Mindsonar: The Key to Overcoming Internal Interference

Helping people “Get out of their own way” for business success

“Getting in our own way” is a phrase that refers to the tendency for people to sabotage their own efforts or goals through their own actions or thoughts. This can manifest in a variety of ways, such as procrastination, self-doubt, or a lack of motivation. Essentially, it means that an individual is preventing themselves from achieving something due to their own behaviour or mindset.

In “Coaching for Performance,” John Whitmore provides an inspiring formula for achieving success:

Potential – Interference = Performance.

As a coach, I use this powerful principle to help clients unlock their highest potential and eliminate any barriers that can get in the way of progress and achievement. The interference, or the things that get in the way of our performance, can be both internal and external. Our individual experiences and understanding of the world are effectively shaped by our personal biases, values, and beliefs. We often process external stimuli through a filter, deleting what does not fit into our current worldview, distorting it to align with existing beliefs and values or generalising for us to better comprehend its significance.

One of the most common forms of internal interference is our own thinking. The way we think can create ripples of change in how we act or feel and ultimately realise our ambitions. We can see this from another familiar coaching tool, the cognitive Triangle.

By understanding and becoming more aware of our thinking we can influence our behaviours and manage our emotions better.

This is where the power of Mindsonar comes into play for me and my coaching, and why it is one of my go-to coaching tools. It enables me to comprehend the client’s underlying values and beliefs. This gives me a unique perspective on their worldview and the triggers that may be interfering with what they are attempting to do.

For example, when an agitated client joined a call, we used the Mindsonar methodology to uncover the core value – the underlying motivation that had been threatened by a recent interaction. With this knowledge in hand, we were able to successfully manage the situation and return to focus on achieving coaching outcomes.

The Mindsonar profile also allows me and the client to investigate, in detail, the cognitive processes that are taking place clearly and visually. It allows us to identify capabilities as well as some of the restricting thinking blind spots. Being aware of my client’s thinking style can be incredibly useful for customising a coaching experience. Take the proactive, option-oriented individual who needs more help to stay focused on their objectives rather than getting drawn in by tempting diversions. Conversely, those with a reflective and procedural cognitive style may need some extra encouragement when it comes to moving ahead at pace.

Enabling my clients to get out of their own way used to be a regular challenge for me when I started coaching. However, with Mindsonar, it’s like giving my clients a map, a compass and a flashlight to navigate through the maze of their own thoughts. They often find themselves receiving extraordinary clarity around their thought processes and any pressing issues. In many cases, it gives them the ability to get right to the heart of things.

Understanding John Whitmore’s performance formula and the importance of our cognitive style, utilising the cognitive Triangle model, demonstrates how powerful it is to have a tool that can x-ray our thinking style and gives deep insights into our cognitive preferences.

This is how I assist my customers in “getting out of their own way” and making minor but significant adjustments to their thinking, emotions and behaviours that lead to better p performance and less interference. Mindsonar opens an incredible world of possibilities in coaching, from personal transformation to developing your business.

How I use MindSonar in my Business Coaching

Understand your client’s thinking to be more effective as a coach
Who we are has a profound impact on our lives and the decisions we make. It influences not only what we do, but also how we do it when we do it (or not in a lot of cases), and most importantly, why we do it.

Our identity shapes the relationships we build with ourselves and others and determines the outcomes and results we achieve in all the roles we perform, be that in business or our personal lives.

To know thyself
Socrates famously said, ” To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”This simple but powerful statement highlights the importance of self-awareness and self-knowledge.. By understanding who we are, how we think and what motivates us, we can make more informed and deliberate choices about how we live our lives, run our businesses and the relationships we create.

This is why, as a Business Coach I spend time helping my clients gain clarity on how they think so they can better leverage their natural ability to “get out of their own way” and quickly achieve better results.

Cognitive style
One aspect of who we are is the way we think – our cognitive style. Cognitive styles are ways that people absorb and organise information as well as how they go about solving problems and making decisions and communicating them with others. As an experienced coach, I am constantly and creatively combining different methods andtools to create unique strategies for my clients. Seeking out new approaches is the best way to ensure that every individual reaches their desired outcomes! That’s why I’m a big fan of Mindsonar.Tailoring my coaching to each clientMindsonar is a tool that measures two things: your thinking style and what is important to you. This information is invaluable in helping me tailor my coaching to each client. By understanding how my client thinks, I can better understand how to best help them change their thinking and behaviours and enable them to be more themselves.

Moreover, by understanding what is important to them and their cognitive style, I can be more effective as a coach in the way I communicate, challenge, and support them during our coaching sessions. I can help them create goals and action plans that are aligned with their values and how they naturally think.

What will work for them and who they are?
There’s no one-size fits all blueprint when it comes to success – individual approaches must reflect a person’s unique abilities and methods of thinking to be effective.Therefore, using the Mindsonar tool I can Identify the unique combination of methods that will work for them and who they are.In short, Mindsonar is a powerful tool that can help coaches facilitate real change in their clients, fast. By enabling our clients an understanding who they are and how they think they can better leverage their unique talents and abilities and be more effective and efficient in achieving their objectives.

As a coach, you want to help your clients unlock their true potential for success.Incorporating Mindsonar into your toolset is an excellent way to give them the edge they deserve. Unlocking greater understanding and clarity in just minutes – what could be better?

