Neurolanguage Coaching: How to Start a Brain-Friendly Teaching Business

If you feel it’s time to monetize your expertise and grow your online business, you’ll need to find ways to set yourself apart from the rest of the professionals in the market. And if you are teaching English – or just looking into this field – you might have heard of Neurolanguage Coaching as an effective way to do so.

With the help of Neurolanguage coach and business English coach Sarah Spicer, we will cover the basics of Neurolanguage Coaching, the benefits of it to the learner, and how you as the coach can grow your online business out of it.

Sarah went from teacher to a language coach and then to a Neurolanguage coach, and she'll share her ways to get sustainable results for your clients.

What is neurolanguage coaching?

Sarah describes Neurolanguage Coaching in five words – innovative, efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective approach to learning a language.

As the name suggests, Neurolanguage Coaching is the mix of neuroscience and language, and it can be described as brain-friendly coaching. It proves to be very effective for the coachee when learning a language because it is based on the science about the brain and how it processes new information. Neurolanguage coach is focusing on the learner and their specific needs which makes language coaching personalised. The coach identifies mindset blocks and emotional triggers which stay on the way towards coachee's goals.

How is language teaching and coaching different?

When you are teaching, you’re directing the learner, telling them what to learn, and explaining points and overall improving their language knowledge. Whereas as a coach, you guide the learner, support and help them stay motivated. You are focused on their language learning goals.

Neurolanguage Coaching is yet another level. This approach takes findings from neuroscience about how the brain learns, and how it does it the best. Then this knowledge is applied to the coaching method. Some techniques are the same as in language learning coaching, such as questioning, asking open questions, finding motivations, and setting goals. But on the neuroscience side, it is brain-friendly, you are creating an environment where the learning process is the most efficient.

So how does neurolanguage coaching work in practice?

People come upon troubles while learning languages, many of which can be caused by worrying about lots of things. Often people get worried about speaking a second language because they have certain beliefs about the language, such as them being too old to improve their language skills or being introverted.

And that’s where you come in, coaching around emotional triggers. Research in neuroscience shows how the brain has plasticity, it is malleable, so we can always change. And you can explain that to your clients helping them to reframe their beliefs around coaching and the learning process.

So, here is an example. Imagine a marketing specialist trying to get a good job but lacking the necessary English skills. He also has a fear of learning English, forgetting even the words he has just learned. But in one month, he wants to be on the next level of learning English.

The Neurolanguage coaches might suggest looking at certain mindset blocks the client has. If they have been learning English for a while, maybe it has more to do with their beliefs about English, and the way they speak English. The coaching questions can help establish where those beliefs come from. So you need to find out what the problem is and help your client change their beliefs around it.

Another thing to do is goal setting, which has to be very specific. You’ve got to find out what the client wants to achieve, and what language they need in certain situations. If the goal is finding a job, the first step could be preparing for the interview. But it is the client guiding the sessions, and the coach can bring in suggestions and help along the way.

What is Neurolanguage Coaching market nowadays?

Neurolanguage Coaching is a fairly new approach, which has been around for just a decade and developed from teaching. The creator of it is Rachel Paling, and at the moment, you can only become accredited with her course and through her company, "Efficient Language Coaching".

The main fields of business that need Neurolanguage coaches in the UK are engineering, tech and IT, and manufacturing.

The learner turns to neurolanguage coaching because they could be learning English for many years and be stuck in the learning process. The problem might be not in grammar, but rather in those mindset blocks people have. So maybe they tried coaching too, but it was not very helpful, and the activities weren’t working. So people would feel like they’re going around and not making any progress. So they want to try the Neurolanguage Coaching method and become the coachee, that’s where the demand comes from.

Sarah works particularly in business English coaching, and the clients want to take the language to the next level and feel like Neurolanguage Coaching with its focus on the brain and how it works is an efficient approach.

How do you start as a Neurolanguage coach?

If you are just starting and have no experience in coaching, it might be a good idea to get a teaching qualification first. As you get more experience, you will learn to work with clients, understand the kinds of problems that people face, and what people want to learn. After you master this, you can go for the coaching qualification.

How do you find clients as a Neurolanguage coach?

The prior experience and background in teaching will be useful for finding your first clients as a coach because you will need to differentiate yourself from others in the market.

One way of doing this is by targeting a specific group of clients. Sarah targets business owners and professionals coming to the UK, and doing business in the UK is different from doing business internationally. And she’s been in this area for years. Sarah turned to Neurolanguage Coaching after seeing the results that people had. Despite being certified for only a year, she has seen her clients making huge progress. And the key to that was focusing on exactly what the client needed.

Getting a certification can help you set yourself apart, and you will likely get more inquiries too. Sarah got her first clients on LinkedIn and social media.

How to deal with poor memory in language learning?

A very common issue is that the learner might feel stuck because of poor memory issues, forgetting the words all the time. So what are the benefits of Neurolanguage Coaching you can offer your client in this case?

The first way to do this is to challenge this belief. Is it true or not? A belief that you’re terrible at something can stop you from even trying. It could work this way when it comes to memory. If you say you’ve got a terrible memory, it may become true simply because you believe it, you’ve been telling yourself this. The more you tell your brain something, the more it believes it is fact.

So as a coach, you can work around that. What's the belief behind it? Why does your client think that? Also remember how neuroscience says the brain is malleable, so you can learn new words.

But you can also think about how everybody’s brain is different. Reflect on past experience with your client: while learning new words, what was the process that helped? For some people, actually writing the words down with a pen helps. For others, it is most helpful to make connections between English and their first language. So the learning styles could be very different, you’ll just need to find the right one for the coachee.

Through Neurolanguage coaching, you learn how to tap into the language of your customer's brain to optimize the learning process. You'll develop a profound understanding of how and what language drives their motivation and decision-making process. You'll learn how to speak the same language as the coachee, so you can create long-term relationships, achieve your customer's goals, and make more money.

As the coach, you can consider joining Introwise which provides effortless scheduling with payments and much more. If becoming a Neurolanguage coach is something you're looking into, you can totally focus on the language learning process for your coachee, and the platform can deal with the rest.