Embracing Ubuntu in Coaching, with Nobantu Mpotulo

In this episode we delve into the philosophy and practice of coaching, with Nobantu Mpotulo, a coach from Pretoria, South Africa, who introduces listeners to the concept of Ubuntu and the importance of seeing the interconnectedness in all human relationships. The conversation explores how embracing these principles can transform coaching practices and personal development, encouraging a collective approach to growth, presence, and empathy. The episode underscores the necessity of moving beyond individual gains to consider the broader ecosystem of impact and relationships.

02:01 Welcome to the Episode with Nobantu Mpotulo

02:24 Coaching and Ubuntu

05:19 The Essence of Being Human

08:20 Western Coaching Models vs. Ubuntu

23:31 The Diamond Approach and Presence

32:51 The Seven Cs of Ubuntu

36:37 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

Nobantu Mpotulo hails from South Africa. Being amongst the first five African Coaches globally to be accredited as a MCC by the International Coach Federation, and having experience in varied sectors, Nobanto is a sought-after facilitator for Leadership Development Programs and coaches internationally.

Nobantu follows the agenda of the client in her coaching. Through probing questions and sharing just in time observations, she takes clients deep and helps them to identify their blind spots and embrace their shadows. Clients go deeper into the sub-conscious and unconscious levels and dance with what emerges. She provides a safe and open space for focus and exploration. She moves on a continuum of being non-directive to directive depending on what is missing in the client’s system.

No matter what she does she gets to the HEART of the client and the HEART of the matter. As a Buddhist practitioner and teacher she supports her clients in integrating the head, heart, instinctual and spiritual intelligence. She does amazing heart work with clients based on the principles of UBUNTU ‘I am because we are’.

Nobantu is an accredited Enneagram Teacher (Narrative Tradition) and Enneagram Coach (Enneagram in Business and Deep Coaching). She is a Buddhist Teacher, a Process Facilitator and Facilitator of Peace Circles. She trains, supervises and Mentor Coaches other coaches. She has experience in the private, public, NGO, NPO, Higher Education, as a coach and an OD Facilitator. Nobantu developed the Ubuntu Coaching programme that assists coaches to connect at the heart level with their clients. Live coach demonstrations on Ubuntu Coaching have been done both locally and internationally.

You can find us on Linkedin at

Matt Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-hall-msb/

Naomi Ward: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-ward-098a1535/

Interbeing is made by Making Stuff Better https://makingstuffbetter.com/ and produced by Emily Crosby Media https://emilycrosbymedia.com/

Transcript

This transcript is AI generated.

[00:00:00] Naomi Ward: Hello and welcome to series four of the MSB podcast and to our new name, inter being 

[00:00:13] Matt Hall: in our previous seasons, we've explored themes like belonging, organizational health, and the future of education. 

[00:00:19] Naomi Ward: This time, we are returning to the source of what we do. Coaching and how the values of coaching can support people in schools to look both inwards, reconnecting with their own humanity and outwards to cultivating generative relationships with care and curiosity.

[00:00:38] Matt Hall: You might be wondering about our new name. Inter being is a term coined by Zen Master Tick na Horn. It describes the deep interconnectedness and interdependence of all things. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything is in relationship, constantly influencing and being influenced by everything else. 

[00:00:57] Naomi Ward: This thread of relationship of inter being colors, everything we're exploring this season, we are in conversation with voices we are drawn to in the world of coaching and with educators in international schools who are walking with us, reflecting on what's changing for them and the questions they're living into.

Now, 

[00:01:15] Matt Hall: we're not here to present coaching as the answer to everything. Instead, we want to have honest, open conversations about where coaching works, where it doesn't, and what possibilities lie ahead. 

[00:01:26] Naomi Ward: And this season is just the beginning. Inter being is also the name of our annual in-person gathering, a space to explore these themes more deeply face-to-face.

You can find more about that in the show notes. 

