Coaching
Your Journey – My support
Let us collaborate on your path towards your objectives.
Coaching is a highly individual process that unfolds between the client and the coach. You will be in the center of the attention, and your story, your objectives and your specific circumstances will set the frame of the conversation. My role as your coach is to go into a deep rapport and ask questions which will lead you into a search beneath the surface to find solutions that reflect your innermost personality and activate resources which will help to set you in motion. As your coach I am serving this process with my outside-in view of and neutral reflection on the mental configuration showing in your responses.
The following examples illustrate some possible situations in which I as your coach can support your personal development. You will get a sense of topics which resonate with me and I am qualified to coach on. The situations described below can be the entry point into our collaboration, the list is not exhaustive because every case is special.
- Strategy, Change, and Core describe three possible versions of personal development work suitable for specific transformation objectives.
- Business Mentoring is complementing your journey by business-relevant insights from 30 years of work with diverse organizations.
- Positive Intelligence is a foundational program which supports general mindset evolution and activates your self-coaching abilities.
- Finally, Your Story is an opener for cases wich are not described here but fitting into the larger frame of mindset coaching.
See how those examples resonate.
You are very welcome to share your own unique story. Be inspired by what is written below and let us explore whether and how I can help.
Strategy
To get what you want, sometimes you might need to become (or remember) who you are.
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What is your (next) plan for life? If this is a difficult question for you, you will benefit from a personal strategy session.
There is a famous quote attributed to Steven Covey: “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
Guided by my questions, you will…
- Dive deep into your motivations and understand the underlying drivers of your ambition
- Paint a vivid picture of your future self and how you would like to live your life
- Identify and connect with your purpose, the underlying “why” and “what for” of your vision, hence figuring out what inspires you
- Get clarity about your strengths and personal resources that you can invest into this life, unlocking what might be hidden under stress and distraction
Will you end up with a step-by-step plan you just need discipline to follow through? Well – maybe. You will get something much more valuable in the first place – a deep connection to yourself and the objectives that are worth pursuing. Crafting a plan to get there will then be the easy part.
Let us explore which wall you should lean your ladder on.
Change
Change is easy in the thinking, but less so in the doing, especially in a complex world and with other people involved.
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You know what you want and how to get there. You have a plan and you are taking action towards your goal. You work hard and are focused on your progress, pushing forward with the required discipline.
But… it feels so exhausting.
There are obstacles getting in your way, and … people. There is company politics, moody customers, your lazy colleague who lets you do the work – and there is your partner complaining that you never have time.
Let me help you to develop your map for the change.
- Chart the wider context of your desired change and identify the different “systems” (i.e., people, constraints, circumstances, yourself) involved
- Explore the explicit or subtle power dynamics at play in those systems
- Clarify your own position – your role, your mindset and your relationships that directly or indirectly influence your ability to progress
- Identify the changes you can make to circumnavigate roadblocks without spending your mental energy on wars you cannot win
- Exercise a mindset of ease and flow, independent of adversities – while doing your meaningful work
Viktor Frankl famously said: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Homeostasis – the tendency of a system to get back into an equilibrium – will then do its work.
Let us explore which adjustments you can make.
Core
Sometimes, you need to dig deeper to understand what keeps you from doing what you know you need to do.
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You have a pretty good idea what it takes to go where you want to go. Whether it is a dream you want to pursue, it is an important step on a path you are following, or it is a seemingly mundane task that needs completion – why is it that you know what to do and you still don’t do it? You have made plans and started in a motivated manner, you even have a to-do list, and yet, you procrastinate.
During our collaboration, you will…
- Explore the inner dimensions of your relationship with your objective
- Deeply understand not only what you need to do but also what you need to stop doing
- Look at your objective from different perspectives – outside-in, inside-out, future-facing from today, backwards-facing from the future, through the eyes of those who are important to you
- Stop being pushed and let your motivation pull you towards your desired future self instead
You might have thought that all it takes is a time management method, discipline, and hard work – but now you figure out that there is some deeper work required: letting go, facing the truth, forgiving, healing, or finally growing up.
Let’s talk about your deeper work.
Positive Intelligence
Explore the complete operating model for a positive mindset through the app-guided PQ program.
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It is one thing to solve one problem – but what if you could learn a method to better deal with any problem? Early in our lives, we develop mindset patterns that help us to make sense of the world and survive our most vulnerable time. While those patterns serve us well at first, they often get in our way later in life – they turn into our very personal saboteurs. What if you could learn how to switch to a more constructive, more positive mindset at will – in any circumstance?
