Philip Rochford, the re­tired chief ex­ec­u­tive of NCB, is the on­ly Trinida­di­an who can claim to have co-au­thored books with Stephen Cov­ey, who died last week, and An­tho­ny Rob­bins.High­ly re­spect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly a mo­ti­va­tion­al au­thor, Rochford has been a life coach since he was 18 years old, but start­ed full-time coach­ing af­ter his for­mal re­tire­ment in 1993 at 60. In his most re­cent pub­lished, co-au­thored book, No Win­ner Ever Got There With­out a Coach, Rochford dis­cuss­es how he be­came a life coach and its im­por­tance.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Coach Fed­er­a­tion de­fines coach­ing as part­ner­ing with clients in a thought-pro­vok­ing and cre­ative process that in­spires them to max­imise their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al po­ten­tial. Look­ing at this de­f­i­n­i­tion, I have been coach­ing on a part-time ba­sis from the age of eigh­teen years, so that means I have been coach­ing for the last 60 years. The in­ter­est­ing point is that the life coach­ing in­dus­try was on­ly for­mal­ly or­gan­ised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly un­der 17 years ago. The lead­ing cer­ti­fy­ing coach­ing body recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly is The In­ter­na­tion­al Coach Fed­er­a­tion, but this was on­ly formed in 1995, so I was coach­ing long be­fore the cer­ti­fy­ing bod­ies be­came es­tab­lished. More­over, at present there is no law in T&T or in the Unit­ed States that re­quires a coach to be li­censed. The oth­er point is that ini­tial­ly, for a few years, I did not know that what I was do­ing was to lat­er be­come known as life coach­ing. Ini­tial­ly my niche was spir­i­tu­al coach­ing, then pub­lic speak­ing coach­ing, self-em­pow­er­ment coach­ing, and even­tu­al­ly ex­ec­u­tive coach­ing. What I have dis­cov­ered is that a per­son is al­ways on his or her pur­pose, but the form it takes varies with the ex­pe­ri­ence and cir­cum­stances of the per­son's sit­u­a­tion. I ven­tured in­to full-time coach­ing af­ter I re­tired from the bank at the age of 60, so at 70 years old now I have been coach­ing full-time for the last 18 years.

Was there a com­mon fac­tor in all of your ca­reers?

Most de­cid­ed­ly, and there were five com­mon fac­tors in all of my ca­reers. First­ly I en­joyed all of them, sec­ond­ly they were all peo­ple-ori­ent­ed, third­ly they pro­vid­ed so­lu­tions to peo­ple's needs, fourth­ly they of­fered ad­e­quate in­come to meet my life needs, and fifth­ly, I sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to de­vel­op­ment of the lives of all the peo­ple with whom I in­ter­act­ed. An­oth­er im­por­tant com­mon fac­tor was that I de­lib­er­ate­ly chose my ca­reers, and ac­cord­ing­ly set plans in mo­tion for their man­i­fes­ta­tion. When I de­cid­ed on the pub­lic ser­vice ca­reer, I set about im­prov­ing my aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be able to com­mand a post that could in­flu­ence the di­rec­tion of the pub­lic ser­vice. This led to my be­ing se­lect­ed for an ad­min­is­tra­tive cadet schol­ar­ship, and on my re­turn from uni­ver­si­ty over­seas I was as­signed to the min­istry of fi­nance in a strate­gic po­si­tion as staff as­sis­tant to the min­is­ter. My ca­reer in bank­ing was one of great chal­lenge. There were then in 1970, sev­en in­ter­na­tion­al banks reg­is­tered to do busi­ness in T&T. None of these banks had a cit­i­zen of T&T as its chief ex­ec­u­tive. This ap­peared to me to be their in­ter­na­tion­al cor­po­rate pol­i­cy for banks to avoid a con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween a chief ex­ec­u­tive's com­mit­ment to his coun­ty and loy­al­ty to in­ter­na­tion­al cor­po­rate pol­i­cy. There­fore, I had to en­ter the bank­ing sys­tem through the reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty.

