What is Cognitive Behaviour Coaching (CBC)?

If the general principle is accepted that coaching is the art of enabling a client's learning and development, then Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), as developed by Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, has much to offer the coaching process.

When cognitive behavioural principles are integrated into coaching, the approach is known as Cognitive Behaviour Coaching (CBC).

Rather than focusing on diagnosing or treating mental health conditions, CBC helps people understand how their thoughts influence their behaviours, decisions and outcomes, supporting lasting personal and professional development.

Understanding the ABC model

The central idea behind Cognitive Behaviour Coaching is that our thoughts shape our behaviour.

Our beliefs influence how we interpret situations, which in turn affects how we respond and the results we experience.

This relationship is often explained using the ABC Model:

A – Activating Event: Something happens.
B – Beliefs: We interpret the event through our beliefs and thoughts.
C – Consequences: Those beliefs influence our emotional and behavioural responses, leading to particular outcomes.

For people experiencing emotional distress or workplace challenges, these consequences are often experienced as having a negative impact on their lives.

A practical example

Imagine a manager who needs to ask a difficult employee to complete an important task.

The request itself is the Activating Event (A).

However, the manager may hold beliefs such as:

"They're too difficult."
"They'll say no."
"They'll be rude."
"I'll look foolish."
These thoughts generate anxiety, leading the manager to avoid the conversation altogether.

The consequence is both emotional (anxiety) and behavioural (withdrawal), leaving the manager feeling disempowered.

While this example focuses on management, the same thinking patterns can affect anyone, whether at work or in everyday life.

Guided discovery

This is because CBC uses a questioning, sometimes challenging, collaborative approach to help the coachee make sense of their beliefs and thinking style and to develop more effective, positive ways of responding.

Neenan and Dryden call this ‘Guided Discovery’ whereby the guide (the coach) adopts a questioning style that encourages insight and, as a result, better, more rational decision-making.

By being with the client in this question mode and by focusing on the moment of what the client is experiencing, the coach is able to help the client understand more in depth and with greater clarity the part that they play in “the system”.

Understanding the three spheres of influence

This system, considering the executive or senior manager (but applies to all of us), is considered at three levels, or spheres of influence, depending on how close the manager (or person) is to the influence on their lives:

1. Personal influence

• Personal goals
• Values
• Motivations
• Responsibilities

2. Relationship influence

• Colleagues
• Team members
• Managers
• Customers
• Suppliers
• Family

3. Wider environmental influence

• The economy
• Political events
• Social change
• The natural environment

Whilst the guide may need to navigate with the coachee in and out of these three spheres, the inter-system and interpersonal focus begins to help break down (in CBT terms, ‘deconstruct’) the influences on their situation and the responses that they inspire in them. Breaking things down invariably makes them smaller, easier to understand and to influence back in return.

How cognitive behaviour coaching helps

In these key ways, CBC, which is normally time-limited and solutions-focused on the present, encourages a greater degree of self-awareness, effective management of moods and responses and therefore a better quality of decision-making.

It also leads to a personal action plan for (forgive the buzzword) ‘continuous change’ (but why should executives/individuals be any different to the world they are faced with?).

As an example, somebody may be procrastinating over a potential career move and may feel anxious and, therefore, stuck in procrastination for fear of failure. Becoming aware of that anxiety, deconstructing the build-up to it and developing ‘risk management strategies’ will form part of the decision-making process and then the action plan. Invariably, this leads to an increased chance of being successful.

Becoming your own coach

The ultimate goal of CBC is to support the client in becoming their own coach, which is why, during the coaching process, there will be some teaching and sharing of different models and strategies. This also means they become more able to coach others, too. Empowerment is shared.

Neenan and Dryden are clear that CBC ‘does not offer quick fixes’ to personal and management style change, but that it does ‘emphasise sustained effort and commitment for a successful outcome to your life challenges.’

References:

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. New York: New American Library.

Ellis, A. (1994) Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, revised and updated. New York: Birch Lane Press.

Neenan, M. and Dryden, W. (2002) Life Coaching: A Cognitive Behavioural Approach. London: Brunner-Routledge.