GRENADE
COACHING
GRENADE
COACHING

Catégorie : psychology

  • Public speaking: what if you learned to speak like a politician… but actually had something to say?

    Public speaking: what if you learned to speak like a politician… but actually had something to say?

    You know those people who stand up and speak in front of an entire room, a microphone or a camera?

    Yes, yes. Those politicians who can spend ten minutes developing an idea that could sometimes have fit into three sentences.

    And yet, we listen to them.

    The sentence is perfectly constructed. The pace is controlled. The pauses land in exactly the right places. Their gaze sweeps across the room. Their voice drops when a statement needs weight and rises when they need to carry the audience with them.

    In short: even when the substance fails to convince us, the form of public speaking can be remarkably well mastered.

    What if this skill were not reserved for politicians, keynote speakers and those other mysterious creatures who somehow enjoy finding themselves in front of 800 people?

    Because before dreaming of giving a TED Talk, learning to speak with confidence can be useful in far more ordinary situations.

    Presenting an idea in a meeting. Defending a project. Going to a job interview. Asking for a raise. Explaining to a client why you disagree with them. Or diplomatically telling your boss that their wonderful idea may be sending everyone straight into a wall.

    Public speaking is about being convincing, but it is also about learning to defend your place and your ideas.

    What exactly is public speaking?

    It is easy to picture a lectern, a stage and a crowd.

    But public speaking more broadly means speaking to an audience. In its oratorical sense, a speech is a developed statement delivered before a group of people; public speaking involves structured and intentional communication designed, among other things, to inform or persuade. Le Robert

    And that “audience” can perfectly well consist of eight colleagues around a table.

    As soon as you need to organise your thoughts, capture attention, convey information and perhaps persuade several people, you are already using some of the skills involved in public speaking.

    The good news is that these skills can be learned.

    Speaking well in public is not just about finding the right words

    We place enormous importance on words, or more precisely on the script.

    We think we need to prepare it, write it, rewrite it… that we need to create a magnificent 47-slide presentation that we will then inflict on innocent people.

    And we forget the fundamental thing:

    a speech is not made of words alone. It is, and should be, embodied.

    Take a perfectly ordinary sentence:

    “I think we should reconsider this decision.”

    Say it quickly, looking down, shoulders hunched and voice hesitant.

    Then say exactly the same sentence while looking at the other person, slowing your pace slightly and leaving a second of silence after “decision”.

    Same sentence.

    Not the same speech.

    Your voice, rhythm, pauses, breathing, eye contact and posture all shape the way your message is received.

    Eloquence is not a gift reserved for a lucky few

    Some people seem naturally comfortable when they have to speak in public.

    That does not mean they were born holding a microphone.

    A large part of speaking with ease comes from skills that can be developed: structuring an idea, articulating your reasoning, using your voice, managing your pace, looking at your audience, mastering your posture and, above all, learning to tolerate that particularly delightful sensation of having twenty pairs of eyes fixed on you.

    Because behind difficulty speaking up, there is often something else:

    fear of judgement.

    “What if I stumble over my words?”

    “What if my mind goes blank?”

    “What if someone contradicts me?”

    “What if my question is stupid?”

    “What if I am not legitimate enough to speak?”

    Self-confidence in public speaking does not necessarily mean eliminating stage fright.

    It is more about developing enough inner security to speak despite it.

    Speaking up in meetings: public speaking in miniature

    This is probably one of the situations where the skill becomes most concrete.

    Picture the scene: you are in a meeting. A decision is about to be made. And you sincerely believe it is a bad one.

    You now have several options.

    • Stay silent and complain magnificently by the coffee machine an hour later.
    • Blurt out:

    “Honestly, this is never going to work.”

    • Or learn to express disagreement clearly, diplomatically and convincingly.

    For example, by structuring your intervention:

    here is what I observe → here is the risk I see → here is why → here is the alternative I propose.

    That way, you are no longer merely expressing an opinion. You are building an argument. That is already rhetoric.

    And knowing how to speak up in meetings can considerably change the way your skills and ideas are perceived professionally.

    Defending your interests without turning into a pushy salesperson

    Public speaking is not only useful for presenting projects.

    It also helps you defend your interests.

    Take the wonderful human experience of asking for a raise.

    Walking into your manager’s office with:

    “Er… I’ve been here for quite a while now and I was thinking maybe we could perhaps talk about my salary…”

    does not have the same effect as calmly presenting:

    what you have achieved, the responsibilities you carry, the value you bring and the precise request you are making.

    Asking for a raise is also an exercise in public speaking and argumentation.

    It is neither about attacking nor begging.

    It is about building a message clear enough for the other person to know exactly what you are asking for and why.

    A successful job interview is also about knowing how to tell a story

    The same mechanism applies in a job interview.

    We often imagine that answering the questions correctly is enough.

    But a recruiter only has a few dozen minutes to understand who you are professionally.

    Your ability to present your career path, explain your choices, tell the story of an experience, give a concrete example and respond calmly to an objection therefore becomes essential.

    Saying:

    “I know how to handle difficult situations”

    is a claim.

    Telling, in forty seconds, the story of a difficult situation, what you did and what happened next is a demonstration.

    And our brains like stories.

    Knowing how to speak in public therefore also means learning to turn a succession of information into an intelligible story.

    How do you make a presentation interesting without delivering a pompous TED Talk?

    Ah, the famous TED Talk.

    The black stage. The red circle. The little personal anecdote. The dramatic pause. And sometimes that strange feeling that someone is about to reveal the secret of the universe using three sticky notes and an experience they once had in an airport (I’m barely exaggerating…).

    Still, the format reminds us of something useful:

    a good presentation is not an accumulation of information.

    It has a direction.

    To prepare an interesting oral presentation, start with an extremely simple question:

    What do I want the people in the room to understand, feel or do after listening to me?

    One main idea.

    Then build around it.

    An opening that makes people want to listen.

    A clearly stated problem.

    A few arguments or examples.

    A progression.

    And a conclusion that genuinely answers the question you started with.

    You have just created a mini TED Talk.

    Without necessarily pacing slowly across a stage while explaining how meeting a Peruvian llama transformed your understanding of leadership.

    Posture matters… but it should not become theatre

    “Stand up straight.”

    “Look at your audience.”

    “Use your hands when you speak.”

    All of this advice can be useful.

    Until you spend so much time controlling your body that you start to look like a mime in the middle of an experimental workshop.

    The goal is not to manufacture an artificial posture of confidence.

    It is rather to remove what interferes with your message.

    Breathe enough.

    Do not speak at breakneck speed.

    Accept pauses.

    Actually look at the people you are speaking to.

    Take up your space instead of trying to disappear.

    Good posture supports the speech; it does not perform the speech for you.

    What if I freeze when I have to speak in public?

    Stage fright before speaking in public is not a sign that you lack competence in your field, only that public speaking itself may be a skill you still need to develop.

    The main challenge is to prevent the emotion from taking complete control of your attention.

    And one of the most effective methods remains spectacularly unglamorous:

    prepare and rehearse. (yes, with a Coach, it’s even better…)

    Not memorise every sentence word for word.

    Know your structure well enough to know where you are going even if a particular phrase escapes you.

    Prepare especially:

    your opening sentence, your three main ideas, your transitions, and your final sentence.

    Then you no longer need to retrieve a script from memory.

    You simply find your way again.

    Persuasion is not manipulation

    This is a distinction that matters to me.

    Developing eloquence and persuasive ability does not mean learning how to manipulate other people.

    An argument can perfectly well respect the freedom of the person listening.

    You set out your reasoning. You make your idea understandable. You explain why you defend it. You give the other person reasons to follow you.

    And they remain perfectly entitled to answer:

    “No.”

    Learning to persuade should therefore also mean learning to listen, respond to objections and accept disagreement.

    Otherwise, it is not really an exchange anymore.

    It is a monologue with a witness.

    Can public speaking be learned?

    Yes.

    And above all, you do not need to dream of becoming a professional speaker.

    You can work on your public speaking simply so that you can say clearly what you think when it matters.

    Speak up more often in meetings.

    Present your work without apologising for existing.

    Defend an idea in front of your team.

    Go into job interviews with greater confidence.

    Ask for a raise without wanting to disappear under the table.

    Set a boundary.

    Respond to an objection.

    Present a project.

    Or simply manage to say:

    “I disagree, and here is why.”

    Perhaps that is ultimately the interesting skill behind public speaking.

    Not becoming someone who can talk for twenty minutes without saying anything.

    But becoming someone capable of saying something when their voice matters.

    Public speaking is also about learning to defend your place and your ideas.

    Working on public speaking through coaching

    Public speaking is particularly interesting territory for coaching because it combines several dimensions: self-confidence, communication, stress management, posture, argumentation, the ability to defend your interests and your relationship with other people’s judgement.

    So we can work very concretely.

    Prepare a presentation. Simulate an interview. Rehearse asking for a raise. Work through a difficult intervention in a meeting. Test several formulations. Observe what a different posture changes. Learn how to respond when someone interrupts or contradicts you.

    Because between intellectually understanding how good public speaking works and actually doing it in front of someone, there is a particularly interesting little space:

    practice.

    And that is precisely where we can start playing — and you know how much I love to play…

  • Low energy: what if you simply don’t run on the same fuel as everyone else?

    Low energy: what if you simply don’t run on the same fuel as everyone else?

    Do you feel as though your energy levels have dropped?

    As though you are running out of energy while everyone else still seems to have enough fuel to launch twelve projects, renovate their kitchen, run a half-marathon and suggest yet another meeting at 6:30 p.m.?

    Maybe you are going through a period of low motivation, struggling to take action, or simply experiencing that very particular feeling:

    “I’ve got nothing left in the tank.”

    What if Human Design had an answer?

    Let’s clear up one important ambiguity first.

    Unusual, significant or persistent fatigue can obviously have physical or psychological causes that deserve to be explored with a healthcare professional. Human Design is neither a medical tool nor a method for diagnosing the cause of fatigue.

    But it does raise another question, one that is much more interesting in a coaching context:

    what if we simply do not all have the same relationship with energy?

    Because when we are constantly told that everyone should be productive eight hours a day, permanently motivated and able to operate at the same pace, we can end up believing that a different fuel tank must necessarily be a defective one.

