Lessons From Rwanda

Accomplishing the Extraordinary in Rwanda

Miracles show up in the most ordinary of circumstances. In the smallest of ways can we see the greatness in others and ourselves.

To declare the desire to coach, to make a difference in the world, first requires us to make a difference in our own lives. To know without a doubt that coaching we give or receive creates something extraordinary – something that nothing else would have accomplished. It is that belief that took me to Rwanda.

I want to demonstrate the small miracles of coaching that happen in the most unlikely of places, Rwanda, and renew your faith in what extraordinary things you can accomplish in your own coaching practice.

As an executive coach, I was working very successfully in the United States with people who looked a lot like me: middle-aged, successful, striving for more, white. No complaints on my part – no thought that I was missing any opportunity.

Then I was asked by a past boss of mine to go to Rwanda – where I could make a difference working with the poorest of women in the area of micro-finance. I was interested. I was intrigued. I was ignorant. I read about the horrors of a genocide in 1994 that killed over 1,000,000 people in 100 days. About a world that turned its back on this country – citing the issue as an “African problem” v. a human rights violation. And I knew I would learn more about the world and human nature in this short 12 day visit than I had learned in any previous trip abroad. I hoped I might have a chance to employ my coaching skills, maybe once, maybe twice. What I found changed my life forever.

My first visit to Rwanda in June 2005 affected me deeply. Nothing I had ever accomplished was of the caliber that I met in the poorest of people and in the leaders of the country. And to know them is to truly understand the meaning of hope.

If you’ve lost someone you deeply love through death, you know sadness. Can you imagine losing your entire family, hundreds of people you knew die as they were executed in front of you: machetes, clubs, rapes, and the most senseless of deaths in the slowest and most painful of ways? Can you imagine? I have seen the memorials, the mass graves, the grief and I still cannot imagine what it would be like personally. And then can you imagine going on? Knowing your life has not ended, just ended as the way you always thought it to be. Having hope. That was key.

From the greatest of loss, comes the greatest chance to make a difference. And coaching in Rwanda, in a very small way, has created extraordinary results. Being a coach means we go to the place that the client needs our skills. There are times when we are woefully unprepared, or so we think. But to know that you are called to a moment in time, and to step into it, to get out of your own way, will change the person with whom you coach, will change you and will forever change the world.

Wow. What are the coaching issues of someone who has watched horror and experienced the greatest of loss? While continually processing their loss separately from their daily existence, their issues are shockingly the same as you and me: the desire to stay motivated, see ourselves as who we truly are: not better, not less, just as we are. A desire to succeed in business, live with integrity, remove self imposed barriers to success, focus on what is possible, learn from mistakes, dream bigger, and find joy, find love, raise successful children, forgive (to name a few).

And that is coaching. There are many people who are suffering post traumatic stress in Rwanda, especially 14 years after the genocide. In spite of their challenges, they want success, personally and professionally. Whether a woman who has a micro loan of $50, or a country leader who believes in the greater future, the coaching requests are the same: how can I be my personal best. How can I remove the barriers to my success. How can I take the best and leave the rest.

I coach a number of people in an NGO (non governmental organization) in Rwanda. I had 20 people who wanted to meet with me, more than I could ever do in a day. I was holding 30 minute laser coaching meetings with each one . So I only could meet with about 4, because each session was a little longer than 30 minutes. (often with a translator who did their best to translate my English ideas into Kinyarwanda or French). Issues: time management, working with difficult employees, staying focused on my job, balance with work and home, etc.

The meetings were enlightening for the client and inspiring for me. And my last meeting I had 10 minutes for a young man. And I asked him what his dreams were. And he said, “I have none.” “Why”, I asked. “When I was ten years old I watched them chop off my Mother’s head with a machete. I think of her every day and I miss her so much.” A coachable moment? Who was I to coach this young man. And then who I was became enough. I told him I too had lost both of my parents. And I too missed them everyday. And he could honor his Mother more by his action than his mere grief. And I said to him that if he chose to live his life to honor his Mother he would be giving her a great gift. That I didn’t know how heaven worked (he was a Christian) but if his Mother could see him through the windows of heaven and saw that he lived his life to honor her, no Mother in heaven would be prouder of a son.

That’s all I had. And then I left. When I returned to Rwanda a few months later, I met the young man that watched over this orphan. And he said, “Vicky, I meant to write to you about some of your coaching! You know that young boy you coached who had no dreams? I don’t know what you said to him, but he changed the next day after you coached him! He decided to go and finish his college degree and had plans. He kept repeating something you said!” I said, “Is it that he will honor his Mother more by his action than his mere grief?” And he said, “That’s it!” (footnote: I just heard that he did complete his education and received his college degree).

A small miracle. Extraordinary by my standards. Not grief counseling, not psychoanalysis. Just what I know is true as a coach. And that is what we can bring to the world. Ourselves. Working passionately in places and with people we love. Not underestimating them or ourselves. Not believing they’re not ready or that we’re not equipped. Knowing to accomplish the extraordinary in coaching just takes the knowledge that this is the time – this is the place. And behavior matters.

If you doubt that you are different, you are better, you are lucky to be born outside of a third world country, I respectfully submit that you are wrong. Human nature is not different outside of our country. Dreams of others are big, often bigger, than many of the people in our country would ever hope to dream. Love is as passionate, grief as numbing and paralyzing, victory as sweet, and self awareness as life changing.

Believe that coaching truly will allow you to create greatness in the world. For yourself, for others. Those that look just like you – and those who are different. And in the end, the world will be greater because you cared enough to try.

To read more about the Itafari Foundation go to http://itafari.org