3 July 2019
The rapid growth of coaching practices has outpaced the current best-practice empirical research and created a difficult landscape to navigate for coaches and consumers alike. To overcome these challenges the present study published in “Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice" proposed to employ the neuro-screening measure to develop and monitor an individually tailored coaching interventions.
The neuro-screeing procedure utilised in the study was Electroencephalogram (EEG). In contrast to other neuroimaging techniques such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), or Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT), EEG is the only technique that is completely non-invasive, portable, low-cost, risk-free method, which is used to directly monitor brain activity (that is the electricity produced by many cortical neurons firing in nonrandom partial synchrony). EEG monitoring combined with automatic mathematical-statistical analysis (so-called quantitative EEG, or qEEG) provides a practical means to derive neurophysiologically based indexes of intrinsic brain activity that support individual cognitive and information processing, self-regulatory functions, decision-making, behaviour, and consciousness.
The study concluded that neuro-assessment profiling and based on it coaching, individually adjusted to a given coachee, helped to reveal every coachee’s individual potential and predispositions (traits) thus allowing effective personal growth and maximising performance. Armed with this knowledge, leadership development could be individually customised to fit the unique neurological ‘blueprint’ of every coachee.