The Art of Noticing

The

Art of

Noticing

As a coach, I’m sure you’re interacting with people all the time. Though let me ask you a question, do you actually notice people? I believe that many coaches, do just that, they just coach and that’s it.

What I mean by this is that a lot of coaches just observe, meaning they register mentally what their clients are saying, though only with a view to respond to it. Whereas when you notice, you become conscious of that person by seeing, hearing and feeling them.

In coaching, we call that "presence". Without presence, you'll miss what matters most to your clients. Though when you apply it, the keys to guiding your clients to find the answers they are looking for, are revealed.

With so much happening all around us and so much information to process, it’s hard to notice everything, right?

This was perfectly highlighted in the 1999 study by cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, who demonstrated how people can focus so hard on something that they become blind to the unexpected, even when staring right at it.

In the video people were asked to focus on a video of people passing basketballs to each and to count how many passes were made. What was interesting is that about half of watchers missed a person in a gorilla suit walking in and out of the scene thumping its chest.

Simons and Chabris called this "inattentional blindness," showing that it can become easy to miss details when we’re not looking for them.

Noticing comes down to two things. The first is having a high level of emotional intelligence.

The term “Emotional Intelligence” was coined by American Psychologists Peter Salovey and John D in 1990 describing it as "a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action".

Emotional Intelligence was popularised through the book of the same name, written by science writer for the New York Times, Daniel Goleman.

Emotional intelligence involves four components:

Self-awareness

Self-management

Social awareness

Relationship management.

I only want to mention the first two for the purpose of this article, as I believe to be the best coach, you need to become a better observer of yourself, to really take in and NOTICE­­­­­­ what is happening with your clients.

Self-awareness is the ability to recognise and understand your own emotions. Having this awareness allows you to manage your behaviours, to ensure that they are in balance with who you are. Being self-aware means you understand your strengths and weaknesses and knowing how you react to different situations and what things trigger you. This means that you know what you need to work on and have a good grasp of your capabilities. You are also able to anticipate the impact and influence you have on your clients, making you much more effective at changing behaviours.

Self-management is the ability to be aware of your emotions to stay flexible and to be in control of your behaviour. This means that you are able to act in a way that is productive and that leads to a positive relationship with your clients.

It could include changing your mood (e.g. not letting a bad mood colour how you interact with your clients), taking steps to avoid or manage situations that cause you to react negatively you and acting with honesty and integrity.

I believe emotional intelligence is such a key attribute for coaches. Coaching is about influencing the behaviour of your clients. By being aware of your own emotions and the effect that you have on your clients, you are able to interact more effectively with them.

The second aspect to noticing is Conscious Listening.

Even though is sounds obvious, listening is perhaps the most critical component of effective communication, though its value is still under-rated in coaching. What we need to realise is that we usually think three to four times faster than we talk, meaning we can sometimes get distracted when our client is speaking, so our minds wander.

Listening is largely a top-down, cognitive process. As we take in the stimuli of the other person’s words, the prefrontal cortex in the brain, which enables organizing and prioritizing, lights up. As we’re continually process the incoming information, our brain is comparing it against what we know, our past experiences and our theoretical construct of the future. In the process of trying so hard to pay attention to everything your client is saying, you can actually end up focusing on nothing.

The challenge of conscious listening requires no less than a conscious choice to override the brain’s preferred mode of operation. Easier said than done, I know. So it requires that you train your brain’s biological need for efficiency, prediction and planning and employ a purely bottom-up process to become truly open to the input of others. That is where the emotional intelligence is important.

This is not just about listening to what your client is saying, but more importantly, properly listen to how you sound and how you feel while you’re speaking and interacting with your client.

When we are listening consciously, we trigger what are known as mirror neurons in the brain. Mirror neurons were discovered in the 1980’s by Italian Neurophysiologist Dr Giacomo Rizzolatti who was studying specific nerve cells in macaque monkeys’ prefrontal cortex’s and found that the cells fired when the monkeys threw a ball or ate a banana.

The surprise finding was that the same cells were firing in the monkeys who were watching the other monkey performing these acts.

When you’re noticing, then you’re giving your clients sustained and complete attention. Listening to what they say and being fascinated by what they might say next. Not waiting patiently when they are silent, but waiting expectantly. It means making it comfortable for them to feel uncomfortable, enabling them to dig deep to find the answers and create the shifts they seek.

It means relying on being present rather than thinking, letting go of your need to assess, analyse, interpret, look for themes or give them ‘aha’ moments. They will find their own.

Dean Griffiths is the Founder and CEO of Energy Fusion (energyfusion.co.uk) an online health and wellbeing platform for companies and healthcare providers. Energy Fusion subjectively assesses the physical and mental health of each members and then strategically supports them to make the necessary lifestyle changes.

Everything they do at Energy Fusion is backed by science and clinical research. Dean is also known as The Soul Whisperer (deangriffiths.co.uk), an intuitive coach empowering women to live a life of purpose through his Inner Journey Coaching Program.

“Know the wonder inside you, release yourself to your inner world.

Celebrate your truth and make this the gift to the world”