The world is changing for women, just as women are changing the world. After a long career in the advertising industry, Rose Murdock set out to prove that for herself, as a life coach and entrepreneur
All of us are coaches when it comes to our favourite sport. We stand on the sidelines or sit on the couch, yelling instructions, cheering or berating, throwing up our hands in triumph or despair.
It’s a natural human instinct. We all enjoy advising other people how to play the game.
But when it comes to our own game of life, we’re often adrift, unsure of direction or strategy, perhaps even worried that we might be in the wrong game. That’s where the life coach comes in.
A guide, a mentor, a navigator through stormy waters, the life coach can help us make sense of change, and learn to embrace and love it.
Rose Murdock, an accredited life coach who runs the Performher Business Etiquette Academy in Johannesburg and Cape Town, has learned this lesson for herself.
After 26 years in advertising, leading multidisciplinary teams on a portfolio of multimillion-Rand clients, she seized the opportunity to share, teach, and train other women in the art and science of achieving more.
We caught up with Rose to find out what it takes to be an agent for personal and corporate change.
Q: If you could change one thing about yourself for the better, what would that be, and why?
A: I would want to be more patient with people, to accept that we all work at different energy levels and not everyone operates at my level of high energy with the passion to find solutions quickly…possibly more patience would provide me with more opportunities for creative thinking.
Q: What do you love most about change?
A: Change challenges you on every level – intellectually, emotionally and even physically. It stretches you to get to know your depths and your limits, forces you to do the things you fear doing or think you can’t do. Change provides the opportunity for you to be your best.
Q: Where do you go when you feel like a change of scenery?
A: I head for the ocean – the wilder the better, to feel its invigorating power and its soothing rhythm wash over me and connect me with the universe. I find it humbling and healing for the soul.
Q: What’s your own personal formula for coping with change in your life?
A: Discipline – reflection, running and reading – keeps me in balance both physically and mentally, and keeps me grounded.
Q: What would you say is the single biggest lesson you have learned about life, as a Life Coach?
A: Human beings have an enormous capacity for coping with whatever life throws at them, for surviving against all odds.
Q: What wouldn’t you change for anything in the world?
A: Being a Mum. Being a professional businesswoman.
Q: Do you think women are better equipped than men to handle change, and if so, why?
A: Not necessarily, but research tells us that women tend to be more risk-averse by nature and sometimes find it difficult to move out of their comfort zone. Women, through both nature and nurture, are less adventurous than men.
Q: How much change do you have in your pocket right now?
A: Nothing in my pocket – but R7.50 in my car ‘pocket’.
Q: What was the single biggest and scariest change you have ever made in your life?
A: Making the decision to leave my husband and father of my two children, knowing there was no financial support for us.
Q: Do you think the world is changing for women, or are women changing the world?
A: There is substance in both statements. If you look at women currently in positions of power in both public and private sectors globally, there is evidence that the role of women in society throughout the world has changed.
The insight, value and inspiration these women bring to every aspect of life, to society, will change the world. With more women in key leadership positions, the reality of women changing the world and the world changing for women is inevitable.
Q: What does it take for you to change your mind?
A: A well-considered argument.
*For more information on the Performher Business Etiquette Academy, visit www.performheracademy.co.za.
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