The Mind's Blueprint: How to Coach for Lasting Change

TL;DR

This article explores the essence of great coaching: facilitating growth and lasting change. Dr. Tom Heaton delves into key mental models and learning principles that coaches can use to unlock their clients' potential.

Topics include:

• The power of a growth mindset and overcoming fixed beliefs.

• The "mundanity of excellence" and how small, consistent efforts lead to mastery.

• Constructivism: building knowledge step by step.

• Cognitive quirks like desirable difficulty and visuospatial preferences.

By understanding these principles, coaches can create tailored strategies to help clients achieve meaningful transformation.

About the Author

Dr. Tom Heaton is a UK-based physician specializing in critical care and anaesthesia, with a passion for the skills of thinking. His work focuses on learning, environmental engineering, and mental models of performance, skills essential for both high-stakes environments like medicine and everyday challenges. You can explore more of his insights on Substack and follow him on X (formerly Twitter).

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The Essence of Great Coaching

What is at the core of all great coaching? What is its essence? Growth. This can be described in a number of different ways, from transformation, through to personal development. But it is ultimately all about the change from one state to a better state. And the coach is the facilitator of this. 

To me, this makes the act of learning one of central importance. We grow and develop in many different ways, but our skills and knowledge are at the core of this, especially in the domains we really care about. These are all developed through learning. 

But despite this central importance, there are a number of persisting misunderstandings about how we learn. Some of these are subtle and less important, whilst some actually profoundly change the way we act (usually for the negative). I wanted to highlight some of these core ideas and articulate the mental models that we should consider to replace them.

These include:

• The growth mindset 

• The mundanity of excellence 

• Constructivism 

• Cognitive limitations 

The Potential Within 

The first is one that has gained a reasonable degree of traction in coaching circles. This is the idea of the fixed mindset and the contrasting growth mindset. Despite this increased awareness, a fixed mindset remains a common problem.

To summarise it succinctly, it essentially states that our innate (and fixed) characteristics have a significant effect on our ultimate ability. This is to the degree that our ultimate success is essentially out of our hands. 

The problem is that not only is this a rather unhelpful model, but it is also one that is mostly false. Yes, there are some narrow examples where our abilities will be limited by some innate factor. If you want to be the world's strongest man, you do need some genetic advantage. But these are almost always in the physical domain. As soon as a skill or knowledge component is added in it becomes significantly less relevant. 

“Ultimately, we have the potential to become what we want.

But we have to believe this” 

This moves onto the importance of the growth mindset - the intrinsic belief that it is actually our ability to develop over time that holds the most weight in our ultimate outcome. That is, we have the potential to grow and become almost anything that we desire. 

Many, if not all, coaches recognise this. But it is the subtlety that some individuals hold a fixed mindset that can be the problem. It is considered a mindset because it is part of someone's perception of the very nature of reality. Not only can this be invisible to many people, but it can be very difficult to shift. However, it is almost certainly one of the most important things to be aware of when looking to make personal progress. If we don't believe that we can change, we can't. 

As well as actively teaching this, be alert for the subtle signs of the fixed mindset in your clients. These include phrases that are so common as to feel like normal conversation: “I'm just not very…”, “I've never been able to…”, or even “I think I'd rather…” It is so natural to feel the impact of our past that we forget how much it can constrain us. 

The Mundanity of Excellence 

Following on from this is a related but separate mindset about the nature of talent and ability. Yes, there may be some acceptance that there is capacity for change. But there is often a lingering belief that it is actually very difficult. As such, the growth mindset may be believed but felt to not be applicable to the practice of the individual. It is a theoretical possibility, not a relevant reality. 

But the case is that excellence, and the path to it, is actually rather unexciting one. Experts in any field have just stacked skills incrementally. They just do things a little better, and a little better and a little better. It is the simple stacking that turns things from a quantitative difference into a qualitative difference. The outcome is unrecognisable. 

