Managing Director at Just In Time Solutions and organizational development consultant
Nobantu Mpotulo is an Executive Coach, Process Facilitator and an Organizational Development Consultant with over 25 years of experience across public, private, higher education institutions and non-governmental sectors. She boasts varied international exposure having studied in South Africa and the UK and has been awarded two career development fellowships in the US under the auspices of USAID. She is an Executive Director in two companies, Just In Time Solutions and Clutterbuck Associates. Nobantu is an Associate of Encompass LLC and Global Coach Network in the USA and Human Systems in the UK, and in South Africa she is an associate of Ernst and Young, Landelhani and Zenande Leadership Development. Nobantu is part of the Ethical Coach program, an initiative that offers coaching to NGO leaders in developing countries. Nobantu teaches coaching at the South African College for Applied Psychology (SACAP) and is also a part-time lecturer at UCT, Mandela School of Governance lecturing MPhil(Leadership).
Nobantu has been coaching executives and teams for eighteen years in the public sector, private sector, NGOs and universities. Her facilitation experience spans over 20 years.
Key Notes:
Episode 7 with Nobantu Mputolo had a massive impact on all our participants and team. We all learned something from her which we were unaware of! When she started with “Sawubona,” one of the most common greetings in the Zulu tribes, we felt welcomed.
Nobantu is the Managing Director of Just In Time Solutions and has been coaching executives, CEOs, and teams in different sectors of the private, public, and NGOs for over 20 years. She’sShe’s also amongst the first five coaches in Africa to be certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) at the MCC Level. As a Buddhist practitioner and teacher for 20 years, she supports her clients in integrating the head, heart, instincts, and ancestry. Here are the key takeaways from Nobantu on Ubuntu Coaching:
- Ubuntu, a Nguni Bantu term meaning “humanity,” is an African philosophy that emphasizes “being self through others.” It is a form of humanism that can be expressed in the phrases “I am because of who we all are.”
- What Ubuntu Coaching teaches you: I see you. I see your hopes. I see your dreams. I see your struggles. And I see that all your answers start within you.
- As coaches, we should see more, hear more, love more, illuminate more, and do less!
- Nobantu strongly emphasizes grounding and integrating yourself as a coach before every coaching session – embodying a coaching mindset and an ICF Core Competency.
- Ubuntu Coaching makes us able to ground ourselves and evolve presence in ourselves and our clients/coachees.
Nobantu’s Ubuntu Coaching Mantra
- See more: You can connect to the soul through the eyes. See what your client is showing, direct them to the reason behind that emotion and actions, not to the feeling.
- Be more: Take one client at a time. Focus on that one entirely. When you make one client/coachee important, everything else goes into the background.
- Hear more: We connect at a limbic level when we hear more. As coaches, we allow our clients to lead. Clients respond when they feel ‘heard.’
- Love more: What stops us from falling in love? As coaches, when we meet our clients, how can we accept them as their original-self? Love your clients/coachees like they wanted to be lived. Clients should feel being loved.
- Illuminate more: Coaches have the power and opportunity to love their clients and receive them in their truest form. We, as coaches, should ignite the fire within our clients.
- Do less: We’re not coaching the problem; we’re coaching the client. As coaches, we want to create our unadulterated selves in the coaching space. That’s when we do less and be more as coaches.
The RASEA Process for Ubuntu Coaching
R – Receive your client
How do we make our clients feel important? We take our clients out of their embodiment and create a sacred space to help them find their essence, to reveal themselves as ‘they are.’ Coaches are the holder of this sacred space, not the space itself.
A – Appreciate
Appreciating and acknowledging your clients for their vulnerability is practicing gratitude, a crucial competency for coaches. As coaches, we should accept that – I don’t know too. I’m not an expert. I’m here to co-create. That’s when your client will be able to receive and able to come out from their wisest-self.
S – Summarize
You come from a beginner’s mind. A coach summarizes what he/she hears the client saying (I see you, I hear you). The Coach listens with Heart, Body, Head and has Empathy for the client. What would the outcome look like?
E – Evoke Awareness
For coaches, evoking awareness is the journey from ‘being present as a coach’ to ‘being present to what is happening within the client.’ What is changing in the client’s expression? Just-in-time observations can help clients being aware.
A – Ask
This is when you as a coach ask the WHO, HOW, WHEN questions to move the client to action. Ask your client what’s being evoked in them?
How to make Ubuntu Coaching a practice?
- Love your client more. Coaching is making heat to heart connection.
- I’m creatively invested – Coaching is the only profession appreciating creative indifference in its truest form.
- There is no destination to reach. There is no exemption or shortcut. There is nowhere to arrive.
- Ground and integrate your head, heart, and body in the coaching session.
- I’m here to co-create. I’m not an expert.
- Working on ‘here and now’ enriches our client’s experience.
- The Seven C’s of Ubuntu Coaching: Compassion, Caring, Courage, Cor-creation, Curiosity, Connectedness, Commitment-to-action.
Nobantu has also shared a presentation slide with us, which you can access from here.
You can watch the entire episode on our YouTube Channel. We hope you enjoyed our episode with Nobantu Mputolo.
A big shout-out to Nobantu Mputolo for sharing such a great concept with our participants!
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