Empowering 
people

Coaching Skills for Leaders - Questions lead further.

Coaching skills are a key leadership resource in times of fluid roles, cross-generational collaboration and growing complexity. Highly qualified specialists expect leadership that integrates their knowledge at eye level and takes individual needs into account.

This is precisely where our "Coaching Skills for Leaders" training comes in: It qualifies managers to use coaching tools in a targeted manner and to live a coaching attitude - dialogical, strength-oriented and development-promoting. Instead of focusing on deficits, we create space for mindful and resonant interaction. The manager acts as an initiator and enabler who strengthens employees' self-efficacy and personal responsibility and thus promotes sustainable motivation.

Theories, methods and models are tried out and reflected on in exercise sequences based on specific practical concerns of the participants. Using a systemic approach and the appropriate tools, new ways of thinking and acting are opened up for managers and their employees.

Contents of the training (selection):

• Self-image & attitude in a coach role 
• Systemic questioning techniques: Who asks questions - and where to? 
• The basic structure of a coaching conversation 
• "Espresso" coaching: Becoming effective with maximum solution orientation 
• The sample report: Strengthening self-efficacy  
• Building mental strengths: Breaking down limitations 
• Pacing, reframing & co.: "Mini-Max" interventions for successful dialogs 

The manager as employee developer

Strategic realignment, restructuring and reskilling are currently shaping the day-to-day work of many companies. These upheavals are leaving their mark on employees. Uncertainty, declining identification with the company and the desire for future prospects are growing.

In such situations, the role of the manager as an employee developer becomes increasingly important: if you succeed in making existing potential visible, highlighting previously hidden resources and promoting individual development, this strengthens employee motivation, trust and cohesion - even through challenging phases.

This is where our training comes in: Participants learn how to use horizontal development and re- and upskilling as an effective motivational tool and how to shape new paths together. Managers reflect on their role as employee developers, learn about coaching tools, practise structured development discussions and design individual development plans.

Contents of the training (selection):

• Fundamentals of employee development: What changes ... 
• Dimensions of employee development: Horizontal and vertical 
• Re- and upskilling: Ensuring future success 
• How and under what conditions adults learn 
• Conducting development discussions: A guide  
• The development plan with development measures: 70-20-10 – more than just a seminar 
• How employees' personal responsibility and self-development are promoted 
• PERMA: Positive emotions, commitment, relationships, meaningfulness and accomplishment. 
• Coaching techniques in employee development 
• Methods of collegial counseling

Systemic leadership – Understanding. Connect. Work.

Confusing, contradictory, less and less predictable - these attributes characterize the current economic environment and form the context for leadership and collaboration.  
Not everything can be done - but many things can be shaped. If you want to remain effective as a manager, you need to be sensitive to patterns of action, think in terms of interactions and understand organizational logic. Managers need to bring systemic thinking into the organization, stimulate a continuous, reciprocal learning and management process and thus lead the organization successfully into the future.  

Our "Systemic Leadership" training teaches systemic premises and attitudes as well as models and tools for recognizing meaningful connections, intelligently reflecting dynamics and initiating targeted pattern changes. 

Contents of the training seminar (selection):

• Definition, basics and premises of systemic leadership 
• The inherent meaning of the system and how this can be used 
• All about the topics of pattern change and pattern stability: Stimulating the system's self-reflection 
• Systemic tools: The systemic loop and hypothesis work 
• The connectivity of systems: What counts 
• Leadership as a continuous process of problem solving 
• Orientation in the PUMO environment: Polarized - Unthinkable - Multicomplex – Overheated 
• The uncertainty profile: How to strengthen competencies in times of uncertainty? 

Empowerment & delegation – leadership with trust and effectiveness

According to an EY study (2025: Motivation & Satisfaction), only 18% of employees are currently highly motivated, compared to 42% in 2019. And 28% work to rule.