The Cen­tral Bank of T&T was es­tab­lished in 1964 as the reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty of the com­mer­cial bank­ing sec­tor. In Sep­tem­ber 1967, I was ap­point­ed cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, the third lev­el in the cor­po­rate hi­er­ar­chy af­ter the gov­er­nor and the deputy gov­er­nor. The man­ag­er, bank op­er­a­tions, and the di­rec­tor of re­search were al­so posts at this third lev­el of the bank's cor­po­rate hi­er­ar­chy. My re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ed hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment, se­cu­ri­ty, and sec­re­tary to the board of di­rec­tors. The ex­pe­ri­ence was tremen­dous and cov­ered for­eign ex­change crises, in­ter-bank ad­min­is­tra­tive re­view, and a so­cial up­ris­ing in April 1970 that threat­ened to take over the Cen­tral Bank in that rev­o­lu­tion­ary up­heaval. On Ju­ly 1, 1970, the Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank of T&T Ltd was es­tab­lished and I was ap­point­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive, sub­se­quent­ly be­com­ing its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. This was his­to­ry. By the end of its first year of op­er­a­tions its mar­ket share was 1.0 per cent, but this in­creased to 12 per cent on my re­tire­ment 23 years lat­er.

The bank, through its poli­cies and prac­tices, pos­i­tive­ly trans­formed the bank­ing sys­tem qual­i­ta­tive­ly, al­though it did not quan­ti­ta­tive­ly have the re­sources of the larg­er banks. The bank in 1993 was merged with two oth­er in­dige­nous com­mer­cial banks, and was re­named First Cit­i­zens Bank and con­tin­ues to be a tremen­dous in­sti­tu­tion in T&T.

Af­ter re­tire­ment from the bank in 1993, my ef­forts were di­rect­ed to leav­ing my thoughts and ex­pe­ri­ences in writ­ten form for pos­ter­i­ty. In ad­di­tion to au­thor­ing my six mo­ti­va­tion­al books, I joined with in­ter­na­tion­al au­thors to co-au­thor two books, A Search for Pur­pose was co-au­thored with Dr. Wayne Dy­er, An­tho­ny Rob­bins, Bill Har­ris, and oth­ers, and Dis­cov­er Your In­ner Strength was co-au­thored with Dr. Stephen Cov­ey, Bri­an Tra­cy, Ken Blan­chard, and oth­ers.

How would you de­scribe your shift from the busi­ness world to coach­ing?

My shift from the busi­ness world to coach­ing can be de­scribed as a shift from my build­ing in­sti­tu­tions to build­ing peo­ple. Of course, to build in­sti­tu­tions you have to build peo­ple, but the fo­cus is dif­fer­ent if your pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is build­ing peo­ple rather than your pri­ma­ry goal be­ing de­vel­op­ment of the in­sti­tu­tions. There were three ma­jor in­sti­tu­tions that as chair­man I di­rect­ly fo­cused on build­ing. Two were new in­sti­tu­tions of a com­mer­cial bank and a na­tion­al pe­tro­le­um mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny, and the third, BWIA In­ter­na­tion­al Air­ways, was the re-en­gi­neer­ing of two ex­ist­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions. One served the in­ter­na­tion­al air trav­el mar­ket and the oth­er served the do­mes­tic air trav­el mar­ket be­tween the two is­lands of T&T. Build­ing the Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank of T&T in a busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment that was not ac­cus­tomed to ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such lo­cal en­ter­pris­es be­ing man­aged by sons of the soil re­quired a cul­tur­al break­through. More­over, there was the fur­ther neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of the gov­ern­ment of T&T orig­i­nal­ly own­ing 100 per cent of the eq­ui­ty of the bank. The is­sue was to build the bank by es­tab­lish­ing in the minds of peo­ple that the bank was com­pe­tent, com­mer­cial, com­pet­i­tive, and con­fi­den­tial. The prod­ucts and ser­vices of the bank had to be rel­e­vant to the needs of the mar­ket­place, pro­vide val­ue to cus­tomers, and be de­liv­ered through out­lets or branch­es that were con­ve­nient to cus­tomers.

