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Who We Work With

The Ideal Client

The clients who gain the most from working with us are usually

  • Within competitive R&D environments in science and engineering
  • Acknowledged experts in their field
  • Aware enough to know that leadership is another skillset that can be mastered
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Is This Familiar to You?

  • You learned the hard way that being a top-class scientist or engineer didn’t prepare you for leadership. You need to have some leadership tools to help build and manage your team.
  • Your people are not as committed or passionate about their work as you and you don’t know what to do.
  • The conflicts in your team are draining you and the team and you wish you knew what to do
  • You’re realizing that you only have few leadership role models and would like to do better to have independent thinkers in your group.
  • You wish you had more time to do your stuff rather than spending time on your people’s stuff.
  • You feel trapped between the needs of your bosses and the needs of your people and are longing for a balance
  • You realize that your career and who you collaborate with is an important long-term strategic consideration and you need external input

If the above is familiar to you, give us a call and let’s find out how you can become the best leader you never had

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Expected Results

If the above is familiar to you, give us a call and let’s find out how you can become the best leader you never had

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  • Your people will learn how to solve their own problems. You’ll acquire the tools to coach your staff to solve most of their own problems. This will free up more of your time for your work and also grow them to independence.
  • You will balance the conflicting demands of your superiors and staff. You will find ways to get the results you need under ever-tightening budgetary and time constraints, while retaining the commitment of your staff.
  • You will learn how to express your own style of leadership. You’ll be able to leverage the scientific and technical skills you’ve used for years so that you can apply a range of tools to sculpt your leadership approach to meet your business challenges.
  • You will clarify your professional vision and learn how to engage your team to reach it. And more.
  • You will deal effectively with conflicts, recognize their value and learn how to turn them into an engine for improved creativity and enhanced productivity.

Case Studies

Moving The Department

I arrived for a coaching session with a senior manager for IT services at a chemical company near Frankfurt.

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The Stalled Project

At the end of a consulting contract, a client told me about his new challenge: to roll out a European-developed SAP…

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Landing the Grant

I was preparing for a grant interview that was critical to my career as an academic researcher, so I wanted to…

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Moving the Department

Problem

I arrived for a coaching session with a senior manager for IT services at a chemical company near Frankfurt. As his assistant showed me in, he said: “a couple of things have changed since we spoke a couple of days ago. First, we’ve been taken over by locusts[1]. Secondly, I have to move my operation over 200 Km to a less attractive location, with no interruption in service.”

Outcome

The move went smoothly. All but two staff made the move and there was no service interruption. This resulted in savings of €50—200 K for finding replacement specialists and further savings of about €330K for the temporary consultants who would have been needed to maintain the service levels until the replacements were in place. An intangible benefit: morale in the department improved.

Solution

Most of the session was spent listening, while he talked the shock out of his system. Then we sketched a force field analysis of the challenge on his whiteboard; this helped him to identify three concerns: first, how to keep the service levels up, secondly, how to negotiate any changes with the Works Council; thirdly, how to retain staff during the move (he expected to lose about 13 of his people).

He handled the first topic with his management team. We spent one coaching session on how to prepare for the discussions with the Works Council. His breakthrough was to learn how to view the Council as a partner rather than an opponent. This shift helped the discussions to run constructively.

He asked me to design a small organizational process for the third topic. After putting myself in their shoes and talking to some members of the department, I understood that it needed to contain three main components. We began by visiting the new site, to see the offices (where some people were able to choose their office furniture) and the canteen. On the return journey in the big bus, we had over two hours of war stories – what they’d been through together at the old site over the years. Finally, upon our return, we ran an Open Space workshop to catch all their concerns and – where possible – to develop solutions together.

The Stalled Project

Problem

At the end of a consulting contract, a client told me about his new challenge: to roll out a European-developed SAP system across the organisation’s US sites. He brushed off my suggestion of some training to prepare the European staff for working in the States with, “you’re probably right, but we don’t have the budget for that sort of thing.” Six weeks later the project kicked-off. Six months after that, my phone rang: “Can you come to the East Coast next week?”

Outcome

The tempo picked up immediately and stayed high. The team made its first roll-out on schedule and the rest of the project plan unfolded smoothly. The project staff cost over-runs due to a delay would have amounted to $50 – 100 K per day; the impact on production and associated business processes an order of magnitude higher.

Solution

Through telephone coaching, we identified that different approaches to managing and working on IT projects on both sides of the Atlantic were causing the project to stall. We agreed on a basic goal: I should come up with an approach that would allow them to meet their roll-out deadlines. And I was not allowed to mention the word “conflict”.

I quickly designed a 1 ½ day off-site workshop to meet their needs, agreed it with the client and his in-house facilitator, and checked with the US hotel about logistics. The first surprise upon arriving in the hotel was that they had no infrastructure to support this workshop. The client and I spent a couple of hours in Staples finding enough materials to improvise the setting we would need.  The next morning the workshop with 50 participants began. By lunchtime on the second day, the groups had identified all the problems interfering with their progress: in many cases it was enough for people to understand each other’s way of doing things; in some cases, once people understood the impact of their work style and behaviour, they agreed to modify appropriately.; in the few cases left over, we found solutions that they then put into practice.

Landing the Grant

– in the client’s own words

Problem

I was preparing for a grant interview that was critical to my career as an academic researcher, so I wanted to give myself the best possible chance at the interview.

Outcome

The 4-h coaching session has had lasting effects as it improved my self-awareness and self-reflection and helped me set a clearer vision.

So – did I get the grant? Yes, in fact I got very high scores on the interview part, to which I think the coaching contributed substantially. Now I plan a second coaching session with CJ on how to most effectively use the grant!

Solution

I decided to get a coach when I was preparing for a grant interview that was critical to my career as an academic researcher, and I knew CJ from an EMBO Lab Leadership course. There might be a certain threshold to contacting a coach, as it may feel like “overdoing” things. However, in retrospect it is difficult to picture a more efficient way of spending your time and money. In my case, we had a specific task. I needed to refine my vision, strategy, and leadership philosophy to be in good shape for the grant interview. Considering how much time you spend writing the grant, having a coach for 4 hours was indeed well-invested time.

We had a very structured discussion, where I was first asked to define the goals and priorities for the session. I had prepared a text about my vision. Through critical questions we refined the vision, which made the foundation for the remaining discussion about my leadership style. This made the workflow coherent and efficient. CJ strikes a very good balance between suggesting new avenues to solutions and letting me explore freely. The process was highly personalized and helped me clarify my thinking and aims.

We also worked with the Zurich Resource Model which helps people to access the best of their capacity in the right moments based on mental images and embodiment. In this model, you tie a mental image to feelings and attitudes. I practised this just before the interview, and it proved very effective in helping me get the right mindset.

Overall, the coaching was highly tailored to my needs and personality. CJ helped me zoom in on the important spots without spending time on unnecessary issues and opened up new ways of viewing my situation.

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