GRENADE
COACHING
GRENADE
COACHING

Catégorie : trust

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • Choose your difficulty: every decision has a price

    Choose your difficulty: every decision has a price

    Every decision comes with a degree of difficulty.

    Whether you are trying to move forward in your career, improve your relationships, take better care of yourself or simply change something in your life, every path comes with its own obstacles.

    Even doing nothing is a choice. And that choice has a price too.

    So perhaps the real question is not: “How can I avoid difficulty?”, but rather:

    Which difficulty are you choosing to face?

    The myth of the easy path

    We might think that choosing the easy option saves us effort. Yet postponing a decision, avoiding a conflict or giving up on a change is often only an illusion of comfort.

    Avoiding one difficulty today may simply mean choosing another one for tomorrow.

    Not having a difficult conversation temporarily protects you from conflict, but it can allow a relationship to deteriorate. Not changing an unsatisfying professional situation avoids the uncertainty of a transition, but may mean enduring a situation that no longer suits you for a long time.

    And the accumulation of these small “easy choices” can eventually become a much harder mountain to climb.

    So why not consciously choose the difficulty that brings us closer to what we actually want?

    Difficulty as a driver of change

    Obviously, this is not about seeking suffering for the sake of it.

    Choosing your difficulty means accepting the effort required for a change you consider important.

    Want to take better care of your health? Changing certain habits takes effort.

    Want to change careers or rediscover meaning in your work? The transition may bring uncertainty and require courage.

    Want to improve a relationship? You may need to have that uncomfortable conversation you have been postponing for weeks.

    In each case, there is a difficulty. But it has a direction.

    The difficulties we choose can become drivers when they serve a goal that genuinely matters to us.

    Choosing means reclaiming power over your life

    Obviously, we do not control everything that happens to us. But sometimes we can choose how we respond.

    That is where the power of decision lies.

    Choosing a difficulty means no longer waiting for a situation to become uncomfortable enough to force us into action. It means deliberately deciding which efforts we are willing to make and why.

    The obstacle is no longer simply something we endure. It becomes a step towards something we have chosen.

    And that distinction changes a great deal.

    Making a difficult decision, one step at a time

    When facing a major change, we easily picture the entire mountain when all we actually have to take is the first step.

    Willpower, however, is not a magical and inexhaustible resource.

    It is also built through concrete, realistic actions that are consistent with our goals.

    Set a boundary. Send a CV. Make that first call. Book an appointment. Say no. Start an activity. Finally have that conversation.

    An important decision does not always need to be followed immediately by a spectacular upheaval.

    Sometimes, taking back control simply begins with choosing the next action.

    Choose your difficulty… but actually choose it

    There is, however, an important nuance: not every difficulty deserves to be faced.

    Some battles are not ours. Some efforts produce nothing. Some goals have been imposed on us by the people around us, our professional environment or simply by an idea of what we should be.

    So the question is not about becoming braver in the face of any difficulty whatsoever.

    It is about asking:

    Is this difficulty genuinely taking me towards something I want?

    Because enduring is not always the same as moving forward.

    Coaching to make more conscious choices

    And sometimes the hardest part is not climbing the mountain.

    It is deciding which mountain is worth climbing.

    Coaching can help you step back from a situation, clarify your priorities, understand what is blocking a decision and turn an abstract goal into concrete actions.

    At Grenade Coaching, that is one of the things I invite you to explore: distinguishing the difficulties you endure from those you choose, and identifying the changes that genuinely deserve your energy.

    Because there is probably no such thing as a life without difficulty.

    But there is a considerable difference between paying the price for what you want and paying the price for what you never chose.

  • Limiting beliefs: how to identify them and break free

    Limiting beliefs: how to identify them and break free

    “I lack self-confidence.”

    “I’m incapable of doing that.”

    “If I raise my prices, I’ll lose my clients.”

    “I always end up with the wrong people.”

    “People like me don’t succeed in this field.”

    “I know my clients: I know exactly what they want.”

    All these sentences have something in common.

    They may be true. Or partly true. Or completely false.

    The problem is that when we treat them as indisputable truths, we often stop checking.

    And that is when a belief can become a limiting belief. Not simply because it is negative, but because it begins deciding for us what is possible, impossible, dangerous, reasonable or even worth trying.

    What is a limiting belief?

    A belief is a representation we consider sufficiently true to use it to interpret the world.

    We need them.

    We cannot start every morning by experimentally checking whether fire still burns, whether our colleagues exist or whether gravity is still working.

    Our brains build models.

    The problem arises when certain conclusions become too rigid, even though the reality that produced them was much more circumstantial.

    I failed once.

    “I’m not capable.”

    Someone left me.

    “People always end up abandoning me.”

    Three prospects rejected my price.

    “Nobody will pay that much.”

    I have always worked this way. Or the famous “we’ve always done it this way”, which drives me up the wall.

    “It’s the only way that works.”

    An experience becomes a rule. Then the rule influences our decisions.

    And our decisions can eventually create a reality that looks suspiciously like our original belief.

    Limiting beliefs, confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecies

    This is where things get really interesting.

    Because we love being right. Even when what we believe is making our lives bloody miserable.

    Once a belief is established, we may tend to notice information that confirms it and minimise information that contradicts it: this is one form of confirmation bias.

    You think:

    “Nobody is really interested in what I say.”

    Someone looks at their phone while you are talking:

    EXHIBIT NUMBER 847.

    Someone else listens attentively for forty minutes?

    Strangely enough, that piece of evidence disappears from the case file.

    And sometimes our beliefs also influence our behaviour.

    If I am convinced that nobody will listen to me, I speak less. I defend my ideas less. I make myself smaller. Other people therefore ask for my input less often.

    And I conclude:

    “See? Nobody cares what I have to say.”

    The loop is complete and the toast has been thoroughly buttered.

    Why is it so difficult to change certain beliefs?

    Because a belief does not merely describe reality.

    It can also protect us.

    If I believe:

    “I can’t succeed in this field because I don’t have the right qualifications”,

    that idea may hurt.

    But it also saves me from a particularly unpleasant experience:

    trying and discovering that I might fail for other reasons.

    A belief can protect our identity.

    Our sense of safety.

    Our belonging to a group.

    Our self-esteem.

    It can help us make sense of a painful experience.

    And sometimes, let’s be frankly less romantic about it:

    it can save us from getting off our arse and doing something.

    “It’ll never work” has one considerable advantage: you do not have to try.

    A limiting belief is not always self-deprecating

    We readily associate limiting beliefs with low self-confidence:

    “I’m useless.”

    “I don’t deserve to succeed.”

    “I’ll never manage it.”

    But a belief can also be extremely flattering.

    “I know my clients perfectly.”

    “I know how this market works.”

    “I have nothing to learn from those people.”

    “If it doesn’t work, it’s because other people don’t understand.”

    The belief is no longer protecting only against a feeling of inferiority.

    It can protect a sense of superiority.

    And the result can be exactly the same:

    we stop confronting our representation with reality.

    That is how an entrepreneur who is absolutely convinced they know what their clients want can spend six months building a fantastic offer…

    that nobody buys.

    Then conclude that clients really are idiots.

    That is one hypothesis. There may be others. But they have just created a belief, and they will have no shortage of opportunities to confirm it for themselves and build another offer using exactly the same logic.

    “My clients will never pay that price”

    I hear this one regularly in coworking workshops about our relationship with money, pricing, positioning or price adjustments.

    Someone considers raising their rates.

    And immediately:

    “I can’t do that or I’ll lose my clients.”

    Question:

    How many?

    Silence.

    Which clients?

    Slightly longer silence.

    Which ones explicitly told you they would leave? Were they clients or prospects? Have they ever paid for one of your services before?

    Silence, accompanied by a sudden fascination with the ceiling.

    Maybe the person is right.

    A price increase can indeed cause you to lose some clients. (But it can also attract others who are perfectly compatible with your service.)

    Coaching is not about replacing a pessimistic belief with magical thinking such as:

    “I deserve abundance, so I’ll triple my prices and the universe will provide.”

    Thanks, but no thanks.

    Instead, we can ask:

    What is your current price?

    What is your margin?

    How are you positioned in your market?

    What value does your offer create?

    Which clients are genuinely price-sensitive?

    Have you already tested a different price?

    With how many prospects?

    What happened?

    We then move from a belief to a testable hypothesis.

    And that shift is enormous.

    How can you loosen a limiting belief?

    I actually prefer the word loosen to “eliminate”.

    Because trying to eradicate a belief with positive affirmations may simply mean replacing one rigid certainty with another.

    Take:

    “If I set boundaries, people will abandon me.”

    Abruptly replacing it with:

    “People will always love me when I set boundaries”

    is not much more serious.

    Some people may indeed react badly.

    Instead, we can loosen it:

    “Some people may react badly when I set a boundary. Others will respect it. I can learn to distinguish between the two and decide which relationships I want to build.”

    Now something changes.

    The new thought is not artificially positive.

    It is simply more complex and more open to reality.

    To loosen a belief, I like working with a few questions:

    • What exactly do I believe?
    • Since when?
    • What experiences is this belief based on?
    • In which situations is it true?
    • In which situations is it not true?
    • What information do I tend to dismiss?
    • What does this belief allow me to avoid?
    • What would I risk if it were false?
    • How could I test it without taking a disproportionate risk?
    • What wording would be more nuanced while still feeling credible?

    The aim is not to think positively.

    The aim is to think more precisely.

    “I can’t do that because…”

    This wording is extraordinary.

    Whenever it appears, I want to hear what comes next.

    “I can’t turn down this client because…”

    “I can’t change jobs because…”

    “I can’t ask for that because…”

    “I can’t raise my prices because…”

    “I can’t say what I think because…”

    The “because” often contains the whole story.

    Because what?

    And then?

    What if that actually happened?

    What would the consequence be?

    Would it be unpleasant or genuinely catastrophic?

    Could you deal with it?

    How often has that consequence actually occurred?

    Sometimes the danger is perfectly real.

    And sometimes we discover that we have organised our lives for ten years around a “because” that nobody ever seriously questioned.

    When our beliefs reinforce our sense of powerlessness

    Some beliefs serve another purpose.

    They explain why we have no power.

    “People don’t change anyway.”

    “That’s just how things work in my industry.”

    “I have no choice.”

    “With my personality, I’ll always be like this.”

    “Other people are lucky. I’m not.”

    Again, some constraints are real.

    Not everything is possible for everyone.

    Our resources, history, environment and power relationships genuinely exist.

    But there is an enormous difference between recognising:

    “I don’t control everything”

    and concluding:

    “I control nothing.”

    A limiting belief sometimes loves to slip precisely into that gap.

    Because powerlessness also has a psychological advantage:

    if I can’t do anything, I don’t have any difficult decisions to make.

    “I lack self-confidence” can become a belief too

    Here is a little irony.

    Even low self-confidence can eventually become an identity.

    “I’m someone who lacks confidence.”

    Okay.

    Always?

    With everyone?

    In every area?

    Since forever?

    Have you never made a courageous decision?

    Never defended someone?

    Never learned something you thought you were incapable of doing?

    Never made it through a difficult situation?

    The aim is not simply to answer:

    “Of course you can! You’re amazing!”

    That would be fairly useless.

    It is about putting some granularity back into a sentence that has become enormous.

    Perhaps:

    “I lack self-confidence”

    actually means:

    “When I have to defend my expertise in front of someone I consider more legitimate than me, I strongly doubt my own value.”

    And that is much more interesting.

    Because we can work on that.

    How can you identify your limiting beliefs?

    They hide particularly well behind certain generalising words:

    always.

    never.

    everyone.

    nobody.

    necessarily.

    impossible.

    that’s just who I am.

    people are like that.

    that’s how it works in my profession.

    I know that…

    Whenever a sentence turns a complex experience into a general rule, it may deserve a quick inspection.

    Not to automatically conclude that it is false.

    But to ask:

    “How do I know this is true?”

    Coaching is not about replacing your beliefs with mine

    This is something I care about particularly.

    A coach’s role is not to look at your belief system and decide:

    “That’s false. That’s true. Now think like me.”

    Otherwise, we have solved nothing.

    We have simply changed gurus.

    My job is more about creating a little movement inside certainties.

    Questioning.

    Looking for exceptions.

    Bringing a contradiction into view.

    Distinguishing a fact from an interpretation.

    Building an experiment that allows us to test a hypothesis.

    And sometimes asking:

    “Okay. And if what you just told me were completely false, what would that change?”

    Then watching what happens.

    Stop letting your beliefs drive

    I would keep one image from my old article:

    your beliefs should not be your GPS.

    They are more like an old map.

    Some roads are still perfectly drawn.

    Others have changed.

    Some directions have probably saved you from some spectacular ravines.

    And there may also be an entire motorway that was built after the map was printed.

    So the aim is not to burn the map.

    It is to look out of the window regularly.

    And when a belief tells you:

    “You can’t.”

    do not necessarily answer:

    “Yes I can!”

    Ask it a much more annoying question instead:

    “What makes you so sure?”

    That is often where the work begins.

  • Bespoke professional training: learn, experiment… and even have fun

    Bespoke professional training: learn, experiment… and even have fun

    I have probably never felt quite as at home as I do in a training room.

    Give me a small group, a table I can sit on while talking with participants, a few markers, a whiteboard, some Post-it notes and a topic, with enough freedom to build a learning experience… and there is a very good chance I will turn it into something fascinating because…

    Training is where I feel at home.

    Because what I love about professional training is not so much passing on information.

    Information is everywhere.

    What I love is seeing the moment when it becomes understanding.

    That little:

    “Aaaaah… yes, of course!”

    The moment when someone understands something about themselves, about other people, about their work or about a situation they have been dealing with for years.

    When someone leaves with a better understanding of what surrounds them and, above all, able to use what they have just learned, I get that delicious feeling of:

    “job done.”

    Training should not be about swallowing information

    I am probably going to make a few “friends” in the industry with this one.

    You know that training course.

    9:03 a.m.

    PowerPoint.

    Slide no. 1.

    The trainer reads the slide.

    Slide no. 2.

    The trainer reads that one too.

    By 10:17 a.m., your soul has left your body, but your physical presence remains compulsory until 5 p.m.

    I have been there too.

    Even when I was younger, I had very little patience for being asked simply to absorb information and then reproduce it.

    Because learning is not just memorising. It is understanding. Questioning. Connecting new information to what we already know. Experiencing it. Testing it. Sometimes even challenging it.

    Good training should call on participants’ judgement, critical thinking and ability to reflect.

    Otherwise, you might as well send the PDF. Attending will be about as productive as skimming it.

    Active learning: making learners active participants in their training

    That is why I particularly enjoy active learning approaches and participatory training.

    I can introduce a concept, of course. Explain it. Put it into context. Provide the knowledge needed to understand it. But then I want us to do something with it. An exercise. An experiment. A game. A discussion, perhaps even a debate. A case study. A problem to solve. A role-play. Small-group work.

    A deliberately exaggerated situation in which people can test a behaviour without facing the consequences it might have in real life.

    Because there is an enormous difference between:

    “I know intellectually how to manage a conflict.”

    and:

    “I have just tried to manage a conflict.” (and it went well…)

    It is in that space between knowledge and experience that training becomes truly interesting.

    Role-play: experimenting without risking breaking the machine

    Take conflict management in the workplace, for example. (One of the training topics I often work on with clients. I wonder why.)

    We could quite easily spend two hours explaining the mechanics of conflict, perception biases, possible reactions and communication techniques.

    All of that can be useful.

    But it is still theory. So I like to introduce role-play and practical scenarios.

    Sometimes deliberately extreme ones. Or spaces where people can practise making mistakes.

    By exaggerating a behaviour, playing a role or deliberately pushing a situation towards the absurd, we can experiment. Try. Fail. Start again. Observe what happens. Try something more daring or more personal. And laugh. Laughter does not prevent learning. Quite the opposite.

    Laughter can create a space in which we dare to try more, make mistakes and step outside our usual patterns.

    We can work seriously without taking ourselves seriously all the time.

    Learning workshops that also create connection

    That is another thing I love about training.

    A training room is not simply a collection of individuals who have come to acquire a skill.

    For a while, it is also a group.

    And that group can become a learning resource for its members.

    A well-designed icebreaker is not just a way of making fifteen people say their name and favourite animal.

    It can immediately create a dynamic.

    Reveal differences.

    Allow participants to discover their colleagues in a different way.

    Encourage cooperation.

    Create enough psychological safety for someone to dare to say:

    “I didn’t understand.”

    or:

    “I disagree.”

    From a learning perspective, those two sentences are worth their weight in gold.

    Because a training session where nobody ever questions anything is not necessarily a training session everyone has perfectly understood. It may simply be a room that is far too polite.

    Designing bespoke training instead of applying a ready-made formula

    I also design bespoke training programmes and learning workshops.

    And “bespoke” does not mean changing the logo on the first slide.

    It means starting by understanding:

    Who are the participants?

    What do they already know?

    What do they actually need to learn?

    In what situations will they need to use this knowledge?

    What are the learning objectives?

    What difficulties are they encountering?

    What skills do we want to develop?

    How much time is available?

    What is likely to bore them?

    What, on the contrary, might put them in difficulty?

    How will we know, at the end, whether something has actually been learned?

    This is instructional design at a very practical level: starting with the need and building the learning experience around it, rather than starting with a nice set of slides and hoping very hard that something happens.

    Already have a training programme? Perfect. We can strengthen it too.

    And this is a part of my work that I particularly enjoy.

    You may already have what you believe is an excellent training programme.

