Leadership Coach Amsterdam

Leadership Coach Amsterdam for Tech Founders Who’ve Hit the Wall

You can read every leadership book. You can copy every framework. The part that breaks your team is still the part you haven’t worked on yet.

That’s where this work starts.

You can lead on a good day. The rest of the days are the problem.

Most of the founders and senior tech leaders I work with arrive sounding similar. Functional in the room. Tense before they walk into it. Already done a round of therapy. Already worked with a coach who taught them frameworks they can quote and can’t quite live. Tired of running their best leadership on willpower and Sunday-night dread.

You’re probably here because you’ve already had the easy version of this conversation with yourself a hundred times. The framework didn’t fix it. The off-site didn’t fix it. The new productivity stack made things slightly worse. You’re starting to suspect the real bottleneck has nothing to do with how you spend your week.

You’re right.

You feel like

  • I can lead when I’m rested. The version of me that walks into Monday isn’t always the same person.

  • My team is functional. The cost of that functioning is me, after hours.

  • I’m reactive when I’m tired. And I’m tired more than I admit out loud.

  • I think I’m a good leader. I’m not sure my partner agrees.

  • I keep using the word “balance” and meaning “I’d like to feel less like this.”

And you want to

  • Lead from a place that doesn’t require you to perform calm you don’t actually feel.

  • Have the hard conversations you’ve been postponing for nine months without losing a week of sleep afterwards.

  • Get out of fight-or-flight as your default operating mode, before your body makes the choice for you.

  • Build a team you don’t have to grit your way through every Monday morning with.

  • Find the version of leadership that compounds across the next decade.

And you want this to change. Not in twelve months. Now.

Because real leadership change takes more than reading another framework.

1. Honest read. What's actually running you. The version under what you tell your team.

We start where most leadership coaching skips. The actual state of your nervous system right now. What patterns you walked into this season carrying. Where the reactivity lives, when it shows up, and what it’s protecting. No roleplay scenarios. No journaling prompt PDFs. A clear-eyed look at the leader you’re being on the worst day of the month, because that’s the one who sets the ceiling for everyone else.

Half of every session is tactical. The hire you’ve been postponing. The cofounder conversation you’ve been avoiding. The board dynamic you can’t quite name. The team member who’s quietly checked out. The other half is body-based. Where the fear actually lives. What your reactivity is protecting. Why your “calm leader” version costs more than you’ve been admitting. We work with your nervous system directly. That’s the part most coaches skip and the part that makes the strategic work stick.

This is the slow part of the pitch. Behavioural change in leadership lives in what your body does under pressure when nobody’s watching. We work weekly or every other week for 4 to 6 months, sometimes a year. Sessions are 75 minutes, in Amsterdam in person or anywhere on Zoom. Most clients tell me the first noticeable shift comes around month two. The structural one comes around month five.

Tech founder in a leadership coaching session in Amsterdam
What clients actually say after working with me:

“Miguel has helped me to find the confidence, the right tools and the courage to improve in my managerial position in my startup. With his friendly, challenging and insightful coach appraoch, he helped me to navigate through hard moments in my life and my career, and to handle anxiety and stress related to my job. I would warmly recommend Miguel!”

Nikolas Gaio – startup coaching testimonial
Nikolas Gaio, PhD
CTO and Founder at BI/OND

One of my previous employers was generous enough to offer me coaching sessions with Miguel. And that was the best career advice I ever get in my life. Every session was just an eye-opening experience on how to overcome difficulties and grow. After these sessions I feel that I became a better version of myself. I highly recommend Miguel for his professionalism, personal attitude and experience..

Executive coaching amsterdam
ALEKSANDR ARAKELOV
Engineering Manager

“Through the coaching with Miguel I got to know myself better and find simple ways to move out of my comfort zone. It enabled me to show up more with my team and stakeholders and to work on my personal and professional development. I feel ready and confident to go out in the world and achieve much more. Working with Miguel was enormous fun and I can recommend him 100% as coach.”

Ivo Hristov – leadership coaching testimonial
Ivo Hristov
Team manager at Gucci

A leadership coach in Amsterdam who’s done the founder version himself.

I built and failed startups before I trained as a coach. Then I led digital teams at Philips. Then I trained at the Co-Active Training Institute, got my PCC with the International Coaching Federation, and added Somatic Experiencing on top because the head-only version of leadership coaching wasn’t getting people to the place they actually wanted to go.

So when I work with founders and senior tech leaders in Amsterdam, I’m coaching from inside the same problem you’re trying to get out of. I’ve sat in your seat. I’ve made the bad version of every decision you’re about to make.