    And that is precisely where Human Design becomes interesting.

    In Human Design, we do not all have the same engine

    Human Design distinguishes several energy Types: Generator, Manifesting Generator, Manifestor, Projector and Reflector.

    Within this framework, not everyone is considered to have the same consistent energy for acting, producing or sustaining effort.

    Generators and Manifesting Generators have, in Human Design terminology, a defined Sacral Centre. Projectors, Manifestors and Reflectors do not operate in the same way.

    This obviously does not mean that some human beings literally have a Duracell battery built into their stomach while the rest of us are running on three AAA batteries scavenged from a remote control.

    It is a symbolic model of how we function, not a physiological measurement of energy.

    But this model can become particularly meaningful when someone tells me:

    “I don’t understand. Everyone else can keep up with this pace. I end up completely drained.”

    What if you were a Projector?

    This is often where people discovering their Human Design profile start raising an eyebrow.

    According to traditional Human Design teachings, Projectors make up around one fifth of the population. They are described as people whose functioning is not built around a constant Sacral energy designed for continuous production.

    Their value is said to lie elsewhere.

    Observing.

    Understanding.

    Identifying what works and what does not.

    Reading people and systems.

    Directing energy rather than necessarily supplying it.

    And that changes quite a lot when you have spent years trying to operate like someone who seems to have a different engine.

    Because the problem can then become:

    “Why can’t I do as much as everyone else?”

    It is a question I have asked myself many times — you can see my profile in the “About” section — when a much more fruitful question might have been:

    “Where does my energy actually create the most value?”

    When low energy meets a lack of recognition

    And this is probably one of the most unpleasant cocktails.

    You have given a great deal.

    Maybe even everything you had.

    You spotted a problem no one else seemed to notice. You proposed a solution. You devoted time and energy to improving the situation.

    And no one seems to see it.

    Worse:

    sometimes you feel as though you are speaking without being heard.

    Then, three weeks later, someone rephrases an idea strangely similar to yours and suddenly:

    “Gerard, what an extraordinary idea!”

    And there you are, internally considering several creative uses for the office stapler.

    In traditional Human Design terminology, recognition plays a particularly important role for Projectors. Their so-called “Not-Self” theme is bitterness.

    It is easy to see why this idea might resonate with someone who spends enormous amounts of energy contributing but feels that their contribution is never truly seen.

    Be careful with the shortcut, though:

    feeling exhausted, ignored or insufficiently recognised absolutely does not prove that you are a Projector.

    That is precisely what a chart is for: looking at the whole picture instead of self-diagnosing as a Projector after three Instagram Reels.

    “Why do people listen to me less?”

    Here again, Human Design offers an interesting framework to explore.

    We do not all naturally occupy space in the same way.

    Some people initiate easily.

    Others draw people along through their energy.

    Some are remarkably good at observing group dynamics.

    Others are particularly sensitive to their environment.

    This can create situations where an extremely insightful person is not necessarily the one who speaks the loudest, responds the fastest or naturally takes centre stage.

    Visibility and relevance are not the same thing.

    And in a company, confusing the two is a serious problem.

    Because a team that systematically listens to whoever takes up the most space risks overlooking the person who spotted the problem before everyone else.

    Before looking for more energy, ask where yours is going

    This is probably the question I find most interesting in coaching.

    When someone tells me:

    “I lack motivation.”

    I want to look behind that sentence.

    Do they genuinely lack motivation?

    Are they exhausted?

    Are they spending their energy on something that constantly forces them to fight against themselves?

    Are they trying to keep up with someone else’s pace?

    Does their professional environment suit them?

    Do they spend more time proving their value than using their skills?

    Do they work among people who know how to recognise what they bring?

    Because there is an enormous difference between:

    having no energy

    and

    spending your energy in the wrong place.

    And that distinction goes far beyond Human Design.

    Get your Human Design chart to better understand how you function

    That is precisely one of the reasons I use Human Design in coaching.

    Not to tell you that four geometric shapes and two Gates know your life better than you do.

    But to provide an additional framework that can be compared with your real-life experience.

    What is your energy Type?

    Your Authority?

    Your Profile?

    Which of your Centres are defined or undefined?

    In which situations do you genuinely recognise the way the model describes you, and where does it not fit your experience?

    A Human Design chart becomes much more interesting when it is used to ask questions rather than hand out new labels.

    If you would like to discover your chart and, above all, understand what it can concretely reveal about the way you function, you can book a session with me directly.

    Book an appointment with Grenade Coaching

    And I promise: if you discover that you are a Projector, I will not prescribe three compulsory naps and a formal ban on touching a spreadsheet after 4 p.m.

    And what about the workplace? Let’s stop building teams of clones

    This is where, in my view, the subject becomes even more interesting.

    Because Human Design in the workplace can also provide a basis for thinking about team building, management and the complementary strengths of team members.

    We sometimes have a rather strange idea of the ideal team.

    We recruit different people…

    then ask them all to function in exactly the same way.

    Same pace.

    Same way of communicating.

    Same way of making decisions.

    Same relationship with autonomy.

    Same definition of performance.

    And then we organise a team-building day with three wooden blocks and a zip line to find out why the whole lot of them are not working together harmoniously.

    There may be an intermediate step.

    A strong team is not made up of interchangeable people

    Whether you fully subscribe to Human Design or simply use it as a tool for reflection, it raises a particularly fruitful management question:

    What does this person need in order to give the best of what they know how to do?

    And its twin question:

    What can other people genuinely rely on them for?

    This is where diversity stops being a pretty value written on a PowerPoint presentation.

    A team may need the person who initiates.

    The person with remarkable stamina.

    The person who sees the dysfunctions nobody else notices.

    The person who creates connections.

    Someone who slows everyone down at the precise moment when the entire team was cheerfully about to charge straight into a wall.

    Team building is then no longer just about creating a pleasant atmosphere.

    It is about building enough knowledge and trust for everyone to know:

    “This is what I bring. This is what you bring. And this is why we are better together than if we all tried to become the same person.”

    Stop standardising people and start benefiting from their diversity

    This is also a subject I discuss in Leader Instinct: we have a very strong tendency to standardise human behaviour.

    We implicitly define a “right” way to work, communicate, lead, think or even be motivated.

    Then we measure everyone against that standard.

    Yet the richness of a group comes precisely from the fact that we do not all notice the same things, think in the same way or bring the same skills.

    Human Design is certainly not the only framework for exploring this diversity.

    But it can be an excellent excuse to start talking about it.

    Listen to the Leader Instinct podcast

    Maybe your energy is not the problem

    So if you arrived here because you were searching for the reason behind a loss of energy, low energy levels, lack of motivation or that unpleasant feeling that you simply do not have enough fuel left to keep moving, please do not immediately conclude:

    “Fuck, I’m a Projector.”

    That would be a little hasty.

    Start by distinguishing what may relate to your health from what relates to your lifestyle, environment, work and way of functioning.

    Then ask yourself another question:

    what if the problem were not the amount of energy I have, but the way I am trying to use it?

    Because we spend a lot of time looking for ways to put more fuel in the tank.

    When sometimes it would be far more interesting to look at what we are doing with the fuel.

  • The 5 stages of depression: useful for understanding… but beware of the shortcut

    The 5 stages of depression: useful for understanding… but beware of the shortcut

    More and more often online, you will find five “stages of depression”: pre-depressive, progressive, acute, remission and recovery.

    This representation is not completely absurd. It describes fairly intuitively one possible trajectory of a depressive episode: something begins to change, symptoms settle in, become significant, then may gradually decrease until recovery.

    But these are not five universal, officially recognised clinical stages that every person with depression must necessarily go through.

    And that distinction matters.

    Because depression is not an organised tour with five compulsory stops and “recovery” waiting at the terminus.

    Depression is unfortunately highly variable. It may develop gradually or appear to arrive abruptly. It may be mild, moderate or severe. There may be one episode or several over a lifetime. Improvement may be complete or leave residual symptoms. Relapse or recurrence may also occur.

    So what do these famous five stages of depression actually describe? And how far can the model help us understand what is happening without misleading us?

    Before the five stages: what do we mean by “depression”?

    The word is used so often in everyday language that it can end up describing very different realities.

    “I’m depressed.” “I’ve got the blues.” “I’m going through a rough patch.” “I have depression.”

    Those sentences do not necessarily describe the same thing.

    Clinical depression is not simply sadness. The World Health Organization explicitly distinguishes it from ordinary mood fluctuations and temporary emotional reactions to difficulties. It notably involves depressed mood or a persistent loss of interest or pleasure, potentially accompanied by fatigue, sleep or appetite disturbances, concentration difficulties, guilt, low self-worth or hopelessness.

    In France, the Haute Autorité de Santé notes that a characterised depressive episode involves symptoms present almost every day for at least two weeks, representing a change from previous functioning and causing significant distress or impairment.

    In other words: sadness is a human emotion; depression is considerably more complex.

    There is no single depression that looks the same for everyone

    This is the first problem with trying to fit depression into five neat boxes.

    A depressive episode may be mild, moderate or severe. Two people meeting criteria for a depressive disorder may have noticeably different experiences.

    For one person, fatigue and loss of motivation may dominate. For another, sleep problems, anxiety, irritability or inability to feel pleasure. Another may experience rage, frustration or anger linked to helplessness.

    One person may continue working at enormous cost while another can no longer manage their usual activities.

    Talking about depression therefore means talking about a range of possible manifestations and trajectories, not a single script.

    Stage 1: the pre-depressive stage or early signs

    In the popular five-stage model, the first stage is a period in which something begins to change.

    Unusual fatigue, disturbed sleep, irritability, gradual loss of motivation, concentration difficulties, isolation or the feeling that previously enjoyable activities now require disproportionate effort may appear.

    The problem is that these early signs of depression are not specific.

    Fatigue has many possible causes. Professional stress is not automatically the beginning of depression. A week in which you want the entire human race to bugger off is not, by itself, a psychiatric diagnosis.

    The idea can nevertheless be useful as an invitation to notice a lasting change from your usual functioning, rather than as a compulsory medical stage.

    Stage 2: depressive symptoms settle in

    The second stage describes symptoms becoming more established.

