An organization consultant and a coach? Of course!
For several years, I have been working with companies to help them improve their organisation - read: who gets what responsibility and decision-making power (roles and responsibilities, RACI), what steps do we agree on to streamline our operation (processes) and how do we proceed if we don't get there together (governance). This can only succeed if you engage with your people as a company. Involve them in your questions, your proposals and your consideration. You don’t have to let the group decide on everything but you can't decide without them either - because in that case, your decisions will live only in slides, not in practice. Of course, it can take quite a lot of time and effort to start consulting your employees. And if you approach it in the standard way of "let’s just sit around a big white table and say something if you have an idea", you will have wasted everyone’s’ time, get little results and can self-righteously say, "see, nothing came, all a waste of time".
Because yes, it can be done differently. Why would you want to sell yourself short, or, for that matter, your colleagues and your entire company by not putting the right effort into changing the way you treat each other?
That question got me studying and retraining myself, taking up team coaching and facilitation (guiding and animating workshops). I love it because it speaks both to my talents and interests aswell as to the needs of the people I work with and those of their company or organization. The need to be heard and seen, the need to find hope and inspiration again from their own work, the need to deliver outstanding work and tackle all obstacles to that end. That's what we want, right? That our people can feel and fuel that intrinsic motivation again, and that we help them unleash it on the big issues within our team, our company, our organization, our society?
Gradually I noticed that I wanted to go broader and deeper. How could I increase my own strength during meetings and project trajectories, so that the team could lean on me even more? And how might I at the same time strengthen them so that I could move on to other projects myself? That was my motivation to start training as a Co-Active coach. As a coach, I don't work directly on the business project, but on the human being. If, as a human being, you can look differently at your own way of thinking, acting and being, it has an impact on every aspect of your life. Those are the stakes: getting to know yourself better in every area of your life and thereby also making your life much more meaningful and valuable to yourself. You will change from the inside out, not just on the surface. As a result, you will make other choices and learn to deal with your own doubts and questions, but also your talents and strengths, differently. That is the change we go for. That is how you become a change agent yourself - first with yourself, then with your world.
