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Scientists used to believe that brain cells and the connections were set early in life and did not change in adulthood. In the past decade, that assumption has been drastically disproved. Through advancement in brain imaging and other techniques, we now know that the brain as well as behavior can be trained, physically modified, and functionally transformed. The inner workings and circuitry of the brain change with new experiences.

Neuroplasticity and behavioral change occur within the context of individual styles. Some of these styles that appear more or less hard-wired need to be taken into account for optimum learning and performance.

Learning and Performance Styles

Self-management involves understanding yourself quite well: your strengths, weaknesses, learning style, working style, needs, and values.

Optimum learning and performance occur when you are in a specific state of mind matched to what you are doing. When you operate from your strengths, you optimize the potential for excellence.

In addition to recognizing strengths, knowing how you learn and perform is crucial for success. These learning and performance characteristics are styles; they can be slightly modified, but ultimately must be respected and strategically planned.

• Readers

Some people learn best by reading, and need to see a text or pictures in order to really comprehend material. President John Kennedy was a reader who assembled an outstanding group of writers on his staff. Part of Kennedy’s brilliance was in using these people and what they wrote to informat his decisions.

• Listeners

President Johnson had attained his reputation and success as a listener. When Johnson kept the same people on his staff after he succeeded Kennedy, they kept on writing. Johnson derailed his presidency by not recognizing that he was a listener, not a reader.

• Writers

Some people learn best by writing. Beethoven kept copious notes and amassed an enormous numbers of sketchbooks, yet never looked at them when he composed. When asked about this practice, he said, “If I don’t write it down immediately, I forget it right away. If I put it into a sketchbook, I never forget it and I never have to look it up again.”

• Talkers

Some people learn best by hearing themselves talk. This is a style I am quite familiar with. A significant portion of the material in my books comes from what I later jot down from teaching, presentations, and supervision of professionals— things that came to me in a different way from what I had previously thought or written out. “I don’t write because I have something to say, I write to see what I have to say.”

• Collaborators

Some people work best in collaboration with others. Creative pairings and the dance of ideas are common for those who perform best in conjunction with others. Some collaborators work best as team members, succeeding in a system where ideas and implementation occur as part of a group.

• Loners

Some people work best alone, preferring the purity of concentration and focus that they can achieve only in the quietness of working alone.

These predominant styles of learning—and none of them is all-or-nothing—constitute an important piece of self-knowledge and a way to facilitate performance for clients.

Copyright David Krueger MD and MentorPath Publications

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I consistently hear my coaching students puzzle about why their clients stall or quit at about two months. Why does someone begin a new endeavor—such as coaching—with such excitement, then seem to lose it several weeks into the work? The possible answers involve both the mind and the brain, as well as familiarity with a map of development to understand this phenomenon.

The Art

New learning falls into four phases.

1. Initial confusion and excitement combine to launch new learning. Awareness of the unfamiliar and uncertain registers as curiosity, or even anxiety, mixed in with the excitement, propelling momentum.
2. Increasing confidence follows, both with the experience of effectiveness and with positive feedback.
3. Mastery is the consistent experience of effectiveness and movement to a new level of excitement, validation, and into its own self-sustaining “flow.”
4. Entropy occurs when the excitement and invigoration of the learning curve’s newness and mastery level off or decline. Even a leveling off may register as a lessening of the ever-increasing acquisition of mastery, pleasure, and rewards. Disillusionment may be introduced, with accompanying questions of why there is not more to this, why the increasing mastery and success have leveled off or waned.

The Science

The brain also plays a role in this process. Dopamine is the brain chemical that induces excitement by anticipating pleasure or reward. The rush from dopamine release motivates people to take risks. The risk is exciting, adding to the dopamine release. But neuroscientists have shown that anticipating a reward is even more exciting than actually receiving it. Why? Because receiving a reward actually shuts down the anticipatory release of dopamine, and along with it the accompanying positive feelings and high energy. This explains the paradox that the expectation of an event is more exciting than the actual event, as has been demonstrated in various arenas:

• An investor will feel more positive when expecting a stock to rise, yet feel less excited than he anticipated when it actually does rise.
• The purchase of a big ticket item—a new car—isn’t as exciting as expected.
• Clients hit plateaus in coaching after one to two months.

In coaching we foster attitudes that both promote curiosity and openness as well as introduce new learning. Learning is always a choice, a potential creation. There are many different levels of learning, both internal and external.. And, learning does not always have to be converted into action or into a specific metric of success.

Copyright David Krueger MD and MentorPath Publications