What is cognitive behavioural coaching? - Chapter 7

This chapter discusses the characteristics and application of cognitive behavioural coaching. Cognitive behavioural coaching (CBC) is underpinned by the theory that thought and beliefs about a situation shape emotions and that these emotions generated by the beliefs shape behaviours and actions. In other words: thoughts and beliefs > emotions > behaviours and actions. Cognitive behavioural coaching has been a growing practice since the early 1990s. CBC is frequently applied in business contexts. In this chapter, CBC is defined as: an integrative approach which combines the use of cognitive, behavioural, imaginal and problem-solving techniques and strategies within a cognitive behavioural framework to enable clients to achieve their realistic goals. CBC is a cooperative model between coach and client. This collaboration is key as, for change to occur, the client needs to accept responsibility for their part of the process. To change thoughts, beliefs and behaviours requires hard work and reinforcement. The remainder of this chapter will introduce examples of models and methods of cognitive behavioural coaching and how these are being applied in both business and personal life. In addition, some theoretical background of CBC will be discussed briefly. 

What is the evidence base of cognitive behavioural coaching?

CBC is supported by a substantial amount of books, articles and journals. CBC has become well recognized as a validated therapeutic approach within clinical settings and is the recommended treatment for a wide range of psychological problems, as classified by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines since 2005. Moreover, it has become the most important and best validated psychotherapeutic approach. The underlying research supports the case that CBC is successful in:

• Helping clients to manage emotions such as fer, anxiety, anger and rejection. 
• Transforming pessimistic or negative thinkers into optimistic and rational-constructive thinkers with a beneficial impact on positive affect and motivation.
• Goal striving and attainment with measurable changes in performance and motivation.
• Sales results.
• Study revision for both young and adult students.
• Confidence, self-esteem, authenticity.
• Psychological wellbeing. 

The success of CBC is determined to a large extent by the relationship that develops between the coach and client at the offset. Clarity of expression, roles and responsibilities enables both to know what action they personally need to take. The client understands boundaries, timescale and their own commitment to change by accepting the necessity to undertake home assignments between sessions. In addition, multiple studies have demonstrated the benefits of helping clients to tune into and develop more constructive and positive thought patterns. 

An integral part of the coaching process is questioning. Questioning aims to enable the client to challenge their own perceptions and shape new perspectives. The Socratic style of questioning is fundamental to CBC. Socratic questioning is a form of disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and for many purposes, including: to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things, to open up issues and problems, to uncover assumptions, to analyze concepts, to distinguish what we know from what we do not know, to follow out logical consequences of thought or to control discussions. Socratic questioning is based on the foundation that thinking has structured logic, and allows underlying thoughts to be questioned. The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from questioning per se is that the former is systematic, disciplined, deep and usually focuses on fundamental concepts, principles, theories, issues or problems.

Another essential ingredient to managing change is flexibility of thinking. All emotions shape adaptive behaviours but negative emotions have been shown to lead to dysfunction, including negative social interactions and reactivity. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (developed by Barbara Fredrickson) enables clients to develop an expanded repertoire of desired action, which is an integral part of CBC, enabling individuals to see that they have more options as to how they approach situations than they may have previously realized they had. 

Research has shown that CBC is linked to increased student performance, greater teacher efficacy and satisfaction, higher levels of conceptual thinking among teachers and more professional, collaborative cultured. Combined cognitive behavioural coaching is more effective than behavioural coaching alone or cognitive coaching alone. 

Other studies have shown that CBC is effective in the treatment of perfectionism and self-handicapping in a non-clinical environment. Further, CBC is effective for sales training. The participants achieved for example a 20 percent improvement in the proportion of salespeople 'on target'. It also has been connected to a reduced rate of resignations (it reduced by a factor three). 

How to apply CBC in practice?

Applying CBC can be done using the following five phases: 

1. Initiating the coaching programme.
2. Developing client awareness of cognitive habits. 
3. Challenging and reframing unhelpful thoughts and behaviours
4. Developing new approaches to problem situations.
5. Reviewing and integrating change. 

Initiation and pre-coaching questionnaire

The initiation of the coaching programme is very important. The client needs to understand the underlying philosophy and principles of CBC. They need to understand that the way they think about a situation determines the meaning and emotion they attach to it, which in turn shapes the behaviour and actions. Next to explaining the principles and theory of CBC, the coach and client should discuss and agree roles, responsibilities and expectations and a contract can be signed. Next, a pre-coaching questionnaire can provide a solid start to the coaching process before the first session. In such a questionnaire, the client can be asked to identify the specific situations they find difficult and begin to tune into the thoughts experienced when they face these challenges. By doing so, the clients may begin to understand how their thoughts are shaping feelings and how these feelings influence behaviour and actions. Both the pre-coaching questionnaire and the coaching contract enable the coach and client to understand some of the key issues right at the start of the coaching process. 

The ABCDE model

Next, the ABCDE model is useful to help clients see how they ave been hampering their happiness or performance and also as a model to help them plan how to achieve success in the future. The ABCDE model consists of the following parts:

• Activating situation.
• Beliefs, thoughts and expectations of the situation.
• Consequences of feeling behaviour and impact.
• Disputing whether current approach was (a) helpful, (b) logical, or (c) empirical?
• Exchange response to new (a) thoughts, (b) feelings, (c) behaviours, (d) images.

For example, the coach could ask:

• "Might other people hold a different viewpoint of this situation?" in order to broaden the client's perspectives.
• "You say .... What evidence do you have to support this idea?" in order to get to the specific truth and reality within a situation.
• "What is the worst that could happen?" in order to help the client to put the situation in perspective and to explore realistic potential outcomes. 
• "When you think like this, how does it impact how you feel and act?" in order to help the client to evaluate the impact of this style of thinking and to check whether it is helping or hampering the client to achieve their goals.
• "Can you think of someone else you know who is experiencing a similar situation? How might you advise them to manage it?" in order to help the client distance themselves and gain greater objectivity.

