Ongoing support – My typical organisational involvement starts with me meeting the senior leadership team and CEO or equivalent. If I don’t have their buy-in, changes on the shop floor will soon fizzle out. I then talk to the rest of the organisation and partake in meetings. I ask questions, clarify underlying assumptions and motivations. There may be times when I present ideas or tools, but usually I am inside the group rather than in front of it.

After the initial months of regular engagement, I usually turn down the frequency of attendance – a monthly board meeting or catch up with a team or leader is sufficient, coupled with the knowledge that I am always available should issues arise.

Crisis management – I am sometimes asked to engage with a specific issue, be it staff or process focused. Here, I will again try to cast the net a little wider in order to situate the issue in its surrounding narratives and systems. The team may be in crisis, and the work may well be with the team, but the team is also defined by its surroundings.

Note that sometimes the work happens before the crisis – my work with Airbus is about preparation and finding group and individual resources that can be brought to bear in potential future crises.

Executive coaching – I work with CEOs, senior officers and cultural leaders in order to try to tease out what it is that really makes them tick, what they look away from and why they avoid it, and where the possibilities are. This work is similar to my psychotherapeutic work with individual clients, only more focused.

© Niklas Serning