I like my Kenyan friends, acquaintances, fellow coaches and clients a lot. They are very polite; inquire about your family first before doing business and work hard on building up a relationship. This is a bit in contrast to my Dutch fellow citizens. The Dutch speak up their minds, get straight to business and have lunch with clients at the local café with a cheese sandwich and a coffee.

So you can imagine that I’ve learned a lot when I came to Kenya and started coaching Kenyan entrepreneurs, radio-makers and social enterprises. Although I thought coaching was this universal language, untouched by local cultures, I was wrong. For me as a very result oriented person, the outcome of a coaching session was important. But I learned that taking time to build up the relationship is just as important, really getting to know this person besides me.

The downside of all this politeness is that my Kenyan colleagues will hardly confront me with my flaws, should I have any of course. My way of interacting with people, especially colleagues and clients, is being straightforward and holding a mirror of what I see. It is then up to them to give it a thought and act on it, or not. We both learn from this interaction.

So how will this benefit my Kenyan coachee, this openness of this peach guy from the cold north? Well, first of all I am a safe place, away from the pressures of extended families and society. I don’t raise my eyebrow when they say they are fed up with paying bills for the whole family or they don’t want to pursue the career of being a lawyer. I listen and reflect what I see and feel, ask them what they really want. I don’t judge them (which my Kenyan colleagues won’t as well), but I also challenge them a bit more… just because I am Dutch.