Personal Leadership

In the world of training and coaching, Personal Leadership is a widely used term. It refers to leading yourself in your own life. Personal Leadership can be seen as the step that precedes leading others. After all, if you are unable to lead yourself, how can you lead others – your colleagues, your team, your family, your organisation?

I primarily see Personal Leadership as consciously choosing the path that leads to a life of freedom, love and growth. Happiness, therefore, can be seen as a choice.

In this context, the words of Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist and neurologist, are particularly powerful. He said:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Awareness

Frankl’s message is not only beautiful but also challenging. It requires awareness, courage and the ability to accept the consequences of our choices. Living by this wisdom is inseparably linked to paying attention to what you do automatically. Without attention, it is impossible to observe what is happening in and around you. Without attention, it is impossible to distance yourself from yourself and look at yourself from that distance. Without attention, it is impossible to suspend judgement about yourself, others and the situation.

As human beings, we are full of memories, experiences, thoughts, feelings and (pre)judgements that colour our perceptions. This prevents us from looking at ourselves and others with an open mind. Often, this happens according to certain patterns. These patterns largely steer our behaviour, mostly unconsciously. Learning to pay attention to these unconscious patterns creates greater freedom of choice. The better you are able to suspend judgement, the better you can learn to observe and listen to the persistent patterns that play out between you and others.

To do this, it is necessary to slow down and consciously pause with yourself, to stop all activities that distract from that awareness. Being coached in my practice in the forests of Huis ter Heide is an explicit invitation to do exactly that. You leave the busyness of everyday life behind for a while. And as soon as you step inside, you are embraced by attention, silence and calm.

Development

As a coach, I see it as my task to uncover what is holding you back from living the version of yourself you desire. Together, we translate that task into a coaching question – or, in other words, a development question. In doing so, I take the word development quite literally. “Development" originates from the Old French desveloper, meaning "to unwrap" or "unfold". So we gently remove the layers wrapped around your awareness, until we reach the level where the answer to your question can be found. We go as far as possible, and no further than necessary. In addition, I do not waste time trying to put something into you that you did not receive to begin with; we work on and with what is already there.

To determine what I can do for you, I always first look at the level at which your coaching question is situated. For this, I use the model of Gregory Bateson and Robert Dilts, in which we distinguish six levels at which people think, learn and change. In the literature, this model is usually depicted as a pyramid. Here, I use the metaphor of a tower of blocks.

Levels of change

When someone seeks a coach, it is often because the tower of blocks is not stable, or is even in danger of collapsing. There is then no alignment, which is usually a sign that something is wrong with the way the blocks have been stacked. Once I know at which level your question arises, I also know that I need to look for a solution at least one, and sometimes several, blocks lower. That is where a block is not in the right place.

As soon as answers emerge at that level, it becomes possible to translate them to the blocks above (behaviour and environment), and balance is restored. All levels start working together again and support one another within the environment you have chosen. You have found what you were looking for. Often, this is freedom, clarity, confidence, energy, balance or peace.

 

Examples of questions linked to the individual levels of change:

  1. Environment
    • Where do I work, when and with whom?
    • What do I respond to?
  2. Behaviour
    • What do I do?
    • How do I fill my days/weeks?
  3. Skills
    • What is my strength?
    • What am I truly good at?
  4. Values, beliefs
    • What do I find important in my life?
    • What do I need in order to (continue to) feel good?
  5. Identity
    • Who or what am I?
    • Who or what do I want to be?
  6. Mission, purpose
    • Why do I do what I do; what drives me?
    • What do I want to leave behind?