Partner with a coach who truly gets you
My journey from a lost gay boy to a serial entrepreneur in Amsterdam and leading teams at corporates.
If anyone knows how it feels not to be your true whole self – it’s me. And not just from my experience of being too afraid to show up who I really am to the world. Even when I finally mustered up the courage to get out of the closet, to my surprise, I was still hiding a big chunk of me and who I truly was.
Do you feel like you need to leave an important part of yourself at the entrance, so you can successfully play your managerial role? Are you struggling to show up with your full self towards your team, stakeholders or your manager? Are you struggling to connect with your team? I definitely know how this feels and have been there way too many times.
There is no such thing as leading teams?!
I used to manage a team at Philips in Amsterdam. I thought I knew what building and managing teams was from my startup experience. But managing in a highly complex corporate is a totally different ballgame. I had to re-learn how to lead with and without authority in different contexts. Dealing with team members I did not hire myself and in complex structures. The biggest learning was that there is no leading teams. There is only leading individuals. I had to understand that individual relationships are at the heart of leading teams.
And the hardest thing was letting go. Letting go of control. Letting go of trying to understand every piece of the complex machine. Letting go doing it all by myself. Once I let some of my control go, things became easier. I had time for actual leadership, vision and strategy work. Pushing the limits a little further, in my team in Amsterdam and online. And paving the way for my team to do what they are best at.
Disrupting the status quo through my Startups
I naturally and constantly question the status quo – and that is sometimes exhausting.
When my first startup failed, I was heartbroken. I tried to ignore the feelings that came with it. I thought I could process my emotions in one afternoon, identify the learnings and done.
To let go of the ego. To rebuild confidence. To get back in the game with everything you are is hard.
I had to learn that takes so much more to really integrate the learnings. And once I did, I could build another, successful startup in Amsterdam.
But it’s the only way to grow and change the world for the better.
