Who can benefit from this training?

This life transforming training is especially suited for people who want to master the paradigms, principles and practices of Coaching. If you contemplate a career change this course possesses the potential to initiate a new and exciting season in your life.

This course is focussed on potential Coaches who want to start a coaching practice as a Life- or Executive Coach.

Are there more than just the course?

Additional to the 20 full day teaching sessions you will receive 8 one hour coaching sessions for your own personal and professional development with me, Nico Liebenberg. Your coaching sessions form an integral part of your development as a Coach.

How can I register for this course?

You can register or indicate your interest in this course by sending me (Nico) an e-mail to nicoliebenberg@gmail.com or post a message in the block below.

Thank you. Look forward to meeting you soon? 

Executive coaching is a common leadership development practice among business leaders all over the world.

Coaching can be defined as “an ongoing relationship that helps clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Through the process of coaching, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance and enhance overall quality of life.

A well trained coach is good at facilitating the process of change–helping people make the changes they want for themselves and their organisations. A coach can assist you to face all kinds of challenges and create new ways of thinking.

A coach is trained to “actively hear and discern”, to listen for fears and to see self-defeating beliefs that get in the way of your success.

A coach will brainstorm possible problem-solving approaches with you, challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and hold you accountable to do what you actually should do.

“In a 2001 study of 100 executives, mostly from Fortune 1000 companies, Manchester Inc. found that the average return on investment was almost six times the cost of coaching. Participants report rich learning environments and improvements in decision making, team performance and motivation, and highly recommended coaching.”

To learn more about the services I present as an Executive and Life Coach click on the page “COACHING” (above).

I recently sat with a couple of friends discussing the season of waiting. Oh, what dread this is for a person encapsulated by the fast pace of the modern world. One of the guys came up with the remark that in such a season one should not be passive, but be like a ‘waiter’ that serves a customer in a restaurant.

The true good waiter doesn’t stand around bored. He observes his customer’s every move, looking for any indication of what he (the waiter) should do next to meet his customer’s needs. He is actively observing (beholding) his customer in order to get an indication of what his next move should be.

This friend remarked that when a christian goes through a season of waiting, he should be like this good waiter. Beholding his Lord to see what he should do next, not a passive waiting, but an active beholding (observing) of his Master.

I think it was Jesus that said, ‘if you see (behold) me, you will become like me’.

The burning sun,
radiance in bloom.
Africa, you are my home!

 Change is not static, passive or just a ‘once of’ event. Change is not an incident; it is a process. Process implies something is started, set in motion and given power to move forward. Process stimulates constant states of growing and becoming. All living systems, including you and all your realtionships, are captured in this constant state of becoming, this process called ‘change’.

Patience is the one virtue that empowers us to cultivate change. Patience is pregnant with the understanding that we are not in control of the world. God is. We have to discard our control-centred paradigms in order to deeply understand change.

A garden can only be cultivated and not controlled. The proverb says, “There is no garden without a gardener.” Every garden has all the potential to become everything it is meant to be. An unwise (impatient) gardener plants a seed today and expects a tree tomorrow.

The gardener’s responsibility is not to supply growth. His responsibility is to cultivate the seed, to supply the right environment for the seed to grow. He doesn’t make the seed to grow, he only believes that the tree is already in the seed.

In my recent readings I picked up on something which really inspired me. The author said that one of the keys to successful living is to desire what you have! What a profound truth. How many of us will enter a peaceful place of rest when we can get to that place where we (once again) desire what we have.

My eye caught a post in some blog that debated how objective, objectivity really is. My understanding of objective and subjective is slightly off-beat compared to most in the scientific world.

When you hold a ‘pure scientific’ paradigm, especially in ’subjective sciences’ like psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. you believe that you can do your science objectively. Now that I don’t believe.

