Ramdas in conversation with Cristina — Coach, Trainer, Mentor & Author, Founder of CoachingEra, Coaching & Training in Italy & South Africa.
On the idea of Life coaching and mentoring? Every individual will have a unique set of challenges…how to address it?
I have been working in the corporate world for 30+ years in different managerial roles.
I am a coach and a trainer and I support my coaching and training clients in their path of transforming themselves from the inside out. In partnership with them, I embrace the challenge to work on the internal and external results they want to produce in their profession and in their life.
While coaching and training my clients, I touch many aspects and issues of the corporate culture. Whatever issue we are working on as individuals, as a coach I have learned that a shift needs to occur – i.e. an internal shift – at the level of vibration. When shifts happen at the level of vibration, results become tangible and permanent. Vibrations create thought and precede thought. If results are addressed externally, it is management. Management here means controlling the external world.
Vibration refers to the energy or essence of a person that sources internally. The early Greek philosophers recognized and embodied in their work the Hermetic Principle that ‘motion is manifest in everything in the Universe, nothing is at rest and everything moves, vibrates, and circles’. Modern science has proven that what we call matter and energy are but modes of vibratory motion.
So in order to achieve external strategic and challenging results, we must go to the source to activate a transformation from the inside out. If we shift only on the outside, we have to manage every single thing in order to succeed, and of course, it is impossible to manage every single external thing. However, when we handle things at the source, we activate a transformation that is lasting, and capable of producing tangible shifts in the external world in business, in our organization and in our lives.
We are all potential transformers with the power to access our internal source. Using the SUN coaching methodology, I offer a unique approach to transformation. The client begins our work with us by uncovering their unique purpose statement.
The purpose is our Essence, which is who we are and what we bring to the world. Everyone has a purpose and life purpose is not one of life’s mysteries. In fact, all experiences offer opportunities to express our purpose and with clarity of purpose, life begins to make sense, especially in business, our purpose can be used as a tool to make wise and meaningful decisions.
Once we clarify our purpose and learn how to apply it, the shift happens naturally from the inside out.
We transform ourselves, we do not focus on issues from the outside; instead, we clarify what we want to achieve from a deep level, and we are more capable of producing amazing external changes.
SUN Coaches support clients in the process of describing each life area as to what it can be like when living consistently on purpose. These are our visions.
With these tools it is easier and more congruent to engage with and move ahead on our action plans; Visions support us in seeing clearly who we are in the context of the business or the corporation we work for. In the same way that organizations have mission statements, people have individual purpose and the two must be in alignment for powerful and meaningful impact.
When we are congruent from the inside out, we
transform the vibrations we emanate to the outside and we master the ability to
produce the results we want.
With this approach, tasks can be mastered and not just ‘managed’.
Difference between mentoring and coaching.
A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. Mentoring may include advising, counseling and coaching. The coaching process does not include advising or counseling, and focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.
A mentor is an experienced and trusted advisor, usually a peer or senior to the employee in case of coaching within an organization. A mentor provides advice and counsel to the mentee.
And I think it’s important to remember where words come from.
During the ten-year Trojan War (the one with the wooden horse), Odysseus, the king of Ithica, left his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus to lead his army. He placed Telemachus under the care of a guardian called Mentor, whose job it was to protect and guide him.
However, it wasn’t a Mentor who provided Telemachus with the proper guidance, it was the Greek goddess of wisdom Athena, by shapeshifting into a “wise” version of Mentor. It’s this godly intervention from Athena that ultimately lends its meaning to our modern word “mentor”, not the personality of the person himself.
So we can say that Mentoring embodies a sense of spiritual wisdom.