Socratic questioning

Next to the ABCDE model, the Socratic questioning method can be used to enable a coach to help the client identify where their thinking has become illogical or where they may have absorbed another person's opinion without reflection. Socratic questioning has already been defined in an earlier part of this chapter, where the evidence base of CBC was discussed. You may consider reading that part again to study on the definition of Socratic questioning. 

Suppress hyperarousal 

Sometimes, certain circumstances impair someone's ability to think clearly and rationally. For instance, prolonged physical arousal is associated with disturbing emotions such as stress, anger or anxiety. This may in turn interfere with someone's clarity of thought, as limbic system hyperarousal triggers a state of heightened reactivity. Helping the client to understand the mind-body responses to prolonged or chronic stress enables them to understand what they need to do. The coach can teach the client to become 'breath aware' by monitoring whether the breath is in the upper chest, which would signify stress, instead of using diaphragmatic breathing, which reduces hyperarousal, raises CO₂ and lowers blood pressure. 

Thinking style sheet

Another instrument that can be used is the thinking style sheet, which consists of the following elements: 

• Thinking style
• Record of situations that trigger this style of thinking
• Personal experience (thoughts, physiology, emotions, behaviours, consequences)

This instrument can be used to collect a record of the various cognitive distortions together with space for the client to record how they are responding to specific situations or relationships in their own lives. It also enables them to assess the consequences and impact of their current thinking patterns on their life, work, and relationships. An example:

• Thinking style: overgeneralization ("this will never work")
• Record of situations that trigger this style of thinking: experiencing a restructure at work.
• Personal experience: "not another restructure". Leads to anxiety and resentment. Behaviours in the new regime become defensive and unhelpful.

Another example:

• Thinking style: blaming ("it is all his fault!")
• Record of situations that trigger this style of thinking: perceived parental neglect. 
• Personal experience: "It is my father's fault. He always criticized me and has made me feel useless". Leads to a pattern of being a vicitim in other situations accentuating the feeling of helplessness, pointing fingers at others for having more power. 

PRACTICE problem-solving model 

In order for clients to make changes in their lives, the CBC coach helps them to develop more flexible and creative ways of solving problems. As humans are deeply habitual and tend to revert to old patterns when they are stressed, clients tend to find it useful to follow a defined process. One such defined process or model is de PRACTICE problem-solving model:

• Problem identification.
• Realistic goal setting, setting goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, time-bound).
• Alternative solutions and courses of action generated.
• Consideration of consequences of each alternative solution, considering pros and cons.
• Target the most feasible and desirable solution(s).
• Implement the Chosen solution(s) by rehearsing strategies and behaviours by means of imaginary and practical actions.
• Evaluate methods, actions and efforts, review what has been learnt and reconsider the problem in the light of specific approaches and solutions. 

PE-P model

Another useful approach is the PE-P model.

• Stage one: Problem
  • Clearly identify the problem you want to solve.
  • Consider why you want to solve it.
• Stage two: Emotion
  • Recognize and accept the emotion inspired by the problem.
  • Identify the thoughts, images, beliefs and expectations that trigger the emotion.
  • Use the ABC model to develop more rational thinking patterns.
• Stage three: Plan
  • Develop a practical and achievable plan (a personal management plan).

Reviewing and integrating change

Change is difficult. First, the client needs to believe in the value of coach programme in order to be persuaded to take action. Further, CBC coaches will be checking with clients regularly to review together what is working and what is not. Based on this review, the coach can adapt their methods to the client's learning styles in order to ensure that they are supporting the change process as effectively as possible. Next, repetition and practice of new approaches is essential to the integration of change. Finally, compassion and the reinforcement of fallibility supports clients to keep motivated through setbacks. 

Imagery can be very effective in enabling a client to rehearse the new behaviours before carrying them out in the real world. Further, as the client is expected to become their own coach, it can be effective to suggest that they read books alongside the coaching programme. This is also called bibliocoaching. 

When might CBC be most suitable?

CBC is applied in a wide variety of fields. It has been applied with children in schools, students, adults in careers, managers and professionals managing everyday workplace challenges, people facing redundancy or retirement or recovering from illness, team sports, and so forth. As the theories and methods of CBC are becoming more integrated with other approaches, which are described in other chapters of this book, CBC offers the coach a holistic and diverse selection of techniques to keep in their toolbox. This enables them to adapt their approach to the specific needs of the client. 

This chapter discusses the characteristics and application of cognitive behavioural coaching. Cognitive behavioural coaching (CBC) is underpinned by the theory that thought and beliefs about a situation shape emotions and that these emotions generated by the beliefs shape behaviours and actions. In other words: thoughts and beliefs > emotions > behaviours and actions. Cognitive behavioural coaching has been a growing practice since the early 1990s. CBC is frequently applied in business contexts. In this chapter, CBC is defined as: an integrative approach which combines the use of cognitive, behavioural, imaginal and problem-solving techniques and strategies within a cognitive behavioural framework to enable clients to achieve their realistic goals. CBC is a cooperative model between coach and client. This collaboration is key as, for change to occur, the client needs to accept responsibility for their part of the process. To change thoughts, beliefs and behaviours requires hard work and reinforcement. The remainder of this chapter will introduce examples of models and methods of cognitive behavioural coaching and how these are being applied in both business and personal life. In addition, some theoretical background of CBC will be discussed briefly.