[00:01:40] Matt Hall: As always, we are guided by curiosity and by the aliveness of the unfolding conversation between us. We ask everyone the same first and last question, but what happens in between is shaped by the people in the room, including you. 

[00:01:54] Naomi Ward: So thank you for being here.

[00:01:55] Matt Hall: Welcome to Inter Being

Well. Welcome back to another, uh, episode of Inter Being. Um, I feel like I say this every time, but it's true every time. I'm really excited by our guest, uh, this week. And I know this is someone you've been following, Naomi and is gonna bring us a really fresh perspective, I hope, on this thing called coaching.

[00:02:22] Naomi Ward: I'm sure she will. We're meeting with Bantu Tulo and she's a coach based in South Africa, in Pretoria, and I'm deeply interested in. What we can learn from Ubuntu, from this idea of Sal Bonna sort of ideas that, as you'll hear come from South African culture, but also just what it means to be human. And as coaches and in coach education, we've forgotten some of these basic unifying.

Ideas that are simply true. Our body knows it and um, our history knows it. So I'm curious to know what our listeners experience as they listen to our conversation and, you know, if you are learning to be a coach or if you're trying to be more coach-like, what can you take from this conversation to be more 

[00:03:33] Matt Hall: great?

Let's go meet her.

[00:03:39] Naomi Ward: So a very warm welcome and I am excited and. There's a bubbling energy here as we, um, have this time with you, Bantu. I wonder what's alive in you today when it comes to this idea of coaching. 

[00:03:58] Nobantu Mpotulo: I've just come back from a lovely workout at the gym, so what's alive in me right now is my body, and, uh, I am, uh.

Uh, a body person. My body intelligence is much alive than the other centers of intelligence. So when I move and feel present and, uh, inhabiting this body and being fully in the world in terms of presence, that's what for me, um, makes me coaching ready. Whether I'm going to be coaching or to be coached, my body is my compass and, uh, the truth teller.

So right now I'm alive to that connection being with the three of you and, uh, just feeling and sensing my body and just feeling alive. 

[00:05:04] Naomi Ward: Hmm. As you say that I feel more of myself arriving with that invitation and I coming to this conversation, I was thinking, I need to stand. I know I'm gonna need to stand for this.

And so with that as our starting point, we have another question that we ask all of our guests this season of Into being, which is simply what does it mean to you also to be human, to be human? 

[00:05:34] Nobantu Mpotulo: I believe it starts with myself. Mm-hmm. And, and as I have alluded to this feeling alive, it's part of that beingness first, the awareness and the consciousness that I'm here.

Mm-hmm. And I do not exist on my own. And as I am not existing on my own, how do I cultivate a state that would, uh, make others feel open and invited to coexist with me? And as we do that dance of core existence and inter beingness, how do we together then think about the ecosystem that's also part of this humanity, of this being.

These beings, whether we see some of these beings, whether others are not seen. So I believe the humanity for me, or being human starts with that internal campus. I've developed a word I called empathy, which for me, I feel is an important precursor for empathy. We cannot do it to others if the state of being in us is not one that is, is in an essential form in a way of.

Somehow preserved and in its natural form and coming from that purity. And, and, and then as I am there, how do I then meet the other and feel that empathy? And then for me, empathy becomes even more real when I've started it internally. And then as we get together, I see you. And, and, and, and, and, and, and I feel you.

I mean, tune with you. I'm atuned to you. And then together, then we create the magic of pathy. How do we have that for the ecosystem? So that we continue this cycle of core existence and, uh, inter beingness with all beings, whether they are human or in non-human form. 

[00:08:20] Matt Hall: Banta, you've, you've straightaway touched on one of the things I really wanted us to explore, which is this prevalence in the coaching in the western coaching world of what Naomi and I call you coaching.

Um 

[00:08:32] Nobantu Mpotulo: mm-hmm. 

