Inner
in­depend­ence
— Your most valuable
strength

How can I deal more effectively with conflict?

Am I managing my professional development to the best of my abilities and my belief?

How can I make my area of responsibility as effective and productive as possible?

What’s stopping me from achieving my goals?

Am I setting the right priorities?

How can I make meaningful decisions?

How do I deal with my superiors?

Am I using my strengths wisely?

How can I become more effective?

How can I achieve success and inner contentment at the same time?

These and other issues are the questions that are on the minds of managers.

What questions are on your mind as a leader? 

Before you read on, I’d like to ask you a question:

Or are you just looking for a quick-fix solution? Because it’s tempting, isn’t it? To just quickly come up with an action plan. It makes you feel better because "something’s happening". And that’s why Einstein’s ‘55-minute rule’ is also relevant when it comes to coaching.

Let’s explain carefully what this is all about. Change only happens when there’s a willingness and determination to achieve something. It’s a wish that has to make you tingle…For this, you also need courage to question cherished habits and long-established ways of thinking.

So: are you really, genuinely prepared to change something?

In Michelangelo´s eyes, the greatest danger is not that we set our goals too high but that we set them too low and too easy to reach.

Because of this, most people are using only a small part of their potential. The influencing factors that are blocking us can be extremely diverse. These can often be physical and bodily, but can also have mental, emotional or social origins. Sometimes they can even be due to the lighting conditions in your work environment, because these can rob us of energy. Or it goes much, much deeper than that.                                 

Kets de Vries asks a useful question here: “How meaningful is the life I am currently living?”

You can achieve far more than you think. If you wish, coaching can provide you with valuable support.

As Galileo said, you can’t teach people anything; you can only provide them with the support to discover something within themselves.

That’s coaching as I too understand it. Coaching is for me a dialogue between partners and equals at eye level. It evolves in a process of dialogue between you and your coach, and focuses on your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, which are all interconnected. Thinking on its own doesn’t create change. What’s needed are both the head and the heart.  Because the two are mutually dependent. So you’ll learn a great deal about yourself.

Coaching, in my understanding, can activate your inner resources and thereby free up the energy that you didn’t know you already had. In fact, it may surprise you how much of this energy you have. We don’t just have ‘interesting’ discussions. Coaching can bring out tangible results.

Coaching can dive deep. How deep is up to you alone.

In our first dialogue, we carefully discuss and agree how to progress, one step at a time. My concern is to share impulses and insights with you, as well as my personal experiences.

The better I know myself, the more I can relate to how I actually am, the more energy I have available for development and change.

Are you following a path through life that suits you? That feels really right for you? Or are you chasing after other people’s expectations? These ‘others’ can also be residing in your subconscious mind, whispering to you from there that everything has to be just the way it is. What can we do about this?

First of all, we need to get to know ourselves better. You can only have an influence on what you ‘know’. Succeeding in this will give you the capacity to be much more independent. And this independence will enable you to view the world with fresh eyes.

This will definitely make you feel better. More energised. And with an inner independence.

Here’s another observation from Manfred Kets de Vries: “What leadership coaches offer their clients is independence. True independence means being free from the domination of one’s unconscious needs and desires and being courageous enough to choose one’s own destiny.”                                     

True independence means being free from the domination of your unconscious demands, and brave enough to choose your own destiny. Inner independence can therefore become your most valuable strength.