Kitty Schaap

Your strength is your faith in people’s potential.

You bring order to the messiness of our growth and development.

You’re a performance coach.

People who come to you for advice will not only get forthright, practical guidance, but they will also get a system to track their progress. You love to keep score. And while this logical, disciplined approach creates security and certainty with others, you temper it with a heartfelt belief in them and what they can achieve.

Your goal is to create self-reliance in others. You don’t want them to have to keep coming to you. You train them, empowering them to create their own internal measures and motivators. And then, you stand proudly on the sidelines and watch them deliver.

You are predictable and consistent. At least you strive to be. This is why people come to trust you. People come to you when they want clarity and opinion. You “weigh” things in your mind and get a strong sense of “what is the right thing to do” in almost any situation.

You begin by asking, “What can he learn from this?” Your focus is instinctively toward other people. Not their feelings, necessarily, but their understanding, their skills, and their performance. You see each person as a work in progress, and you are comfortable with this messiness. You don’t expect people to be perfect; in fact, you don’t want them to be perfect. You see the possibility in imperfection. You know that imperfection creates choice, and that choice leads to learning.

Since you are energized by ‘others’ growth, you look for signs of it. “Where was this person last month?” you ask yourself. “What measurable progress have I seen?” You create novel ways to keep track of people’s performance and celebrate with them when they reach new heights. You ask them a lot of questions to figure out what they know and what ’they don’t, how they learn best, what is important to them, and what journey they are on.

People’s performance improves when you’re around. This is your greatest gift.

Instinctively people know that you care about them, and that your caring is genuine. They get it. They feel it. They never doubt it. And this certainty frees them. They can experiment, and reach, and fall, and fail, and then reach again. And you will still be there willing them to keep reaching. You don’t give up on people. No matter how much they struggle, you keep believing that they will find a way to move forward, and to improve. You are intrigued by “the process”–the process of other people’s learning and growth. You aren’t impatiently waiting for the big-bang breakthrough. Instead you are content to see small increments of growth that happen every day. The “getting it” can be more exciting to you than the “got it.”

You are also intrigued by the process of the activity. You revel in breaking activities down into their discrete parts, and then showing others how to do each discrete part. You want others to understand the “how,” the “method,” and when you can show others the “how,” you are delighted.

You know that people can learn only from where they are starting, so you ask lots of questions to determine their starting point. You listen very carefully. You watch closely. Any small action or reaction could be a clue about where to “join” them in their learning journey. Your “start-by-listening” approach makes others feel heard, and safe. For you, it is the source of vital information about their learning styles, their personalities, their understanding. You use this information to tailor what you are teaching so that it fits each person–you individualize. You want to get on people’s level. You want to engage in their world, see people in their “natural habitats,” and better understand their realities This achieves three things: 1) it shows them that you know them; 2) it shows you the world from their perspective; 3) it gives you the raw material you need to give them good ideas for how to get better.

You are a learner yourself. Because you love the process of “getting it,” you sign yourself up for classes so that you can feel yourself “getting it.” This is a constant part of your life.

Your dedication to constant learning is not just for you. It also serves to equip you with new ideas and techniques that you can use to help others. Consequently, to others you seem wise, an unending source of knowledge, experiments, and ideas that might help them grow. Whenever others run dry–of ideas, or of self-belief–they return to you. You seem strong, patient, understanding, and yet always expectant.

You are systematic, bringing method and process and accountability to your projects.

Wherever you go, you will instinctively try to build a learning organization, a place intentionally designed to expand each person’s experience, understanding, and, in the end, performance.