Coaching for leaders and other dedicated people

I have led projects myself and introduced project management to a company with a classic mid-sized culture. I saw a matrix organisation unsettle the old balance of power. I also saw success win people over: opponents became allies, and fighting each other became fighting together for a shared goal. Who is on the team, and how the team grows together, matters – across the organisation and in every single project.

Agile began as project management adapted for fast-moving software development. After the hype, it is now simply part of working life. But applied seriously, it unsettles existing structures just as project management does. Individuals and teams gain power and have to learn to use it. Often there is also an unspoken hope that it will deliver a better product and fix deep-rooted problems at the same time – quickly. The good news: it’s hard, but achievable, especially if expectations are managed well.

Growing prosperity in Germany doesn’t only have upsides. A volatile, globalised world creates a great deal of uncertainty, because it asks all of us to adapt quickly and decisively. As a result, everyone’s working environment is constantly changing. Responsibilities keep being reshuffled, and teams are increasingly international. Organisational structures become global and therefore more complex, the formal ones as much as the informal ones. Your colleague no longer plays football for the same local club on a Sunday; he plays cricket in Chennai. The upside: constant change brings constant new opportunities. If you know yourself, you can weigh up change, often turn it to your advantage, and in the end even welcome it. Cricket is a great sport.

Consultants can be a real help in times of change. Yet their frameworks often feel as if they were made for a different company. Experience shows it pays to understand the situation in depth. Coaching can help you explore: How did we get here? What is the consultants’ official task – and what might be the unofficial one? How can the organisation, its culture and you yourself contribute to the best outcome? What is worth keeping, without clinging to things just because they are familiar? And how do you bring others with you?

I have often seen companies try to create a climate of innovation through the workspace. Free coffee, table football and lounge corners are popular choices. In the end, the free coffee is what lasts; the table football and the lounges go unused.

The second route is creativity workshops. But here, too, the ideas are often forgotten once daily business takes over again.

Real capacity to innovate isn’t about crazy ideas. It is about a team that trusts it can voice even odd-sounding ideas without being laughed at. About a climate in which such ideas can be discussed openly, developed together and turned into real innovation. About trusting that the credit will be shared fairly in the end. And all of this has to work while the business keeps running, when fast, concrete solutions are needed.

I built a team like that as head of engineering. It doesn’t happen overnight. But we can work on it together.

Artificial intelligence opens up many possibilities – AI helped with this text, too. But what we read in the media raises high (often inflated) expectations and fuels uncertainty. The world of work will change, roles will shift and teams will be put together in new ways. But above all, this change is one thing: an opportunity.

I have watched many careers, supported people on theirs and shaped my own. Two lessons stand out:

1. A career is like a pair of shoes. Some feel perfect from the first moment. Others never fit, and often you only find out after you have bought them and walked a few miles. Luck plays its part. The hardest thing is admitting they’re the wrong shoes.
2. A career is a chain of recurring decisions: Do I have what the next step requires? Do I want to take it now? Will the right opportunity come to me, or do I need to create it? In short: WHAT DO I REALLY WANT (NOW)?

Expert or manager? Most people face this question sooner or later. It’s not easy to answer, and I have often seen a hasty decision turn out to be the wrong one.

Coaching helps you find out what drives you and what a career really means to you.

Growth is often confused with promotion, and in many companies promotion means management, because there is no career path for experts.

That is exactly when it pays to be clear about your own interests and motivation.

Growth means leaving your comfort zone, dropping old habits and learning new ones. That’s tiring, but also rewarding. And when it becomes too much?

There is no standard answer. First, accept that it happens to everyone: if you have never been overstretched, you have never truly pushed yourself. Coaching helps you see more clearly, shift your perspective and regain room to act. And sometimes it helps you accept that this step was simply too big.

A good idea is a powerful driving force. Whether it should become a company is another question. For the business plan, funding and legal structure, there is good support out there, for example from chambers of commerce, start-up centres or specialised start-up coaching. But the most important resource of a young company is you.

As head of engineering I watched many university spin-offs, and as a member of a start-up’s supervisory board I also got to know the founders’ side. Having your own company offers great opportunities and a lot of freedom. But it also means responsibility, uncertainty and a new role: from expert to entrepreneur.

Psychodynamic coaching helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses and, above all, your motives. What drives you? What are you looking for in being your own boss, and what are you leaving behind for it? If you know your motives, you make clearer decisions and are better able to get through the hard times. Sometimes the best answer is: go for it. And sometimes it is: not yet.

Committee work takes patience above all: understanding what others want, sensing the mood in the room and finding solutions that balance everyone’s interests as fairly as possible.

Coaching won’t do that for you. But it can sharpen your awareness of the dynamics at play and help you get clear about what you want and how your strengths can get you there.

In uncertain times companies reshape themselves: they add promising product lines, sell unprofitable ones and buy competitors. Very different cultures and ways of working suddenly have to coexist. Small, agile firms are absorbed into large groups; parts of large groups are spun off and must compete with lean mid-sized rivals.

For the people involved, change becomes permanent. Teams are formed, split and merged. Coaching for you as a leader, or support for your team through the transition, makes cultural differences visible, builds understanding and helps everyone reach structures that work – and last – sooner.

Coaching won’t make your decisions for you. It helps you get clear about what you need, prepare decisions and find new options for action. The answers come from you. I ask questions, give feedback and bring in methods.

For leaders, experts and other dedicated people who carry a lot of responsibility. And for managers and project leads who want to develop their team or have someone at their side through a change.

Yes. Whether coaching helps doesn’t depend on the title on your business card, but on what you bring: a decision that’s coming up, a role that doesn’t feel right, a conflict that won’t go away. You set the agenda. In the introductory call we find out whether we’re a good fit.

You get in touch via the form. In the introductory call, which takes 20 minutes and is free of charge, we talk about what you need and whether we’re a good fit. Then we agree on goals and framework and get to work: in conversations for individual coaching, and also with workshops and ongoing support for teams and change initiatives.

At your company, in Aachen or online. In German or English.

Systemic coaching looks at your situation in the context of your team, your organisation and your wider environment. Psychodynamic coaching also asks about inner patterns and unconscious dynamics that shape how you experience things and how you act. In practice the two aren’t separate; they simply ask in different directions.

That depends on the situation, and the methods vary a great deal. The future workshop and stakeholder analysis are two examples. But psychodynamic coaching doesn’t rely on rigid methods alone. It adds shared experience (role-play, for instance) and in-depth conversation.

Yes, on the human side: acceptance, communication, leadership and teamwork. The technical implementation is not part of what I offer.

The fee depends on what you need and on the scope. We’ll talk about it in the introductory call.