    What looked like a bad period begins to last. Lack of energy affects work. Social interaction becomes costly. Previously pleasurable activities bring less pleasure. Sleep or concentration problems persist.

    An important concept here is anhedonia: a marked reduction in interest or pleasure.

    Depression does not always look like someone constantly crying. It may also feel like:

    “I don’t feel much anymore.”

    or:

    “Everything takes effort and nothing really appeals to me.”

    When several symptoms persist, intensify and significantly affect daily life, assessment by a health professional becomes particularly relevant.

    Stage 3: the acute phase of depression

    This is what the model presents as the peak of the episode.

    Symptoms of depression are numerous or intense enough to seriously disrupt daily functioning: depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, exhaustion, sleep disturbance, appetite changes, cognitive difficulties, guilt, loss of curiosity, bitterness, anger, self-devaluation or a very pessimistic view of the future may occur.

    In severe forms, normal professional, family or social activities can become extremely difficult. Suicide risk also needs to be assessed where relevant.

    But even here, calling this the “third stage” can mislead.

    A person does not have to consciously experience stages 1 and 2 before reaching this point. Some depressions develop slowly; others appear much more abruptly, particularly in the context of major traumatic or cumulative events.

    The acute phase therefore describes intensity, not the third level of a video game that everyone must unlock.

    Stage 4: partial remission

    When symptoms begin to decrease, some articles describe a fourth stage: remission.

    This term does have clinical meaning.

    But remission and recovery are not the same thing.

    A person can feel considerably better without having returned to previous functioning. Fatigue, sleep problems, cognitive difficulties or residual anhedonia may remain.

    And importantly: remission is not “acceptance”.

    Acceptance may describe how a person psychologically understands and lives with their illness. Remission concerns the evolution of symptoms.

    You can fully recognise and accept that you are depressed while still being in the middle of a depressive episode.

    Stage 5: recovery and relapse prevention

    The fifth stage is described as recovery: symptoms have greatly decreased or disappeared, functioning gradually returns and activities resume.

    But feeling better does not necessarily mean everything is over overnight.

    Clinical recommendations commonly distinguish an acute treatment phase from maintenance treatment, which aims to consolidate remission, restore functioning and quality of life, and reduce recurrence risk.

    This helps explain why follow-up may continue after symptoms improve.

    After depression, learning to recognise your own early warning signs, vulnerability factors and what helps maintain improvement can be useful.

    Where the five-stage model becomes misleading

    This is where I begin to have a problem with the five neat boxes.

    Because they easily suggest:

    1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → finished.

    Reality is considerably less disciplined.

    Someone may improve and then worsen. Some symptoms may disappear while others remain. There are single episodes, recurrent depressions and persistent or chronic forms.

    A real trajectory might look more like:

    early symptoms → worsening → improvement → residual symptoms → further improvement

    or:

    depressive episode → remission → another episode months or years later

    or something far less easy to draw as a tidy arrow.

    The five-stage model can serve as a simplified map. The problem begins when we confuse the map with the territory.

    What if my symptoms do not fit these five stages?

    That absolutely does not mean your suffering is illegitimate or that you are somehow “doing depression wrong”. There is no great depression examiner waiting to give you a mark, and depression is not a performance.

    This is precisely the danger of overly linear psychological models: they can create a norm where they were only meant to help understanding.

    Conversely, recognising a few symptoms in an article does not allow you to diagnose yourself with depression.

    If a persistent low mood, loss of interest or pleasure, significant fatigue or other symptoms continue and affect daily life, speaking with a doctor or mental-health professional can help assess what is happening and what forms of support are appropriate.

    So, are the five stages of depression bullshit?

    Not exactly.

    But they are not a psychological law either.

    Pre-depression, establishment of symptoms, acute phase, remission and recovery are a fairly intuitive way of describing one possible trajectory of depression.

    They can help explain that a depressive episode evolves, that symptoms may develop gradually and that recovery itself may take time.

    What becomes problematic is treating them as five official, universal and successive stages.

    Clinical classifications and guidelines focus instead on symptoms, duration, severity, functional impact, evolution, remission and risks of relapse or recurrence.

    Ultimately, the most useful question may not be:

    “Which stage am I in?”

    but:

    “What has been changing for me, for how long, what effect is it having on my life, and what help do I need today?”

  • Why hire a coach? 40 situations where coaching can help

    Why hire a coach? 40 situations where coaching can help

    We sometimes imagine that people hire a coach only when they have “a problem”.

    That is rather reductive.

    You can also seek coaching because you are going round in circles, because a situation keeps repeating itself, because you have a decision to make, because a relationship has become difficult, because you want to improve the way you manage… or simply because you know where you want to go but cannot work out how to get there.

    There is therefore no single doorway into coaching.

    After years of supporting people, I have seen individuals, couples and professionals arrive with extremely different requests. Some were in the middle of a crisis. Others were doing reasonably well but wanted something to change. Others simply needed an outside perspective to understand what was happening.

    So rather than explaining abstractly “why you should get coaching”, here is a much more interesting question:

    In what situations can coaching actually be useful?

    Why choose individual coaching?

    You do not need to wait until you have hit rock bottom before asking for support. Fortunately.

    How can I rebuild my self-confidence?

    When you systematically doubt your abilities, constantly seek external validation or no longer dare to do things you actually want to do, the work rarely consists of repeating in front of a mirror that you are wonderful.

    It is more about understanding what undermines that confidence, what maintains the problem and how to regain a more accurate perception of your abilities.

    How can I stop sabotaging myself?

    You know what you should do. Sometimes you have even started.

    And yet, mysteriously, you procrastinate, give up, repeatedly choose the wrong person, turn down an opportunity you wanted or find an excellent reason not to change anything.

    The famous “self-sabotage” generally deserves better than a kick up the backside and three inspirational Instagram quotes.

    We need to understand what the behaviour is protecting.

    What can I do when I feel stuck?

    You have thought about the problem from every possible angle. Then from the other direction. Then once again, just in case the problem had politely changed overnight.

    Sometimes thinking more with exactly the same premises simply produces… more of the same thinking.

    An outside perspective can reveal blind spots, contradictions, alternatives or resources you can no longer see.

    And also…

    • How can I learn to set boundaries?
    • How can I make a difficult decision?
    • How can I break a recurring pattern?
    • How can I manage my emotions better?
    • How can I stop procrastinating?
    • How can I communicate better?
    • How can I say no without feeling guilty?
    • How can I find my place?
    • How can I get through a period of change?
    • How can I understand my needs better?
    • How can I leave a relationship or situation that no longer suits me?
    • How can I turn a desire for change into concrete action?

    The common denominator is not necessarily suffering.

    It is often the gap between the situation you are living and the one you would like to build.

    Why choose couples coaching?

    No, couples coaching is not reserved for couples deciding between booking a session and throwing plates at each other.

    You can come because the relationship is in crisis, of course. But also precisely to avoid getting there.

    How can I discuss a difficult subject with my partner?

    Money, sex, children, family, division of labour, life plans, jealousy, commitment…

    Some subjects become so emotionally loaded that eventually you are no longer discussing the problem, but every previous argument about the problem.

    Coaching can recreate a framework in which each person can speak and hear what the other is actually trying to say.

    How can I set boundaries in my relationship?

    Loving someone does not mean accepting everything.

    But setting a boundary without turning it into a threat, ultimatum or punishment can require genuine relational learning.

    How can we deal with family problems affecting our relationship?

    In-laws, children, ex-partners, blended families, differences in parenting…

    A couple does not exist in a vacuum. Some difficulties arise precisely at the boundaries between the couple and the people around them.

    And also…

    • How can we start talking again?
    • How can we stop having the same arguments?
    • How can I express my needs without attacking my partner?
    • How can we rediscover closeness?
    • How can we manage an important difference between us?
    • How can we make a decision together?
    • How can we rebuild trust?
    • How can we divide responsibilities more fairly?
    • How can we live with our differences?
    • How do we know whether we still want to build something together?

    Sometimes the goal is not to “save the relationship at all costs”. It may also be to understand what is happening and help two people make a more conscious decision about what comes next.

    Why hire a coach in a business?

    Because putting eight human beings in an open-plan office with a task list, a dashboard, KPIs and someone called a “manager” has, strangely enough, never been sufficient to create a functioning team.

    A company is an extraordinary relationship laboratory: objectives, power, responsibilities, personalities, constraints, clients, money and sometimes urgency. Everything is there to produce the best… and occasionally a magnificent mess.

    How do I manage a difficult employee?

    First useful question: what exactly is difficult?

    Their behaviour? Their results? Your communication? A conflict of values? Resistance to change? Poorly defined responsibility?

    Defining the problem correctly already prevents you from looking for the solution in the wrong place.

    How do I manage a crisis?

    In a crisis, the temptation is often to react faster at the very moment when we need to think more clearly.

    Coaching can help a leader or manager distinguish genuine urgency from noise, prioritise decisions, anticipate consequences and work on communication.

    How do I deal with a difficult client?

    Setting boundaries while preserving a commercial relationship is a particular skill. Sometimes you need to learn to negotiate, reformulate, clarify what is possible and what is not, and stop confusing customer service with unlimited submission.

    How do I motivate my team?

    Motivation is not a button located somewhere behind an employee’s left ear.

    It can depend on autonomy, recognition, meaning, workload, clarity of objectives, quality of management, working relationships and the feeling of progressing.

    And also…

    • How can I give difficult feedback?
    • How can I handle disagreement within my team?
    • How can I delegate without micromanaging?
    • How can I assert my authority without becoming authoritarian?
    • How can I manage interpersonal tension?
    • How can I improve communication?
    • How can I support change?
    • How can I develop cooperation?
    • How can I manage competing priorities?
    • How can I reconcile performance with healthy working relationships?

    The aim is not to manufacture smiling managers capable of reciting three communication methods.

    It is to develop the ability to understand human situations and intervene with greater discernment.

    So how do I know whether I need coaching?

    A simple rule can help.

    You do not necessarily need a coach because something is wrong.

    Support can become useful when:

    you want something to change, but your usual methods are no longer enough to produce that change.

    You may know exactly what you want. Or not yet know.

    You may have a very concrete problem. Or simply that irritating feeling that something is wrong without being able to put your finger on it.

