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The Manager who didn’t want to Live in the Now

By Jantina Wijtsma

I was coaching Bert, a manager who worked for a non-profit organization. Bert had a whole list of questions for me:

  • “How can I manage my team to be ready for the future?”
  • “How can I renew the values in the team asap?”
  • “How can I move us forward fast?”
  • “How can I quickly achieve the best results for the company with the people I manage?”
  • “How can I earn money for us in the future?”

As expected, his MindSonar score on past-present-future was incredible. Bert scored 8 for the future, but only 1 for both the present and past!

It was almost horrible for me to associate with the score. That’s what I always do for a few minutes, to be able to give feedback to my clients. It’s a way to try to fully experience the Meta Programs of the client myself, so that I’m able to make rapport and help the client associate in other, less developed Meta Programs in the context, that serve his goal in a more effective way.

Imagine yourself when you almost only live in the future! In my trying to associate in that state completely, my body reacted at once. My heart beat faster, my body hunched over like it didn’t want to stand up properly. Straight away I lost all my energy.

Where was the now in this manager’s thinking?

During our coaching sessions Bert I asked lots of questions about the past and the now, in relation to him managing this team. Bert was almost unable to answer these questions. In one of the coaching sessions he discovered that he didn’t really want to be in this job, in this team. To make a long story short: I wasn’t at all surprised when he quit this job within six weeks…

4 Comments

  1. Wow! The session saved the man years of frustration in his life, without this session and the previous test you did he maybe would not notice all these differences he had and this was maybe not the best job for him. Of course working on this future oriented meta program would have been useful for him.

  2. The way I see it, it was a good thing, finding out he was not where he really wanted to be, is a call for change before is too late. Sometimes we realize things like that years later and time wasted is a very bad thing.

  3. The most complex question is maybe the one that says, how can I renew their values asap, I think this tells how he was looking up for something different than what he found when he got that position. That was a great intervention.

  4. Many people stay long in jobs that do not generate them happiness. In this case you share us the person is always handled in the future was a clear signal of what is not wanted in this. Thanks for sharing


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