It is totally impossible to be ‘objective’, since the moment you start to observe anything, you are involved. Your paradigm is involved. All the knowledge your paradigm holds get involved in your observations and eventual interpretations. You might think your paradigm is more ‘objective’, but that is not possible, because you will eventually use YOUR (subjective) paradigm to interpret what YOU are observing. YOUR observations and YOUR interpretations will become clear, not necessarily what you observe.

In the end, after you have made your observations and interpretations what he hear from you is YOUR decriptions of YOUR interpretations of what you have observed. You make your paradigm explicit about your topic of research.

Consensual validation, an interesting term. Now that is something I believe can exist. Consensual validations is a term that describes that in our observations we have consensus that we believe we interpret what we observe in basically the same way.

Let me give you an example. If I show the colour green to 1000 people and all 1000 of them say that what they see is the colour ‘green’, we have consensual validation about what the 1000 people observe. The same interpretation of a thing after it has been observed means we have consensual validation.

In the scientific world we don’t have objective and subjective, we have consensual validation.

Let me tell you a story that might encourage you to understand that your paradigm determines what you see, irrespective of what you look at.

Two (separate) American shoe manufacturing companies send their top marketing specialists to investigate the market for shoes in Africa. After two weeks both of them reported back to their respective head offices.

The one’s reply read: “Don’t bother to exploit this market, no one in Africa wears shoes.” The other one’s reply read: “You won’t believe what I have found. The most unexplored market in the world. No one here wears shoes yet.”

A wise man once said, “Your context gives you the picture to look at. Your paradigm determines what you see.”

No one lives in a vacuum, unaffected by a (certain) context. We all are bound by a certain context where we live, work and play. No two peoples’ contexts are alike, even if they are alike, their paradigms will differ and that will cause them to see their ’similar’ contexts in a different way.

Albert Einstein once said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that caused the problem.”

We all run into problems (or challenges as I like to call them). In our journey in life we get to these challenges mainly because of the way we think. The way we think (our paradigms) brought us to where we are today and if today has a challenge it could be attributed, amongst other reasons, to the way we thought yesterday and the day before that.

Expand your thinking, think differently, shift your paradigm, but don’t use the same thinking to solve the problem. It is that “same thinking” that caused the problem in the first place and what makes you think the “same” thinking is (now) suddenly going to solve the problem? “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that caused the problem.”

I recently had an awakening about my paradigm (mind-set) of why I find it difficult to hear certain people and why it is so easy to hear others.

Last week I negotiated my future with a good friend of mine. Now, I remarked to him that I find our styles and ways incompatible. Before I continue, let me remind you that I find it very difficult to think in terms of right and wrong. This said, neither my friend nor am I right or wrong.

My friend is quite strong in negotiations, the traditional way. He is actually an expert in negotiations because of his experience and academic background. If I was a union representative he would be the last person I would want to negotiate with. He looks at things and he sees what is right about it and what is wrong about it. He has a very good ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

I, on the other hand am not a good negotiator. I have no clue about the first principle of negotiations. What I think I am good at is dialogue – to talk and listen (deeply) until we draw with our words a true picture of reality, understood by both of us in basically the same way.

A day later I had another incident amongst friends where I was talking about my way of viewing change in people. After I laid out my paradigm one of my friends simply ‘cancelled’ my paradigm by remarking she totally disagrees with what I just said. I found myself at a loss of words and just said, “oh”.

The following morning i found my mind kept itself busy with reflecting on my being-at-loss-for-words and the possible reasons for it. I realized I find it difficult to understand people who think in black and white, right and wrong. That paradigm challenges my paradigm. I realized I am more comfortable with dialogue – to talk together. Dialogue, I embrace, even though we might differ in paradigm.

Looking at differences, I think, make me think someone must be wrong. Someone else will most probably be wrong and not me. I can’t be wrong, because if I was wrong I would not have believed what I believe. Since I believe what I believe and I don’t want to believe ‘wrong’ things, I surely am right then, ain’t I?

For me, it makes sense to (really) hear one another rather than to think about where someone else differs from me (and are therefore wrong!) May my mind forever rather seek to understand than to judge who is right and who is wrong!