All of us, including the most talented entrepreneur, have blind spots – Unconscious thoughts, feelings and assumptions that foster ineffective habits and unproductive behavior patterns. Blind spots affect our personal and professional lives and in the business world, they hold leaders back from mastery, hindering their ability to help teams perform at their highest levels, drive results, and move the organization forward. Theirs.

Unaware of the unconscious root of the problem, leaders can get stuck. This awareness often comes too late due to poor team performance, ineffective communication and substandard company performance. When leaders recognize it unconscious behavior patterns early and bring to the surface – moving them from the unconscious level to the conscious level – these pattern can be examined and changed.

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The Road Often Taken: A Surface Approach

Executive coaching can be very effective in helping business leaders and entrepreneurs overcome their blind spots. However, traditional training often fails to focus on without feelings, where the roots of behavioral patterns live. Results are usually limited and temporary because these methods only work at the surface level and never reveal the true source of ineffective or uninspired performance.

Think of it as the tip of an iceberg peeking out from the ocean: the only issues that surface and are addressed are those above the surface, when a completely unconscious level of issues lurks beneath. In the long run, leaders get stuck because they haven't changed the way they think and act at a deeper level.

Common methods usually involve complex rating systems that chart problem behaviors and outcomes. This can be useful for analyzing the details of job skills compared to performance, but the effects of leadership development are often superficial.

Trainers using these methods usually ask, “Where is the problem?” and “What are your options?” then intervene their solutions, limiting the results to the knowledge and experience of the coach. This well-meaning advice is based on subjective judgments and does not tap into objective, deeper levels for answers that can move leaders forward on a profound level.

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Dive below the surface for lasting change

Sustainable leadership development happens by tapping into the unconscious—that place just below the surface where the real barriers to elevated performance exist. This is where the neurological sequence of the brain lives, which is based on core beliefs and previous experiences. Scientific principles of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) are highly effective in identifying and changing ineffective behavior patterns and improving patterns in the unconscious mind that support elevated performance. This approach uses five steps to get below the surface and ensure deep and lasting change:

1. Identify the situation, goals and objectives.
2. Use neuro-linguistic programming to uncover problematic behavior patterns.
3. Set development plans, metrics and target dates for individual leaders.
4. Identify patterns, root cause, impact, and solution options with open neural pathways.
5. Evaluate and measure achievements and determine the next level.

Starting with a completely open mind is vital to a leadership coach's ability to uncover the past or present experiences that created the neural pathways that created a leader's beliefs and resulting actions.

By listening closely and using the principles of neuro-linguistic programming, an expert coach can determine patterns of behavior and their origins by examining the leader's words. Language usually comes directly from our unconscious and is therefore a window into deeper thought patterns.

For example, phrases such as “I'm not“,”I can not“unable to,” and “don't have to” reveal an assumption of the impossibility of a desire or goal. NLP-trained coaches listen deeply, not just to the words used, but to the tone, pace, energy level and smoothness of speech, as well as the use of fillers such as “how” AND “I know”, to uncover experiences that lead to negative neural pathways and the resulting behavior patterns.

Typical questions an expert behavioral and NLP coach might ask include:

• What is the root of the matter?
• What is really holding you back?
• If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?
• What is your desired outcome?
• What is it that we are not discussing that we should be (reveals a blind spot)?

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At a deeper level, by observing how executives conduct or participate in meetings, coaches are able to observe them in their “natural habitat,” which reveals patterns of behavior that the client may not report because they simply they are not aware of them. Observation is performed virtually, making it easier and faster for the trainer to blend into the background. The coach reads the sensory acuity and words, noting the approach and leadership style, as well as the non-verbal reactions of the team.

Neuroscience techniques are applied to change the leader's thought patterns and the resulting behavior. Tangible results come to light after they become aware of their unique, limiting thoughts and behaviors and learn how to implement them with this three-step technique:

1. Identify the thought/behavior pattern in the moment.
2. Stop every time it repeats.
3. Drive a new, improved model.

Sustained leadership development elevates the entire organization

Blind spots that hold back the leaderspersonally and professionally, repeat yourself until unconscious patterns emerge at the level of consciousness, where blind spots can be transformed.

When leaders have the opportunity to consciously work with their embedded and unconscious behaviors in this way, they can unleash their full potential and have a powerful impact on their organizations. The best part is that by using the NLP approach to coaching, results are fast, with executives typically achieving their first round of goals within five weeks.

A lot is happening in our unconscious and subconscious minds. Some of them are very positive, while some are holding us back from reaching our ultimate leadership potential. A good leadership coach is one who is not afraid to get out of his figurative shovel and dig deep into those areas, uncovering the negative patterns and thoughts that act as obstacles to our progress.

It's not just a good way to effect real change. It's the only way.