GRENADE
COACHING
GRENADE
COACHING

Étiquette : EN

  • 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.

  • Understanding your problem is not enough: how to move from awareness to change

    Understanding your problem is not enough: how to move from awareness to change

    There is a particularly satisfying moment in personal development.

    The moment when everything suddenly makes sense.

    “Aaaaah… so THAT’S why I do that!”

    At last, we understand why we procrastinate.

    Why we systematically avoid conflict.

    Why certain situations send us into a tailspin.

    Why we keep repeating the same relationship pattern.

    Why we lack confidence in certain situations.

    Why we can never say no.

    Why we react the way we do.

    And that realisation can bring enormous relief.

    Finally, something makes sense.

    The problem?

    Understanding why the tap is leaking still does not fix the tap.

    Understanding your behaviour is not the same as knowing how to change it

    Understanding matters.

    Sometimes it is even essential.

    If you are trying to solve the wrong problem, you may indeed apply the wrong solution.

    But there is a fundamental difference between:

    identify → understand → know what to do → manage to do it → manage to do it again in real life.

    And we often squash all those stages into one.

    “Now that I understand, I should be fine.”

    Then three days later, the situation happens again.

    Someone says exactly the one sentence they should not have said.

    And…

    BAM.

    Same reaction.

    But you understood it.

    Yes.

    You just had not learned it yet.

    “That’s just how I am”: when an explanation becomes a justification

    Today we have an extraordinary number of frameworks that can help us understand ourselves better: personality tests. Medical diagnoses. Karpman’s Drama Triangle. Typologies. Neurodivergence. Attachment styles. Human Design. High sensitivity. Trauma. Atypical functioning. Family systems. Behavioural profiles. [etc.]

    And these tools obviously do not have the same nature or the same level of scientific validation.

    But they can share one thing in the way we use them.

    We can move from:

    “This helps me understand why this situation is difficult for me”

    to:

    “That’s just how I am, so there is nothing I can do about it.”

    And then the tool that was supposed to increase our understanding paradoxically begins to reduce our room for action.

    An explanation becomes an identity. Then an identity becomes fate.

    A diagnosis can explain a difficulty without condemning you to helplessness

    I can use my own example.

    I am autistic.

    So figurative language and second-degree humour can sometimes be difficult for me.

    That information helps me understand why certain communication situations may require more effort.

    It does not mean:

    “I am autistic, therefore I can never learn to recognise irony or sarcasm.”

    I can learn clues.

    Observe contexts.

    Ask questions.

    Develop strategies.

    Practise.

    I may never process those signals in exactly the same way as someone for whom they are intuitive.

    But understanding why something is difficult does not mean giving up on learning how to deal with it.

    And of course, this is my own experience. It is not a universal description of autistic people.

    Be suspicious of the word “therefore”

    There is a tiny word that often deserves close attention in our explanations.

    Therefore.

    “I am introverted, therefore I cannot speak in public.”

    “I am afraid of conflict, therefore I cannot set boundaries.”

    “I lack confidence, therefore I cannot ask for a raise.”

    “I have always functioned like this, therefore I cannot change.”

    Sometimes the conclusion is reasonable.

    And sometimes the therefore contains an enormous logical leap.

    The first part may explain a difficulty.

    The second turns that difficulty into an impossibility.

    So one useful question is:

    “Does what comes after ‘therefore’ necessarily follow from what comes before it?”

    From “why?” to “how?”

    “Why?” is a fascinating question.

    Why do I do this?

    Why do I react like that?

    Why does this situation affect me so much?

    But after a while, another question becomes necessary:

    “How does this actually happen?”

    When?

    With whom?

    After what?

    In what emotional state?

    What happens in my body?

    What thought appears?

    What do I do immediately afterwards?

    What do I gain in the short term?

    What does it cost me later?

    For example:

    “I don’t know how to set boundaries.”

    is still very broad.

    But:

    “When I think a boundary may disappoint someone whose approval I am seeking, I tend to reverse my decision.”

    is much more workable.

    We have moved from an identity to an observable mechanism.

    Knowing is not a skill

    You can know exactly how an argument should be structured and still freeze when you have to speak in front of twenty people.

    You can understand assertiveness perfectly and still say yes when you wanted to say no.

    You can know all the principles of conflict management and still lose your temper when someone presses exactly the right button.

    Because knowledge and skill are not the same thing.

    A skill is developed through practice, feedback, adjustment and repetition.

    That is true of public speaking, communication, negotiation, setting boundaries and many other relational abilities.

    Understanding gives you a map.

    Practice teaches you how to drive.

    Observe → Understand → Test → Adjust

    This is probably the simplest way I can describe the process I like to use.

    1. Observe

    Describe what happens as precisely as possible.

    Not:

    “I always sabotage myself.”

    But:

    “In what situation? With whom? What did I do? What happened just before?”

    What actually happened?

    2. Understand

    Look for possible mechanisms.

    Emotions, needs, habits, environment, beliefs, missing skills, relational context…

    3. Test

    Choose one concrete change.

    Not:

    “I am going to become more assertive.”

    But:

    “At my next meeting, when I disagree, I will ask a question first before explaining my objection.”

    4. Adjust

    What happened?

    What worked?

    What did not work?

    What does this experience teach us?

    Then repeat.

    Change becomes an experiment rather than a judgement about yourself.

    And sometimes the problem is not psychological

    Another reason why method matters.

    If I procrastinate because my task is badly defined, spending three weeks exploring my childhood may not be the most efficient strategy.

    If I cannot speak up because I do not know how to structure an argument, I may need a skill, not an existential revelation.

    If I am exhausted because my workload is objectively absurd, working only on my “inner resistance” may even become frankly counterproductive.

    Not every problem is a wound.

    Sometimes what is missing is: a method, information, a skill, organisation, a boundary, a conversation, or a decision.

    And identifying the nature of the problem prevents us from spending a great deal of time repairing the wrong pipe.

    Why coaching can help move from understanding to action

    That is precisely where I see the value of coaching.

    Not in:

    “I am going to reveal who you are.”

    You are already fairly well placed to participate in that investigation.

    A coach’s role can be to help turn something vague into something observable.

    Move from:

    “That’s just how I am.”

    to:

    “I do this in these circumstances.”

    Then:

    “This seems to be what triggers the behaviour.”

    Then:

    “This is what I would like to be able to do instead.”

    Then:

    “What experiment can we build to try it?”

    And afterwards, come back and look at what actually happened.

    It is less spectacular than a mystical revelation.

    It is also much more usable.

    Understanding is not useless. It is the beginning.

    I absolutely do not want to fall into the opposite extreme.

    Awareness matters.

    Putting a name to a difficulty can be enormously liberating.

    Receiving a diagnosis can help make sense of years of difficulties that previously seemed incomprehensible.

    Identifying a relationship pattern can completely change how we read a situation.

    Understanding how we function can help us stop judging ourselves and start looking for strategies that are genuinely suited to us.

    But then comes the question:

    “Now that I know, what am I going to do with it?”

    And perhaps that is ultimately the whole difference between knowing yourself and learning how to act with what you know about yourself.

    An explanation can make your story more intelligible.

    A method can help you write what comes next.

    As the saying goes:

    The past is a chapter. Not the whole story.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Procrastination and lack of motivation: what is your laziness really hiding?

    Procrastination and lack of motivation: what is your laziness really hiding?

    You know that kind of day: you know perfectly well what you need to do. The file is open. So is the task list. You had even planned to start at 9 a.m. It is now 11:42 and you have learned an astonishing amount about the best way to clean bathroom grout…

    Yes, yes, you are procrastinating.

    Or, in its much more scientifically precise formulation:

    you just can’t be arsed.

    Well… maybe.

    Because behind this apparent loss of motivation, very different mechanisms may be hiding.

    And before trying to become more disciplined, it might be worth understanding why you can no longer get yourself moving.

    The answer may be subtler than it looks.

    Procrastination is not necessarily laziness

    That is probably the first idea to get out of the way.

    Procrastination means voluntarily delaying an action even though we know that postponing it may work against us.

    Psychologist Fuschia Sirois’s work notably invites us to understand it as an issue of emotion regulation: we are not merely trying to avoid a task, but the unpleasant emotion associated with that task. APA

    In other words:

    maybe I am not putting off this report because I am lazy.

    I am putting it off because it bores me.

    Because it makes me anxious.

    Because I do not know where to start.

    Because I am afraid it will be bad.

    Because I do not understand what is expected of me.

    Because the task is so enormous that my brain would rather alphabetise my spice rack.

    And in the short term, the mechanism works remarkably well.

    I postpone the task. And voilà: Relief.

    The problem?

    The task still exists.

    And now… it has invited stress over for dinner, the annoying bastard.

    So no, procrastination is not necessarily self-sabotage

    Immediately describing all procrastination as self-sabotage implies that we are consciously involved in some sort of conspiracy against ourselves.

    It is rarely that simple.

