Holistic Leadership coaching

Leadership-coaching/supervision

 

According to my clients (feel free to read the client references below) my coachings are characterized by a wholeness oriented approach, always accompanied by humour, warmth of heart, intuition, and a deeply respectful atmosphere.

All coaching-processes are different, as they start with a unique individual. At our first meeting you are not obliged to embark on a longer tour de coaching. But as you can read from the client references below, most clients decide to prolong what started as an “emergency-meeting” and transform the sessions into an effective and useful personal developmental process.

When in a leadership-coaching process with me, it includes my “VIP” service, meaning that you can get access to consult me with a few hour’s notice.

I offer sessions by telephone, skype, teams, zoom, or face to face.

Location: Sønderborg

Excerpts from client references (five in total):

Leadership coaching, reference #1:

Anonymous male top executive

Getting hit by mentally unstable leaders almost always happens when you least expect it. After 25 years on the job in a public institution, always with significant leadership responsibilities, one day, without warning, I was suddenly faced with a new supervisor who took away my identity and self-concept on a basis that was completely groundless. One may have read or heard about how people react to such a situation; but no one can know what their own reaction is going to be until they are put on the spot. In my case I experienced the situation as (non-physical) rape and was left with the same feelings that actual rape victims often have: shame, guilt and the notion that somehow I probably brought it on myself. That is not a pleasant situation.

Unfortunately, I waited slightly longer to bring Helen in than I should have, as it took three months before I wrote her. My first session with her, which lasted two hours, resulted in huge relief from the pressure I was under. Helen was able to make me understand the feelings I was experiencing and why I felt that way. She also offered good advice on how to handle these emotions mentally. That was invaluable to me – as were the following sessions.

My advice to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation, where someone you have trusted and been close to suddenly turns around 180 degrees and launches into a direct attach by any and all conceivable means, is to seek professional help from day one. And I guarantee you that Helen is not a bad choice in that situation.

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Leadership coaching, reference #2:

I contacted Helen based on a personal recommendation. My motivation for scheduling a session was that, despite improvements, I still did not have a healthy attitude towards my work. Old habits and behaviour patterns stayed with me and led to a high degree of internal discomfort, almost like stress symptoms. Despite lots of positive feedback from satisfied customers and business partners, I was always unsure and never at ease. Helen had a structured and welcoming approach and was able to uncover all the underlying causes. Since then, I have made regular use of two simple mantras:

‘It’s good enough’ and ‘You can’t do everything, and it’s all right’ – very simple, very effective. There is definitely a time before Helen and a time after Helen. Thank you.

Woman, self-employed, age 44 years

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Leadership coaching, reference #3:

A journey.

I rang Helen on a dark Monday morning. I had just been let go after ten years as a high-level executive in a multinational company under American management. I knew that I needed help to return to a positive and creative mindset. I was so used to demanding that from my employees, regardless how much pressure they were under, so I asked no less of myself. I remember that I said on the phone, ‘There’s something in me that I need to deprogram, and there’s something I need to program.’ I’m a technician, after all! It’s now been nine months and many meetings, and when I read my notes from that time, I barely recognize myself. It was not a pathetic person, however, who wrote those words, but a hurt, angry and confused person.

I arrive at Helen’s, and she greets me with humour and a smile and shows me into her consultation. The room has a pleasant feel. We begin our first meeting.

So what actually happens over the course of the following many months?

I think the best way for me to describe the process I am now going through, with Helen’s help, is to describe it as a journey. A journey on foot. Not by plane. There’s no way to skip anything along the way. Every single kilometre is felt, in my body and soul. On the other hand, I’m not required to go faster than I can still handle the individual stages of the journey and allow them to leave an impression. I’m not asked to decide where I want to go, I’m simply made aware of it if I begin to move backwards. I am only required to be in the moment that is right in front of me, here and now.

Helen is an experienced traveller. She hasn’t always been exactly where we are, but she will have been somewhere similar. She does not tell me where to go, but I find my way back, and my house is still standing.

The journey continues, and now it’s a journey of personal development that has no end. Helen gives me a set of binoculars and a mirror, helps me clear some of the rocks in my path, assesses how far I have come from my starting point. Sometimes there is a gap that requires me to build a bridge to move on. She shows me where I can find construction materials to build a bridge, or maybe she points out that there already is a bridge that I just haven’t noticed yet. Often, tools are introduced that I did not know, but which I can now take with me. The path ahead lies open.

Sometimes I felt that I might have an idea where Helen was on her personal journey. But I didn’t. Helen was where she was because that’s where I was. I think Helen could parachute in at any point in a journey and effectively help anyone, even without having been part of their previous journey.

