The Agile Business Innovation‘s Podcast

How Can A Bottle of Champagne Change Your Leadership Style?

I do a lot of systemic work where I help large scale change to happen and I do a lot of work on teams, but I also do a lot of work in executive coaching. And one of the things in executive coaching is helping people to change their stories.

We can't change events because events are always in the past. But we can help people change the stories around the events. It's the interpretation of events that often hurts.

Regulating The Degree of Intimacy

As an organizational consultant I work at a systemic level. As a coach I work at team level but I also work at individual level. I do a lot of executive coaching and to do that well, I use a model called transactional analysis.

One of the transactional analysis concepts is called ego states, the patterns of thinking and feeling linked to patterns of behaviour that all of us have stored in our archive, either programmed by Parents or learned in early childhood or associated with the here and now competencies we have. We call that Parent Adult Child ego states.

You always Have a Choice: Which Drawer Will You Open?

The model I use for executive coaching is called transactional analysis. TA was developed in the 1950s by a guy called Eric Berne and has been flourishing ever since, because it's very practical and easy to explain to your clients as well.

It gives models with which you can recognize behavioural patterns and help people change them. And that's our job as executive coaches.

Be A Guide Into The Unknown

I had a discussion yesterday with some of the best executive coaches in the Netherlands and we were talking about themes that were coming up in this Corona crisis and what it means for our profession.

As we were sharing, I was thinking, well actually maybe we're in a space where none of us really knows what's going to happen to our profession and maybe that's going to become our profession. To be a guide in the unknown, to look into the abyss and to guide people through it or across it or under it or over it.

Cultural Scripting: How countries React to Covid19

One of the things that is preoccupying me at the moment is the difference in how countries react to Covid19. I've worked all over the world so I see these differences very clearly. I compared my agenda from May last year to this year - last year I was in 10 different countries in four weeks. And that used to define my life.

At the moment I'm not physically travelling, although I am travelling in my mind and through the camera with people in other countries.

Cultural scripting and cultures have been a fascination of mine for a very long time because I think that apart from your personal life story, you also have a cultural life story and that actually determines how we react to Covid19.

Cultural Script Matrix

One of the reasons that I'm really fascinated is because I'm looking at the resurgence cultural scripting. A cultural script is the pattern that cultures repeat when times are rough. All of us have in us not only a personal script, which is based on our personal history, but also a cultural script, which is based on the societal norms and ways of doing things.

Functions of Cultural Script

One of the things I'm really fascinated by in this time is the response to Covid19, not at an individual level but more at a business level and at a society level, Now we talked about what is cultural script.

We talked about the elements of it and now I want to talk about the functions of cultural scripting.

Why do we keep this cultural scripting going?

Five steps to autocracy

I'd like to talk to you about the development of autocratic systems. I've been getting a lot of questions about this because in the world today post-Covid-mania we're seeing that some systems are becoming more democratic and more refocused.

They're embracing this change of paradigm from individual responsibility to collective responsibility.

And in other countries we're seeing that they're developing more autocratically, they're enforcing rules and in some cases, military rule. What is it that makes a paradigm shift possible in some countries and not in others?

How to Encourage Democratic Leadership

I've been talking about my ideas about coaching and consultancy and the development of systems and leadership. I'm really fascinated in this Corona time about the development of autocratic systems.

Will we be able to hold on to this change of paradigm from individual responsibility to collective responsibility?

Unfortunately you see a split. Either people go back to the normal, or they create something different. You see a re-establishment of democracy or a re-establishment of autocracy.

Re-entry After Corona

One of the things that fascinates me at the moment is how are we going to take care of re-entry after Corona, or even during Corona. Here in Holland, we've been through a period of infection and we're actually expecting a second wave of infection, but in the meantime, we’re slowly reopening businesses, restaurants and theatres in a very controlled manner.