Shanaaz Majiet is and expert Organisational Development Practitioner and Executive Coach with 17 years experience. Her professional experience and career track record is well established in the public sector in South Africa where she held a series of leadership portfolios in large systems across government where she led major change management, restructuring and leadership development initiatives to transform the public service.

As a coach and mentor she pioneered coaching programmes and interventions at national, provincial and local government in the Western Cape in particular. She designed ground breaking public leadership development programmes for provincial government in the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape with local government practitioners to improve government performance.

Shanaaz serves as an executive coach on the ABSA and Old Mutual external panel of Coaches, and specialises in leadership, performance and transition coaching, using an integral Gestalt coaching approach. She has extensive experience in coaching and mentoring on leadership development programmes in Southern Africa and internationally.

She holds formal graduate and postgraduate academic qualifications, from the University of Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Harvard Business School & the Gestalt International Study Centre and is in the process of obtaining her ICF MCC credentials.

In early 2003, Shanaaz founded SMSC Consulting, a business in the area of organizational transformation and coaching, reinforcing the link between personal growth, performance development and business growth. Her practice now extends her work and experience into the larger corporate world.

Shanaaz leads the projects at SMSC Consulting. She also works as an executive performance coach for business executives and teams.

Shanaaz says people, results, impact, learning, curiosity and action are central to her life. Courage is what she most wants to contribute to the world and she sees no limits to human development, other than lack of clear purpose, lack of commitment, and our limiting beliefs.

 My Approach to Coaching:

1.    Building a contactful relationship that supports learning

Establishing a trustful relationship that supports the coachee in making contact with him/herself and with the coach helping to create an environment where learning  is possible.

2.    Attending to what is well-developed / less—developed in the coachee’s behaviour

-     We learn most easily when we have a rich experience of what we do well. It supports us becoming open to that which we have yet to learn.

3.    Attending to the balance of intimate and strategic behaviours

-    Behaviour can either be strategic, meant to achieve a goal, or intimate, in tending to enhance connection among people (Melnick & Backman, 2000; Nevis, Backman & Nevis, 2003). Attending to both supports contact, learning and action.

4.     Viewing the coaching process from a system perspective

-   Seeing the Coachee as one part of the system and the organisation, family, or others, as another part helps to keep the whole in mind. Understanding that both parts contribute to and create their experience.