When vacation comes to an end, this always comes along with a bit of melancholy. This is exactly how I am feeling at the moment. After a wonderful vacation in the county of Devon in England, every member of my family must become familiar again with everyday life at home.
I am making use of this transition into everyday life to reflect on myself. How does it feel to resume work – my coaching business? In fact, I realize that I have rarely been so pleased and confident about getting back to work.
I believe this is due to the fact that my portfolio has changed, or rather has been realigned. While I frequently held methodological trainings (such as Scrum, Business Model Canvas, Design Thinking, Lean Startup, etc.) at the beginning of my self-employment, I now tend to work rather as a coach or team developer. In this role, I am often given the opportunity to support a team over a longer period of time. After the pandemic, many companies, organizations, departments and teams want to be better prepared for future crises. Against this background, they ask me to support their teams to establish a better team spirit, to become more aware of their strengths, to refine their value proposition, to improve their structures used for communication, and to bet closer to their customers. In this case, my work often begins with designing and facilitating team days or team workshops. In the majority of my assignments, the teams and their supervisor frequently ask me to continue to support them even after the respective workshops. This subsequent support doesn’t need to be very time-consuming, but it is important to incorporate the outcome of the workshop in the team on a sustainable basis. A large portion of my “renewed” confidence is surely also attributable to the fact that now my assignments are a perfect fit to my personal ambition to incorporate change within the teams on a sustainable basis.
I am well aware of the fact that this is not by mere chance. I definitely have an influence on my clients to a certain extent in terms of what is good and reasonable for their team. My improved systemic view of teams and organizations, which I gained during my two-year training at the isb (Institute for Systemic Professionalism and Consulting) in Wiesloch, Germany, acts as an inner advisor in this context.
In addition, I was able to hold several of my workshops in recent months with very competent partners. It is unbelievable what a relief it is to work together as a pair, especially when the team has more than 12 members. Four eyes and ears see and hear more than two, own ideas complement those of your partner, and you can better convey a sense of ease to the team. In this sense, I am grateful when my customers are willing to provide a budget for a fellow coach if this is required due to the size of the team. Ultimately, this leads to a relief on the part of the coach and to more sustainability on the part of the customer: a classic win-win situation.
In a nutshell: I am happy that many entrepreneurs have realized that team performance is more important than optimizing the performance of individual employees. Therefore, I am really looking forward to this year’s fall that has in stall further exciting assignments which will be fun for both the teams and for me. Let’s make a difference together!
This text first appeared in my newsletter 'Innovation on Wednesday'. It is published every other Wednesday. For subscription click here