    That is precisely where the work begins.

    And why tell me all this?

    Because throughout my experience as a coach, I have worked with very different individual, relational, couple and professional issues.

    My job is not to tell you how to live your life.

    Still less to hand out prefabricated solutions in the style of “the five habits of successful people before 6:12 a.m.”

    It is to understand with you what is happening in your situation, bring to light what you cannot yet see and build solutions that are usable in your reality.

    Of course, I could tell you here that I am absolutely wonderful.

    That would be slightly suspicious.

    So the simplest thing is to let the people I have already coached speak for themselves:

    → Read my clients’ testimonials

    And if one of the questions in this article looks suspiciously like the one you are asking yourself, perhaps that is already a good place to start.

  • Narcissistic abuser: recognise the mechanisms and learn to stop playing the game

    Narcissistic abuser: recognise the mechanisms and learn to stop playing the game

    “I think my partner is a narcissistic abuser.”

    Sometimes that sentence comes after months. Sometimes after years. And sometimes even before the coaching sessions have begun.

    The person has read articles, watched videos, spoken with friends and family, discovered gaslighting, DARVO, flying monkeys, love bombing…

    And suddenly, some pieces of the puzzle seem to fit together.

    But a much more difficult question comes next:

    All right. What do I do now?

    Because identifying a problematic relationship dynamic does not necessarily tell you how to respond to it. (I also talk about that here)

    And with certain people, our usual reflexes can even help keep us trapped in a game we cannot win.

    “Narcissistic abuser”: what exactly are we talking about?

    Let’s begin with an important clarification.

    The French expression “pervers narcissique”, often translated as “narcissistic abuser”, is widely used, but it is not an official psychiatric diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR.

    There is, however, narcissistic personality disorder, which is diagnosed by mental-health professionals according to specific criteria. Having certain narcissistic, manipulative or particularly unpleasant behaviours is therefore not, in itself, enough to diagnose someone. Cleveland Clinic

    And when you come to see me, my job is not to diagnose your partner, mother, colleague or boss from a distance.

    What we can look at, however, is something much more directly useful:

    What does this person do?

    How often?

    What happens when you say no?

    What happens when you confront them with their actions?

    What do they do when you set a boundary?

    How does the situation end up being turned against you?

    And above all:

    what can you do in response to this dynamic?

    You do not need an official “Premium-grade arsehole” certificate before you are allowed to protect yourself from behaviour that hurts you.

    The problem is not only what the person does. It is the relationship system they create.

    This is probably one of the hardest things to explain when you are living in a narcissistic or manipulative relationship.

    From the outside, each event may seem relatively ordinary: a remark. An argument. A lie. A humiliation disguised as a joke. A forgotten promise. A slightly different version of events. A conversation that somehow ends with you on trial.

    Taken separately, each event can be explained away.

    It is their repetition and organisation that become important.

    Little by little, you may begin spending more time anticipating the other person’s reactions than asking yourself what you actually think.

    And your relational reality eventually revolves around one question:

    “How do I need to behave to avoid the next disaster?”

    At that point, there is already a problem, whatever the other person’s diagnosis may be.

    “But they’re lovely with everyone else”

    Yes.

    And that is precisely what can make some situations extremely difficult to explain.

    A person does not necessarily behave in the same way with everyone.

    Your partner may be charming with colleagues. Funny with friends. Lovely with the neighbour. Caring with family. And completely different in private.

    The reasoning:

    “They’re wonderful with me, so they can’t be abusive towards you”

    simply does not hold up. And it does not make you the local nutcase.

    We all adapt our behaviour to different contexts and people. In an abusive or manipulative dynamic, that discrepancy can become particularly disorienting for the person experiencing it.

    Because they no longer have only to deal with what is happening.

    They may also have to convince other people that what is happening is real.

    Flying monkeys: when other people enter the game

    The term flying monkeys, borrowed from The Wizard of Oz, is used in popular literature about narcissistic relationships to describe people around the manipulative person who relay their influence: defending their version of events, passing on messages, guilt-tripping the target or sometimes participating directly in the pressure placed on them. Psych Central

    And flying monkeys are not necessarily sinister accomplices gathered around a table in a basement.

    That is exactly what makes the phenomenon remarkable.

    Some may sincerely believe the version they have been told.

    “You’re exaggerating.”

    “I know them; they would never do that.”

    “You probably both have some responsibility.”

    “They’re suffering terribly because of you.”

    “You should still make an effort.”

    Now imagine having to manage both the original conflict and the perception of five people who only have access to part of the story.

    It is exhausting.

    And trying to convince absolutely everyone can become a second trap.

    DARVO: when you ask for accountability and end up in the dock

    Here is one particularly useful mechanism to know.

    DARVO stands for:

    Deny – Attack – Reverse Victim and Offender.

    In other words:

    deny → attack → reverse the roles of victim and offender.

    The concept was developed by psychologist Jennifer Freyd to describe a possible response when a person is confronted about wrongdoing: they deny it, attack the credibility of the person confronting them, then present themselves as the victim. Research on DARVO does not limit it to narcissism. Dynamics Lab

    Example:

    “You insulted me yesterday in front of our friends.”

    Denial:

    “I never insulted you.”

    Then:

    Attack:

    “Anyway, you always twist everything. You’re completely paranoid.”

    Then:

    Reversal:

    “Do you realise I constantly have to watch everything I say because of you? I’m the one living through hell.”

    And twenty minutes later…

    there you are defending yourself.

    The original subject?

    Gone.

    Meanwhile, your brain is still trying to understand how you got from:

    “Why did you insult me?”

    to:

    “I now have to prove I’m not a horrible person.”

    That is precisely why recognising a mechanism can change so much.

    The first reflex to develop: recognise the game before you play it

    Once you have identified DARVO, the aim is not necessarily to become better at DARVO than the other person.

    In fact, it is often exactly the opposite.

    You learn to notice:

    “Ah. We have just left the original subject.”

    And you can develop responses.

    “That isn’t the issue we’re discussing.”

    “We can talk about that afterwards. Right now, I’m talking about what happened yesterday.”

    “I’m not going to debate my personality.”

    “I’ve heard your disagreement. My decision remains the same.”

    These are extraordinarily simple sentences.

    Holding onto them when someone knows exactly which buttons to press is another matter.

    And that is where practising in coaching sessions becomes useful: to strengthen your responses and your ability to hold your ground.

    Do not try to beat a manipulator at their own game

    It is an understandable temptation.

    Once you finally understand the mechanism, you think:

    “Fine. Now I’ll do the same thing to them.”

    Bad game.

    Not because you need to be morally superior and float above the conflict in a white light.

    But because you are then accepting their playing field.

    Lie against lie.

    Manipulation against manipulation.

    Provocation against provocation.

    You will spend a phenomenal amount of energy trying to control someone who may already be spending a great deal of energy controlling the situation.

    And above all, you risk losing sight of your actual goal.

    The question is not:

    “How can I finally beat them?”

    But:

    “How can I reduce their power over my decisions, my emotions and my life?”

    Dr Ramani’s strategies: stop feeding the dynamic

    Clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula has worked for years on narcissistic relationships. Her approach emphasises, among other things, that you cannot force a narcissistic person to change and that it often becomes necessary to redirect your energy towards boundaries, self-protection and rebuilding your own functioning. Doctor Ramani

    Several strategies often discussed around her work fit here.

    Don’t engage: do not enter every battle

    Not every provocation deserves a response.

    Not every accusation requires a twelve-paragraph dissertation.

    Not every absurd version of your personality needs correcting.

    That is terribly difficult when you feel unfairly accused.

    Your brain screams:

    “BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE!”

    And yet sometimes, not entering the exchange is precisely the strategy.

    Grey rock: become profoundly uninteresting

    The grey rock principle consists of reducing the amount of emotional fuel offered in certain interactions: brief, neutral, factual answers, little personal information and little reaction to provocations.

    It does not mean becoming an emotional rock throughout your entire life.

    It is a contextual strategy intended to limit certain interactions.

    Radical acceptance: stop negotiating with the person we wish they were

    This is probably the most painful one.

    Radical acceptance does not mean:

    “This behaviour is acceptable.”

    It means something closer to:

    “I am going to stop building my strategy around the hope that this person will suddenly react like someone they have never shown themselves to be.”

    Dr Ramani specifically emphasises giving up the constant attempt to change or appease the narcissistic person and beginning instead to rebuild your own boundaries and relationship with reality. Doctor Ramani

    And that can hurt.

    Because sometimes you have to grieve not only a relationship…

    but the relationship you hoped you would one day have.

    Knowing what to do is infinitely easier than actually doing it

    That is the problem with all this advice.

    On the Internet:

    “Set boundaries.”

    Wonderful. Thanks, Jean-Pierre.

    Now try setting a boundary with someone who has known you for fifteen years, knows exactly how to trigger your guilt and may have access to your children, friends, home or finances.

    Suddenly, the sentence:

    “Just don’t react”

    becomes slightly less brilliant.

    These strategies can require nerves of steel.

    Not because you are weak.

    Because they run directly against extremely powerful human reflexes:

    defending yourself when accused,

    trying to be understood,

    correcting an injustice,

    convincing someone you love,

    responding to provocation,

    seeking repair.

    And that is precisely why practice matters. Training your mindset. Strengthening your mental resilience. Consolidating your self-confidence.

    Coaching: turning a theoretical strategy into reflexes

    This is where my work really begins.

    I am not going to teach you to diagnose your partner.

    I can, however, help you work on what happens when you are facing them.

    We can replay a real conversation.

    Identify the exact moment it shifted.

    Spot a DARVO.

    Observe which sentence made you lose your footing.

    Identify your usual reflex.

    Then replay the scene.

    You say A.

    I answer B.

    You try a response.

    We look at what works.

    We try again.

    Again.

    Until:

    “I know intellectually what I should do”

    begins to become:

    “I can recognise what is happening while it is happening.”

    Then:

    “I now have several possible responses.”

    That is exactly the difference between understanding a strategy and developing a reflex.

    And sometimes you simply need to vent

    I care a lot about this part.

    Because you cannot spend your whole life in military-strategy mode.

    Sometimes you held your boundary.

    You did not answer.

    You refused to enter the DARVO.

    You stayed perfectly factual.