[00:08:32] Matt Hall: You know. The dominant model is we are here for you to get better, for you to achieve your outcomes, for you to achieve your aims. And our sense at MSB is it's becoming increasingly irrelevant and not helpful as a framework for thinking about human existence and human development. 

[00:08:55] Nobantu Mpotulo: Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:56] Matt Hall: And.

You are very explicit in your coaching practice, in the naming of your coaching practice. Aun is right there in the middle and oh, yes, I, I would just love to hear your relationship with that Western model and maybe how you think, feel, behave differently in, in the way you work. 

[00:09:17] Nobantu Mpotulo: Thank you for that, Matt. Um, I got, uh, emancipated in coaching when I stopped.

To coach the problem. And try to get the clients to solve and, and, and, and, and just being with this amazing human being and the curiosity and, um, coaching. The who, who is this amazing person? Who has decided to have me as their coach. So for me, there's that importance. And, uh, I am now, um, being trained to be an African constellation and systemic constellation, uh, facilitator.

And what fascinates me in that is, uh, one of the principles that says the problem is the solution because I believe in the western sense. We look at this problem that needs to be dealt with and, and, and, and eradicated, you know, era eradication of problem. Whereas if you sit with that and see this actually as a solution, then.

We able to face even the fears that we have about challenges we have, and we start to look at those as opportunities for growth or to know what I am. It's, you know, as I'm, I'm talking to you, it's like now I'm seeing this, this lava that is going to be my beloved. I'm seeing this for the first time, however it is.

I don't want this to be in a certain way, but I'm saying I'm going to dance with this uncertainty such that more clarity. So for me it's about not eradicating something. But being clear of what this is, and as I look at what this is, can I even go deeper and, and be more curious and, and inquire deeper into that?

And as we do that, we get to areas that we don't normally go to, areas that are exciting. And it's like this newness, this novel. Hmm. I can feel the excitement right now. 

[00:11:51] Matt Hall: And, and one of the things that you said was about, you know, being human is about being in connection and, and seeing people as the sum of all of the people that have contributed to those people, and thinking of being human as being beyond.

Connection with just other humans, but with all beings, this kind of ecosystem, as you said, I find that a challenging place to start when someone's come to a coaching session thinking it's about them. Um, that's the, again, that's the dominant mindset we encounter. This coaching is for me. How do you help people to think about, or maybe you don't, maybe you've come working with different clients, but how do you help people position that, that thinking about the system as opposed to them individually?

[00:12:36] Nobantu Mpotulo: I love that question because that's, that, that's one thing when I, um, am exploring what my clients want to work with, I take the approach, the collectivism, uh, of the whole, of who else is going to be impacted by when this gets resolved and, and, and it's not just a change. Of, of the client or the coachee, but then what would be different as they go back to work?

Their teams, the organization, their stakeholders, who else would be impacted by this? And for me, what becomes important as well is, uh, is looking at what's meaningful. Because if the clients don't know what. The meaning of what they're doing would have, as much as we don't know what has not happened, but just working with that deep meaning and, and, and, and starting, because when there's meaning, it is seldom meaning for my own interests or individual interests.

Most of the time it's about others as well. So for me it's this kind of moving to satisfy this deep fire within me and as an consciousness to who else might be impacted, whether negatively or positively. So, and how do I now, as the coachee who's coming with this, become this buffer and this kind of catalyst.

For the healing of the collective. 

[00:14:33] Naomi Ward: Mm-hmm. It takes me to like, we almost need a new language. That's not what's, what's your goal? It's almost like, what does the world need to come through you? Mm-hmm. And so there's an unlearning. 

[00:14:50] Nobantu Mpotulo: Exactly. 

[00:14:51] Naomi Ward: Or, or remembering. 'cause the things that you're saying about body as truth teller.

