Here’s to my first blog entry! A true challenge, since putting things into words is usually a dialogue thing for me. It makes me wonder if I can get used to the individuality of blogging. What’s it like doing monologues all the time? Will I find words for thoughts, if not in the conversation mode I love so much? At the same time blogging feels exhibitionistic. Although the huge number of blogging enthusiasts on the Internet is reassuring. I hope it compares to a sauna - in which being naked feels normal - since everyone is. I’ll get back to you on the monologue versus dialogue part. But first I will tell you - as you’re so kind to read this - what all this is about.
Eager, maybe even excited, I’ve started working on coachcultures.org. The eagerness is content driven. As a personal coach I meet with people from various cultural backgrounds, trying to make the best of them selves in a Dutch working environment. My excitement - I’m sure - goes with the travel plans that enrol as we speak. Half September my girl and me will set off for a year, aiming to visit four continents. A plan which is not about leaving home, but about coming home actually. Enriched we hope. A whole year to take in the things our daily schedules tend not to allow. One of these things will be coachcultures.
Coaching is about being you. Most people recognize an amount of disconnect between their thoughts and feelings on the inside versus how they behave on the outside. We spend loads of time unconfusing our selves and others, since we’re busy not being our selves. Coaches aim to unpeel your layers of cultural influences, social conditioning and family expectations. If we feel free to be our selve, work becomes increasingly pleasant and effective. This is - very, very briefly - what coaching is about.
Working with clients from different cultural backgrounds, I noticed how coaching gets more complicated. I’ve experienced how cultural characteristics can easily be interpreted as personal. In addition these clients ofcourse have more trouble fitting in. Nevertheless they want to be true to themselves, for good reason. Think of all the personal things they have already given up by going abroad. As a coach I am very eager to help them to integrate in a business culture, without having to give up even more. At the same time I’m convinced these people are special. They can add great extra value to a company, as long as they feel free to show these 'valuables' to the company.
Within a coaching process I try to make use of our - both cultural and personal - differences. If we - as coach and coachee - can work out and integrate our differences, my coachee might be able to take things further. This is where things become both complicated and interesting, as I myself am subject to cultural influences as well. This causes all sorts of pitfalls in terms of misinterpretations and bias. If we learn to recognize these pitfalls - and shamelessly make use of them along the way - I am convinced the intercultural coaching process will become way more effective.
More information on coachcultures - together with some of my thoughts - is available to you on this website. In my blog I like to take you along on my travels, working out ways to promote intercultural coaching. I intend to meet with various people in various cultures, trying to find most interesting questions and - hopefully - some answers. This is actually where you come in as well. As I mentioned I thrive on dialogue. Therefore I very much welcome you to respond to my blog, presenting me - and other readers - with your questions and answers. Feel free to address what is obvious - or less obvious - to you. Learning more about intercultural coaching can hardly be this individual thingy this one Dutch coach works on. Hopefully this blog helps us to touch on many interesting aspects. I am especially interested in the kind of knowledge I can’t learn from books. Although it's tempting to present interesting facts from even more interesting books, Socrates already stated knowledge from books is no real knowing. I’d like to learn from my experience, and yours. So let’s do so, and let’s blog about it!
I’ll leave you with my promise to be short and snappy in blogs to come. Since I got the nerves to quote Socrates, let me restrain myself from writing half a book straight away.
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