    You left the room.

    Well done.

    And now you want to scream:

    “WHAT AN ARSEHOLE!” or “WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT!”

    Fine.

    Sometimes you need somewhere to put that.

    A space where you do not need to be strategic.

    Where you can reconstruct chronologically what just happened.

    Check your perception.

    Understand why it hit you so hard.

    And regain enough distance to decide what comes next.

    That is not failing to manage your emotions.

    Sometimes it is precisely what allows you not to unload them in the wrong place.

    “Am I going crazy?”: when gaslighting makes you doubt your own reality

    And sometimes venting serves an even more fundamental purpose: telling someone what happened and checking that no, you are not completely losing your mind.

    That is particularly relevant with gaslighting, a form of manipulation in which one person gradually causes another to doubt their memories, perceptions or interpretation of events.

    “I never said that.”

    “You’re making it up.”

    “You always interpret everything the wrong way.”

    “It was a joke; you’re far too sensitive.”

    “That is absolutely not what happened.”

    One isolated occurrence is obviously not enough to call something gaslighting: we can all remember an event differently. What becomes problematic is the repetition of a dynamic that gradually erodes your trust in your own perception.

    The term itself comes from a work of fiction that became surprisingly relevant.

    Patrick Hamilton’s British play Gas Light, first performed in 1938, was adapted for film, notably in George Cukor’s famous 1944 Gaslight. In the story, a husband gradually manipulates his wife into believing she is losing her mind. Among the things she notices, the gas lights in the house mysteriously dim. When she mentions it, her husband denies it and pretends to be able to read the newspaper in such low light, which she observes and which contributes to making her doubt her own perception.

    That is where the term gaslighting comes from.

    And it is also why having a space outside the relationship can become valuable. Not to have someone automatically agree with your version of events, but to reconstruct a situation, distinguish facts from interpretations and gradually regain confidence in your own judgement.

    Sometimes regaining control begins with an extremely simple question:

    “Wait… what actually happened?”

    What if no communication strategy is enough?

    That is also a possibility we need to be able to face.

    Sometimes the best wording changes nothing.

    The clearest boundary is not respected.

    Grey rock does not solve the problem.

    Disengagement reduces some arguments but does not transform the relationship.

    And no relationship skill can, by itself, make an unhealthy situation healthy.

    Coaching can then help clarify:

    What do I want?

    What can I still accept?

    What are my actual limits?

    What resources do I need?

    What decisions am I prepared to make?

    But when the situation involves violence, threats, coercion, financial control, or significant physical or psychological danger, the priority changes. It is no longer only a matter of communicating better: appropriate specialised professionals and support services need to be involved.

    You probably cannot control what this person thinks of you

    And perhaps not what they tell other people about you either.

    That is one of the hardest things to accept.

    You can explain.

    Prove.

    Argue.

    Show the messages.

    Tell the story in the right order.

    And some people may still choose to believe another version.

    Trying to obtain universal recognition of what happened can then keep you attached to the situation.

    The question gradually becomes:

    “Do I need this person to acknowledge what they did to me before I can start taking my life back?”

    The answer can be painful.

    But it can also be extraordinarily liberating.

    Leave the game instead of winning it

    That is ultimately the change I am trying to create.

    At first, the question is often:

    “How should I answer them?”

    Then it becomes:

    “Why does this strategy work on me?”

    Then:

    “How can I respond differently?”

    And finally:

    “Do I even want to keep participating in this dynamic?”

    You may not need to become better than the other person at their game.

    You may need to regain enough stability, discernment and decision-making power to understand that you can leave the table.

    And sometimes that is precisely where taking back control begins.

    Coaching and narcissistic relationships

    If you think you are in a relationship with a narcissistic person, if you recognise mechanisms such as gaslighting, DARVO, flying monkeys, blame reversal or repeated violations of your boundaries, we can work together on the behaviours you observe and, above all, on your options for action.

    Coaching is not a substitute for psychiatric diagnosis, psychotherapy when needed, or specialist domestic-abuse services.

    Its usefulness lies elsewhere:

    understanding the dynamic, developing reflexes, testing responses, strengthening your boundaries, preparing difficult conversations and helping you regain your decision-making power.

    Because ultimately, the goal is not to become an expert in narcissistic personality.

    It is for that personality to gradually stop organising YOUR life.

  • Knowing your value: what if the problem is your environment?

    Knowing your value: what if the problem is your environment?

    Let’s start with what you probably most need to hear or read about yourself:

    You have value.

    Yes, you.

    And yet it is perfectly possible to spend a considerable part of your life doubting it.

    Because we often make a rather nasty confusion between our value and the recognition we receive.

    And to understand the difference, let’s talk about a perfectly ordinary object.

    A bottle of water.

    A €5 bottle of water has not suddenly become better

    Have you ever bought a bottle of water at an airport and felt that little sting when paying three times its usual price?

    The same bottle costs far less at the supermarket. Even less when it comes in a pack of twelve.

    And yet its contents have not miraculously changed between the supermarket shelf and the departure lounge.

    What has changed is the context: availability. Need. Alternatives. And above all, the situation in which that bottle finds itself.

    In other words, its intrinsic value has not necessarily changed. Its perceived value, and the value it has in that particular situation, certainly has.

    And that distinction becomes much more interesting when we apply it to ourselves.

    What if you were simply in the wrong environment?

    Now imagine applying the same idea to the people around you.

    Is it possible that sometimes you fail to recognise everything they bring simply because you have become used to their presence?

    A person can seem perfectly ordinary in an environment that makes little use of their qualities and become absolutely remarkable somewhere else.

    A quiet colleague may go relatively unnoticed from day to day and then become the person everyone turns to when a situation gets complicated.

    Someone considered “too fussy” in one team can become extraordinarily valuable when a project requires impeccable rigour.

    A highly creative person may spend years believing they are incapable if they work in an environment that rewards conformity above all else.

    So when you doubt your own value, there is a question we often forget to ask:

    “Is it really that I am not valuable enough… or am I in an environment that is unable to use and recognise what I bring?”

    (And I swear, as a Projector in Human Design, I TOTALLY understand this. I’ve been there too.)

    Personal value and recognition are not the same thing

    We tend to look for evidence of our value in other people’s eyes: a promotion, a compliment, a raise, a message, an invitation, a returning client, someone choosing us.

    And when those signs disappear, a conclusion can arise very quickly:

    “I must not be worth very much.”

    Except that a lack of recognition is not necessarily a reliable measure of value.

    Not everyone will see what you can contribute.

    An organisation may make very poor use of your skills.

    A relationship may have become so accustomed to everything you give that it barely notices anymore.

    And, obviously, there are also situations in which we need to develop a skill, change a behaviour or learn to show what we can do more effectively.

    So the idea is not to tell ourselves:

    “I’m wonderful; it’s simply that nobody understands me.”

    That would be a little too bloody convenient.

    The point is rather to distinguish between:

    what I bring, what I still need to develop, and what my environment is capable of recognising.

    Three very different questions.

    Recognising other people’s value also changes our relationships

    Obviously, this works both ways.

    Is it possible that some people around you have become so familiar that you no longer really see what they bring?

    When we recognise someone’s value, we do not merely give them a compliment or an automatic “thank you”.

    We can support what they are doing.

    Recommend their work.

    Share what they create.

    Give them credit when they contribute an idea.

    Help them when they need it.

    Tell them precisely what their presence or their work brings.

    Because recognition is not only something we demand.

    It is also something we can learn to give.

    Learning to see value helps us recognise our own

    There is something rather interesting about this mechanism.

    The more precisely we learn to identify the value other people bring, the more we develop our ability to recognise our own.

    Because we gradually stop thinking of value as some sort of general ranking of human beings.

    There is no enormous cosmic Excel spreadsheet with a score out of 100 next to every person. (Thankfully, because I would have a few questions about the formulas…)

    Instead, there are qualities, skills, sensitivities, knowledge, behaviours and ways of being that take on different importance depending on the people and the situation.

    And sometimes something we have always considered perfectly ordinary about ourselves is precisely what someone else finds exceptional.

    Why?

    Because for us it is easy and… for them, it isn’t.

    Finding the environment that recognises your value

    Perhaps this is where the bottle-of-water metaphor becomes most interesting.

    The goal is not to become a €5 bottle of water. Although hey, whatever your kink. 😏

    The point is to understand that an environment is never entirely neutral in the perception we build of ourselves.

    Some relationships allow us to deploy our qualities.

    Others make those qualities almost useless.

    Some professional environments make us feel competent.

    Others can make us doubt skills that are nevertheless perfectly real.

    And sometimes we spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to become valuable to an environment that simply is not looking for what we have to offer.

    So before concluding:

    “I’m not valuable enough.”

    another question may be worth trying:

    “Where does what I bring have value?”

    The answer can change a great deal.

    And today, whose value can you recognise?

    There is one final half to this story.

    Look at the people around you. Not just the ones who shine, okay?! Not just the ones whose contribution is obvious.

    What does someone regularly bring to your life that you may have ended up taking for granted?

    Say it!

    Thank them!

    Recommend them!

    Support them!

    Make it visible!

    Because recognising another person’s value does not diminish ours in the slightest.

    Quite the opposite.

    And the next time you pay a fortune for a bottle of water at an airport, you can at least turn that little piece of commercial extortion into a philosophical reminder:

    the context in which something is valued never tells you, by itself, everything that thing is worth.

    The same goes for us.

     

    In short: you have value. And if you still doubt it, book a session with me. You’ll soon discover that I am COMPLETELY right.

  • Making peace with mistakes: learning to get things wrong and keep progressing

    Making peace with mistakes: learning to get things wrong and keep progressing

    What if making mistakes were not the opposite of succeeding, but a necessary condition for learning, progressing and daring?

    We tend to demonise mistakes. From childhood onwards, they are corrected, underlined and sometimes punished. In the workplace, a mistake can feel like an admission of incompetence. In our personal lives, it can directly shake our self-confidence.

    When we become too determined to avoid mistakes, what we often end up avoiding is risk. We choose what we already know how to do, hesitate to take initiative and sometimes give up on projects simply because we are not certain we will succeed.

    The fear of making mistakes can then become a genuine fear of taking action.