The people standing behind you, that's ancient. Mm-hmm. Ancestral. Exactly. And, and present right here at 

[00:15:11] Nobantu Mpotulo: a cellular level. Mm-hmm. And, and, and for me, it's also the, this. Thing about birth and, and, and how we do that here. In, in, in, in, in, in South Africa, when a child is born, the umbilical cord that connects that child to the mother, when it falls, it's buried in the ground somewhere at home, in the garden.

And that right up the, from the start, the child is connected to mother nature. So that the child can treat mother nature with dignity and respect, and then that reciprocity as mother Nature provides, gets to continue. And if you think about it, we might be coming the, the, the four of us from different mothers, but the fact that whether you adopted or you were abandoned, there was that umbilical cord.

That connected you to your mother and they are mother to their mothers. They are mothers. And we all connected in a sense, just that umbilical cord because if that umbilical cord cannot be the kind of, uh, conduit to feed the kid, who wouldn't all be here. 

[00:16:39] Naomi Ward: Hmm. 

[00:16:41] Nobantu Mpotulo: This doesn't happen because I will it to happen or I'm not banned or whatever.

It's nature. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:53] Naomi Ward: So we're all connected and this, this moves me because of the harm we do to each other. Um, and there's something here about the responsibility. 

Mm-hmm. 

As, as coaches and the people we work with. That we're asking questions like, well, how about seven generations from, from here? Like, what? But, but I wonder because I'm thinking, I'm sort of thinking about the people we work with who want to become coaches and you say it has to start with you.

Mm-hmm. This quality of presence, purity, and. I think sometimes we skim over that. And I wonder, you know, you offer your own coach education. How do you support people to reach that kind of level of mm-hmm. Beingness, um, that is so transformational. 

[00:17:58] Nobantu Mpotulo: Yeah. Being nice and presence, uh. What keep me alive? Uh, Saturday I was running 21 kilometers.

The last time I ran was in 2019 before COVID and I didn't practice. I was running for a friend of 58 years who's suffering from cancer and another friend, which started, okay, you're gonna run, we decide on Wednesday. I don't train for this race. And what carried me through this running 21 kilometers was just the presence and because it was a Mandela race and just stopping and reading the quotations from Nelson Mandela, just that aliveness helped me to finish in three hours, 29 minutes.

And normally when I last, uh, ran, I would run for three hours. But I hated the running because it was about getting at the end of the finish line. But right now with presence and just taking in everything and not thinking about the finish line, am I gonna make it or what? That for me was something that really gave me energy.

And, and, and I'm also an assessor with ICF and one thing I am really trying to get ICF to do is to make sure that when we assess, uh, coaches and training, the competency number two, embodies a coaching mindset should be assessed. Because if it's just implied. It doesn't become conscious and awareness that is there.

So starting right as you go for a coaching, how do you ensure that your state is a state that is here, a state that is going to cultivate this interpersonal space that makes your coachee to be seen first? I see you Sal born now. I feel you, and as I am feeling you and feeling myself, then I can relax and I can start to see myself in you, which is what Ubuntu is about.

I see myself in you, and then when I see myself in you, I wish you all the goodness and cannot make any harm on you. If I harm you, I will be harming myself. So for me now, what this does, it takes us even further than just this client and the coach. It takes me further to embrace even the shadows that I, uh.

Want to hide under the carpet. It takes me to be able to see myself as being a Donald Trump, because once we start trumping the Trumps in us, they come in an unconscious way. Mm. And when the shadows come. So for me, this, this thing of Ubuntu is about seeing everything as an extension of myself. And then when I see everything as an extension of myself, then that's me.

How do I harm? And, and, and I practice, um, a, a, a spiritual kind of, uh, approach that is amazing, which is called the diamond approach, which literally help me to transcend in from this form to, to actually feel like I'm energy, I'm everything where. If I really, in a state of practice, I cease to see even different colors or different things.

Everything just becomes this unity. 

[00:22:14] Naomi Ward: Mm. 

