I am often asked:
Some say that there are as many coaching approaches as there are coaches. This might well be true. As the common denominator, the International Coach Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
Having a broad and interdisciplinary academic background, I offer multiple perspectives and draw on a variety of methods and tools to customize an approach that works best for each client. Each session looks different depending on your needs of the day and where we are at in the process. My coaching is indeed based on an eye-to-eye level partnership with my clients, based on transparency, trust and authenticity. There is no “I am the expert, you are the patient” sort of dynamic.
I am not a clinical psychologist or trained psychotherapist. If you are suffering from a mental health condition, you need to see a psychotherapist or psychiatrist. In coaching, we focus less on problems, more on goals. But I don’t shy away from intense emotions (something that differentiates me from many other coaches), and I encourage you to bring your whole self with all your past experiences and difficulties into our work.
A coaching process can be more demanding than therapy: I like to integrate exercises and “homework”. Much of my and the client’s work happens beyond the time we spend together.
I find double sessions (90 minutes) to be the most common and effective, but sometimes shorter or longer sessions may be a better fit.
It depends largely on your needs and goals. I always strive to make the coaching processes as effective and efficient as possible.
If you face a decision, perhaps one session would be enough. But typically the transitions people face or search for call for work over several months, with session intervals ranging from weekly to monthly.
And there are the clients who return on an on-need basis whenever a new challenge surfaces.
And if you wish, you can count on me as your LGP or life general practitioner who knows you and understands the big picture and can accompany you with living your life well.
Coaching is an investment in yourself and I hope you know that you are worth it! My rates are very competitive with therapy. I offer a sliding scale to make coaching accessible beyond executive circles. Your financial commitment is limited and a few sessions are often enough to feel a change and even breakthrough.
First, I don’t believe that a coach needs to have the same industry background as you have or share other specific traits with you. Coaching is not mentoring or counseling. Rather, psychological tools and a fresh outsider perspective will empower you to find your own solutions (and reaching out to a mentor or consultant might be part of the coaching “homework”). There are qualities in a coach – such as intelligence, empathy, being a good listener – that are important. What is most important for the success of a coaching process is the chemistry, the relationship of trust and openness and understanding, between coach and coachee.
I offer a free initial phone conversation (most calls take about 30 minutes). I will tell you if I have the right skill set and expertise for your needs, and you will have to determine if you get the sense that you can be open and trusting with me. If there is a green light, we will schedule our first double session and test working together. If this step is successful, we plan for a coaching process together according to your needs.
While I do meet clients in person, most clients prefer the comfort of meeting online or by phone.
I have come to appreciate virtual work as it can speed up the process. The natural need to want to perform and present yourself in a certain way is not as strong with virtual meetings. Some people even prefer to turn the camera off, because it helps them to speak about vulnerable issues in the “dark.”
Yes. I will try to accommodate your schedule as best as I can.
I enjoy working with people of all ages, backgrounds, orientations and worldviews.
Research shows that experiences and intangibles in general bring more happiness than tangible goods. A coaching session or a MBTI personality assessment can be a wonderful, meaningful and potentially life changing gift to someone. Maybe they find the drive to continue on their own, and, if not, even one session can make a big difference and touch off a beautiful development in someone. Reach out to me about purchasing a gift voucher.
I have been volunteering with programs that offer free services to populations in need such as people experiencing homelessness. It is important to me to support causes I value and I regularly contribute to (silent) auctions and benefit raffles. If you would like me to offer coaching for a specific charity, feel free to inquire.
Here are a few of the workshops, group coachings and lecture topics that I offer. Contact me to discuss how best to customize or develop a program according to your needs.
ITC is a method that tackles peoples’ frustrating experiences with having failed at personal development goals (think of New Year’s resolutions 6 months later..). Rather than forcing a change in behavior − which is usually doomed to fail sooner or later −, the process uncovers the unconscious limitations in the current mindset and reveals the unquestioned assumptions and blind spots that are holding us back from achieving our goals. It aims to equip participants with the insight to overcome this “Immunity to Change”. The process leads to a new perspective on oneself and sets you on a path to finally be ready to achieve challenging personal goals. This innovative approach draws from the research of my teachers, Harvard developmental psychology professors Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey, on what prevents us from achieving our goals and what adults need to grow mentally and emotionally. You can think of this workshop as a psychoanalytically flavored power shot that prepares you for your journey to success!