    And yet we are allowed to get things wrong. Better still: in many forms of learning, making mistakes is essential to progress.

    What exactly is a mistake?

    Traditional definitions describe an error as taking something false to be true, or getting something wrong in our reasoning, judgement or actions.

    That may be reasonably accurate, but it says nothing about what we can do with it.

    I prefer a much simpler definition:

    A mistake is what happens when we experiment.

    And that definition can considerably change our perspective.

    Experimenting means that we do not yet know the outcome perfectly. We form a hypothesis, act, observe what happens, then adjust.

    Learning from mistakes means turning an imperfect experience into useful information for the next one.

    A mistake can then become a springboard, a driver of progress and a space for discovery.

    Can mistakes lead to innovation?

    History is full of discoveries and innovations that began with an unexpected result.

    Alexander Fleming did not set out to discover penicillin when he observed that mould contaminating a bacterial culture prevented the bacteria from growing. What could simply have been dismissed as a contaminated experiment became the starting point of a major discovery.

    The difference is not only in the mistake: it lies in our ability to notice what it can teach us.

    The same logic applies to the Post-it. Spencer Silver, a researcher at 3M, originally developed an adhesive that did not meet the intended objective: it stuck, but only lightly, and could be repositioned. A few years later, Art Fry recognised the value of that property and imagined a use for it that would become the Post-it note.

    Other famous inventions and discoveries, from the microwave oven to certain recipes such as tarte Tatin, are also linked to accidents, unexpected results or repurposed ideas.

    Obviously, not every mistake produces a revolutionary invention. But every mistake can contain information.

    A mistake that is analysed becomes experience.

    A mistake that is understood becomes learning.

    Why are we so afraid of making mistakes?

    The problem is often not the mistake itself.

    It is what we believe it says about us in other people’s eyes.

    “I made a mistake” becomes:

    “I’m not competent.”

    “I’m not good enough.”

    “People are going to judge me.”

    “I should have known.”

    This is where fear of mistakes meets fear of failure, low self-confidence and fear of other people’s judgement.

    We are no longer simply trying to avoid an unpleasant consequence. We are trying to protect the image we have of ourselves, or the image we want to present to others.

    And that can come at a considerable cost: procrastination, perfectionism, difficulty making decisions, fear of taking initiative, giving up, or constantly needing reassurance.

    Making peace with mistakes does not mean excusing everything

    There is, however, a trap in turning “mistakes are positive” into some blissful little mantra.

    Not every mistake is desirable.

    Some have serious consequences. Some result from negligence. And repeatedly making the same mistake without trying to understand what causes it has very little to do with learning.

    Giving yourself permission to make mistakes does not mean abandoning responsibility.

    It means being able to ask:

    What happened? Why? What does this mistake teach me? And what can I change next time?

    Responsibility does not require self-flagellation. It requires looking clearly enough at what happened to be able to act differently.

    Learning from mistakes to strengthen your expertise

    Expertise does not mean never getting anything wrong.

    It is also built through accumulated experience, adjustment, and an increasing ability to recognise what works… and what does not.

    The more capable we are of analysing our mistakes without confusing our behaviour with our personal worth, the more effectively we can learn.

    And above all, we regain an essential freedom: the freedom to try.

    Try a new way of communicating. Make a decision. Suggest an idea. Set a boundary. Change a habit. Launch a project. Say something we have never dared to say before.

    With one very simple possibility:

    It may not work the first time.

    And that is not necessarily a disaster.

    How can coaching help overcome the fear of making mistakes?

    In coaching, the interesting question is therefore not simply: “How can I stop making mistakes?”

    It is more likely to be:

    “What makes being wrong feel so threatening to me?”

    Is it fear of judgement? Perfectionism? Excessive demands on yourself? Fear of disappointing someone? Difficulty separating your personal worth from your results?

    That is one of the things we can explore together at Grenade Coaching.

    The work consists of understanding what is happening behind the fear of getting things wrong, then developing a more constructive way of interpreting your experiences, successes and failures alike.

    Because the goal is not to become someone who never makes a mistake.

    It is to become someone who is no longer stopped by one.

  • Shadow Work: how to work with your shadow side

    Shadow Work: how to work with your shadow side

    Autumn is probably the perfect season to talk about Shadow Work.

    And no, despite its deliciously gothic name, Shadow Work was not invented for Halloween.

    Today, the term refers to various introspective practices inspired in particular by the concept of the Shadow developed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.

    The basic idea is fairly simple: we do not necessarily know everything we are, or everything we are capable of being.

    Some traits, emotions, desires or behaviours fit perfectly with the image we have of ourselves. Others… considerably less so.

    So we sometimes learn to hide them, condemn them, repress them or simply stop looking at them.

    Until one day a trigger brings them back: an argument. Inexplicable jealousy. A criticism that makes us disproportionately angry. Someone we mysteriously cannot stand. A failure. A period of stress.

    Any strange reaction that leaves us wondering: “Why on earth did I react like that?”

    That may be a sign that we have stumbled across something in the shadow.

    What is Shadow Work?

    To understand Shadow Work, we first need to understand what Jung called the Shadow.

    In Jungian psychology, the Shadow broadly refers to aspects of our personality that our conscious mind does not readily recognise as belonging to the “self”.

    And this matters: our shadow is not necessarily our bad side.

    That is where the concept becomes much more interesting.

    Of course, we may reject our aggression, jealousy, selfishness or need for control.

    But we may also have learned to hide other traits because they were not considered socially acceptable: our ambition, sensuality, creativity, authority, vulnerability, need for attention, ability to say no, desire to be recognised, or even our anger.

    Simply because, at some point in our lives, we may have understood or learned that this part of us was unacceptable, dangerous, ridiculous or undesirable.

    “A nice girl doesn’t get angry.”

    “Men don’t cry.”

    “Stop trying to get attention.”

    “Be reasonable.”

    “Who do you think you are?”

    So we learn. We adapt our behaviour. And some colours gradually disappear from the picture we have of ourselves.

    That does not necessarily mean they disappear from us.

    Autumn: a rather beautiful metaphor for our shadow

    Look at a tree in summer. Its leaves appear green. Uniformly green. Then autumn arrives.

    The days grow shorter, chlorophyll production decreases, and the other pigments already present in the leaf gradually become visible: yellow, orange, red, copper, gold.

    Some of those colours were already there. We simply could not see them.

    I love this image as a way of explaining shadow work.

    When everything is going well, we can maintain our usual image of ourselves fairly easily.

    Then fatigue, conflict, fear, frustration or uncertainty arrive.

    And something appears.

    “I’m not usually like this.”

    Maybe.

    Or perhaps you are also like this.

    And that is not necessarily bad news.

    Why does our shadow sometimes emerge during conflict?

    Because relationships are extraordinary revealers.

    Imagine someone who irritates you beyond belief.

    They take up a lot of space.

    They speak loudly.

    They seem extremely self-confident.

    And every time they open their mouth, you want to introduce a dictionary to their teeth.

    Why?

    First possibility: they really are annoying. Let us not neglect this possibility. Fortunately, Shadow Work does not require us to turn every arsehole we meet into a spiritual revelation.

    But there is a second, interesting possibility:

    something in that person is touching something in you.

    Perhaps you forbid yourself from taking up space.

    Perhaps you learned that you had to stay discreet.

    Perhaps you even secretly envy their ability to assert themselves.

    Or perhaps that person reminds you of someone who once crushed you.

    This is not a conclusion.

    It is a line of enquiry.

    And that is precisely what can be useful about shadow work: sometimes replacing an immediate judgement with a question.

    “Why does this affect me so much?”

    Projection: when our shadow appears in other people

    This brings us to another important idea in Jungian psychology: projection.

    Sometimes we may attribute something very strongly to another person that we have difficulty recognising in ourselves.

    And again, caution is required.

    If someone is genuinely behaving arrogantly, noticing their arrogance does not automatically mean that you are secretly arrogant.

    That would be an exceptionally clumsy use of psychology.

    However, when our reaction seems disproportionate, repetitive or strangely emotionally charged, it can become interesting to explore.

    Why is this particular characteristic so unbearable to me?

    Why do I need this person to stop being the way they are immediately?

    What might that say about me?

    Shadow Work often begins in, and thanks to, this kind of crack.

    How do you practise Shadow Work?

    There is no official Shadow Work method with twelve steps personally certified by Carl Jung.

    Today, the expression covers various introspective practices drawn from or inspired by several psychological traditions and personal development.

    But you can begin very simply.

    Take a situation that triggers a particularly strong emotion in you.

    Then ask yourself a few questions:

    • What exactly just happened?
    • What emotion did I feel?
    • What actually hurt, angered or frightened me?
    • What exactly am I blaming the other person for?
    • Is this a situation I encounter regularly?
    • What do I absolutely refuse to be?
    • Who taught me that this characteristic was bad?
    • Does a small part of me have this characteristic too?
    • Is that part of me looking for something?
    • What need might be hiding behind this reaction?

    The aim is not to immediately discover THE hidden truth of your unconscious.

    The aim is to open up hypotheses.

    A few Shadow Work questions that shake things up

    Looking for Shadow Work exercises?

    Here is a particularly simple one.

    Complete these sentences quickly, without trying to produce an intelligent answer:

    The people I can least stand are those who…

    I would absolutely never want to become someone who…

    I feel ashamed when…

    I would like to be able to…, but I do not allow myself to.

    When someone criticises me, what really hurts is…

    I wish other people recognised more of… in me.

    I feel jealous when…

    If nobody could judge me, I would…

    Then look at your answers.

    Not to condemn yourself.

    To look for repetitions.

    Because the shadow loves repetition.

    Accepting your shadow does not mean handing it the keys to the house

    This is an important distinction.

    Doing Shadow Work does not mean:

    “I accept my aggression, so from now on I can tell everyone to piss off. It’s my authentic self.”

    No.

    Understanding a behaviour does not mean giving it permission.

    Recognising:

    “Yes, I can be jealous”

    is very different from:

    “Because I am jealous, I have the right to control my partner.”

    Recognising:

    “I need recognition”

    does not mean:

    “Everyone must constantly praise me.”

    Integration is more about being able to say:

    “This part exists in me. Now, what am I going to do with it?”

    And that is infinitely more powerful than spending your energy pretending it does not exist.

