Gordon Hunkin
Corporate Coach and Facilitator
Johannesburg and Internationally via Zoom
Little Falls, Roodepoort, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
An Introduction
In 2006 my desire to work more directly with people again led me to begin my training as a coach and then to starting my own business as a coach and facilitator of leadership and team processes. With more than 40 years of both formal and informal experience in working with a broad spectrum of people, including many in various leadership roles, I feel ideally equipped to facilitate growth and transformation for individuals within teams and organisations.
Whatever my role has been over the last 40 years, my work and life experience has centred on helping people. My core motivation is to see others achieve positive transformation and forward momentum. I thrive on helping others grow in their personal mastery, develop more effective habits, and live more purposefully. Leadership Development and performance are particular areas of interest for me and these are often aspects I am asked to help clients grow in. I have, however, helped clients achieve a broad spectrum of goals and business objectives.
Organisational challenges that have been part of the focus of coaching, facilitation or consulting engagements include: leadership development, leading performance, organisational culture, talent management, employee engagement, breaking silos, change management, developing a coaching capacity, succession planning, productivity and creating growth.
A large portion of the individual coaching I have done over recent years has been international (via Zoom).
Faith, family, and friendships are some of the values that I cherish. I have been married to Riana for 38 years, and counting. We have an amazing 28-year-old daughter, Jessica.
Professional Experience
Although my degree is geared toward communications I have had a varied working experience; one that has helped me gain a solid understanding of business and to nurture leadership, management and people skills. This includes a stint in the public sector, a great opportunity to help take a successful retail business to the next level and a fulfilling season serving as a pastor.
I then had an opportunity to launch and establish an ‘in-house’ publishing company for a multinational non-profit entity. Acting as MD of this company for 7 years was a great stretching experience and one that has certainly added to the understanding and skills I bring to the leadership context.
Since 2008 I have been largely self employed as a coach and facilitator but have, in the last four years, found myself more deeply involved with some of the organisations I have worked with. I sit on the EXCO of one of these and am helping a newly formed EXCO develop for another. With both I still do individual coaching and team coaching and development, as well as leadership and management development. My role for one client in the Agriculture sector has extended to that of a Chief People Officer with a contribution to talent management.
Coaching/ Facilitation/Training Model/s
Rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach I prefer to co-create a process that is suited to you and to then partner with you in achieving the solution you and / or your business needs. To that end, I prefer to discuss the desired outcomes in some detail prior to beginning a coaching engagement to ensure that the correct business solution is co-designed.
A coaching engagement would often be a series of 12 coaching sessions based on achieving the goals coachees set within the organisational objectives related to the coaching. There is, however, complete flexibility in the way the coaching engagement is designed. For example, more and more I find that it is necessary to coach leaders in the context of their team and that sometimes a team workshop, a team coaching intervention, or shadowing leaders on the job, is required to create the desired impact on business.
Where necessary, I am equipped to set up the whole process to measure ROI and produce a detailed report on this.
I naturally draw on the models and methodology from my coach training, including the work that the Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) has done in using neuroscience research to enhance coaching effectiveness. Over the years I have, however, read widely and incorporate a wide range of tools that I find useful in stimulating relevant thinking for my clients.
My preference in training is a facilitation model that is very interactive and is truly transformational. The processes I choose to facilitate are generally designed around this approach.
I have also developed a ‘Leading Performance’ model based on hundreds of coaching conversations and the success I have seen in helping leaders adjust leadership behaviours in order to more effectively lead performance.
Qualifications and Experience
Academic qualifications
- BA (English & Philosophy), to which I added Communications in part-time study
Coaching qualifications
- Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation (ICF)
- Certificate of Professional Coaching (COPC – Stage 3) from Results Coaching Systems (RCS), now rebranded as the Neuroleadership Institute (NLI)
Coach specific training
- The Neuroleadership Institute (between 2006 and 2011): 1. Intensive Coach Training, 2. Executive Coach training, 3. Team Coach Training, 4. Business Coach Training, 5. Theoretical Foundations of Coaching, 6. Life Skills Coaching, 7. Coaching Toolkit
- WBECS / Lisa-Anne Edwards (2017): Coaching for Return On Investment (ROI) – Enhanced Programme
- Foundations of Great Coaching Pilot Programme (through WBECS – 2019) with David Peterson (Google) and David Goldsmith
Experience
- I have worked with over 200 individual coaching clients, various teams and groups and have accumulated over 2500 coaching hours
- My coaching experience includes team, executive, leadership, performance, behaviour and life coaching
- As a facilitator I have experience with leadership and team development processes, training managers in coaching skills, leading for performance and creating a culture of ownership and accountability (own workshops) as well as with productivity workshops (e.g. Your Brain At Work).