How can the motivation of committed employees be maintained and less active employees be led back into genuine participation? Through leadership that strengthens personal responsibility, awakens initiative and creates spaces in which people can experience their effectiveness. Empowerment begins where leadership gives employees confidence, invites them to develop and encourages them to take responsibility.

Our training course "Empowerment & Delegation - Leadership with Trust and Effectiveness" helps managers to delegate in a targeted and motivating way. This means not only delegating tasks, but also explaining them in a meaningful way and enabling development. Participants learn how to encourage employees to take initiative, promote self-organization and take responsibility. This takes the pressure off management and strengthens self-organization in the team.

Contents of the training seminar: 

• Reflection on your own leadership role as a catalyst for self-organization in the team 
• Attitude and tools for consciously sharing responsibility 
• Promoting initiative and self-efficacy in the team 
• Overcoming psychological hurdles when delegating 
• How AI can be used in the context of delegation processes  
• Negotiating delegations in a team: using the group's swarm intelligence 
• Retrospectives as a necessary condition for successful delegation 

Leading in the matrix – making an impact between lines

For many companies, the matrix organizational structure is the answer to globalization, increasing complexity and the combination of local and global requirements. On the one hand, this structure opens up a wide range of opportunities, but on the other hand, the potential for conflict increases enormously. This presents management with special challenges: Managers must be convincing without disciplinary power, balance functional conflicts and remain capable of acting in contradictory target systems.

Our "Leading in the matrix" training supports managers in navigating this field of tension with confidence. They learn how to balance multi-rational requirements, bring about viable decisions and make targeted use of lateral leadership.  

With a view to their leadership practice, participants develop broader approaches to leadership in the "both-and" mode - and strengthen their ability to endure ambivalence and sometimes second-best solutions. 

Contents of the training (selection):

• Sharpening your own leadership role in the matrix: Positioning & leadership branding 
• Dealing with ambivalence and multi-valence: using "both-and" in everyday leadership 
• Lateral leadership: What feeds our effectiveness 
• Rhetoric: developing the art of persuasion 
• Complicated, complex, controversial: Developing a common map  
• Methods for complex decision-making processes: GAS, tetralemma, consensus & co. 
• Designing dissent & enabling viable decisions in conflictual settings 
• Building followership: Networking for professionals 

The magic of conflict: resolving, using and fueling conflict  

There are no conflict-free zones - neither privately nor professionally. And yet conflicts are all too often avoided. This is precisely what is counterproductive. If, on the other hand, conflicts are addressed at an early stage and existing energies are used correctly, opportunities for further development open up for everyone involved.  
If we remain in mental trenches and do not know how to use the enormous potential that lies in conflict, it paralyses productivity and reduces the performance of organizations.  
The ability to recognize conflicts, moderate resolution processes and ensure the sustainability of agreements is therefore of central importance, especially for managers: conflicts can significantly strengthen the learning culture of a system.  

In our training course "The magic of conflict: resolving, using and fuelling conflicts", we strengthen the ability to recognize conflicts at an early stage, moderate them impartially and help shape sustainable solutions. Based on the results of an online self-test, participants reflect on their own conflict patterns and experience how approaches can release energy for solutions.

Contents of the training (selection): 

• Differentiation of definitions: Problem, conflict, dissent  
• What conflict is about: functional and dysfunctional conflicts 
• The DIANA scheme: insights into your own conflict pattern 
• The importance of beliefs in conflictual settings: You don't have to believe everything you think  
• Conflict diagnosis: penetrating conflict landscapes 
• When and how fueling conflicts can actually be helpful 
• Identifying opportunities in conflict situations: Conflict stories 
• GPS: The basic guide to conflict resolution 
• Escalation processes in the event of conflict 
• An excursion into the topic of cooperation & conflict: learning from dolphins

Leading in transformational settings and under uncertainty

Transformation is here to stay. Whether restructuring, cultural change or AI implementation and process reorganization: employees are confronted with constant transformation. They often want predictability, predictability and clear direction from managers. Wishes that managers cannot fulfill and that they themselves are also concerned about.  