    What if our shadow also hides some of our strengths?

    Let us be clear: our shadow does not magically contain “superpowers”.

    However, some qualities may have been rejected along with the behaviours we were trying to protect ourselves from.

    Someone who learned never to get angry may also have learned never to oppose anyone.

    Working with their anger may then help them rediscover their ability to set boundaries.

    Someone who rejects their ambition may discover behind it a genuine desire to create or achieve.

    Someone who hates their sensitivity may learn to recognise the fine perception that can sometimes accompany it.

    Someone who forbids themselves from being selfish may discover that they simply no longer know how to take care of their own needs.

    Someone who experiences anxiety but rejects it may also overlook some of their capacities for fine perception and intuition.

    That is why Shadow Work is not about eliminating the shadow.

    It is more about recovering what we locked away with it.

    Can you do Shadow Work on your own?

    Yes, to a certain extent.

    Write.

    Observe your reactions.

    Keep a journal.

    Notice your emotional triggers.

    Question certain automatic responses.

    All of this can be excellent introspective work.

    But we quickly run into a rather amusing problem:

    we are trying to observe our blind spots with the very brain that made them invisible.

    That is where an outside perspective can be useful.

    A coach can question a contradiction, notice a repetition, spot a lie we keep telling ourselves, ask why the same word keeps returning, or point out that we have just dodged exactly the same question four times in full bullet-time mode.

    And sometimes your answer will be:

    “Oh, shit.”

    Personally, I loooove the “oh, shit” moments.

    They often mean we have just found something interesting.

    Shadow Work, coaching and psychotherapy: let’s not mix everything together

    Shadow Work in coaching can be used as an introspective tool to explore certain behaviours, beliefs, emotional reactions or relationship dynamics.

    But not everything belongs in coaching.

    If this exploration brings up trauma, significant psychological distress or symptoms requiring clinical care, the work should be carried out with a qualified mental-health professional.

    Coaching is not there to treat a disorder or replace psychotherapy.

    It can, however, help you examine:

    your reactions,

    your relationship habits,

    your boundaries,

    your contradictions,

    the image you try to project,

    the behaviours you repeat,

    and the parts of yourself you may have learned to keep carefully out of frame.

    Turning the shadow into information rather than an enemy

    In the end, I still love my autumn metaphor.

    Not because autumn is some magical season when you absolutely must do your Shadow Work with a scented candle, a beige blanket and a €27 notebook from an esoteric shop.

    But because the tree gives us a beautiful image.

    When the green disappears, other colours become visible.

    Difficult periods can do the same thing to us.

    They reveal certain fears.

    Certain anger.

    Certain needs.

    Certain contradictions.

    And certain strengths too.

    Our first reflex is often to make whatever appears disappear immediately.

    Shadow work offers another possibility:

    look.

    question.

    understand.

    Then consciously choose what we want to do with it.

    Your shadow may not be the part of you that needs to be eliminated.

    It may simply be the part of you that you have not yet learned to look at directly.

    And if you need an outside perspective to explore what lies behind some of your reactions, blocks or recurring patterns, that is precisely the kind of work we can explore together in coaching.

  • Friendship: how to build healthy relationships and manage conflict

    Friendship: how to build healthy relationships and manage conflict

    “Friends are the family we choose.”

    We happily repeat this phrase.

    But curiously, when a friendship breaks down, when two friends fall out, when someone drifts away without explanation or when a friend disappears from our lives, we sometimes find it much harder to acknowledge how painful what is happening can be.

    We have an entire vocabulary for romantic breakups.

    But what do we call the end of a friendship?

    What do we do when we have fallen out with our best friend, when we argue all the time with a friend, when a relationship that was once extremely close becomes conflictual, or when someone who occupied a huge place in our life suddenly stops speaking to us?

    We suffer.

    But sometimes we are almost embarrassed by how much we suffer.

    Philippe Besson put it particularly well when he observed that there is no bereavement leave for the death of a friend: our social organisation itself tends to treat this bond as secondary.

    And yet, in recent years, something has begun to shift.

    Perhaps we are finally beginning to ask whether friendship deserves to be considered one of the major relationships in a human life.

    Friendship is not the little sister of romantic partnership

    Culturally, we have built a strange hierarchy of relationships.

    Romantic partnership occupies an enormous place.

    Family does too.

    Then come friends.

    And yet we can share twenty, thirty or fifty years with someone without ever living with them, marrying them or sharing property.

    That person may know our love stories, breakups, moves, enthusiasms, disasters, periods of doubt and the different versions of ourselves that have come and gone.

    Legally, however, that relationship may barely exist.

    It is precisely this hierarchy that philosopher and sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie examines in 3. Une aspiration au dehors. Drawing on his relationship with Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis, he considers friendship not simply as a pleasant addition to family or couple life, but as a way of life in its own right, with its rituals, habits, rhythms and forms of solidarity. Geoffroy de Lagasnerie’s website

    We can, of course, debate his critique of family-centred life or have no desire to organise our own lives as he does.

    But the question he raises remains fascinating:

    Why do we consider some relationships fundamental simply because they are familial or romantic, while treating others as secondary even though they may be just as decisive in a person’s life?

    And now friendship has even entered the French National Assembly

    The question became very concrete in September 2026.

    French MP Clémence Guetté introduced a bill seeking to grant new rights based on “friendship and bonds of affection and mutual support”. In certain legal situations covered by the proposal, the text would extend to friendships possibilities that are currently largely organised around family or romantic partnership: supporting a sick friend, taking leave after the death of a friend, or helping a friend after the birth of a child. OpenCongress France

    View the proposed legislation and its progress

    This is a political proposal, not the law currently in force, and its parliamentary future remains open.

    But regardless of what anyone thinks about the legal solutions being proposed, its existence reveals something interesting:

    friendship is beginning to be examined as a genuine social bond, rather than merely a pleasant private matter.

    In fact, in January 2026, a conference on the “politics of friendship” had already brought Clémence Guetté and Geoffroy de Lagasnerie together at the French National Assembly. Geoffroy de Lagasnerie’s website

    Why are friendships so important to our wellbeing?

    Because we are social beings.

    And on this point, we now have far more than pretty quotations about friendship.

    In 2025, the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Connection devoted an entire report to the consequences of loneliness and social isolation for health and wellbeing. The WHO even proposes considering social health alongside physical and mental health. World Health Organization

    Scientific research on social relationships also finds associations between the quality of social ties and various indicators of health and wellbeing. A longitudinal study of nearly 13,000 adults over the age of 50, for example, associated stronger friendships with better outcomes across numerous psychosocial indicators. This obviously does not mean that “having friends cures everything”, but it reminds us that our relationships are not simply scenery around our lives. PubMed

    Our relationships are part of our balance.

    And their quality matters.

    A friendship can also become a difficult relationship

    Here is the much less Instagram-friendly side of friendship.

    Loving someone does not automatically make us good at relationships.

    We can be deeply attached to someone and still:

    communicate badly, struggle to set boundaries, accumulate unspoken resentments, feel jealous, feel that we give more than the other person, feel abandoned when they meet someone, become less and less able to tolerate certain behaviours, feel used, struggle to say no, or eventually explode over something that looks completely insignificant from the outside.

    “I argue with my best friend all the time.”

    “My friend never listens to me.”

    “I feel like I’m always the one making the effort.”

    “Since he got into a relationship, our friendship has basically disappeared.”

    “She hurt me and I can’t forgive her.”

    “My best friend no longer speaks to me and I don’t understand why.”

    These are genuine relationship problems.

    And yet we quite readily consider therapy or coaching when our romantic relationship is struggling, but much less often when a friendship is causing us pain.

    Why?

    Relationship coaching is not just for couples

    This is a distinction I care deeply about.

    When I talk about relationship coaching, the first image that often comes to mind is a couple sitting opposite me.

    But a relationship is not necessarily romantic.

    We can work on a parent-child relationship, a relationship between two family members, between colleagues, business partners, friends, or even a relationship that deliberately sits outside the usual categories of couplehood.

    We can also work not on one particular relationship, but on the way you relate to other people.

    Why do I always end up in the same conflicts?

    Why do I find it so difficult to set boundaries?

    Why do I never dare to say when something has hurt me?

    Why do my relationships become so enmeshed?

    Why do I feel that I give a great deal and receive very little?

    Why do I abruptly cut people off when I am disappointed?

    Why do I find it difficult to make friends or maintain friendships over time?

    At that point, we are no longer simply trying to repair an argument.

    We are observing a relational pattern.

    “I fell out with my best friend”: who needs to come?

    Both of you, ideally, when both people want to work on the relationship.

    But not necessarily.

    As with couples coaching, it is possible to work on a relationship even when the other person is not present.

    Because you can already explore your own position:

    What actually happened?

    What did you understand about the situation?

    What did the other person probably understand?

    What were you expecting without ever saying it?

    What boundary was crossed?

    What are you trying to obtain?

    Do you want to repair this relationship, transform it, create some distance, or simply understand what is happening to you?

    Sometimes the problem is not even a lack of love or affection.

    We can love each other very much and be extraordinarily bad at understanding one another.

    And that is something we can work on.

    A healthy relationship is not a conflict-free relationship

    This is one misconception I would really like to clear up.

    A healthy relationship is not one in which nobody ever argues.

    Two different people will inevitably have different needs, perceptions, rhythms and sometimes different interests.

    So conflict is not always the problem.

    The problem may be what we do with it.

    Can we express disagreement without humiliating the other person?

    Say that something hurt us without immediately turning the other person into the guilty party?

    Hear criticism without assuming that the entire relationship is being called into question?

    Set a boundary without using silence as punishment?

    Acknowledge that we were wrong?

    Repair things after causing hurt?

    A strong relationship is not one miraculously spared from every tension.

    It is often a relationship that knows what to do with its tensions.

    What if our circle of relationships deserved as much attention as our career?

    We spend enormous amounts of time working on our professional lives.

    We develop skills.

    We review our progress.

    We think about our future.

    We change careers when a situation no longer suits us.

    But our relationship circle?

    Who are the people we are close to?

    With whom can we be vulnerable?

    Who can we ask for help?

    Who helps us grow?

    Which relationships nourish us?

    Which ones exhaust us?

