WE ALL HAVE INTRINSIC IDENTITY©
For more than 15 years, I have been researching a question that began with someone very close to me ...
... More than 3 decades have passed since someone very close to me was diagnosed with mental illness, yet I knew their life story and I knew what had happened to them. I could see that what was being described could not, in my view, be understood separately from the person, their experiences and the circumstances in which their responses had developed
I began asking: What if we became better at understanding the person before deciding what was wrong with them?
That question eventually led me into deeper research into identity, individuation, development, psychology, neuroscience, traumas, attachment styles, addictions, relationships, schemas, physical health and the systems in which human beings develop.
FROM A PERSONAL QUESTION TO A BODY OF WORK
My work has continued to evolve through Research, Coaching, Strengths, Systems Thinking and my own experience of how people adapt to the environments in which they live.
I became increasingly interested in what happens when an adaptation becomes an Identity and when a person becomes highly skilled at being who they believe they need to be, without developing the opportunity to discover who they are actually capable of becoming.
These questions eventually brought together the different strands of my work - talent, Strengths, identity, adaptation, relationships, systems thinking, Futures Studies and my own experience of becoming.
This became the foundation for my work on Intrinsic Identity©️
WHO I WORK WITH
I work with a select number of motivated people who have a genuine desire to understand themselves more deeply and explore what they may be capable of becoming.
You may already be successful, capable and highly driven. You may have achieved many of the things you once wanted, yet still feel that something doesn't quite fit. Or perhaps you simply have a sense that there is more to you than the identity you have learned to inhabit.
I don't see this work as simply helping you set and reach your next goal. I walk alongside you in a process of discovery, bringing focused attention, curiosity, challenge and a willingness to ask the questions that may be difficult to ask yourself.
Together, we explore your Intrinsic Identity©️: your natural patterns, motivations, Needs, Contributions and ways of engaging with the world, alongside the experiences, relationships and environments that have shaped who you have learned to become.
CliftonStrengths® may form part of that exploration, but it is not the destination. The deeper question is not simply “What are you good at?” It is: “Why did you become so good at it and what might become possible when you understand what is genuinely yours?”
We explore what energises you, what matters to you, where you may be adapting, what may no longer fit, and how you might develop from a more conscious understanding of yourself.
And because I am a Futurist, I don't want to leave you looking backwards. We will also look forwards at who might you become, what could you contribute, what kind of relationships, work and environments might allow you to flourish and what future becomes possible when you stop continually trying to become someone else?
This is a challenging partnership. I won't simply tell you what you want to hear. I will ask questions, challenge assumptions, connect patterns and futurise with you while remaining curious about what you are discovering for yourself.
The aim is not to create a better version of the identity you have already learned. It is to help you become more fully conscious of who you are, how you became who you became, and who you might become.
LEARNING TO RECOGNISE WHAT WAS ALREADY THERE
My own journey has been anything but conventional. I failed high school. I encountered professional environments where my potential was not recognised and, at times, found myself being defined by roles that felt very far removed from what I knew I could contribute. For much of my life, I felt as though I was knocking on doors that other people controlled. Eventually, I began to realise that perhaps the question was not simply whether someone would open the right door for me. Perhaps I needed to understand who I was becoming and create environments in which I could contribute what were genuinely mine.
That realisation changed the way I approached my life. I became an entrepreneur. I created businesses and opportunities rather than waiting for someone else to give me permission to pursue them. I built guest houses, established the Guest House Association of Pretoria, worked across hospitality and tourism, and later moved into technology and enterprise systems.
But one of the experiences that taught me most about human potential was something much simpler.
I started a cookery school for under-resourced South Africans, including domestic workers who had not had the opportunity to gain recognised qualifications.
I loved that work.
It wasn't simply about teaching people to cook. It was about creating an environment in which people could discover what they were capable of.
And perhaps they might discover that cooking was something they loved.
Or that it wasn't.
Either way, discovery mattered.
Looking back, I can see that I was already working with an idea that would become central to my life:
What happens when we create the conditions for people to discover what is already within them?
WHY I DO THIS WORK
My own experience eventually led me to CliftonStrengths®.
For the first time, I found a language that helped explain some of the patterns I had experienced throughout my life, particularly my talents of Futuristic, Strategic, Activator, Ideation and Communication.
It helped me recognise that some of the things that had sometimes made me feel different were also the things that enabled me to see possibilities, anomolies, connect ideas, initiate action and imagine what could be different.
And I began experimenting.
What if we didn't simply assess people's strengths?
What if we considered where those strengths might naturally contribute?
What if we created learning environments around how people naturally engage?
What if recruitment considered the relationship between a person's natural patterns and the environment in which they were being asked to contribute and help match individuals to roles that helped them thrive?
These questions eventually became part of my work with strengths-based recruitment, learning, organisations and human systems.
But, once again, the questions kept evolving.
FROM UNDERSTANDING TO BECOMING
Intrinsic Identity©️ is not another label to put on yourself. It is an invitation to explore the relationship between who you are, who you have learned to be, and who you might become.
My work is increasingly concerned with the space between those three things. We all adapt, we learn how to belong, how to stay safe, how to gain approval, how to succeed and how to navigate the environments in which we find ourselves. Those adaptations can become so familiar that we mistake them for identity. Sometimes they serve us well and sometimes they can become toxic and no longer do. Oftentimes the very things that made us successful become the things that prevent us from living the life we are capable of living.