The current contextual conditions - characterized by the PUMO model (polarized, unthinkable, multicomplex, overheated) - require decisions to be made and revised under uncertainty, contradictory goals and areas of tension to be moderated and employees to be led through ambivalence and uncertainty. Managers are confronted with involuntary and unconscious reactions and emotions that cannot be countered with purely rational arguments and logical considerations.

In this training seminar, we will discuss how managers can generate confidence under these conditions and how they can awaken the unconscious potential and resources of their employees. We will learn and experiment with methods that help to deal with uncertainty and polarization, to shape change as a collective development process and to offer teams orientation without simply promising answers. We work with tried-and-tested models from hypno-systemics, embodiment research and constructivism.

Contents of the training (selection):

• The uncertainty profile: Recognizing individual and collective beliefs and behavioural patterns and drawing on unconscious resources 
• The Growth Mindset Theory and the "Growth Mindset Challenge" 
• The change formula and the pattern report: promoting collective development processes 
• What polyvagal theory can teach us about motivation for change 
• Polarity management: How we can bring opposites together 
• Change guarantees resistance: Sources of resistance and how they can be utilized 
• Embodiment research: How our body controls the psyche and vice versa – and how we can utilize this 
• Building mental strengths: Breaking down limitations 
• Pacing, reframing & co.: "mini-max" interventions for more confidence and self-efficacy

Leading through dialog: Making challenging employee discussions motivating 

"Criticize to motivate" - is that actually possible? Managers often face the challenge of being clear in their feedback in order to ensure developments, as well as maintaining existing relationships and preserving relationship quality. This art of discussion is a central component of successful leadership.  

Our training teaches methods that open up motivating resonance spaces in which development can succeed - even when it comes to very critical feedback and conflictual content. We rely on a hypno-systemic approach and corresponding methods that consciously focus attention, create understanding for involuntary patterns and focus on resources and future orientation: "... and suddenly it works." 

Contents of the training (selection):

• Keeping the target focus: The solution doesn't care how the problem came about 
• Who asks leads: And where to?  - Systemic questioning techniques for managers 
• Understanding without agreeing: How it works 
• Feedforward and feedback: giving feedback in a relationship-friendly way 
• How polyvagal theory helps us to conduct good dialogs 
• Preparing for meetings with ZiAnNu: filling the "benefit shaker" 
• Individual realities: Recognizing and pacing meaning and logic 
• Rhetorical figures for motivating conversations: flower technique, pacing and greeting objections 

Leading managers

Those who lead managers face special challenges: Expectations are high, dynamics are complex and "seductiveness" is manifold. Achieving corporate goals, satisfying multiple stakeholder interests and establishing a contemporary leadership culture in your own area requires more than "just" management: "First, let's fire all the managers", as Garry Hamel stated back in 2011. It takes leaders who are convincing and inspiring, who integrate multi-rational dimensions and who coach their managers in a targeted and strength-oriented manner without falling into micromanagement.  

This is where our training comes in: Participants reflect on their role and effectiveness in executive leadership and discuss leadership models such as "Principles of Systemic Leadership" and "Transformational Leadership" as well as which impulses they want to implement for themselves. Transformational leadership is particularly suitable as a model of leadership because it aims to bring about changes in the attitudes, values and goals of those being led in order to achieve an increase in performance or to maintain performance. In contrast to transactional leadership, transformational leadership focuses on inspiration, motivation and the development of visions.

The managers deal with the topic of "strategic leadership" and how they can achieve transformational goals. Using a digital online test to record and build a culture of "psychological safety", they reflect on how cultural impulses can be fed into the company from their level. They discuss how to maintain a balance between closeness and distance, between control and trust and between continuity and change.