- My training experience includes the training of coaches with NLI. I was a lead trainer, assessor and mentor for NLI and trained, amongst other courses, their flagship training programme and the Executive Coach Training course.
- Some consulting on building an internal coaching capacity and integrating that into organisations
- Coaching and consulting on developing a high-performance culture
Client list
- As a coach and facilitator I have had the opportunity to work across a wide range of organisations, both in the corporate context as well as with small businesses.
- My clients include:
- Financial Services: Rand Merchant Bank, Standard Bank, SARS (Gov.), SANTAM, SANLAM, ABSA (was Barclays South Africa), Centriq, Discovery Insure, Société Générale UK (via Zoom)
- Mining & Construction: Murray & Roberts Cementation, AVENG, Aurecon, PPC, Harmony Gold, Goldfields
- Manufacturing: ArcelorMittal, SAPPI, Oberthur Technologies, Polyoak Packaging
- Retail & FMCG: Colgate-Palmolive East-West Africa, SABMiller, Imperial Toyota, Sovereign Foods
- Broadcasting & IT: Multichoice, Business Connexion, SABC
- Health: Discovery Health, / Vitality Group
- Parastatals, NGOs, etc: W&RSETA, Water Research Commission, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Emzingo (International MBA students Social Impact program)
- Education: Wits Business School
- Agriculture: Eldorado Fresh Lettuce Producers, Greenway Farms / Rugani Juice
- Various small businesses and independent clients
Testamonials
Gemma Leach – Talent Manager at Société Générale, UK
As a result of the coaching with Gordon I feel I achieved a far deeper level of self-awareness, which was also a prompt and reminder to keep curious and have and open/ growth mindset. I was able to get to the core of some deep limiting beliefs and say things out loud for the first time which was extremely powerful and therapeutic and in turn has helped me develop new enabling and healthier habits. Life changing!
I am far kinder to myself as a result of the work that I have been doing with Gordon, his clever questioning and insights and I have been able to initiate long overdue conversations with family and colleagues and feel good about it in the process.
It taught me the value of powerful questioning, holding the space and listening without judgement or pre-determined agenda.
Even though we only met virtually due to being based in different countries, I felt as though Gordon created such a safe, caring and supportive environment. He is very warm, an exceptional listener and was skilful in making the connections to the online content I had also been working on to steer me to insights I had already made previously or opportunities to explore in further detail.
I felt as though I could really be honest, open up and share my vulnerability without judgement. Gordon offers such a great level of both support and challenge and clearly has a lot of experience and a natural gift.
Luyanda Xulu – Head of Engineering, South Deep Gold Mine (Goldfields)
The value I gained through Gordon’s coaching included:
- Reassurance on the strategy and tactics that we had developed with my team,
- Inspiration to stay on course with executing the strategy and tactics despite a number of distracting events and doubts,
- Learning how to manage upwards (principals & senior executives),
- Learning to deal with “workplace drama” through engaging in conflict in a rational manner with colleagues and my seniors,
- Learning to deal with criticism (positive and negative) in a positive manner,
- Rational thinking
As a coach Gordon was an excellent sounding board, he listened attentively to my issues and asked insightful questions and guided me toward finding the right answers at the right time. Gordon assisted me with both personal and work-related issues. I also found him to be accommodative and I appreciated the confidentiality he maintained.
Leon van Wyk – Senior Manager: Media Asset Management, Technology Division, Multichoice
Following some difficulty that I was experiencing with my team, I was referred to Gordon by Multichoice.