I’m Miguel Baumann. PCC and CPCC certified, the two highest professional coaching credentials in the world. Somatic Experiencing certified. Two master’s degrees. 10+ years coaching, 500+ clients, three startups (one good outcome, two instructive failures). Based in Amsterdam since 2017, working with leaders across the European tech world in English, German, and Dutch.

Strategy and somatics: why a good leadership coach in Amsterdam offers both

Pure strategy gets you to the same wall every founder hits at month 18. Pure somatics is body work without traction. The reason I do both is that founder leadership lives at the intersection. Cutting it in half wastes half the work.

The strategy part is the conversation you’d have with an operator who’s been on your side of the table and has the scar tissue to back it up. The somatic part is what your body learned to do under pressure long before your conscious mind got involved, and what you can’t change with willpower no matter how many books you read. Neither alone moves the needle on the leadership you’re actually trying to build. Together they compound.

Leadership coach Amsterdam framework: lead yourself, lead your team, lead for change

  • Decisions made faster, with less retroactive second-guessing

  • A nervous system that doesn’t get hijacked by the same five trigger conversations every quarter

  • Hard conversations you used to put off for weeks, handled inside a week, with less collateral damage

  • A leadership style your team can count on Monday through Friday and on a bad week

  • The capacity to slow down without performance loss, because your body’s no longer running on adrenaline as the operating system

  • Clarity on what’s actually yours to carry and what you’ve been picking up that belongs to someone else (a cofounder, a board member, a parent, an old boss)

  • The hard skill of staying with a conversation that used to make you shut down or escalate, until something real gets said

Frequently asked questions about leadership coaching in Amsterdam

Therapy works with what happened to you. Coaching works with what you do next. There’s overlap, especially in the somatic work I do, and the orientation is different. Coaching is forward-leaning, action-oriented, and lives in your weekly leadership reality. Therapy resolves the past so it stops running the present. Both are useful. Many of my clients do them in parallel and the work compounds across both rooms.

Mostly title. ‘Executive coach’ tends to mean C-suite or senior VP work. ‘Leadership coach’ is the broader category, and the term I use because most of my clients are founders, not corporate executives. The work is the same. If you’re a CEO of a 200-person company, the conversation looks slightly different from a co-founder of a seven-person startup. The underlying work on your leadership and your nervous system is the same.

Yes. About half my clients are remote. Zoom works fine, especially after the first session. Some clients fly in for in-person intensives a few times a year and we do everything else online. I have clients in London, Berlin, Stockholm, Lisbon, and Tel Aviv. The work doesn’t lose much in remote, particularly once we’ve built the rhythm.

The somatic layer. Most leadership coaches stay in the head, working on frameworks, mental models, conversation scripts. We do all of that and we work with your body’s response, because that’s where the under-pressure patterns live. If you’ve already done strategy-only coaching and felt like something didn’t quite click, this is probably the missing piece.

Specific behavioural shifts within 4 to 8 weeks. Bigger structural change in your leadership, 4 to 6 months. The slow part is letting your body trust the new pattern. The work itself moves quickly. Your team usually feels it before you do, around week six. Your partner often notices around week eight. You’ll spot it in yourself once it’s already been going for a while.

Yes. English is my primary working language, German is native, Dutch is fluent. Many clients switch between languages depending on what’s coming up. The body-based work in particular often surfaces in your mother tongue, even when you’ve been working in English for fifteen years.

Built three startups (one good outcome, two not). Led digital teams at Philips. Co-Active Training Institute (CPCC), International Coaching Federation (PCC), Somatic Experiencing certified. Two master’s degrees. Based in Amsterdam since 2017. 500+ clients across founders, executives, and senior tech leaders.

Up to you. Some clients tell their team. Others don’t. Both work fine. The work doesn’t require disclosure. The shift becomes visible to the team regardless because your behaviour changes whether you label it or not.

Fair concern. This isn’t that kind of work. The somatic layer is body-based neuroscience, not a meditation app. The leadership layer is a working conversation with someone who’s sat in your seat. The room is direct and warm at the same time. If something is BS, I’ll say so. If you’re stuck, I won’t pretend you’re moving.

Different work entirely. Consultants give you an answer. Coaches build your capacity to make the answer yourself, at speed, again next week. Both have a place. If you’ve already had the consulting version of your problem and the answer didn’t actually change anything, that’s the gap I work in.

Engagements are quoted per scope and duration. The free 30-minute first session is genuinely free, no upsell. We talk pricing at the end of that conversation, only after we’ve both decided the fit is right.

A few signals. You’ve been thinking about your leadership stuck-points for over a year and nothing has actually shifted. You’ve already done the easier inner work and feel the next layer waiting. Your team is functional, your business is fine on paper, and you’re quietly worse than you were a year ago. Any of those land? The free first session is the easiest way to find out if this work is the right move right now.

Tech founder ready to book a free session with a leadership coach in Amsterdam