How Options Decimated the Amsterdam Mafia

Thinking ‘in options’ means that you like to explore many different possibilities. The counterpart to options thinking is thinking ‘in procedures’: sticking to a step-by-step plan. Most people in coaching, consulting, et cetera, are fans of options thinking. Options are creative. Options thinking makes new things possible. Procedures are for bookkeepers and menial workers….

Thinking in options however, can have its downside too.Continue reading

Amplifying your Team’s Advantages (Financial Industry)

AMPLIFYING YOUR TEAM’S ADVANTAGES

Understanding diversity in the financial industry and making it work for you

Financial institutions are pillars of society, secure and reliable institutions that take care of money transactions. Of course, the foundations of financial institutions are their employees, and these types of companies are extremely careful about who they recruit to positions within their organisations.

When we talk about financial institutions we are most familiar with banks, as we do business with banks almost on a daily basis. In doing so, we meet mostly with their sales departments. Far fewer people understand what else is needed in a bank’s inventory to perform safely and reliably. Hence banks employ a wide range of different team members who need appropriate qualifications in order to perform their work well. Staff members are provided with constant training, as banks are continuously evolving to offer their clients the most advanced and reliable services. As a business coach, I have worked with several banks operating in international markets and have trained heads of various departments, giving me the opportunity to recognise different ways of working, different ways of communicating and, of course, different thinking styles.

In my work, I use one of the best performing and effective profiling tools – MindSonar® – which allows professionals to identify their own ways of thinking and their most likely responses in specific situations. In this way, they are enabled to gain self-knowledge and to recruit team members who have different ways of thinking in specific contexts, which leads to creativity and the ability to solve even the most demanding challenges. Of course, an added benefit of knowing each other in this way is that they can more often avoid conflicts and resolve problems.

It is also true that understanding the diversity of team members gives the organisation, its leaders, teams and individual employees the responsibility to develop and strengthen their competences and thus enable each other to achieve the highest level of efficiency in communication, relationships and operations, provided, of course, that they are also suitably professionally competent.

We have recently prepared and delivered workshops with an HR department of a banking organisation.  The workshops are intended to strengthen communication and relational skills and raise emotional intelligence.  Analysis of a team’s MindSonar® group profile demonstrated a strong pattern of how individuals, specifically in the positions of sales managers, are similar in thinking styles in specific contexts. This is of course, logical, as a position of a branch manager or a sales manager requires a certain approach, and therefore, it makes sense for the organisation to either recruit or develop a co-worker who will cope with the challenges this position brings. At the same time, we discussed with these leaders how they value different thinking patterns in their teams. Despite relationships that sometimes require more input, it is precisely different patterns of thinking that strengthen and enrich a team, especially in the sense that it can achieve above-average efficiency and when it comes to financial management, appropriate returns.

Recognition that professionals need high-level communication and relational skills for their optimal functioning is crucial for both the development of the individual as well as the organisation. In identifying this, financial institutions, as the most technologically and security-wise advanced companies, are at the forefront of modern corporate operations.

An effective and widely useful tool enabling the profiling of diversity of thinking styles – MindSonar® enables identifying differences in thinking and facilitates guiding the development of individuals. Using MindSonar® means skilled trainers and profiling practitioners – MindSonar® Professionals – can assess individuals or entire teams and show them where and how they can progress, accessing coaching and specialised workshops. Organisations and teams can develop optimally and achieve maximum prosperity.

Developing Leadership in the Dutch Military

For many years, when an officer in the Dutch military was being prepared for a high ranking position, they started a leadership development training, working on their communication, strategic skill, and leadership competencies.

At the beginning of the training a MindSonar profile was made and the candidate defined their own strengths and weaknesses as a high ranking officer. Their MindSonar profile was related to the competencies they wanted to develop (they chose five from a list of twelve competencies defined by the military).

The Meta Programs and criteria in their MindSonar profile were seen as a ‘lever’ to better enable them to develop these competencies. An officer might, for instance, want to develop a thinking style that had stronger ‘towards,’ ‘general,’ ‘people’, and “structure” Meta Programs, combined with more ‘yellow’ criteria (personal development and systems overview). During the year the officer had several conversations with the MindSonar professional. At the end of the course, another measurement was done to determine if the target competencies had indeed been developed.The MindSonar professional running this project was Marjan Kos (Netherlands). Look her up in the Registry.

Improving Diversity in the Workplace

Improving Diversity in the Workplace

Words by Levitha Biji

Leicester business owner opens up about her experience of racism, which led her to start a business based on equality, diversity and inclusion 

Experiencing racism once – in a new business owner’s life – motivated Minakshee Patel to start her own consultancy firm. 

Whilst at a Polytechnic in the mid 1980’s, she stood in an election for the Students Union. She wrote history being the first female as well as the first Asian during the election. However, there were some individuals who believed she didn’t have a place there, she told us: “They used a derogatory term to describe me because I am Asian, I was shocked.” Being the character she is, the experience made her more determined to win the election, which she did. She said, “It was more about them than me.” She eventually started her own consultancy business, Minakshee Patel Consultancy. 

She turned this experience into a positive one and now Minakshee, who has 16 years’ experience, wants to make a difference by adding value regarding equality, diversity and inclusion to other organisations and ensuring their employees have a voice. This business owner’s goal is to be a catalyst in her clients’ journeys to help them reach their goals by using MindSonar®. 

MindSonar® measures cognitive diversity and the insights gained enables staff to perform at their best and improve diversity & inclusion within the workplace by helping to address unconscious bias, leading to a competitive advantage for your organisation.