    Procrastination can temporarily help us avoid an uncomfortable emotion. The problem begins when this strategy becomes repetitive and ends up increasing the stress, guilt or difficulties it was supposed to help us avoid. APA

    So the right question is not necessarily:

    “How can I force myself to work?”

    but:

    “What am I avoiding when I avoid this task?”

    And that is where the answers become much more interesting.

    “I can’t be bothered”: yes, but which kind?

    Because there are probably fifty different things hiding behind that sentence.

    The tired kind: I am genuinely exhausted and need to recover.

    The bored kind: this task stimulates absolutely nothing in me.

    The scared kind: starting means risking failure.

    The perfectionist kind: if I cannot do it perfectly, I would rather not start.

    The confused kind: I do not even know what the first action is.

    The rebellious kind: I could do it, but I hate being told how, when and why.

    The absurdity kind: I can no longer see the point of what I am doing.

    And finally, a particularly interesting category:

    the demotivated kind.

    I know how to do it. I could do it. But something in me replies:

    “What’s the point?”

    And now we are no longer talking only about procrastination.

    We are talking about motivation.

    How do you get your motivation back?

    We often imagine motivation as some mysterious quantity in our body made from heaps of dopamine and pleasure.

    Some people supposedly have lots of it. Others very little.

    And some have probably lost it down the back of the sofa along with their car keys and the remote.

    But motivation depends enormously on the context in which we act.

    In Drive, Daniel Pink popularised research on intrinsic motivation around three major factors:

    autonomy, mastery and purpose.

    Autonomy: having some latitude over what we do and how we do it.

    Mastery: feeling that we are progressing and developing our skills.

    Purpose: understanding why what we do matters and what it contributes to. Daniel Pink

    And suddenly the question:

    “Why do I procrastinate so much at work?”

    can become:

    Do I still have room to make decisions?

    Am I learning anything?

    Do I feel that I am progressing?

    Do I still understand why I am doing this job?

    Because trying to solve structural demotivation with nothing but more discipline is a bit like pressing harder on the accelerator when the car has clearly run out of fuel.

    Motivation and recognition: “What’s the point if nobody sees what I do?”

    Recognition also matters.

    Not necessarily in the form of applause, medals and a brass band every time we answer an email.

    But human beings generally need to feel that their contribution exists, is useful or is at least noticed.

    When effort seems invisible for a long time, motivation can erode.

    And once again, the solution is not necessarily to become “more disciplined”.

    Sometimes the real issue is the environment.

    Being busy is not the same as moving forward

    Procrastination has a particularly elegant disguise:

    productive procrastination.

    Answering emails.

    Reorganising your folders.

    Redoing your Notion setup. (No, no, I am absolutely not targeting anyone.)

    Watching fifteen videos about productivity.

    Choosing a new time-management app.

    You are extraordinarily busy.

    You still have not started the thing.

    That is where it can help to ask:

    “If I could accomplish only one thing today, which one would actually change something?”

    Then start that one.

    Even imperfectly.

    What if procrastination were sometimes information?

    Let us be reasonable: I do not think we should glorify it.

    Regular procrastination can be costly in stress, guilt, opportunities and sometimes health. APA

    But I do not think it is particularly intelligent to respond automatically to procrastination with:

    “Get off your arse.”

    Well… sometimes, yes.

    But when the phenomenon keeps repeating, it may deserve something better than a moral judgement.

    Because behind “I’m procrastinating”, there may be:

    “I’m scared.”

    “I’m exhausted.”

    “I don’t know how to start.”

    “I want to do it so well that I no longer dare to do it at all.”

    “I have no autonomy.”

    “I’m no longer progressing.”

    “Nobody recognises what I contribute.”

    “I no longer understand why I’m doing this.”

    Or even:

    “I don’t want this anymore.”

    (A sentence we often hear from our Manifesting Generator friends in Human Design.)

    No time-management app will properly answer that kind of sentence.

    Coaching, motivation and procrastination: getting moving again

    That is precisely where coaching can become useful.

    Not to have someone standing behind you shouting:

    “COME ON! MOTIVATION! DISCIPLINE! MOVE!”

    But to understand what is actually happening.

    Is the task unclear?

    Is there fear?

    Perfectionism?

    Exhaustion?

    A lack of meaning?

    A lack of autonomy?

    A problem with recognition?

    Or is this goal simply no longer yours?

    Motivation is not always something you need to recover. Sometimes its disappearance is information you need to listen to.

    And once we know what the problem actually is, we can stop trying to repair everything with yet another productivity hack.

  • 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.

  • 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.

     

  • 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.