[00:22:15] Nobantu Mpotulo: And the energetic field then gets to be something else. 

[00:22:19] Naomi Ward: Mm. 

[00:22:22] Nobantu Mpotulo: And it all starts with strengthening the individuality first. If the self is wanting and insecure. Then you can't meet the world with that presence and consciousness. 

[00:22:39] Matt Hall: Just mindful of time. So let's, let's just take a, um, let's just take a time out for a minute.

'cause this is, I'm really enjoying this conversation. Um, it's lovely, but I, I want to make sure that we've, if that we've spoken about things that you definitely wanna speak about. Is there anything that we've not touched on yet? 

[00:22:59] Nobantu Mpotulo: I am a spontaneous person and I don't plan. I literally don't. 

[00:23:04] Naomi Ward: Okay. 

[00:23:05] Nobantu Mpotulo: I believe in emergence and being on the edge away.

My son fine. My son is 40, and who worried about me, how much I'm on the edge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He doesn't know what's gonna happen because I dunno. Yeah. 

[00:23:23] Naomi Ward: And that, that that's where we need to be, isn't it? Yeah. And it, and it's, it's thrilling. 

[00:23:28] Matt Hall: So where should we go next in this conversation? 

[00:23:31] Nobantu Mpotulo: What, what's your body telling you, Matt?

[00:23:34] Matt Hall: I heard you say Diamond and I want, my body wants to know more about Diamond. You said you used a diamond approach and I was like, is that a methodology? Is that like, is that a nine? What is that? 

[00:23:46] Nobantu Mpotulo: It's, oh gosh, it's so difficult to even explain. I've been, uh, a practicing good since 2000 and, uh, I have not had the states that I've had through this program.

This is a psych course ritual program. But it's not linked to any spiritual doc doctrine. So it takes from bullism, from phim, from a, a lot of different, uh, spiritual kind of doctrines. It's about restoring the soul to its essential nature. When you were about 18 months. It's so freeing because what happens, it's all these conditions and separated nurse, and you inquire.

It's, it's about inquiry, about the state you are in and what could have, uh. Condition that state, and as you inquire, you find layers really like falling off. And the main thing is about a kind of organic way of making the ego not to be strong and working with the super ego. It's showing in the world and loving the world.

And. Mm, not being conscious of being inept. Even when you flounder, it's like you floundering. Can I just be with this floundering ring? How is it now? And as you inquire into it, there's a joke, a humor as you inquire, and it's like, oh. Maybe five years ago, this embarrassing moment would be so debilitating, such that I wouldn't move.

But now it's like I get curious about even that, and as I get curious, it stops holding or having a, a, a heavy hold on me. So it's, it's about being simple and real and unassuming. 

[00:26:09] Naomi Ward: And I feel there's joy and humor. Oh yes. And love and being of the world, not, you know, and of nature. And there's the dancing is here and 

[00:26:27] Nobantu Mpotulo: now only you feel it.

You feel it.

And here's the thing that happens, which for me has been so freeing. This practice has helped me not to have my thing. Mm. The love I have for my son has changed. It's a love of another human being. It's not a love of my son or my things. The purity of love and getting to a state where, when Rumi talks about the beloved.

[00:27:07] Naomi Ward: Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:08] Nobantu Mpotulo: And when Rumi talks about that, beloved, the Beloved is not another or an external thing. The beloved has always been with us. And then when we get in touch with that beloved. We stop trying to protect ourselves from others or from other beings because they are the beloved as well. And as you come with that essential nature, the others pick it up.

Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:41] Naomi Ward: And this kind of transmission of the being, I see it when we. Working with beginning coaches and someone just sits with them with an open heart and is quiet and the other person, you see the tears come, oh yes. Oh 

[00:27:59] Nobantu Mpotulo: yes. 

[00:28:00] Naomi Ward: Because this is so unusual. 

[00:28:03] Nobantu Mpotulo: I wanna cry. Even now I can feel my chest really cracking open even now.

