Setting:

Mr. A, manager of an internationally active company based in Germany, would like to leave the company through a cancellation agreement with the company owner (CO) with whom he has a trustful relation since long time. He had already identified career alternatives.

The client provided the following reasons for his intended termination:

1. lack of recognition by the CO, combined with
2. favouring a very competitive colleague for a position in the company by the CO - for which he hoped being the candidate.

Coaching:

Our collaboration revealed that his real concern was his inability to assert himself in dialogue with his boss despite the following aspects:

• Mr "A" was successful as a manager (considerable increase in turnover and regular implementation of innovative business ideas),
• was very satisfied with his job, responsibilities and salary,
• Mr "A" regretted the resignation as his only way out.

This information lead me to the following question: "do you really want to leave or what can you do to change the situation in your favour?"

Addressing his real concern became a question of correcting his self-perception and positioning in the company, strengthening his self-confidence and convincing his boss that he was the right man for the position he was aiming for.

We achieved this together in 14 months of constructive collaboration and my client is still working in the company today. He has moved up the career ladder and, according to his own statement, is very happy.

Conclusion: The key to finding a solution is identifying and working on the real concerns

Setting:

Ms E, a lawyer in the process of completing her doctorate alongside her work formulated the following concerns:

1. Professional decision taking: She has several job offers and is having difficulty deciding which one would be best.
2. Preparing for upcoming job-interviews.
3. How to assert herself as a woman and younger team-member within her current position.

Coaching:

In order to address her first concern, we started by evaluating and prioritising the criteria that seemed relevant for clarifying her values in life (career, income, working hours/workload, health, leisure/sports, partnership, possible family, children). She realised that she would prefer work-balance including family rather than a fully career driven lifestyle.

In order to cope well with job interviews (topic 2), she formulated the following goals and questions:

• How to sell my strength and deal with weaknesses?
• How to best overcome my insecurities?
• How to present myself confidently and authentically?

This exercise helped her in identifying adequate job opportunities and allowed her to address fundamental questions about her communication and to make suggestions on how communication can be more targeted and therefore more effective.

For better asserting herself as a woman (topic 3) and younger team-member we started using the LIFO® questionnaire. This exercise allowed her to reflect on how she uses her behavioural styles and to become aware of her strengths in order to develop them further and use them more strategically within mixed teams.

This collaboration took place over a period of around 3 months.

Conclusion: The example shows that private and professional systems can be seen and dealt with jointly.

Setting:

The way in which banking transactions are carried out has changed dramatically in recent years, not least because of internet and online banking. Cost pressure is leading to competition in the banking sector in the search for opportunities to reinvent themselves and secure business areas. This pressure is felt by bank employees and the teams in which they work together. I was requested helping to organise team-building measures for a bank operating in northern Germany.

The main concerns of the employees were:

1. Dealing with pressure/stress individually and as a team
2. Dealing with innovation and perceiving change less as a threat and more as an opportunity for themselves
3. Maintaining/improving morale in the teams, and
4. Openness and transparency in communication.

Coaching / team building:

The LIFO® method was applied individually and was very helpful in identifying personal strengths and development potential for better interpersonal understanding. The individual behavioural styles were discussed in the team and even hung up in the bank's kitchenette after the workshop and discussed in the kitchenette meetings.

Conclusion: The willingness of individuals to share their assessments about behavioural styles with the team improves teamwork and team member satisfaction.

Setting:

Ms D, a project manager expressed a need for general management support in the strategic positioning of her department with the following challenges:  

• she was not familiar with procedures of her own institutions as well as in the collaboration with other institutions.
• Her line manager was not satisfied with her work and lead to a strained relationship with him.
• Her contact person at a partner organisation was difficult to deal with and inaccessible.

Ms D wanted regular support for the following important issues:

1. Time / self-management and prioritisation of activities
2. Setting boundaries, being more mindful of herself,
3. More efficient steering and strategic cooperation with partner institutions (defining roles/responsibilities, negotiating, and contract management).

Coaching:

In our regular sessions, we were able to achieve noticeable improvements in the above-mentioned areas through self-reflection, exercises, and role-playing. It also became clear that Ms D acted very professionally in her area of expertise. Her main difficulty was more in inefficient communication with her team and her line manager. The relationship with him remained difficult.

Despite progress, Ms D continued to feel uncomfortable in her team as she could not quickly enough familiarise herself with the required procedures of her employer. Consequently, her long-term perspective/career opportunities were not good enough to stay in this venture. As a result of our collaboration, it became sensible to consider changing the employer, the project or her career as a whole.

Conclusion: Basic requirements must be right and working on symptoms cannot solve formal requirements and concerns.