Available as a small group workshop, lecture, or individual coaching process.
The MBTI assessment is one of the world’s most popular personality tools – used by more than 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies in 115 countries. It is a very elegant and powerful tool for self-awareness and improvement. It provides a positive, comprehensible, and concrete framework for understanding, valuing, and operationalizing individual differences. The underlying theory is based on Carl Jung’s clinical observations that people differ in their innate preferences for how to take in information from the world, how to make decisions, and from where they primarily direct and receive energy. The MBTI assessment identifies 16 different personality types but is not meant to pigeonhole or limit a person to certain traits, nor is it measuring normality vs. abnormality. All types are equally valuable but have different strengths. The goal of the assessment is to give you deeper insights into your preferences and patterns and to help you understand others better who differ from you. This insight contributes to improved communication and interaction with others and can prevent and resolve conflict.
Many people come to see me with an assumption about their type based on one of the numerous online knock-off tests or with a test result delivered to them in business school or at an HR training – but without the required professional personal assessment conversation by a trained practitioner. In many cases, this leads to a wrong assessment result, as we uncover in our work together. I am a licensed MBTI practitioner, and I often use this lens as a starting point for my clients’ personal development journey, but you can also reach out to me just for the assessment.
I am familiar with other personality instruments − for example, I have worked with the BIP inventory (Business-focused Inventory of Personality) −, but the MBTI is my favorite. Last but not least because it was a game-changer for my own life!
Available as a small group workshop or for individual coaching processes.
Born out of my intercultural psychology studies and my own experiences working in intercultural environments and being an ex-pat, I offer workshops to
Available as a group workshop, lecture, or individual coaching process.
In this workshop, we ask ourselves about the weight we want and should give to ethics in our professional decision-making processes. This leads to the bigger question of the place ethics has in the economic system and within companies. I present you with a few classical philosophical approaches and then we will look at an ethical dilemma a leader is facing and uncover the different layers of ethical complexity. And most significantly: We will engage in a hopefully lively and inspiring discussion with each other!
Available as a group workshop, lecture, or individual coaching process.
In our modern societies, most of us are constantly pursuing myriad goals. But in that jungle of demands on ourselves, it is easy to lose track of our true north, i.e. we just focus on secondary goals without taking our ultimate and long-term vision into account. Let me help you to be smart and conscious about setting goals that are important and deserve your energy and follow through – and not to overload yourself with being too ambitious about tackling too many goals at the same time. We will also learn about the pitfalls of investing in the wrong goals. Identifying and engaging with one important goal is a crucial step in personal or development.
We start from your vision and values and pick a goal that is important and exciting to you and in your power to achieve. Then, we will break it down into SMART subgoals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timed. And we will do a visualization to prepare you for how to withstand and overcome potential roadblocks along your journey.
Available as a group workshop, lecture, or individual coaching process.
I designed and ran a group coaching program to help people cope during the Covid-19 crisis. However, this program has proven to be beneficial not just in the context of a global pandemic, but to help people connect and grow – facing small and big challenges of life.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger sounds like a cliche but it has a lot of truth to it. A time for personal and collective difficulty has proven to be an opportunity for people to reflect and introspect, to foster connection and develop empathy, to grow their capacity for hope and love, and to question old structures and start building new ones.
Each of the three workshops in this series has a different focus: Challenges and comforts, resilience, and Carpe Diem. Through myriad tools (mediation, guided visualization, creative exercises, group sharing & experiencing) participants are empowered to gain control of what life allows them to control.
Available as a small group coaching program / workshop.
Conflict is inevitable, its escalation is not. In this workshop, we engage theoretically and practically with strategies to deal with conflict effectively and constructively. The goal is for us to learn to consciously respond rather than automatically react in conflicts.
This workshop will introduce you to important theoretical frameworks in the world of conflict resolution and mediation. I will guide you to identify your own preferred conflict style (based on the model of Thomas & Kilmann) and we will discuss in which situation each style and strategy is the most promising. We will also practice how to effectively prepare for a conflict conversation.
Available as a group workshop, lecture, or individual coaching process.