As im­por­tant as em­ploy­ees were to achiev­ing these goals, they were part of the process, and not the dom­i­nant rea­son for build­ing a bank that had the vi­sion to be the best bank in the land. The pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try in the 1970s was the prin­ci­ple en­gine of growth for T&T. How­ev­er, all as­pects of pro­duc­tion re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing were in the hands of in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. The gov­ern­ment held the view that the do­mes­tic mar­ket­ing of prod­ucts could be han­dled lo­cal­ly, and moves were made to start the process of the lo­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion and mar­ket­ing of gas. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the gov­ern­ment pur­chased one of the oil com­pa­nies and the com­pa­ny's gas sta­tions were ab­sorbed in­to a new com­pa­ny called the T&T Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. This move re­sult­ed in the com­pa­ny hav­ing a 17 per­cent share of the do­mes­tic gas sta­tions' mar­ket. This was Jan­u­ary 1973 and I was ap­point­ed its first non-ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. This was a sec­ond oc­ca­sion in which I was re­quired to es­tab­lish a new com­pa­ny from its in­cep­tion. My first ex­pe­ri­ence in es­tab­lish­ing a bank helped me to es­tab­lish the vi­sion, mar­ket­ing, re­cruit­ment, and oth­er cor­po­rate poli­cies of this mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny. Even­tu­al­ly un­der my chair­man­ship, the pe­tro­le­um mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny ac­quired the gas sta­tions of Shell, Exxon (then Es­so), and Tex­a­co, there­by re­sult­ing in 100 per cent of the do­mes­tic gas sta­tions. The day fol­low­ing the last ac­qui­si­tion I re­signed as chair­man in April 1977, as my task had been com­plet­ed, I had pro­vid­ed for man­age­ment suc­ces­sion, and demon­strat­ed that our cit­i­zens could man­age their af­fairs. In 1979, I ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge to in­te­grate the in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic air ser­vices of T&T. A new act of par­lia­ment, T&T (BWIA In­ter­na­tion­al) Air­ways Cor­po­ra­tion, in­cor­po­rat­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al ser­vice of BWIA and the do­mes­tic air ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and it's sis­ter is­land of To­ba­go. This need­ed a new fleet of wide-bod­ied air­craft, re­vi­sion of op­er­a­tional man­u­als and new tech­nol­o­gy to deal with mod­ern book­ing and tick­et­ing. When I took up of­fice as chair­man, all the trade unions op­er­at­ing in the com­pa­ny were in the in­dus­tri­al court pur­su­ing dis­putes with the com­pa­ny. Morale of the em­ploy­ees was low, and the pi­lots had just re­turned from a strike. I re­signed in 1981, but by then had de­vel­oped a new vi­sion for the air­line and es­tab­lished an op­er­a­tional plat­form for suc­cess.

What has been your biggest chal­lenge in coach­ing?

It seems sim­ple but it's re­al­ly a big­gie. My biggest chal­lenge in coach­ing is to main­tain my own align­ment when a client is not liv­ing up to his or her own abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to achieve the de­sires that are ca­pa­ble of be­ing man­i­fest­ed by the client. In coach­ing, every client wants to move from his or her present po­si­tion to a new and im­proved po­si­tion. The client's de­sire for a new po­si­tion is clear­ly there, but so of­ten the client does not be­lieve that the de­sire is pos­si­ble of achieve­ment and does not fol­low through on what is pos­si­ble. I can hold the vi­sion the client es­pous­es, but the client has to take the ac­tion to man­i­fest his or her dreams. My chal­lenge is to keep my own bal­ance when a client is not be­ing faith­ful to hon­or­ing the client's own dreams. I have to re­mem­ber that I have to view the client's con­di­tion, meet a client where he or she is, and not in­sist that a client must act as I think they are ca­pa­ble of act­ing. The biggest chal­lenge is to un­der­stand that I am not the cre­ator of the client's re­al­i­ty, and so I can­not change it. I can pro­vide an en­vi­ron­ment for the client to change it, but the client can choose not to change his or her po­si­tion. I on­ly have pow­er to change my feel­ings to­ward the sit­u­a­tion.

It ap­pears that the un­der­ly­ing fac­tor that pre­vents clients from reach­ing their full po­ten­tial is their lim­i­ta­tions that they place on them­selves. The rea­son for this gen­er­al­ly stems from their lim­it­ing be­liefs that are formed through their for­ma­tion and pro­gram­ming while grow­ing up. These lim­i­ta­tions are imbed­ded through con­stant ref­er­enc­ing of them by par­ents, guardians, teach­ers, and friends. Lim­it­ing be­liefs are formed by con­stant neg­a­tive ex­pres­sions. Ex­am­ples are: mon­ey does not grow on trees, love of mon­ey is the root of all evil, blessed are the poor for theirs is the king­dom of heav­en. I am not good at math­e­mat­ics; it has al­ways con­fused me. I can­not speak in pub­lic, I don't like home­work, I can't sing, my Eng­lish is poor, my gram­mar is weak. Lis­ten­ing to var­i­ous lim­it­ing state­ments over­time be­come neg­a­tive be­liefs that lim­it your ac­tions in life. How­ev­er, you need to pur­sue your dreams, de­sires, and goals de­spite your cir­cum­stances, and per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions.