Coaching to a New Orleans State of Mind: A Multi-Tasking City and Mind-Set

In many ways, this new interdisciplinary field was inaugurated when Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve Bank, noted in a 2010 graduation speech that “we are social creatures. . . . [E]conomic policymakers should pay attention to family and community cohesion. All else being equal, good economic policies should encourage and support stable families and promote civic engagement.” (Weitz, 2012) Bruno Frey anticipated this merger in 2008 when he noted that “economics is undergoing a remarkable new development, which may even be called revolutionary.” He is speaking about the impact so-called “positive psychology” (the study of happiness, courage and other positive human conditions) might have on the formulation on economic policy. (Weitz, 2012) Several other books have also been precursors to the Bernacke speech—including Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness (2006),  Dan Ariely’s (2008) Predictably Irrrational (2008), and Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide (2009). In each of these books, decision making processes are described as a mixture of cognitive (primarily frontal lobe) considerations and emotional (primarily limbic system) considerations. Ariely and, more recently, Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow, 2013) have focused often on decision-making processes that effect financial matters. They are describing the multi-tasking processes involved in effective policy-formulation, monitoring of economic outcomes, and (more basically) the nature and meaning of economic “success.”

I would suggest that these financial matters play a major role in the work professional coaches do when operating in an organizational context with clients who must make difficult, economically-based decisions. The multi-tasking in these instances might not take on the grandeur of the numinous, but it certainly involves peremptory ideation and the tendency of economic decision making processes to recruit the nearby debris of old decisions and anticipated successes and failures, as well as the multitude of data points that are converging on the present decision point. We are living in a postmodern world of complexity, unpredictability and turbulence. Some multi-tasking is required. A New Orleans State of Mind might be appropriate and our clients might try to find (with our help) their own Jackson Square.