From our first introductory meeting I had a sense of respect and admiration for Gordon, and it was immediately evident to me that he was well read, understanding and a thoughtful coach, with significant knowledge on the subject. It was evident that he was very passionate about his role, with a natural ability to engage and develop executives at any level, (even the hardened old school types like me).
Gordon took the time to understand my frustration through thoughtful and deliberate questioning, allowing me to discover and verbalize the issues through introspection and then carefully planned and provided reference material as guidance. We had numerous structured engagement sessions, and at every session his deep understanding and care was apparent.
During the time that I have worked with Gordon, I have had the opportunity to closely observe his interpersonal style – he is a pleasant and self-confident individual who believes in positive enforcement and motivation and I would describe him as a dedicated and enthusiastic individual who has a great penchant for creating positive change in others.
Gordon is an accomplished Coach who is highly focused, energetic, passionate and a driven professional with an exceptional work ethic and dedication to his clients, he is excellent at observing, and allowing self-discovery.
It has been an honor and pleasure working with Gordon, he is a true inspiration. Through our engagement and under his guidance I have been able to positively influence and change both my team and customers perception of me, in a very short time influencing the manner in which I engage with others turning my high performing team into a super performing team, with a great outlook, and attitude. This has changed my eNPS score from negative 20 to Positive 40. Truly remarkable in this timeframe.
I truly believe that Gordon is a great asset to any individual or organization.
Lisolomzi Gxasheka – Underwriter: Performance (Large Financial Institution)
What I was able to achieve with Gordon’s help as a coach includes:
- A great sense of self-belief that what I have to offer matters
- An ability to reset my default thinking and developing a learning mind – a growth mindset
- Improving the effectiveness of my communication
- Approaching meetings differently by focusing more on the vision (desired outcome) rather than getting stuck around the problem we are facing
Gordon is a great listener – his listening is intentional. He always made sure that I understood what I was saying/asking by either asking more questions (with no judgement) until it was clear in my mind and that there was very little chance of ambiguity in understanding. Gordon also helped me shift my ‘expert hat’ (making assumptions based on my expertise and telling the client what to do and how to do it) to that of adding the true value that is required. My manager has praised the growth in me as he sees the ‘next level thinking’ that is so prized by him and the organisation.
Older Testimonials
Through the coaching I was able to use an extremely pressured time to embrace the change in my leadership style we had discussed in the sessions. The result was a completely new way of working for my team with team members deployed to play to their strengths. We are still under pressure but are all much happier, less stressed and our collaboration has grown exponentially
Enterprise Architect (IT), Health Industry
Gordon has a contagiously patient and calm approach. His guidance enabled a learning and discovery process through which I have been able to look at things differently. I was able to challenge myself to successfully move outside of my comfort zone and change leadership behaviours in the workplace to have more of the impact that I want to.
Continuous Business Development Manager, Mining Supply Chain
Thank you Gordon, you achieved more than what is visible to you. You were confident and competent as a coach and I trusted you from early on. I have been ‘revived’ by this experience. I can feel the impact of my changed behaviour and I like what I feel.
Continuous Business Development, Large IT organisation
I really am grateful for your assistance in taking me through this journey, from where I was completely paralysed to where it is resolved and being closed. You really gently stretched me on this goal and helped me cross the terrain I was absolutely terrified to venture into even, I had no idea where to start and yet today it is resolved through your coaching skills and coaching intuition. This was an invaluable experience for me and proved to me that coaching is a powerful process I absolutely believe in now.”
Coach, Social Entrepreneur
When I look back now I actually understand that the simple principles I learnt through this coaching series are priceless and I now put them into action on the important issues in my life family, work and play. Shortly after we finished the series I was moved into a more strategic position which is all about “the plan and implementation”. Recently I received a director’s award for “adaptability” and two supplier of the year awards from two key customers. Key to these awards was planning, relationship and delivery.
Regional Accounts Manager, Multinational FMCG company
Through this coaching series I was able to develop a framework and new behaviours that I can use in my life and work to enhance my leadership style. Gordon was patient in his coaching and listened without judging me. At the same time he helped to stretch myself and come to solutions by myself.
Executive Manager
Little Falls, Roodepoort, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa