Category: Coaching for Performance

Coaching for Performance #1 – PLANNING

This is the first of three Posts on the subject of Performance Management and how the leader can drive for business results with coaching. Post #1 – Planning Performance. The next two are Supporting Performance and Reviewing Performance.

What does planning performance involve a leader doing? What options does the leader have for the way they invest their time? How does the leader add value? What are typical coaching goals? What resource material does the leader need as a platform for the coaching? What tools does the leader need from the Coaches Toolkit? I start with an overview of planning performance. I then draw on the experience of two senior leaders I have worked with and observed in action.

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Leadership Interview: Hans Augusteijn ‘My Coaching Journey’

We follow the fortunes of a senior leader in Northern Europe over a three year period as he learns and applies his newly acquired coaching skills and ends up a senior director spreading the coaching gospel to his direct report leaders.

I first started working with the Top Team at Maersk Northern Europe Liner Operations Cluster (NEULOC) in Rotterdam when I visited them to kick off the Coaching Master Class program in December 2012. At that time Hans Augusteijn was a Senior General Manager, a member of the senior management team and starting out on his coaching journey. Here he reflects on that journey three years on. What has he learned along the way? What can we learn from his experiences?

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Is ‘Impossible’ a Fact or an Opinion?

How can you build a team in which the word impossible serves as motivation for innovation and out-side-the-box thinking? How can we coach our people (employees, peers and even superiors) to begin with “WIN” or “can-do” mindset? How can we coach our people to build an organization where “impossible” is nothing but a source for of inspiration and motivation to find solutions that will place its organization ahead of competition? What is the leadership style you can apply to prevent your organization from missing good opportunities?


Whether it has been in big or small situations, I believe everyone throughout life has witnessed situations where the word ‘impossible’ has related to a specific action or idea but sooner or later it has been proved wrong.

In the history, there are evidences that impossible is more an opinion than a fact and for the sake of this article, there are two great examples related to transport which are simply undebatable.

The airplane. A number of scientists and engineers confidently stated that heavier-than-air flight was impossible – the most famous statement came in 1895 from Lord Kelvin, the Irish mathematician, “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”, only to be proved definitively wrong just eight years later. This one doesn’t need to elaborate further.

The Panama Canal. In 1534, Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, ordered a survey to determine if the two oceans, Atlantic and Pacific, could be connected and a canal built for ships to cross. The surveyors eventually decided that construction of a ship canal was impossible. A theory that was also disproved. In January 7, 1914 the ship Alexandre La Valley completed it’s maiden voyage going through Panama Canal. Today 13,000-14,000 vessels pass through the Panama Canal each year, at a rate of about 35-40 per day and ships up to 1,050 ft (320.04 m) in length, 110 ft (33.53 m) in width can cross. It is an engineering masterpiece.

How many times have you experienced situations where your projects or ideas have been judged as “impossible to be accomplished”? How often have you witnessed circumstances originally seen as impossible but soon later a solution to surmount every single obstacle has been found.

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