When was the last time you felt the frustration of being stuck? Have you known the anxiety of not knowing back nor forth while demands gain crushing momentum? of doubt that engulfs all attempts at its resolution? Most likely, you have experienced stifling conflict in your communities, aggressive rivalry and sabotaging resistance. You’ve seen people’s energy disperse in rumination and aimless competition.
Now remember moments when you found yourself fully immersed in your activity and environment, flowing freely and adaptively, perceptive and engaged, acting purposefully without striving—when things and people fell into place, all aligned yet multivoiced, one many-armed body… It’s possible to live, act, think, create from this place more and more.
Should I do this?
or should we do that?
It must be this! or is that?
Why does he, how could she,
why don’t they see the obvious!?
Working with me
How do we get to
clear perception
coherence and
unhindered flow?
We must open up, observe and be ready to let go—of notions and behaviors that are of no more help. We must learn to engage in more creatively expansive sensemaking. Whether we try to find coherence for ourselves or in our group, we must appreciate all voices and find shared purpose, that is, we must find unity in difference. If we do, daunting uncertainty turns into exciting possibility.
In circle workshops, I support collective sensemaking that transforms conflict by uncovering shared purpose. In coachings and trainings, I facilitate (self-)awareness of the rigid patterns in our perception and action. I encourage experimentation with empathetic communication that reveals surprising similarities. And I help develop the mindfulness that allows us to open up and let go. All my services, I tailor to your needs and aspirations.
SUPPORT FOR INDIVIDUALS
Solution-Focused & Existential Coaching
If you struggle with doubts, confusing conflicts or difficult decisions, coaching can help you find new direction. I will provide a space to explore behaviors and grow your self-knowledge, communicative skill and mindfulness. Together, we will unfreeze and mobilize sensemaking patterns and develop a liberating understanding of your situation.
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Coaching expands sensemaking, our breadth of attention, and versatility in adapting to changing circumstances. It supports awareness of how we relate to challenges and other people and thus enables transformation.
In my coaching, I draw from both existential and solution-focused brief therapy. The latter allows to attend to clients’ most urgent needs within a few hours. Its methods help to reestablish orientation and activate resources to meet current challenges. Existential Therapy adds the ambition to understand why we are as we are, what drives and what limits us, so as to enable encompassing transformation.
If we wish to respond more aptly to novel situations it is essential that we understand our sensemaking patterns. We must study the way we frame events and then act on these frames. Which learned expectations do our interpretations reveal? And, crucially: Do they constrain or inspire creative responses to challenges?
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Say, for instance, in your relationships and at work you react frequently with annoyance or anger. What does say about how you interpret the conduct of others? And how do our emotions, and the actions they spur, influence those people?
Alternatively, if you are stuck in doubt, let’s look at the competing views. What do they mean and have meant to you? And why do you believe that they’re competing in your current situation?When we find that we are stuck or that our actions are self-sabotaging, we should inquire which habits lead us here, and which fears and drives they manifest. Once we have gained insight, we can begin to unfreeze rigid patterns, aided, for instance, by mindfulness practice. Advancing on this path, we gain new agency—that is, we develop our ability to make “considered decisions that challenge habitual and culturally conditioned avenues of conduct.”[1] We disclose new ways of acting and relating to others, emancipate from our cultural and biographic inheritance, and overcome limiting self- and role-images. As psychoanalyst Jung already argued, by this process of emancipation we develop inner coherence.[2]
Finding our way, beyond the trajectories that we have fallen for unwittingly, requires that we remain calm in the nexus of possible perspectives. Only if we can inhabit that space of the unknown, will we become truly adaptable and perceptively open. That’s the gist of philosophies such as those of Nietzsche and Heidegger and of wisdom traditions as Buddhism and Daoism. As existential philosopher Kierkegaard says, “Whoever has learnt to be anxious in the right way, has learnt the ultimate.”[3] Let’s give it a go.
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A few hours of solution-focused coaching can facilitate liberating insight and lasting perspective shifts. To transform deeply ingrained habits of thinking and acting, however, regular sessions will probably prove necessary.
Before launching into coaching, we will get to know each other in a free session. You will learn about my approach, and I will learn about your challenges. Thereafter, I will charge 95€ per hour. A package of five hours costs 440€. If your budget is limited and you and your work are demonstrably purpose-driven, we can discuss what’s possible with what you can afford.
We can stand the greatest trial so long as we have a sense of direction
—and the nerves to consider that it might be the wrong one.
Not knowing our way, we don’t know which obstacle to overcome.
Unwilling to reconsider our way, we can’t distinguish an
obstacle to overcome from a cliff to steer clear of.
SUPPORT FOR GROUPS
Communication, Mindfulness & Adaptability Trainings
Does your team struggle with proliferating burnout? Is it inhibited by tensions, misunderstandings, or by members adhering rigidly to unaligned pursuits? In trainings, we will explore such challenges in depth and practice empowering skills, such as empathetic communication and mindfulness, that foster coherence, resilience and adaptability.
