Luc Van der Hofstadt is a professional sports coach who has brought his sports coaching principles to business, coaching executive and corporate ‘athletes’, teams and organizations to achieve high level sustainable performance. He always presents a set of practical and relevant coaching tools by using real life examples from the sports field and applying them to both everyday life and the corporate world. In his team coaching, he delights in helping individuals and teams manage their own and their team’s energy to achieve peak performance.
My Definition Of Success | According to me, success is reaching one’s goals. When those goals are reached, it is about setting new ones, as part of an ongoing process. With time, I realized that success means above all having a good quality of life with a good work/life balance. Finally, from a business point of view, success is about doing your best in your field of work as well as using your talent with passion.
I Am Driven By | My passion. I’m passionate about people and about my work as a business and sports coach. I love energizing individuals, teams and organizations for better performance.
I think my ‘MAGIC’ come from | I was luckily born with a talent for animation and I worked hard to develop my competencies. The combination of talent and competencies sometimes result in MAGIC. I’ve always loved coaching. When I completed my Master in Laws, I started working as a waterski instructor. After a 10-year career in various communication agencies, I went back to my passion, i.e. coaching business people, teams, corporations and sports athletes/teams in order to help them reaching their goals.
A Key Talent | My talent is about connecting with people, and more particularly speaking to their hearts instead of their minds. First of all, I develop their self-consciousness, which is the first step to grow or change. Secondly, I suggest them to question theirselves. There isn’t one truth, it is always ‘your’ truth, and it is only your perception of the reality. Others have different truths, different perceptions and different ways to look at things. Finally, I call people to find their ‘Why’: ‘Why do I do what I do?’ (= the sense/purpose). It is essential to connect with your individual ‘why’ and the team’s ‘why’. Friedrich Nietzsche said: ‘He who has a why to live can bear almost any how’
The Characteristics Of Success | I’m convinced one needs perseverance to be successful. Moreover, I often tell my sports coachees: ‘Pain is an information, not a limit’. They should always try harder and believe in their capacities to succeed.
How I Use My Mind | When I coach an individual or a team, I always have a plan in mind. Before starting though, I repeat myself that ‘It will not happen as planned’. As a consequence, I focus mainly on the goal rather than on the process. From a personal point of view, when an obstacle come across, I always connect to my ‘why’ and I also remind myself that I want my wife and two little girls (and myself J) to be proud of me. This psychological reasoning motivates me to pursue my ambitions in hard times.
Lessons I Have Learnt | ‘By believing in your dreams, you turn them into reality.’ In 1992, I visited South Africa for vacation purpose. My dream was definitely to live there. I came back many times for short periods. After believing in this dream for more than 20 years, I finally moved to Cape Town with my family two years ago. I started the South African branch of the Mentally Fit Institute, a company created in Belgium initially and of which I was one of the co-founders.
Performing At My Peak | As a coach, I have always been an ‘Agent of discomfort’ for my individual coachees and for my teams. My job is to keep the people out of their comfort zone. There is no growth without discomfort: ‘Comfort kills effort’. I try to apply this to myself as well.
The Best Advice I’ve Received | ‘Follow your intuition’: the best decisions I have taken in my life happened when I didn’t think about them. I just did it. Two months after meeting my wife, we decided to live together and to have our first child. A few years later, we sold our house in Belgium and moved to Cape Town. Intuition was right as I have never regretted those important choices.
Advice On Building Wealth | Wish I knew, I could use it to myself!
I Am Inspired By |
Nelson Mandela for his incredible accomplishments in South Africa and his capacity to forgive.
Barak Obama for his serenity and charisma.
Thierry Jansen (www.thierryjanssen.com) for his humility and for the inspiration and tools he gave me in the numerous trainings I followed with him.
Jacques Fradin (www.jacques-fradin.com) as my professor of neurosciences and for all the help I got from him to develop myself on the private as well as on the professional side.
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