This is why I don't begin by asking “What's wrong with you?”I begin with questions such as:
Can I see myself differently? How did I become who I became? Who might I become? What is genuinely mine, and how do I integrate this?
These questions form the foundation of the way I now work with people. CliftonStrengths® may be part of that exploration, but it does not define you. It is one source of information - a way of noticing patterns that can then be explored in the context of your life, relationships, environment and experience.
The deeper work is developmental. It is about becoming sufficiently conscious of ourselves to distinguish what is genuinely ours from what we have learned to become, and then developing the freedom to choose how we participate in our lives and relationships.
That includes individuation - becoming more fully ourselves without needing to disconnect from others, because ultimately, becoming ourselves is not about becoming independent from humanity. It is about becoming sufficiently ourselves, interdependently, that we can participate in humanity more authentically.
This is where my work has brought me as I am still learning, questioning, researching, challenging assumptions and still asking the question my mother planted in me when I was ten "What might become possible if we discovered what is already within us?"
Perhaps the answer is not simply a better career, relationship or a better version of ourselves. Perhaps it is the possibility of becoming more fully human and that is what I now invite people to explore with me.
WHEN THE QUESTIONS CHANGED
The more I worked with people, talent and strengths, the more I began to see something that interested me even more. Knowing what someone is good at does not necessarily tell us why they became good at it.
A person can be highly capable, highly productive and deeply engaged in what they do and yet still be living from an identity they have learned rather than one they have consciously discovered or chosen.That question became increasingly important to me.
I asked not only: What are you good at?
But also: Why did you become so good at it?
Could something that looks like a strength sometimes also be an adaptation? Could a person become extraordinarily capable because capability brought approval, belonging, safety or significance? Could we sometimes be the person who successfully adapted to their environment for the person they might have become if they had been given greater freedom to develop?
I wasn't interested in abandoning Strengths. Quite the opposite.
Strengths had taught me to look for what was already present in a person.
However my later research taught me to ask what else might be present beneath what a person had learned to become.
This led me back to my academic work.
In 2022, I completed my MPhil in Philosophy and Futures Studies, graduating Cum Laude. My research had taken me well beyond individual behaviour and into the relationship between human beings and the biological, psychological, social, economic and environmental systems in which we live.
I began to see human development differently.
Perhaps we cannot fully understand what happens to a person by looking only inside the person. Perhaps we also need to understand the environment in which they developed.
The relationships they experienced, expectations they absorbed, adaptations they made, the identities they learned to inhabit, the systems that rewarded some behaviours and discouraged others and the possibilities that may have remained unexplored.
This is where my work became increasingly systemic.I became less interested in asking simply: “What's wrong?” and more interested in asking:“What happened?” “What did you have to become?” “What might be genuinely yours?” And ultimately: “Who might you become if you had greater freedom to develop from what is genuinely yours?”
These questions eventually brought together the different strands of my work - talent, Strengths, identity, adaptations, relationships, systems thinking, Futures Studies and my own experience of becoming. And they became the foundation for what I now call Intrinsic Identity©️If these sound like questions you've been asking, You don't need to arrive knowing exactly what you need, you may simply know that something about the person you have become no longer makes sense. You may be highly capable but disconnected from your life or you may keep repeating patterns you don't understand. You may be questioning your work, relationships or direction or you may simply be curious about who you could become if you stopped trying to become someone else. That's where we can begin to explore the individual development pathways through Awareness, Discovery, Deep Dive, Emergence or begin with the lower-cost WITH-Humanity learning resources if you want to explore the ideas of innate talents and Interdependent Rules of Engagement© before working with me directly.
Who I Work With
I work with a select number of motivated people who have a genuine desire to understand themselves more deeply and explore what they may be capable of becoming.
You may already be successful, capable and highly driven. You may have achieved many of the things you once wanted, yet still feel that something doesn't quite fit. Or perhaps you simply have a sense that there is more to you than the identity you have learned to inhabit. I don't see this work as simply helping you set and reach your next goal. I walk alongside you in a process of discovery, bringing focused attention, curiosity, challenge and a willingness to ask the questions that may be difficult to ask yourself.
Together, we explore your Intrinsic Identity - your natural patterns, motivations, needs, contributions, sometimes triggers and patterns of over and underuse, ways of engaging with the world, alongside the experiences, relationships and environments that have shaped who you have learned to become. CliftonStrengths® may form part of that exploration, but is not the destination. The deeper question is not simply “What are you good at?” but rather “Why did you become so good at it and what might become possible when you understand what is genuinely yours?”
We explore what energises you, what matters to you, where you may be adapting, what may no longer fit, and how you might develop from a more conscious understanding of yourself and because I am a Futurist, I don't want to leave you only looking backwards. We will also look forwards at who might you become, what could you contribute, what kind of relationships, work and environments might allow you to flourish, what future becomes possible when you stop continually trying to become someone else?
This is a challenging partnership because I won't simply tell you what you want to hear. I will ask questions, challenge assumptions, connect patterns and futurise with you while remaining curious about what you are discovering for yourself.
The aim is not to create a better version of the identity you have already learned, it is to help you become more fully conscious of who you are, how you became who you became, and who you might become in the future.
Welcome to Sam McDonald Coaching - for the life you love to live ...