Coaching and Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a word that originates from the Bantu languages of the Zulu and Xhosa. It means something like “humanity” or “civility”. It’s meaning is often conveyed in the sentence “We are who we are through others.” You can find an explanation by bishop Tutu here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E625cR7zcws

He says: “Ubuntu means I need you in order for me to be me, as you need me in order for you to be you. It is saying, really, we are bound up together. Because you see. I wouldn't know how to speak like a human being. I wouldn't know how to walk like a human being. I wouldn't know how to think like a human being. All of these things I learn from other human beings. So, I actually need other human beings in order for me to be human. And in a nutshell, we say a person is a person through other persons.”

For me, this is a profound truth that influences many things in my life. When I am mad at someone, I realize that my anger is not “my anger”, nor is the reason for the anger “in the other person”. It is between me and the other person. It also influences my theory of change: If I want to change my anger, I don’t have to work on “my anger”, neither do I have to work on changing the other person. The best place to start is looking at our interactions and shifting those – even the imagined interactions.

I like watching travel videos and found an interesting example. A cycling couple went to a temple in Sri Lanka, and when they wanted to leave, their flipflops had disappeared. Their conversation could have revolved around how this is so unfair and mean, they could have described their anger at the thief or even gone down the slippery slope into racism. But they didn’t. They talked about how the thief probably needed these shoes more than them and mentioned their gratitude at their privilege of being able to buy new pairs of flipflops easily. Their imaginary conversation with the “thief” went in the direction of acknowledging their common humanity and recognizing their different surroundings.

In coaching, we sometimes forget that we are all linked. We forget that we are who we are through others when we focus coaching conversations on describing individual behaviors without context, emotions without context, perspectives without context. Insoo Kim Berg, one of the founders of the Solution Focused approach had a useful assumption to counter this: “People must have good reasons”. If we don’t understand these reasons, it does not mean that they are not there, it just means that we must try harder to understand.

Here are some instances in which I observed coaches forgetting Ubuntu:

- Asking for “where is the problem in your body” without following up with linking questions like: “and if it were better, what would other people notice”. Locating the problem “within” a person presumes that it makes sense to look at someone outside of their context.

- Insisting too hard on generating “agency” and not allowing the client to describe their hardships. Let’s say a client is suffering from a bad relationship with their boss and is describing what the boss is doing and how they are impacted. A coaching impulse could be to try to get the client to speak about what they can do rather than “complaining” about the boss. A stance closer to “Ubuntu” might be to enquire about how they would like the relationship instead, what they would see the boss doing, how they would respond etc.

- Any form of decontextualized labels: 360-degree surveys with 1-5 scales on “empowering leadership”, personality profiles, etc. They tend to forget the context and the fact that there are usually other people involved in leadership relationships. Recently, I coached a client because there was a high fluctuation in his team. 3 people had left, all for good reasons that had nothing to do with the client. He was still asked to do coaching as the fluctuation in his team was too high. He did profit from the coaching and used it to reflect on his leadership, what he values, how he wants to lead his team etc., but locating the problem within the leader was neither accurate nor useful.

Even if you are using individual assessments, you can integrate Ubuntu in your practice by asking about other people, about the environment and for descriptions of differences that involve concrete situations. As you know, I feel passionate about this. One of the reasons is how I want to show up as a fellow human being: as a compassionate collaborator for my clients’ growth rather than a judge with an armory of “objective” truths. “I am who I am through others.”

I hope that you will take this as an inspiration to experiment with your ways of being you through others, of being the coach you want to be with others. If you want to reflect together, learn about our courses, or just hang out – why not join one of our free meetups and exchange sessions?

‍