Reviewed Piece of SF work: Stanus Cloete

ATeam Tease: a one and a half day team motivation workshop with a South African hair salon, building team relationships between stylists and proprietors

– July 2010

At the end of 2009 I was contacted by the proprietor and manager of two hair salons with the request for a team motivation workshop for their hair stylists. The prioprietor is a patent lawyer and the manager a hair stylist. She manages both salons. They provide an upmarket hair salon for men although they have many female customers. They want to be distinct from unisex hair salons. The one salon is two years in existence and the other six months. Both are new businesses that have to build their own client bases. As the business grows they appoint new stylists usually without their own client base that they can bring to the salon. Two years back they started with one salon and the manager as the single stylist. The business has grown to two salons and five stylists besides the manager. Stylists are required to be available to work in both salons as customer needs dictate although they mainly have one of the salons as their main base. This is still a growing business.

Client Quotes:

Proprietor: You listened and delivered what we wanted. We certainly got our money’s worth over and over again! Manager: Very effective listening. The workshops were very well put together for creative people. Stanus adapted always and not only before the workshops but during as well.

Candidate’s Summary:

To be an effective coach you need to be an expert artisan of your approach. You also need to be something of an artist to stay flexible and creative in the moment of cooperating with your client in co-constructing their desired future. As artist you are aware of what is happening around you in the encounter with your client but often do not see the wider implications of what you do. You only become aware of these when your work is reviewed by others and they converse with you about your work. The review process with Kirsten Dierolf and Marika Tammeaid fulfilled this important function of making me aware of the implications of the work I have done. I rediscovered how important building the platform with your client is for obtaining a satisfactory end result. It is of vital importance to know who is a customer for what. They also made me aware of how my stance of not knowing positively influenced the end result. I had no choice as I had no knowledge of hair salons. However this I will remember in future whenever I may think that I know anything about the client’s context. The client is always the expert of their own situation. It was also very reassuring to hear my reviewers’ reflections on the SF clues they found in this piece of work. Hearing about the clues from the reviewers’ point of view becomes a learning experience. The reviewing process was truly an experience full of highlights.

Reviewers Summary:

Stanus managed to align the management’s goals with the team’s goals and elicited their wishes for a good future. I was very impressed with the high degree of care that Stanus put into designing the material and the exercises for this workshop. He worked in the grammar of the client and adapted beautifully to the creative flamboyancy of the salon stylists. You could see many clues in this piece of work: a not knowing stance, resource orientation, respectful and interactional view, workign with the clients’ goals and evelopming the process according to what the client wants.

Second Reviewer summary:

I was impressed how thoroughly Stanus did the pre-work for the whole training process. He really engaged all the participants as customers for change. He was very skilful in waking up the team’s imagination about the possible good future and picking up exercises suitable to the particular environment. Stanus transparent and encouraging way to facilitate helped the team trough crucial moments of discussion and lead to valuable insights for the participants. With seemingly light and funny tools he contributed to profound changes in the team’s ability to adopt and implement the company strategy.

• Lead reviewer: Kirsten Dierolf
• Second reviewer: Marika Tammeaid

About The Candidate:

Stanus Cloete has 30 years of life coaching experience and started doing business coaching in November 2008 when he established Agosolf Coaching. He studied with SF Work in the UK during 2009 and obtained his SFPro Certificate with Mark McKergow and Jenny Clark of SF Work. He is a member of SOLWorld as well as COMENSA (Coaches and Mentors of South Africa).