Neurological Levels (AWARENESS)
So what exactly is this neurological levels got to do with coaching?
This week’s web-torial is a deep thought provoking topic. Even the title of the topic sounds so advanced and complicated and some may thought it’s some medical/ surgical jargons. :)
During our web-torial, Coach Mel introduced us the 7 levels of Neurological Levels which are :
There are seven levels as shown where the highest being (1) Model of the World (2) Identity (3) Values & Beliefs (4) Attitudes & Motivations (5) Competencies (6) Behaviors and finally (7) Environment. These 7 neurological levels help us to find the levels of our mind is operating by the narratives we use to describe our situation or problem. Some people may be stuck at certain level and perceives that their problem as unsolvable.
Neurological levels help us to be aware of our thoughts/actions and our understanding of the reasons behind these perceived unsolvable problems. If we could help our coachee to discover their thoughts levels by levels, we could help them create new awareness and new perspectives for their so-called unsolvable problem and perhaps ignite new positive changes. To me the process is like taking the spiral staircase. If you are standing at the top looking down to the staircase, we need to go through levels of the stairs before we reach at the ground. Each of the steps we take, we try to understand what was happening at the level we stopped and eventually when we get down, then we look up again we realized there were much happenings along the way. As it seems what we see is not who we are by just looking from the top view. Hence, we need to get into deeper levels and reach to the ground to find our Model of the World and our Identity.
Models of The World (our reality)
Model of the World here refers to our internal interpretations through our filters of the external world. In my previous blog about Filters & Styles, we discussed about D-D-G i.e. Delete, Distort & Generalize. We often D-D-G all the information we received and then form our own meaning of that piece of information. This so-called piece of information is our models of the world. Therefore, everyone will have their own models of the world because of the different interpretations we each have. Coach Mel reminded that it is important that as coaches, we should respect and see our coachee’s model of the world from their perspective.
Identity (who you are)
This level is about finding who you are and who you are not. Most often than not, we sometimes confused who we are. It’s not what we do but rather who we are i.e. our attributes as a person. For e.g. I am a trainer (this is what I do) who is very passionate (my attribute) about teaching the young talents in the industry and I can be very patient (attribute) in sharing my knowledge and experience to these young talents. When we are aware of who we are, it can connect us to finding our Ikigai.
Values & Beliefs (what’s important to you)
Our ideal standards of behavior and our beliefs influences our values, attitudes and behavior. How we think and how we act are the results of our values & beliefs in our life. Then, our values & beliefs could be the result of our past experiences and the people we met in our life journey. For e.g. my mom is someone who emphasizes a lot on cleanliness. Hence, naturally I followed my mom’s standard of cleanliness as well. Sometimes this values & beliefs that I have in me, becomes the reason of some minor arguments I have with my husband because his understanding of cleanliness and mine are different. So we have to come to a mid-point where we will have to give in and accept each other’s differences.
Attitudes & Motivations (what drives us)
Attitude is our way of responding caused by our feeling or opinion about something or someone. We may realize our rationale of our attitude either consciously or unconsciously. If we could recognize the drive behind our attitudes, we could understand our selves better and hence be more willing to take actions to unlock our potentials and be able to enjoy fulfilment in life.
Competencies (how you do it)
Once we have identified our needs and wants, it’s time to look into the competencies in us to achieve our goals. Competencies relates to our knowledge, skills, capabilities, talents and resources to enable us to take action. Have we forgotten how good we are at doing something? Or if not, what further opportunities are there to develop new skills?
Behaviors (what you do or say)
This is the level about our narrations and the language we use to express ourselves. As Coach Mel said, we can choose to process before we let it go i.e. to narrate our stories because behaviors can cause either a positive or negative effect on the atmosphere and environment.
Environment (where, when and with whom you do things)
This involves the environment we are in, the people we interact with, the culture that we are part of and our inability to influence the situation which eventually put us in frustration or stress. The frustration and stress we faces would then make us assume incorrectly about the environment and thus we made our own version of our model of the world.
How to use it in coaching?
As shown below, the phrase “ I just can’t accept the mess there” illustrate how I can use “ Neurological Levels” (in reverse) in coaching:
I explored which are the words that creates a tug internally for me and that indicates the level I am operating from and that is the level where something needs to change. Through this exercise, I learnt that I have to lower down my expectations on my meaning of tidiness vs mess. This could help remove the burden of an ideal home for myself and my family and hence create a more harmonious relationship in the family. My Model of the World now : It’s okay not to be perfectly clean and tidy! :)
So my role as a coach is to help my coachee re-align their neurological levels. Listening to my coachee’s language/narrations to see which neurological level my coachee may be facing some challenges or advantages.
Coach Mel further reminded us that it’s a myth for coaches trying to go into all the levels and catch our coachees’ words one by one. We shall take the conversation one at a time and prioritize the crucial ones.
Recap on some of the key pointers shared during the session:
Good to use “ what ifs” questions to explore further
Awareness is the whole thing in neurological levels
Listen for the first time and then check-in with the coachee
Give coachee the choice to say it, if the awareness has come up
We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change - Sheryl Sandberg