Executive & Leadership Coaching with Hans van den Hooff

What sort of people do you work with?
I work mostly with women and men in their thirties or forties who have a strong educational background and who have about 10 years of working experience. Many of my clients work in a competitive professional environment in a variety of sectors including: Financial Services, Professional Services, Energy, Governments and NGO’s. I work with CEO’s, business unit managers, project managers, line-managers and staff-managers.

Which coaching questions do people have?
Some people want to work with me for an agreed time period on a well-defined issue. Others come on a more open-ended basis for what may be called “maintenance”. Examples of issues that coachees wish to explore include: relationships with others (superiors, subordinates, clients, suppliers, etc.), personal behaviours that they are not always happy about, career change or questions about ambition and self-realization.

What happens during a session?
First of all we meet to check the personal chemistry. When we both decide to work together, we agree a certain meeting frequency and the location A set of 360-interviews may precede the actual coaching. Sessions generally last 60 minutes. The nature of our work is dialogue. We try to explore the identified issues from alternative perspectives. The central purpose of this process is that clients develop a richer degree of personal awareness and deeper levels of self insight. In turn, this helps identify the connections between different areas of life and may help to decide which levers to pull or not and how.

What qualifies you?
I have a background in Psychology and Management consulting. I know a bit about what is going on in organizations and I have some knowledge of what is going on in people. I understand competitive pressure, the fun and the rules of the game, the politics and the rivalry. I have a good grasp of the dynamics of leadership and I understand the importance of self-realization and a healthy work life balance. Finally, I have a lot of experience in career counselling. I have twenty years of experience in accompanying people and change processes. I set up my own coaching firm in 2001, Before that I was manager and partner with the management consulting firms PA Consulting Group and Arthur D. Little Inc. respectively and I had different positions with Shell in Europe and in the US. From my training in Analytical Psychology I have a relatively good self insight and I know how to listen. I know to a certain extent what it takes to develop growth in a person and I know to keep my own issues outside my professional practice. I am a member of the International Society of Psychoanalytical Studies of Organizations ISPSO.

References
Previous clients include: Shell, DSM, AkzoNobel, ABN-Amro, EBRD, EU, Nuon. RBS, Philips, City of Amsterdam, PA Consulting Group, Dutch government, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Railways.