[00:28:11] Naomi Ward: Mm. What? What's in, what's in the crack of that opening? It's the 

[00:28:18] Nobantu Mpotulo: beloved. It's, it's amazing how the world, how our conditioning has, has really closed off our hearts to both pain and love. So when this cracking happens, the beloved doesn't say that it's all love. It says there is pain, the suffering, and. You move towards that with love.

Mm-hmm. So we start to sort of find the middle way of non-polarized kind of way of being. Because for me to be able to experience love, I should have experienced. Pain and hate. And, and, and Naomi, you talked about, um, when you were asking about, uh, diamond approach, it talks about, uh, what is called ties, which the yellow one is for joy.

Then the red energy is that energy that is like moving forward, the force and the black energies. That energy of even allowing yourself to hate. Then when that happens, then the shadow side is seen and recognized and embraced. And as these latis now get together, there's what they call the merging gold that is like honey, because now it's like I'm not loving you because you might love her or my partner.

I'm just having love for humanity and everything, and when you sit now in mosquito, there's in that edge of wind just,

[00:30:15] Matt Hall: it makes me really think about so many of our listeners, uh. Working in schools and the, the role that, again, particularly in the context that we work a lot of western industrial models of schooling, you know, full of wonderful people who are full of love and care for young people, um, and the world and their responsibility, aware of their responsibility in that brilliant people.

Um, and yet working in a system that doesn't create much space for. These sorts of conversations and these perspectives. 'cause it's a system that's designed to create an output. Um, and to, for kids to be career ready or university ready or performance ready or whatever ready means. Um, and that ranks them and measures them and compares them to each other.

Um, yeah. And that so often is the conditioning. We are undoing in a meaningful coaching relationship, I think. 

[00:31:16] Nobantu Mpotulo: Hmm. I was just excited. Uh, two weeks ago I was working with MSF, uh, the Southern African and the East African group emerging, and they're the only one that have used Buntu as part of forming and all the other MSF, uh, regional offices.

Uh. According to geographic region, but this one is MSF Mundo. It's so amazing to see how they really took like the Seven Cs of UND and actually made that their strategic focus and the way of moving forward and with the work that they do as doctors without Borders and going to those areas and, and, and, and it was just.

Such a good kind of merging of what they're already doing with this ancient, um, African wisdom and really leaving that and sort of, uh, checking themselves out if we really are where they to be. Hmm. How 

[00:32:32] Naomi Ward: incredible that, that way of being is available. Under such pressure and stress. Exactly. Exactly. Um, and, and that makes me think that if it's possible there, it's possible in schools to to, to have both.

And, and you talk about the seven Cs of Abuntu that I have seen. And is this something you've created Bantu or is this something. Much older. 

[00:33:01] Nobantu Mpotulo: What are the, the seven seas are the seas that we live by. By the way, I always say to people, UND is not just African. Yeah. UND is a way of being for human beings.

The fact that we all have hearts, there's a heartbeat in you. You're capable of love. And that's, and for me, the seven Cs are really concepts that are there. But now taking them consciously and having them to be able to be applied. For instance, the first C is about compassion. How do we, as we witness the suffering in the world, we open in our hearts, we do something about it.

Second one is about caring. How do you care? For the ecosystem, how do you care for other beings, not just the people close to you? And if you're thinking about that, that, that for me is the courage to love. Mm-hmm. Even loving the unlovable. And then as we start now to meet these people that we don't know and have this courage to love the other sea is we become curious about them.

Hmm. Can we now then come together in that pathy co-create something for the better good of all humanity. And then as we do that, we do that in a connected way and with commitment to action. So these seven seeds, to me, they sort of, um, harmonize the being and the towing. Because if I am just looking at my own, being in my own practice, that means that I am this calm person who's economous and all of that.