    And above all: who are we ourselves within our relationships?

    This is not an invitation to conduct a quarterly audit of your friends complete with KPIs, pivot tables and annual performance reviews for Gérard, Kévin and Stéphanie.

    It is simply about recognising that building and maintaining healthy, reciprocal and satisfying relationships also deserves some attention.

    That is precisely why I wrote Relation’Aile

    Relationships have long been the common thread running through my work: romantic, family, professional and friendship relationships, but also our relationship with ourselves and the way we build connections with others.

    It is also the subject of my book Relation’Aile, in which I explore this relational material and what we can learn from the way we connect with other people.

    Discover Relation’Aile, the book

    Because ultimately, we learn an enormous number of things throughout our lives.

    But relatively little about how to be in relationship.

    And yet it is probably one of the skills we will use for the longest time.

    Friendship deserves our attention

    So yes.

    Share this article with your friends to tell them how much they matter to you.

    And… if an important relationship is deteriorating, you do not have to wait until it is completely destroyed before doing something about it.

    Whether the problem concerns your partner, your best friend, your mother, your adult daughter, a colleague, a business partner or a relationship so atypical that no administrative form quite knows which box to put it in, it is still a relationship.

    And a relationship can be observed, understood, worked on and sometimes repaired.

    That too is relationship coaching.

    Not learning how to have perfect relationships.

    Learning how to build relationships in which everyone can truly exist.

  • Saviour syndrome: helping others without taking control of their lives

    Saviour syndrome: helping others without taking control of their lives

    Sometimes, everything goes off the rails.

    A breakup. A professional crisis. A family conflict. A period of doubt. A loss of direction. A problem that seems impossible to solve.

    And at times like these, we sometimes dream that someone will finally arrive with THE solution.

    The providential man. Or the providential woman.

    The person who will save the day.

    Someone who would immediately understand what is happening, know exactly what to do and finally rid us of the problem.

    The expression is particularly familiar in politics: the “providential man” is the saviour figure who emerges in times of crisis and onto whom people project the ability to resolve a difficult collective situation. Historian Jean Garrigues has notably studied the persistence of this figure in the French political imagination.

    But we also create our own providential men and women in our relationships.

    A partner who will fix us.

    A manager who will solve every problem in the team.

    A friend who always knows what to do.

    A therapist who will heal us.

    A coach who will finally tell us how to live.

    And sometimes, someone is quite happy to take the job.

    Welcome to the wonderful world of saviour syndrome.

    What is saviour syndrome?

    Let’s start with one clarification: saviour syndrome is not an official medical or psychiatric diagnosis.

    The term instead describes a relational pattern in which someone feels a particularly strong need to help, fix, advise, protect or take responsibility for other people’s problems.

    Helping is obviously not a problem.

    Thankfully.

    The problem begins when:

    “I want to help you”

    gradually becomes:

    “I have to save you.”

    And sometimes:

    “I know better than you what is good for you.”

    The saviour may then feel responsible for the other person’s happiness, decisions or even personal development. They give enormously. Anticipate needs. Offer solutions before anyone has asked for them. Step in. Take over.

    And they may end up completely exhausted, wondering why nobody seems to appreciate everything they do for others.

    This is beginning to smell slightly like a trap.

    “I always want to save other people”: why?

    Because being the saviour can feel rewarding.

    And that is precisely what makes it subtle.

    Being the one who helps can make us feel useful, competent, indispensable, generous or needed.

    “Good thing I was there.”

    “Without me, he would never have managed.”

    “She needs me.”

    “If I don’t deal with it, nobody will.”

    It can also help us avoid something much more uncomfortable: accepting our powerlessness.

    Because loving someone unfortunately does not give us the power to solve all their problems.

    Sometimes the other person will make a choice we think is wrong.

    Sometimes they will ignore our absolutely brilliant advice.

    Sometimes they will suffer and we will not be able to remove their pain.

    Helping also means accepting that the other person remains the owner of their own life.

    Karpman’s Drama Triangle: Rescuer, Victim, Persecutor

    This is where Transactional Analysis becomes particularly interesting.

    Psychiatrist Stephen Karpman described in the late 1960s what is aptly known as the Drama Triangle, with three relational positions: Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor.

    These are not three categories of people.

    They are positions we can enter and move between during the same interaction.

    Imagine:

    “Leave it, I’ll do it for you.”

    Rescuer position.

    The person refuses your help.

    You insist.

    They get annoyed.

    And after spending a huge amount of time on someone who may never have asked for anything, you end up thinking:

    “After everything I’ve done for you!”

    The Rescuer can then become the Victim.

    Or the Persecutor:

    “You never make any effort!”

    And that is how a relationship that began with a perfectly generous intention ends in an argument worthy of a Christmas dinner that got a little too boozy by 11:47 p.m.

    The problem with the saviour: helping can become infantilising

    This is probably the point that interests me most.

    To save someone, you implicitly have to believe that they need to be saved.

    And this is where help can paradoxically become infantilising.

    If I systematically do things for you, I also deprive you of the chance to discover that you are capable of doing them yourself.

    If I make every decision whenever you doubt yourself, you never learn how to decide when I am not there.

    If I systematically answer for you, I gradually occupy the space where your own voice could emerge.

    The intention may be wonderful.

    The result, much less so.

    Doing something for someone is not always the same as helping them.

    Sometimes helping means precisely not taking the wheel.

    But what if I actually want someone to save me?

    That is the other half of the problem, and we talk about it less.

    Because the dynamic does not survive on the saviour alone.

    When we are exhausted, lost or overwhelmed, handing our power over to someone else can be extraordinarily tempting.

    “Just tell me what I should do.”

    I often hear this from clients, and I completely understand the desire because… deciding takes energy, and so does living with uncertainty. But I have never been a fan of “ready-made” coaching.

    So when we are going through a difficult period, meeting someone who seems to have all the answers can feel terribly reassuring.

    That is precisely why we need to remain cautious around the providential man or woman who claims to know exactly what we need.

    Coaching should instead provide perspective, knowledge, tools, hypotheses and sometimes a healthy dose of contradiction.

    Ideally, it should gradually increase your ability to act without the coach.

    A good practitioner is not “the person who will save the day”

    You have probably gathered by now that I do not want to be your providential woman.

    For one thing, it is not even flattering to me, actually. More importantly, it would mean delegating far too much responsibility to me.

    Because a coach’s role is not to create someone who comes back asking:

    “Martine, what should I do now?” at every crossroads in their life.

    Quite the opposite.

    The aim is for you to develop your powers of observation, discernment, understanding of your own patterns, relational skills and confidence in your decisions to the point where you need an outside person less and less to decide for you.

    There is a fundamental difference between:

    giving someone a solution

    and

    helping someone develop the ability to build one.

    The famous dilemma of giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish, although I am not going to let you “starve to death” either. (To understand that part, you’ll have to work with me.)

    Helping without saving: the difference between support and taking control

    You can help enormously without becoming a saviour.

    Helping can mean listening.

    Asking a question.

    Providing information.

    Offering another way of looking at the situation.

    Sharing a skill.

    Giving an opinion when it is requested.

    Being there while someone is going through a difficult time.

    Or simply asking:

    “Do you want me to listen, help you think it through, or suggest solutions?”

    That little question can prevent an absolutely phenomenal number of conflicts.

    Because sometimes someone genuinely wants our help.

    And sometimes they just want to be able to say:

    “My colleague is an arsehole.”

    Without immediately receiving a seven-step strategic plan to restructure their department.

    Saviour syndrome at work: when helping becomes exhausting

    The same mechanism obviously exists in the workplace.

    You may know this person.

    They pick up overdue files.

    Correct other people’s work.

    Solve every problem.

    Reply to messages while on holiday.

    Spontaneously train everyone.

    Take on emergencies.

    And regularly utter this fateful sentence:

    “Forget it, I’ll do it.”

    In the short term, this person can become incredibly valuable.

    In the long term, they may become exhausted, frustrated and convinced that their colleagues are incapable of functioning without them.

    And their colleagues may indeed end up taking less initiative.

    The system perpetuates itself.

    And I know what I am talking about because I have been that person, and I learned from my mistakes.

    That is why this is particularly interesting in management: an effective manager is not necessarily the person who solves every problem for their team.

    They may be the person who gradually builds a team capable of solving those problems themselves.

    Leadership: do we really need a providential man or woman?

    In an organisation, just as in an individual relationship, we may be tempted to look for the person who knows.

    The boss. The expert. The charismatic leader. The person who will take charge and solve the problem.

    The expression providential man historically belongs to political vocabulary and refers precisely to this figure who appears in a critical situation as someone capable of resolving it. Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française

    But leadership built entirely around one indispensable person has a rather spectacular flaw:

    it depends on one indispensable person.

    Another model is to build autonomy, responsibility and competence around you.

    This is precisely one of the ideas I explore in my Leader Instinct podcast, particularly through relational positions and the way we exercise leadership.

    Listen to this episode of Leader Instinct

    How do you get out of saviour syndrome?

    Perhaps by gradually replacing one question.

    Instead of:

    “How can I solve their problem?”

    try:

    “What does this person actually need from me?”

    Those are not the same thing at all.

    And a few questions can quickly reveal a tendency to rescue:

    • Did this person ask me to help them?
    • Am I helping them, or deciding for them?
    • Do I feel responsible for the outcome?
    • Can I accept that they may reject my advice?
    • Am I expecting recognition in return for my help?
    • Do I regularly exhaust myself solving other people’s problems?
    • If this person became completely autonomous tomorrow, would I be happy… or would I suddenly feel useless?

    That last one is fairly reflective and may bruise your ego, but it is necessary.

    And if it stings, that is probably a good sign.

    Perhaps the purpose of helping is to become unnecessary

    I do not believe the quality of support should be measured by the dependency it creates.

    Quite the opposite.

    Successful support should gradually give the person more power over their own life.

    That does not rule out help, support or advice.

    It simply means:

    I can walk beside you without claiming to know better than you where your life should go.

    And ultimately, whether we are talking about a parent, a partner, a manager, a coach or that famous providential woman everyone is waiting for to fix the situation, the principle remains surprisingly similar:

    helping someone does not mean becoming their power.

    It means helping them reclaim their own.