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Generally, a training unfolds by (i) exploring with participants why an issue matters and which skills could help solve it, (ii) beginning to develop these skills with the aid of exercises, and (iii) transferring the ability and motivation to continue practicing. The training offers a safe space where participants can experiment with new behaviors and engage proactively in their own learning.
If a training deepens, for instance, mindfulness or the awareness of sensemaking patterns, it will help participants become more adaptable and resilient. Similarly, if team members learn to communicate more effectively, that will improve the team’s quality of collaboration and the members’ engagement.
Thus, exemplary themes of my trainings are:
Empathetic, mindful, and non-violent communication
Mindfulness practice, its implications and applications
Rigidity vs. resilience
Adaptive sensemaking and self-leadership
Leading by narrating purpose and facilitating sensemaking
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To tailor a program toward the needs of your organization, you should ask yourself the following questions:
What is the aim of the intervention?
Are there conflicting views or interests about the need or the goals of an intervention?
What would a successful intervention look like?—to whom?
What difference should be noticeable? Who would notice these differences and how?The design of the training should take the answers to these questions into consideration and choose topics and exercises accordingly.
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Trainings can last anywhere between a couple of hours and a week. We will assess where you stand, where you would like to be, and what results you hope for, and then discuss a suitable format.
I charge 200€ per hour of training. Preparation is included. With purpose-driven but financially constrained organizations, I will happily discuss what’s possible with a given budget.
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In addition to my commercial offering, I happily host introductions to Zen practice on a donation basis, as it is tradition. We’ll explore the origins of Zen Buddhism, its meditation practices, opportunities for monastic stays in Europe and beyond, and Zen’s relevance today. Specifically, we will discuss what Buddhist religion and spirituality, as manifest in Zen, can add to mindfulness practice that’s stripped of its cultural inheritance.
If you want to establish a regular Zen or meditation class at your organization, get in touch. At Yoga Now Studio in Berlin, you can get to know my style in weekly guided meditations. To learn what Zen is and does, check out The Way of Zen in the approach section.
Sensemaking Circles & Conflict Transformation
If your team or community is paralyzed by disagreements, resistance or sabotaging passivity, then facilitated conversation can be the way out. Circle processes, for instance, create a space for people to open up, nourish mutual understanding, uncover similarities, and find new alignment. Thus, a group can come to appreciate differences and weave them into a shared vision, thereby transforming destructive conflict into perceptive engagement.
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Where people wish to create together but are impaired by a lack of mutual understanding and competing narratives, facilitated conversation that spurs collective sensemaking can transform conflict and enable co-flourishing. It creates a safe space to open up about difficult feelings and thereby helps integrate differences, generate shared meaning, and mobilize coordinated efforts.
A workshop that facilitates collective sensemaking can initiate ongoing relationships and joint endeavors and lay the foundations for synergistic group work that can be creative in unpredictable ways.[4] Particularly in communities and organizations with flat hierarchies, self-management and participatory decision-making, facilitation can make the difference between stagnation and unblocked creativity.[5]
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Circle processes are a powerful method to facilitate collective sensemaking and decision-making. With guidelines for open, non-violent communication, circles allow all those involved to tell their story, one after another. They reveal unity in difference so that new shared identities can be formed.
Expert on circle processes, Tom Porter, argues that in conflict we stand between old relationships and identities that are no more and new ones that are not yet.[6] We feel the loss of order and community, feel uneasy and insecure, disempowered and not recognized. That’s why it’s so important that everybody gets heard. Only then can emerge shared meanings and visions, which are essential to group cohesion and without which organizational decisions will suffer from persisting resistance. As Tom Porter puts it:
You can’t get to a good place in a bad way. The way decisions are made is critical to the ownership and success of the decision. Generally people can live with a decision they may not actually prefer if they have had a voice in that decision or resolution.[6]
Collective sensemaking in circles enables adaptive collaboration and manifests a culture that encourages people to become adaptable.
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The focus of the circle will be agreed upon beforehand and the participants selected. The number of participants can range anywhere between 4-20, plus any number of spectators.
I will connect with all parties to gain an understanding of the issue and build credibility and trust in the neutrality of the process. During the implementation of the circle, however, I will be a steward only and leave the stage to the participants.
The costs of my service as a facilitator depend on the project, the preparation required, and the parties involved. For some purposes and socially responsible clients, I am willing to lower rates. Contact me to discuss the details.
References
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1. Emirbayer, M. & Mische, A. What Is Agency? American Journal of Sociology 103, 962–1023 (1998). p. 994.
2. Jung, C. G. Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewussten. (Patmos Verlag, 2022).
3. Kierkagaard, S. The concept of dread. (Princeton University Press, 1944). p. 155.
4. Macy, J. Coming Back to Life. (New Society Publishers, 2014). pp. 108-109.