Contents of the training (selection):

• Transformational leadership: defining the "4 I's" (Bass & Burns) for yourself and spurring your own managers on to top performance 
• My leadership brand: consciously developing and strengthening your own values and convictions 
• Creating idealized influence and inspiring motivation with storytelling 
• Managing vs. leading: A self-reflection  
• Strategic leadership: anchoring strategic goals in the organization and generating intellectual stimulation 
• Psychological safety (Edmondson): Advancing cultural development in one's own area 
• Definition, principles and premises of systemic leadership 
• Working not only "in" but "on" the system: Using the lean strategy model 
• The intrinsic meaning of the system and how this can be used 
• All about pattern change and pattern stability: Stimulating the system's self-reflection 
• Systemic tools: The systemic loop and hypothesis work

Strengthening your own resilience

The demands on managers are high: permanent transformation constantly brings with it new areas of conflict; decisions under uncertainty require permanent observation of the effects and, if necessary, appropriate adjustments or corrections. "Addition sickness" is rampant and draws on additional resources, even though the company's own capacities are already exhausted. Against this backdrop, it is extremely important to maintain your own inner balance, separate the important from the unimportant and set boundaries - because working life is a marathon.

Traditional time and self-management training often falls short in such situations. The reason: resilience cannot be created through good self-organization alone - it arises when the mind, body and emotions come into positive harmony. This is precisely where our resilience training comes in.

Based on the scientific findings of current embodiment research according to Maja Storch (2022) and Wolfgang Tschacher (2025) as well as hypno-systemic stress and resilience research (Gunther Schmidt, 2025), we use methods that can influence both mental processes and physical reactions and specifically strengthen your own resilience. The focus is not on simply "training away" stress reactions, but on consciously activating positive inner resources to enable powerful emotional self-control.

Participants learn how to develop their resilience, release emotional blockages and gain mental strength using practical, everyday methods.

Contents of the training (selection):

• The seven "fire accelerators" - and what is your pain point? 
• Reflection on the results of the online test "My inner drivers" 
• Stress is what you make of it: discussing the latest findings from stress research 
• Stress me out: using the affect balance according to Maja Storch 
• If you say "yes", you can also say "no" 
• Mañana competence: More flexibility for perfectionists   
• Regulating emotions with mindfulness 
• Working with autosuggestions: Developing customized approaches to resilience for yourself 
• Activating mental resources: Pattern reporting and emotional gymnastics 
• Anchoring new habits and utilizing the opportunities of multicoding 

Mental strength – Accessing your own potential with pinpoint accuracy

Commitment, motivation and talent - these are the most important ingredients for success. Is this statement true? Only partially. Mental strength is at least as important. This is particularly evident in top-class sport, where mental strength has been proven to be the deciding factor between victory and defeat. Professional athletes therefore combine physical and mental training to optimize their performance, tap into their potential with pinpoint accuracy, overcome blockages and emerge stronger from defeats.

In management, too, it is precisely these aspects that make the difference: remaining calm under immense pressure and delivering top performance, keeping the focus on the goal during constant transformation and remaining capable of acting in the face of uncertainty. Our hypno-systemic approaches in particular have proven to be highly effective here because they activate unconscious resources, support inner balance and help you to remain healthy and productive in the long term. Our approach is based on the conviction that every person already has all the resources they need within themselves.

Participants learn how to activate their mental resources in a targeted manner, strengthen their inner balance and reach their full performance potential under pressure.

Contents of the training (selection):

• Theory on the topic of mental training: embodiment, neuroplasticity & focusing attention 
• Me, myself and I: How do I actually talk to myself - analyzing inner dialogues 
• Stop thinking: I don't have to believe everything I think 
• Goals and mental contrasting with WHOOP  
• Using the power of thought: Developing an auto-suggestion for myself 
• Mental imagination: securing the future presence of success 
• Body scan & trance journeys: What our unconscious knows 
• Growth mindset theory: increasing self-efficacy 
• Brain breaks: Rolling your eyes is welcome 
• Working with the page model: Who am I and if so, how many?  
• Metaphors, symbols, litter stories: Unlocking unconscious potential 
• Journaling: recording successes, learning content, dreams