This is the idea of Positive Intelligence, a concept developed by Shirzad Chamine, which is embedded in a 6-week app-guided program.
The program will help you:
- Understand your saboteurs and how they interfere with your life and progress
- Train a simple and pragmatic method to stop your self-sabotage that can be applied anywhere, anytime
- Activate your inner sage to support constructive, outcome-oriented action and calm yet decisive behavior
The program can be run individually or as part of a small group. It consists of weekly video sessions, daily app-guided PQ practice and weekly reflection sessions – the so-called pod meetings.
Go on a surprising and impactful journey to welcome your sage.
Business Mentoring
Benefit from my experience of 30 years of work in and for ambitious and complex global organizations.
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Today’s business world is dynamic, fast moving, connected, global, ambitious, competitive. This is fascinating and inspiring. It comes with a cost, though – complicated structures, ambiguity, the need to constantly adapt and change. Whether you are an employee in a large organization or an aspiring solopreneur, it is super-useful to know how businesses “tick” and what this means for your personal development.
I can help you with that.
- Better understand the business and operating model of your company and your place in it
- Make space for your authentic self within a complex organization
- Peacefully deal with challenges – restructuring, conflict, new role, new boss, overwhelm, underwhelm, ambiguity, complicated structures, toxic culture, constant change
- Access my knowledge about solutions, approaches, concepts, and frameworks about many aspects of business and leadership
- Take a shortcut to learning what can otherwise take a long time to master
As John Crosby defines it: “Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.”
Be invited to pick my brain.
Your Story
Your individual story is unique and can only be told by yourself. Let us collaborate on your path towards your objectives.
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My job as a coach is to create a safe space for you to express and explore your thoughts, emotions, ideas, dreams – open, inviting, and free of judgement. Then, guide you through your inner process in deep rapport and provide the right impulse to have something “click” into place in your mental models. You will notice when it happens.
How this could work for your unique situation:
- Explore your vision, see the bigger picture, foresee how you will have arrived at your destination
- Clearly hear your inner voice through all the noise and have the courage to listen to it
- Allow yourself to feel your feelings – and re-learn to let your intuition guide you
“The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable, and comfort the troubled.” – Ric Charlesworth. Probably couldn’t be summarized any better.
I am curious to hear what is on your mind.
Who I Work With
I work with people who want to create more space for their true identities at work.
You are an ambitious professional – you want to unfold your potential and do your best and meaningful work. Whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned expert and want to progress in your role – you have a passion for your profession and want to make an impact while further developing your skills.
A new level is reached if you are a leader – emerging or evolving, keen on leveraging your potential and taking people along on this journey. You are inspired by inspiring others, and you love the challenges that come with those responsibilities.
Or, you dream of making your own ideas happen as an entrepreneur, whether going solo or with a bigger vision in mind, and this objective sets you on fire. The business you are planning to create is close to your heart.
Today’s world is full of opportunity, but this comes at a price – the need to make choices. Businesses are fascinating ecosystems, comprising numerous individuals striving to synchronize their efforts in pursuit of what we broadly term as customer value.
Amidst this intricate framework, you find yourself, with your unique personality and aspirations, endeavoring to find your place while also striving to distinguish yourself – a journey towards growing into your best self. Yet, this journey is rarely straightforward.
Click to read on about common challenges on the path…
- Searching for self and future self: Struggling to align personal aspirations with organizational objectives, grappling with restlessness, frustration, disillusionment, integrity dilemmas and evolving identities
- Growing pains: Navigating pivotal career decisions, the desire to get a promotion followed by post-promotion issues, experiencing uncertainty during or after launching your own venture, coping with the tumultuous phases of change
- Psychological distress: battling with heavy workloads, overwhelming busyness, conflicting values, and the pressures of being caught in the middle of a hierarchy
- Heteronomy and external control: Feeling constrained by external factors or individuals, feeling undermined, and struggling to adapt to perpetual changes and ambiguity
- Self-defeating behaviors: Confronting internal barriers, feeling hindered by vague obstacles, grappling with the weight of self-sabotage
Lasting
Change
How do you know when you’ve truly embraced change – that you have emerged on the other side? You may recognize this sensation from previous transformations in your life, though you might not have attempted to articulate it before. While my words may not perfectly capture your unique definition of “inner peace”, here’s a suggestion.