“The path to excellence is surprisingly simple, just not always easy” 

But the path is very dull. In essence, it comes down to doing the basics really well, again and again and again. The challenge for teachers and coaches is imparting the fact that there is no special recipe or ‘secret sauce’. The changes come from diligence and dedication over a significant time. Whilst this actually makes excellence more available to many people, these barriers actually (paradoxically) make it feel less attainable. The challenge, therefore, morphs into one of motivation in addition to instruction. 

Take the example of the Polgar sisters. These three siblings were all taught chess by their father. There was nothing extraordinary in their instruction; no secret chess strategies that they discovered. They simply played lots and lots of chess. Yet they became 3 of the greatest chess players of all time. Indeed, this was the exact point that their father was looking to prove - the components of excellence are available to anyone. 

Building Our Knowledge 

A less well-known learning theory draws on the way we understand how our brains actually function. It has such relevance because it informs us of the ways we should be approaching our development. As the name implies, constructivism recognises that we build our learning. That is, we use our existing knowledge in conjunction with current learning to build our new knowledge and skills.

This can be a major departure from some people's intuitions about learning. The computer model that we have suggests that we can simply ‘download’ knowledge into our brains. For instance, we read a book or listen to a podcast, and the knowledge enters our brain. This suggests that it is only the quality of the learning material or the teaching that is important, not the prior knowledge or the sequence of learning. But our learning is more like a box of Lego. We can craft incredible creations, but we need to consider the component parts. 

“We are building our knowledge, not downloading it. We must consider the component parts and how they are put together” 

Importantly, constructivism recognises that we are all unique. Even the same lesson is interpreted differently by different students. They each have different existing knowledge, different mental models, and different objectives. All of these powerfully affect how we create new knowledge. 

This makes it invaluable to spend some time mapping out a client's current position, as well as their intended destination. Every aspect of our learning needs to be bespoke. 

The Idiosyncratic Mind 

Finally, there is often great benefit in understanding some of the quirks of our brains. Again, this can sometimes run against our natural intuitions. We can feel like rational and objective minds, but we are far from this. Instead, evolution has bequeathed our brains with a number of characteristics. If we don't fully appreciate these, we can miss out on a lot of potential growth. These are broadly covered in the field of ‘cognitivism’, but I think the two most important ideas are Desirable Difficulty and our visuospatial preference. 

The principle of desirable difficulty is essential for us to grow optimally. It recognises that there is a goldilocks zone for development. Too easy and we don't actually develop; too hard and we can't make progress. Instead, we need a balanced difficulty. We need to be challenged, but not too much. We should be on the edge of our comfort zone. Like weights in the gym, we want them to be heavy enough to stimulate growth, but not so heavy that we can't even move them. 

“If you aren't failing sometimes, then you aren't

pushing yourself hard enough” 

The critical message is that this entails a degree of failure. If we are pushing ourselves adequately, sometimes we won't succeed. We should accept this and embrace this. But it is usually more important in the converse. That is, if we aren't failing at all, we aren't challenging ourselves enough. We must be alert for this. 

Our visuospatial preference is another strong tendency. Simply put, we remember things that are visual or ‘real’ much better than anything theoretical or auditory. We should strive to build this into all of teaching and training. Use images to emphasise key points. Design it to be as immersive as possible. This aids both understanding and retention. They make the learning real.

Overcoming these mental quirks is one of the key roles of a coach. Your distance and objectivity mean that you can often see them more clearly. For example, you need to push your clients from their comfort zone, helping them to overcome the natural resistance to this. 

Conclusion: Foundations for Growth 

To summarise, there is a lot more going on in our brains than we often realise. We have mental access to only a small amount of it and are actively deceived about other aspects. But fostering the right mental models can help counter this. 

If we can recognise these features in ourselves and our clients, we can make a notable difference in our results. Because these are some of the skills that catalyse everything else. They are the foundations of effective growth. Now, how will you use these mental models to unlock your clients’ full potential?

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