Be curious
Stay open to what you don’t yet know about the person in front of you.
ABOUT ROB MACDONALD
Human connection.
A common thread.
I’m a consultant, coach, trainer, author and speaker. At the heart of all my work is a question: how can we help others find their own way forward?
I work with people and organisations in South Africa and the United Kingdom, with an approach that reaches across professions and borders.
WHERE THE IDEA BEGAN
Advice is technical.
People are human.
My work with financial advisers has taught me that even the soundest advice does not always lead to action. Helping clients first understand themselves, their lives and what matters most to them creates fertile ground for advice to take root—and make a lasting difference.
Over more than ten years of training and consulting, I saw that advisers didn’t need to become coaches. They needed the skills coaches use: open questions, deep listening, space for silence, curiosity and empathy.
I began calling this a “coaching way of being” — a way to help clients find their own answers to the life questions behind their financial decisions.
And I realised the same idea belongs wherever one person is trying to help another: in leadership, teaching, sport, professional practice and parenting.
THE PRACTICE
A way of being.
In the moments that matter.
Small shifts in how we engage
can open a very different conversation.
Ask openly
Ask questions that invite thinking, rather than steer towards your answer.
Listen deeply
Listen to understand what matters to the other person.
Hold silence
Give people the time and space to hear their own thinking.
Show empathy
Try to understand the experience from the other person’s perspective.
EXPERIENCE I BRING
Ideas, practice
and perspective.
My background brings together management education, financial services and the practice of coaching. I hold an MPhil in Management Studies from Oxford University and am a former Director of the MBA Programme at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
Today, Coaching Way of Being brings together the work I do with individuals, teams and organisations — helping people engage with one another more thoughtfully.
Read my published author profileLET’S START THERE
Every meaningful change
starts with a conversation.
Tell me a little about what you have in mind. Let’s explore what might be possible.