Coaching
For us, coaching is about creating a space where people feel safe to explore their current situations in depth, and are able to tackle the challenges that face them. It gently guides people to help them find their own solutions and how to implement them sustainably.
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In our coaching, we work with individuals on their current challenges and help them develop and grow in order to achieve sustainable results.
It supports the identification and exploration of new and powerful questions, as well as finding different perspectives and pathways to current challenges.
Examples of challenges might include: overcoming a performance barrier, getting comfortable in a new position, working on personal development, resolving a disturbance or a conflict that has arisen, or enhancing self-leadership and self-management.
Our clients come to us with the intention of transforming an inappropriate behaviour or attitude that is stopping them fitting in or feeling at ease in a certain context.
Every coaching project begins with a joint definition of the desired coaching goals or outcome.
We believe that our clients are (and must be) always in control.
What is acceptable or not is the client’s full responsibility. They decide what feels good or not and what is applicable or not. Whatever comes from the coach is an offer and it is the client’s responsibility to choose and decide what is right for them or not.
How we coach
At bridgingpositions we do not follow a traditional detached systemic coaching approach. What do we mean by this? We would like to create a profound professional relationship with our clients. We first try to fully immerse ourselves into our client’s issues and understand them from their subjective perspective before we start counselling. Only by putting ourselves in our clients’ shoes can we develop the trust and understanding needed, to later develop applicable solutions together. Our coaching focuses our efforts on fostering the client’s access to their store of inner resources and on widening, opening and co-creating new perspectives. This opens up new courses of action and resources that allow the client to find sustainable and implementable solutions. Elements that we often use in our coaching:
- The art of asking powerful questions supports the exploration of the deeper meaning of the current issue and the investigation of its context. This leads to the isearch for the best sustainable options and their possible pathways. At the same time, it creates an attitude of curiosity, appreciation, focus, courage and the ability to reframe one’s own and others’ beliefs.
- Cultivating self-leadership. This encompasses:
- Understanding and dealing with one’s strengths and weaknesses and own emotional and social intelligence resourcefully.
- Enhancing one’s personal resilience in the face of adversity.
- Becoming grounded in one’s own source of creativity, inspiration and purpose.
- Exploring cultural diversity. This may include family cultures, corporate cultures, local, regional and national cultures – to name just a few.
- Mindfulness practice which allows shifting one’s attention to physical and mental patterns and becoming a detached observer of one’s own and others’ patterns. In becoming observers, we create an internal space. As V. Frankl put it: 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.
- Change management theories and practices which enable the theoretical understanding of a change process, the use of different processes to design possible strategies to move forward, and the capability to follow up and measure the implementation, while all the time considering the possible implications that all of this might have for the system.
- Enrichment of communication skills and exploring how to deal effectively with and within human dynamics.
- Applying innovative practices for the challenges that the client is facing. This means that the client’s growth is stimulated with different tools, methodologies and meta-models that can support the progression of their challenges and at the same time enrich their bank of possible resources.
Catalyst Training
Catalyst training creates transformation capacity inside the organization. The catalyst’s role is to enable, support and coach the whole organization in transforming itself.
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Internal catalysts are trained to support and drive transformation by holding a number of relevant and predefined group interventions inside the organization, e.g., team building, innovation practices, or focus groups. Defining the scope of each catalyst in advance is key to using the appropriate methodologies, processes and interventions. The Catalyst Development Program focuses on 3 dimensions:
- Doing: learning new ways of working: skills, tools, key interventions – the practical skills involved in creating, holding space and facilitating workshops and meetings.
- Being: understanding who you are – your own presence and energy, added to your own unique ‘magic’ and how to use these to catalyze co-creative events. This requires in-depth self-reflection and a willingness to continuously focus on being at the service of the challenge at hand, rather than acting from habitual ego-centred patterns.
- Design: developing the art of paying attention to both content and human processes and dynamics; learning the skills to shape and constantly adapt designs that pay attention to both.
Self-Leadership Backbone
Leading yourself is the central prerequisite for leading others. It centres around knowing yourself, building up your personal focus and developing the personal mastery which is the basis for effective and successful leadership.
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Our skills at leading others depend greatly on how well we know and manage ourselves. To succeed, we need to establish an intimate understanding of who we are, how we operate, what is important to us and, most importantly, what higher purpose and deeper goal we would like to dedicate our lives to.
A very effective way to do this is the Self Leadership Backbone process. It is about:
- getting to know oneself on a deeper level;
- developing a moral inner compass that allows us to make the appropriate choices;
- authentic leadership: being and acting true to oneself also in the midst of strong influences;
- creating momentum to master the challenges that life holds in store for us.
The purpose of the Self-Leadership Backbone is to help us find personal fulfilment by uncovering and exploring our authentic self, thereby fulfilling our potential and becoming the best that we can become. It helps us develop direction and focus in our lives, allowing us to see opportunities that allow us to advance in the direction of our authentic self where our own qualities can contribute the most. In the end it helps us to make our decisions in accordance with our purpose, our values and our ambitions- both everyday ones and larger ones. We pursue our objectives with integrity. And as our intentions become visible not only to ourselves but also to the people around us, we build up the necessary trust to lead others.