Finn Lyhne

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Leadership coaching, reference #4:

I have now worked with Helen as my coach for almost two years – and she has really helped me better understand myself and my personal possibilities and limitations.

Back in 2008, I contacted Helen to arrange a meeting to see if coaching, talk therapy or whatever you want to call it was my kind of thing. My primary reason for contacting her, briefly put, was that I had been working myself too hard for a long time and I’d had experiences in my professional life that affected me more than I ever thought – and for these reasons I had begun to develop certain physical stress symptoms. After my first two conversations with Helen about how she might help, some areas were uncovered that I had never given any thought to myself.

Helen really opened my eyes to fundamental aspects of both my personal and professional life.

Helen….

Has helped me understand my personal challenges with regard to who I am, and what I want – which was definitely the hardest thing for me.

Has helped me realize what’s important to ME!.

Has helped me identify my personal values, which are now constantly in the back of my mind, guiding my actions.

Has given me useful tools to support myself and prevent my symptoms from popping up again.

– and I could go on……

I am now convinced that working with my own values, among other aspects, is the difference between my personal well-being or the opposite, which I’ve already been through. All the things that, UNFORTUNATELY, you don’t learn in Business College or in business.

Even though I feel that I have come a long way, with Helen’s help, I am now convinced that this is something I have to continue working on, and I definitely use the tools that Helen has given me – and I now also know that the process will probably never end.

Briefly put, Helen has really meant the difference between continuing in a ‘free fall’, or, as I have done, learning to look out for myself while also pursuing my personal, private and professional ambitions.

I would recommend Helen anytime and already have recommend her to anyone who needs help, input, coaching etc., all of which is provided on a high professional level but always with a touch of humour.

Thomas Christiansen

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Leadership coaching, reference #5:

A few conversations that turned into a two-year process of ‘getting back on track’.

When you’ve worked long enough with little constructive feedback, and you’ve been more or less on your own, it’s a little bit like running in a fog. You think you know the direction, but you don’t quite understand why you can’t find the goal, and at some point your sense of direction begins to get a little vague – and still you continue, dogged, but increasingly fatigued.

Fortunately for me, my company suggested that a personal coach might be an idea. I had begun to notice that I was not quite at the top of my game, that I was a little irritable, etc., but I had also been very busy, spent many days travelling, etc., and by the way, I was perfectly capable of handling this myself. On the other hand, I did realize, at some level, that something needed to be done, so I seized the opportunity – now it was slightly more ‘legitimate’.

So I rang Helen, and we set up an appointment in Aarhus.

It’s no secret that on the day of our first meeting, I had many thoughts going through my mind on the way to Århus – a two-hour trip for me.

I don’t actually remember too many specific details from our first meeting. My focus was a hundred per cent on whether Helen was someone I could ’trust’, feel secure enough with to allow an outsider to get that close.

I quickly felt that I could trust Helen, and that feeling only grew stronger with time.

So what have these two years given me?

First, I should mention that Helen said, at an early stage, ‘it might take time to deal with stuff that you’ve been carrying around for many years. It could take years.’ I politely chose not to comment on that, since I felt that 5-6 months would be fine.

I guess what I can best compare the outcome to is if my thoughts, before I began, were like a coiled rope, all tangled up in a tight knot, and now I have been able to untangle that knot – I’ve learned that it’s not helpful to simply tug at both ends like a madman.

I have examined and reflected on a lot of thoughts, and I have received help to find answers to a lot of questions.

Solutions/answers have not been handed to me, but I have received help to find the answers in myself, in my world.

I have received help to articulate thoughts that I would normally have tried to side track, and I have learned that it’s okay and important to give voice to them.

So is everything as it is when you get your car back from the 25,000 kilometre check-up – everything running smoothly, not rattling noises?

It’s not like that.

I have more insight now, I think, into my own reactions in various situations, I have new tools and goals that make my lifer more manageable. The tasks are not any simpler, but I have taken some of them off my list and developed a more systematic approach for others. I’m also learning that my resources are not limitless, and that building the good life is something I have to keep working on, all the time.

So has it been worth the effort?

Absolutely – on several occasions, I have come close to falling back into the familiar situation of ‘I don’t have time for my appointment; I can work my way out of this,’ but every time I have gone away from our meetings with renewed strength. Being met completely without prejudice and without demands, by a highly professional conversation partner who only has one’s best interest at heart – that is hard to put into words. It is strengthening – it is coaching in the most positive sense, and it helps me focus more on opportunities than on limitations.

Gunnar Lassen

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