After extensive study and rich dialogue with Art Costa and Bob Garmston, Thinking Collaborative has determined that the work of Cognitive CoachingSM would be best served with a revision to Capability 3. For years, Capability 3 has read “Adjust One’s Style Preferences.” Going forward, Capability 3 will now read, “Attune to and Adjust for Human Uniqueness.” This revision has been made with high consciousness of current global conditions and offers a hopefulness that this principle will provide the What, Why, and How for transformative action regarding human uniqueness. For the January Sustaining the Journey, we will explore this change in language and thinking:

Humans are beautifully unique! We each bring our experiences, our hopes, our fears, our learnings, and our perspectives to every interaction in which we engage. Our perceptions (our view of the world) are based on incoming data. Our brains receive about 400 billion bits of information per second. Because of this barrage of data, our brains must filter out what the brain deems as nonessential information and retain only what is determined as important. Because of this constant filtering, our conscious mind is only aware of 2,000 bits of incoming information per second (from Jeffrey Statinover, Harvard psychologist).

As explained in the 2018 Cognitive Coaching Foundation Seminar® Trainer’s Guide, filters are…

the internal reality of our unique worlds that we create from our lived experiences. A variety of filters impact our values, beliefs, identities, and world-views (Hayes, Merola, Simoneau, 2018).

As a result, “we do not see things as THEY are, we see things as WE are” (Anais Nin). Hayes, Merola, and Simoneau (2018) add:

For coaches to effectively interact as a mediator of thinking, they must first look inward at their own biases that have developed from unique filters. First and foremost, coaches must explore what is within themselves, and then consider: “Who am I in relation to the person I am coaching?”

• When coaching for human uniqueness this week, who might you need to be?