To read about possible takeaways, click here…
- Autonomy and integrity: Discovering your own purpose, feeling liberated in mind and soul, keeping inner obstacles in check, maintaining integrity across your entire being
- Serenity: Achieving emotional calmness, experiencing significantly reduced stress, embracing ambiguity with tolerance, welcoming change as a catalyst for growth and personal development
- Sense of ease: Enjoying your work, achieving results with optimized efforts, nurturing a spirit of curiosity and continuous learning
How I work
My work is development coaching – the guidance and support to get through phases of personal transformation. I open up the space in which ideas develop and provide a sounding board for individual behavioral strategies and playful planning.
We will clarify your human systems together, thus disentangling complexity by jointly exploring the “bigger picture” and your own role in a professional and personal context, recognizing worthwhile and promising areas of change and defining respective goals.
I will support you in solution design through simulation of possible futures and development of your individual future model.
Through my mentoring you will benefit from my experiences from 30 years in business and 20+ years in management.
I like inserting my analytical skills into this work, like structuring complex issues, combining bottom-up detail and top-down overview and reducing complexity through metaphors and visualizations. Those strengths are underpinned by a strong intuition.
My approach considers the multidimensionality of human situation and understanding of context. I recognize the individual and their relationships, integrating different levels of events. I make use of merging psychological models – “how people work” – with business concepts – “how the world around us works”.
I allow myself and will encourage you to be visionary, opening up the big picture and develop longer-term strategies. With a tolerance of ambiguity and a great appetite for ideas, I invite you to explore unconventional and creative ways of thinking and support you to transfer those into your personal context.
I work with a mix of methods and tools from my coaching and business backgrounds. Complex matters can often be simplified through metaphors and analogies. Visualizations help to clarify relationships and put structure around complicated matter. I apply my knowledge about strategy and leadership and the many business and technological frameworks I have thoroughly used, be it for planning, governance, process or solution design, program management, change, or architecture. If there is none that is useful for a specific situation, I create my own.
Is this your story?
You have a goal. You want to achieve something that is important to you – get the promotion, change your life, implement this idea, do this thing – you fill in the blanks.
You know that you need to take action to make it happen. And you are determined to do it. You have done all the preparation – set a goal, made a plan, broken it all down in smaller steps, created this spreadsheet to track your progress. You are all set. And motivated. NOW it is going to happen. This time, it is going to work!
And then, it doesn’t.
Although you know exactly what you need to do to make it happen, you still don’t do it.
Instead, you keep yourself busy by doing other things. Those also need to get done, right?
You procrastinate.
Or you try, but the world is against you. There are obstacles. People are mean. Your boss does not support you. The time is not right.
Then, you beat yourself up for your lack of discipline. You question your abilities. You binge a show to distract yourself. You go shopping to gather just some more materials. You take another course, so that you know more first.
And this objective does not make sense, anyway. Or does it?
Or maybe you just need a better plan?
And so, the cycle starts again.
Isn’t that fascinating, this distance between “knowing” and “doing”? What is happening in this gap? Why is it so hard when it seems so easy? When you want it so badly, and you are so well prepared, why can’t you “just” make it happen?
Welcome in the messy middle of your very personal transformation.
You can only do so much by “planning”. Cognition has its limits if you want to figure out how to move to a place where you have not yet been before.
Courage and action are the carriage that move you forward, but maybe they need some guidance about where to go.
Maybe your mind needs to go first, so that courage and action can follow.
Maybe this is not so much about DOING what, but more about BECOMING who.
Let me support you in going deeper. I am fascinated by the inner and outer dynamics of personal development – and the phenomenon of associated growing pains.
I guide you through the messy middle – so that you can do what only you can do.
As American poet Robert Frost said: “The only way out is the way through.”
Welcome your Future-Me.
Comprehend the wider context of your systemic circumstances, and how you perceive what is happening around you. Decipher your behaviors and where they help or hinder you.
Rediscover and activate your capabilities which you might have forgotten that you had them.
Welcome what you are blessed to learn, and then go learn it. Face the challenges and circumnavigate the hurdles.
So that you can create the positive change you yearn and go the next step on the way to your authentic self.
Oh, that sounds too hard? No problem. There is value in comfort. It’s a viable option to stay where you are. But there is a cost of inaction. You might miss out on some color in your life and on the excitement to meet your true self. You might continue feeling “stuck”. The nagging will come back and stay as a permanent resident.
But imagine the prize if you finally did it and followed through. Imagine the pride in your achievement, the joy of your new life, the calm of your relationship, the peace of your mind, the serenity of your “everyday”. Imagine the doors that might open. Imagine your freedom.
The key is in the mindset.
You still want to get to the other side – and you accept that you must deal with the challenges you are facing?
Get in touch.
Get in Touch
What’s on your mind today? Share your thoughts and let’s connect.