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Muhammad
Yunus
FOUNDER,
GRAMEEN BANK, BANGLADESH
Please
tell us about your organization.
My name is Muhammad Yunus.
I am with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. And, right now I am in my office
in Bangladesh.
Grameen
Bank is a bank for the poor people in Bangladesh. It started in 1976 in one
village, trying to give money to extremely poor people. The banks told them
they weren’t credit-worthy. So, I wanted to do some experimentation to
see if this were true. I did. And, it worked. They did pay it back. We expanded
it, and in 1983, we became a formal bank and kept on expanding ourselves.
Today we have 2.4 million borrowers in Bangladesh, and 95% of our borrowers
are women. This is the type of work I do.
What
is your function
with your present employer?
My
work involves organizing it and setting it up, and continuously trying to
find out how to see how it will work better. We have 12,000 staff and 1,149
branches. So, it’s a big organization. The work I do is typical of a
chief executive of any organization.
When
and how did you first become aware of Life Coaching?
I
met Dave Ellis way back. I didn’t know what he did. He came as a RESULTS
volunteer to Bangladesh. He attended one of our international dialog programs.
A dialog program is one that we conduct each year, several times, where people
come to understand the kind of work that we do. And, RESULTS is an organization
that is very interested in our work, because we have a common goal to help poor
people. Dave took an interest in our work.
This was a group of RESULTS
volunteers from all over the USA and from other countries as well. They came
to Bangladesh to see what Grameen Bank does and lived in the villages with
the poor people to see their day-to-day life and see the kinds of problems
they face and the kinds of things they do for themselves and how Grameen Bank
is useful. So, in that group, about five years back, Dave was one of the volunteers
who came. That was our first meeting. And, at that time, I didn’t know
what crazy thing he does. Later on he told me, when I met him many times later,
what he does, and I thought it was a funny thing to doÑlife coaching. It didn’t
make any sense to me. But, he explained it to me. I thought it was still a
funny thing. How can you help other people unless people cannot do things
for themselves?
But, he agreed to that.
He said, “I don’t help anybody. People help themselves. I just facilitate
their own thinking. That’s all.” And, he said, “Why don’t
you try it?” I said, “Okay, I’ll try it.” So, he agreed
to do that for me . And, since I live in Bangladesh, he would call me on the
phone, and we would spend a couple of hours on the phone talking about things.
The
coach/client relationship in Life Coaching sometimes involves very open, candid,
honest communication about very sensitive subjects. How comfortable are you
with divulging confidential information to your coach?
Basically,
my fear disappeared when I saw that he wasn’t trying to be an advisor to
me. I can assure you he is not an advisor. He is kind of a background person.
He never comes to the scene of your life. What I felt is you have capacity in
yourself, but you never touch those buttons you have. And, he doesn’t know
either. He just asks you questions, and gradually, you discover the dark corners
of your capacities. And, that’s what Dave does.
He does it very efficiently,
I can assure you. And then you feel different. You feel at least the problems
you saw that you only had one light and only one side of the story, he helped
to go around and light up another light on that problem. And, now, you see
the problem is not a problem anymore. It’s solved.
So, he is not an advisor.
He’s not telling you what to do. He is only getting you out of your very
conventional, traditional way of doing things. So he brings out your own capacity
or you discover your own capacity. You explore yourself. That’s what
Dave does. And, he does it quite good.
If
I were a close friend of yours contemplating Life Coaching, what would you
say to me to convince me of it’s merits?
I
felt funny about his job, but I agreed to try it out, and I can tell you,
if you feel funny about it, just try it. Make your judgment after you try
it out. If my friend asked me about what is life coaching and asked me if
he should go through it, my answer is, “Try it. You may like it.”
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