Setting:

Ms E, a project manager in an international consulting company, asks me for support. In the preliminary discussion to clarify our collaboration, she describes the following difficulties:

• Her work-life balance is unbalanced and incompatible with her desire with her private aspirations, like moving house, heading towards family and children.
• Ms E lacks discipline (e. g. sometimes late for work, not always meeting deadlines) and has difficulties in setting priorities.
• Her boss criticizes her inefficiency and she suffers under his disdain.
• She has an upcoming meeting with her boss next week to discuss her weaknesses.

Coaching:

We discussed possible goals, such as

1. Improving Ms E’s discipline, keeping to-do lists with priorities and schedules/deadlines consistently,
2. Practising mindfulness and setting boundaries, e. g. exercises on the topic of "saying no" in the event of additional ad-hoc tasks,
3. Communicating more consciously and thereby strengthening her self-presentation.

During our collaboration it became evident that Ms E was unable to formulate a priority concern. It became obvious that the most urgent difficulty was the upcoming meeting with her boss. As this resulted in extreme pressure and stress for my client and aiming at keeping things practical, we therefore agreed on preparing this meeting.

For this meeting we focused on:

• Prioritising her concerns and how to formulate them to her superior.
• How to deal with his critics without becoming neither aggressive nor rude.

The meeting was a first step towards constructive collaboration confirming necessary requirements for improving her efficiency and reliability. Following this first emergency intervention, we then focused working on the identified goals (1, 2 and 3). As a basis for the fruitful eight-months collaboration we started with the LIFO® questionnaire.

During this time, she made good progress in certain areas e. g. communication and discipline and setting boundaries. Yet, this was not enough to improve the relationship with her line manager and her personal satisfaction. As a matter of fact, she was increasingly suffering under extreme work pressure. I concluded that Ms E might be taking a health risk (burn-out) if she continued working like that. I suggested to consider seeking professional help from a psychological psychotherapist.

Conclusion: Coaching has limits and as a coach it is my duty to formulate and communicate them clearly to my clients providing hints for alternatives.

Setting:

A married couple “F” wanted to support one of their daughters in the takeover of a company in the healthcare sector. A banker, friend of the couple with experience in company takeovers, offered his support in evaluating the sales offer of the previous operators/sellers.

The request: Couple F asked me for a second opinion, an independent assessment of the sales offer, the business plan also including a risk assessment.

Couple F express the following concerns:

1. Their daughter might be overwhelmed by the commercial tasks,
2. They also wondered whether their daughter would be robust enough in terms of health and personality to be an entrepreneur,
3. The father explained that he did not want to put his hard-earned money into what he saw as a risky investment. His wife saw things differently.

Coaching:

When assessing the initial request, namely business plan and risk assessment, family related worries and internal aspects became more and more obvious. This was, in my understanding, the real (unknown) concern. I therefore asked the couple if, in addition, they would also like my support in this matter. Couple F keenly accepted.

Communication problems arose from the previously insufficiently reflected parent-child relationship. Couple F reported that their daughter did not feel treated at eye level, but still as a child and that the parents could not trust her.

In our coaching sessions we looked at family as a system and their communication patterns using several tools and communication exercises. We achieved the following:

• a more reflective communication from the parents with the daughter at eye level (e. g. by transactional analysis model),
• a change in the couples F self-perception in their relationship with all their daughters - accepting them as adults,
• the parents’ acceptance that taking over the company is a decision of their adult daughter only, and
• they realised that, as parents, they could only support their daughter without being overbearing and accepting also a possible rejection,
• successfully applied communication techniques and rules easing the conversations with their daughters.

Conclusion:

The coaching sessions revealed that, for enabling working on the initial concern (taking over the business) systemic issues within the family had to be addressed primarily.

Setting:

International acting agencies working in the field of development cooperation, knowledge transfer, and institutional strengthening regularly require my expertise for facilitation of planning workshops with project teams (10 - 20 team members) with the following objectives:

1. Preparation of annual operational and activity plans

As workshop facilitator I am guiding teams with sometimes conflicting interests (e. g. different management styles, stakeholders, cultures) towards impartial decision-making. This task requires empathy, diplomacy, and tact.

2. Improving cooperation within teams

Such technical planning workshops offer the possibility to improve team collaboration. Here I act as team-builder, communication’s trainer and coach. I train team-members to strengthen their competences, social skills, interaction with each other, dealing with conflicts within teams and thus improve cooperation.

3. Individual coaching

The work with the teams often leads to individual coaching sessions. Frequent concerns are: Dealing with 'difficult' team members and/or superiors, a lack of recognition, low self-confidence or communication challenges within the team.

As an introduction to the individual coaching sessions, the LIFO® instrument helps to identify personal strengths and development potential for better interpersonal understanding.

Conclusion:

Planning workshops paired with team building and individual coaching have proved very successful.