But now the last C is saying, Hey, hey, hey, that's good. But now what action are you committing to? Hmm. The fire? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So those are the seven Cs. It's, uh, compassion, caring. It's about courage, it's about curiosity, co-creation, connectedness and commitment to action. 

[00:35:26] Naomi Ward: Mm-hmm. 

And I'm, and I'm smiling because.

We have a coaching philosophy at MSB that we've really gone deep to think about. And I, and I feel it in what you are talking about it. And I feel the Ubuntu in it. 

[00:35:42] Nobantu Mpotulo: Mm. 

[00:35:43] Naomi Ward: And um, as a human way of relating so everything's connected. 

[00:35:51] Nobantu Mpotulo: Exactly. Exactly. And, and, and hence people who are isolated. I mostly find them not happy, who isolate themselves.

I've got everything I need. I'm self-sufficient. I don't need other people. And, and yet you see the level of sickness and amen. Why then and even babies die if they don't have that connection with a human being or even an animal. Mm-hmm. Because we do have stories of, uh, of mammals out there who have raised human beings.

[00:36:34] Matt Hall: Mm-hmm. So, I wonder as we come to the end of this conversation, um, I wanna ask you the same question again. This, what does it mean to be human? I'm curious about whether your, your body has changed in how it feels about that question in the time we've been talking. 

[00:36:55] Nobantu Mpotulo: I think I still am with that and uh, where I am right now is we have had this beautiful conversation.

I feel being human is just to, to be and relax and connect with you. It's like now you both are next to me. Like, so that's being human. Which, which, which environment approach. We call this unlocal unity of not having to have people here to feel them. And this is something that has helped me to, to not fear death anymore or feel that someone who's died is lost because with this kind of unlocal unity, it's an energetic connection with the others.

You don't have to have a physicality to make it real. 

[00:37:55] Naomi Ward: Mm-hmm. I can feel that too. Thank you. Me too. 

[00:37:59] Matt Hall: Thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate it. 

[00:38:02] Naomi Ward: Thank you very much for this and, and to be continued somehow I'm determined. Sure. Yeah. 

[00:38:09] Matt Hall: Yes.

That was everything I hoped it would be and, and more. And then we, as always, we could have, we could have carried on. Um, yeah. What stood out for you? 

[00:38:25] Naomi Ward: I think it's this question we wrestle with around the individual we have in front of us in a coaching conversation versus the sort of wider ecosystem. And I think what Bantu has given me as a confidence to talk really clearly about that from the beginning.

Like, how is who you are and what you do. Going to impact this, this, this, this, and this. 'cause, as she said, that's the source of meaning and purpose and responsibility in our lives. So I think that's gonna shift how we are when we work with people a little. Yeah. 

[00:39:11] Matt Hall: I, I was chuckling to myself because I, I think I asked her a question about that, about, you know.

How, how do you get people to think in that way? And, and as always, like the, like all the best things in coaching, her answer was simple. She was like, ask them, I think she's, you know, that, that point, how will achieving this outcome or moving forward with this thing or changing this impact other people and who and what, um, what are the ripples of this?

Uh, and I think I was expecting some. Kind of convoluted, complex mechanism by which you do this. But no, ask them. And, and what I really got from that conversation was, yeah, the stripping back, this reminder just to strip back coaching to, you know, love, connection, presence, hearing, seeing the person for everything that they are and everything that's connected to them.

Um, exploring a seam going a bit further. It's not. It's not as complicated or as difficult as we like to make it at times. Um mm-hmm. It was really refreshing and when we find 

[00:40:16] Naomi Ward: ourselves in that place of overcomplicating it just to laugh at ourselves. Yeah. Like, oh, there we go again. And come back to the delight of just being here with each other.

[00:40:28] Matt Hall: Yes. 

[00:40:28] Naomi Ward: Because that there was real joy in being in contact with, with nato and you, Matt Hall, 

[00:40:36] Matt Hall: and you turn the next one.

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