Managing own and other Egos (MOAOE)
The MOAOE is a training course on how to deal mindfully and effectively with one’s own and others’ ego-states.
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The skill of “managing one’s own and others’ egos” is vastly under-developed in most organizations today. In this training course we learn how operating out of our ego-state is harmful to oneself and hinders good quality relationships when working with others, especially on a leadership level. This creates a severe negative impact inside an organization. Then we work on further developing the MOAOE skills individually and collectively in order to fulfil the organization’s highest potential.
Seminars
Our seminars are developed for groups of participants with different organizational backgrounds. They are designed to develop abilities in particular subjects, as well as to improve social skills.
Cultural Diversity
A crucial skill for global leadership is how to master intercultural challenges.
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Cultural diversity is a treasure to be cherished. Particularly in times of globalization, businesses and colleagues should be empowered to recognize, live, and above all, profit from cultural differences. This seminar will bring out awareness of national cultural similarities and differences and also of the organizational cross-cultures (the organizational culture, the department culture, the functions culture, etc.). This seminar conveys to participants the necessary knowledge and faculties to communicate and act effectively in all cross-cultural contexts.
Leading Growth
Leading Growth is the ability to manage difficult communication situations and to help people combat stress by using their own emotional intelligence.
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Communication is the lifeblood of organizations. Often it is a lack of knowledge of relational dynamics and related skills that prevents a harmonious flow of communication, and creates discomfort that extends not only to those directly involved but to a great part of the organization. This seminar will focus on understanding how communication works and how we change our way of communication when under stress. We will explore communication patterns and learn to master strategies for dealing effectively with difficult communication situations. This seminar is about understanding our own psychological needs and drivers better and learn how to communicate with and relate to others (especially when dealing with difficult situations and interactions) so that the stream of communication flows effectively.
Innovation and Creativity Lab
Participants working on their current challenges will learn how to generate new perspectives and innovative solutions for their challenges and how to engage and coordinate with others to implement those solutions elegantly.
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Innovation is at the heart of present and future economic success and we believe that in order to sustainably implement an innovative and creative attitude and behaviour in your organization, action learning is key. Methodology and best practices of creativity and innovation are best learned by doing. In Innovation and Creativity Lab, participants will learn to activate the appropriate mindset to use tools, methodologies and processes in different circumstances and settings so that they can connect within themselves and others in a profound way to inspire and implement innovative thinking in their context. At the same time, they see how their own challenges progress when they take on an appropriate mindset and use a well-designed process. In this training session we will foster:
- A mindful attitude – the capability not to immediately react to external pressure or demands, but to absorb all necessary information and create a space of stillness and reflectiveness before acting elegantly and decisively from that space. An example of this practice is mindful listening.
- Cre-active mind– how to harvest different perspectives and innovative approaches to find creative, appropriate and implementable solutions to current challenges. An example of this practice is stakeholder analysis and perspectives.
- Comprehensive mind – participants realize their own and other people’s sources of creativity and inspiration to reach creative and effective solutions for their current and future challenges. An example of this practice is exploring different styles of creativity and innovation.
Mastering Change
The focus of this seminar is understanding ‘human dynamics’ in a change context and learning how to constructively support people undergoing change.
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Mastering Change is a seminar that gives managers, project leaders, change catalysts and internal OD consultants an overview of the relevant aspects of Change Management. It develops an understanding of the basic principles and dynamics of change. The focal point of the seminar is the human factor and its responses to change (from the beginning of a change initiative to its implementation).
Conflict Management
How can we successfully work through difficult, conflictive situations and build up conflict resilience?
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Conflicts are often perceived as unpleasant and so most of the time they are avoided, or in the worst cases, used to display unhealthy power games. By understanding the nature of conflicts and ways of effectively dealing with them can give us a better idea of what is important for us and for others, and create a deeper connection with oneself and others. If conflicts are identified and addressed at an early stage, solutions can be found in a creative and innovative manner. Dealing with conflicts in a professional way means doing the latter and everybody involved benefits from that approach: you, your employers, your clients and your colleagues. In this seminar, participants learn to deal with and manage the challenges that come with conflicts – for instance, how to work on one’s own personal attitude towards conflicts, how to address disturbances, how to use feedback for resolving conflicts and how to successfully develop one’s own personal strategies for dealing with conflict.
The Perfect Meeting
How to successfully design, organize, structure and lead effective meetings.
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Buzz words like “Death by Meeting“ have shed a negative light on meetings and conferences. This is mainly due to too many of them taking place, and due to poor knowledge in organizing and holding them. Meetings, however, can be a highly effective and solution-oriented management tool, provided they are well-designed for the purpose: organized, structured and chaired professionally. This seminar will provide you with a vast toolkit to manage and overcome the challenges posed by meetings.