    The content is relevant. The expertise is there. But…

    it is a little flat. Lots of slides. Lots of theory. Lots of time spent listening. And after an hour and a half, you notice that very particular look on the participants’ faces. The one that tells you their bodies are still in the room, but their brains have gone out to buy bread.

    That is precisely where I can step in.

    Not necessarily to rebuild your entire training programme, don’t worry.

    But to design learning activities that strengthen existing content.

    Turn twenty minutes of theory into an inspiring workshop. Create a practical scenario. Imagine a game that lets people experience a concept. Build a case study. Add an individual reflection exercise. Get participants working together. Create a sequence that checks what has actually been understood.

    In short:

    put some movement into the content.

    What about online training?

    Same problem.

    Changing the medium does not magically transform a lecture into a learning experience.

    Online training can be excellent, but it still demands motivation to listen and participate. And those little practical exercises people are asked to complete can sometimes feel more paralysing than encouraging.

    It can also become:

    video 1, video 2, questionnaire, video 3, quiz, congratulations, you have finished.

    And three weeks later:

    “What was that about again?”

    For e-learning, I can therefore also design intermediate exercises intended to maintain engagement and consolidate learning.

    Reflection questions. Practical cases. Application exercises. Challenges between two modules. Activities that require learners to use a concept in a real situation.

    Tools for assessing learning outcomes. Sequences that revisit previous knowledge.

    Because finishing a video does not necessarily mean you have learned something.

    Consuming content is not the same as learning it.

    Consolidating learning rather than simply “completing the course”

    There is a distinction that seems fundamental to me between:

    having attended a training course

    and

    having acquired a skill.

    A ticked box on an LMS platform tells us that someone reached the end of a module.

    It does not necessarily tell us what they will know how to do on Monday morning.

    So I like working on learning consolidation.

    Bring a concept back.

    Present it from another angle.

    Ask people to use it.

    Introduce a new difficulty.

    Check whether someone can transfer what they have just learned to a different situation.

    And, above all, allow people to make mistakes.

    Because mistakes in training are wonderful.

    They allow us to discover precisely what has not yet been understood before the mistake actually costs something.

    Training in human relationships: an especially rich field

    My favourite field remains, of course, human relationships.

    Communication.

    • Conflict management.
    • Management.
    • Workplace relationships.
    • Professional stance.
    • Understanding individual ways of functioning.
    • Cooperation.
    • Relational intelligence.

    I have also designed and facilitated training around Human Design, including relational workshops that allow participants not only to discover their profile but also to experience what these differences can produce in their interactions.

    And this is where my different activities come together.

    Coaching has taught me how to ask questions.

    Training forces me to structure and communicate.

    My work on relationships allows me to observe what happens between participants, not only what is written in my training programme.

    The best training may be the one where the trainer talks less

    That may sound paradoxical when you sell training.

    But I have no desire to be the person showing off for seven hours.

    My role is also to create the conditions that allow participants to think for themselves.

    I can bring expertise.

    I can create the framework.

    I can challenge an answer.

    Add information.

    Put two ideas into conflict.

    Point out something that has just happened within the group.

    But participants also arrive with their own experiences, skills, disagreements and questions.

    Why waste all that richness by simply asking them to shut up and listen to me?

    Training is not about filling heads. It is about creating the conditions for something to be built inside them.

    And sometimes between them.

    Why do I train people?

    Ultimately, for that moment.

    The one when someone stops.

    Thinks.

    And says:

    “Wait… I’ve just understood something.”

    I love that moment.

    Because a piece of information has just changed status.

    It is no longer simply something I said.

    It now belongs to the person who has understood it.

    And when a workshop has also allowed several people to laugh together, understand each other better, test something they would never have dared to try in their professional environment and leave with a skill they can genuinely use…

    Yes.

    That is when I feel I have done my job.

    Looking for professional training or a bespoke workshop?

    I can work with you in several ways:

    • design and deliver bespoke professional training;
    • create a learning or participatory workshop around a specific issue;
    • contribute to an existing seminar or training programme;
    • design an icebreaker with a genuine purpose rather than simply an entertainment effect;
    • create games, case studies and professional role-play scenarios;
    • enrich an existing training programme with active learning activities;
    • design exercises for online training or e-learning to support attendance, engagement and consolidation of learning;
    • work on communication, management, cooperation, human relationships or conflict management in the workplace.

    Already have the content but it lacks the learning experience? I am interested in that too. Without adding another 50 slides, don’t worry: together, we can absolutely make sure that something happens in the room.