Success coaching and inspired actions (1)

The only real failure in life is one not learned from” (Anthony D’Angelo).

Hennie Grange is a performance coach resident in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has a simple philosophy about success, and especially about what or who people regard as being successful. Hennie believes that a truly successful person is someone that has the kind of knowledge that changes his life and those of others for the better. This belief is based on the fact that, to be successful in life or in any endeavour, the first and most important acquisition is adaptive and expandable knowledge.

Hennie has assisted several people to achieve wonderful goals in life, career, business, family life and their spiritual journey. One of the classic examples of his simple but hugely effective mode of coaching involves coaching aspirations for corporate leadership and top management positions. Specifically, his coaching organisation partners with some recruitment companies in South Africa that hire top company executives and managers.

Hennie’s special offering in this partnership is to coach potentially qualified candidates to become best suited “in their minds and thinking” for the positions of their choice. Beyond that, he is also involved with coaching such persons for an agreed period of time in their new positions. The goal in both instances is to enhance qualitative thinking of the candidates by assisting them to change their inner realities through a process, which “filters” their external realities or experiences.

It is perhaps worthwhile to explain what “realities” and “filters” mean in the context of coaching, especially in relation to achieving specific goals or attaining particular positions. Simply put, “realities” refer to a person’s personal experience, which creates a definite belief system or mindset. For example, a person that has consistently experienced poverty, hunger and destitution has a certain mindset, belief and understanding of poverty.

This mindset, belief and understanding will obviously be quite different from the thought, belief, mindset and understanding of someone that has not had the same experience of poverty, hunger and destitution. Hence, the “realities” of the poor man are totally different from those of someone who doesn’t know what it means to be poor, hungry or destitute.

The implication of this is that, as human beings, our external realities or experiences are filtered (or influenced and moderated) by our history, memories, beliefs, habits, fears, past occurrences, events etc. All of these create in us a mindset or mind frame concerning specific thoughts and actions in regarding self attainment. These external realities inevitably set us up for either success or failure.

These external realities are in fact the creator of the thin line that exists between winning and losing, especially in relation to self belief and/or self confidence. Experience is said to be the best teacher, and negative experiences, if not well directed and packaged almost always teach a person to act and behave in negative ways. Such experiences simply become etched in the mind and ingrained in the brain of a person, leading to repeated occurrences. The only way to change the course is to find a way to “filter” the realities.

What experienced coaches, especially performance coaches like Hennie Grange are able to do in motivating and inspiring successful coaching engagements is to help change the inner realities of the client. The truth is that nothing can be done about the external realities. These are usually beyond the control of most people, but the inner realities can be influenced by the way a person learns to experience his realities. The state of reality in this regard is an inner (mind) expression of an external reality.

In the example of the poor person mentioned earlier, the external reality is that there is hunger and destitution. But, if it were possible for that person to have an inner reality of wealth and abundance, a new mindset would be created about his condition. He may still be poor in the sense of not having physical cash, but in his mind, he is thinking differently about himself. It is that inner reality that challenges the innate creativity of every person to seek to be different and to do something different. Bringing people to this type and level of thinking is the real essence of coaching.

It is obvious that if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got. You need to do something different, in order to achieve a different outcome. But, it all starts with the right knowledge – knowledge of the external realities and the inner realities. A successful coaching engagement would therefore help to put in the right context and concept the issues around where you are, what you want, and how to get what you want, through creative thinking and informed actions.

Emmanuel Imevbere