Becoming a Coach with Marcel Häbold: From HR Challenges to Leadership Transformation

He grew into several HR business partner roles until he eventually got fired from Amazon. That was the point when he decided to make a change in his life and eventually started out as a coach. Today he helps large companies select their leaders in assessment centers.

I was impressed by how this requires him to be an actor in a role play and at the same time observe the candidate and hold the space for all other participants. Towards the end of this episode Marcel put me into such an assessment situation. So let's not lose time and get started.

And we are on. Thanks, Marcel, for today's session. It's great to have you here.

You can pick any of these cards, and I see you have already done that.

So we move on to presentation. And I see a night sky in a snowy, mountainous region, possibly in Scandinavia, and everything is magically illuminated by aurora lights. If you are only listening to this and not watching the video, you can probably see Marcel's image on the cover picture of the podcast episode.

Marcel, take us with you into this night sky.

And that night we decided to leave the hotel we stayed in and spend the night in the car in the woods. We drove off grid and found a nice place near a lake, in absolute silence, no one around us, no light surrounding us. And then we got to experience the northern lights, the aurora, for the first time.

I recall this very moment because it was so special. We spent four to five hours outside just watching. It was freezing cold, minus two or three degrees. And still we could not not look at the sky. That was really impressive.

And why does it describe my journey as a coach? It was the very first time I got to experience how small my concerns and worries actually are when I am in pure awe of a natural experience like this.

I got to feel very tiny. It does not play any role what my concerns are or what I am worrying about in this very moment, because this might happen either way, whether I am here or not, whether I am worrying or not, whether I am having my thoughts or not. I was just really happy to be part of it. That was a very mighty moment for me, and I could make use of it.

I transferred it to my career and also to my path of becoming a coach. Because every time feelings and thoughts get bigger than I want them to become, I just recall this very moment, and they are very tiny again.

How did that evolve? And maybe you can also help us understand a bit what an HR business partner actually does day to day.

And at the same time, newspapers had always been displayed online for free, without charge. You could easily reach the website and get all the information without paying for it. So the big question was, how can we make users subscribers, how can we make them pay for the content they were actually using or consuming?

Joining in 2011, that was a critical phase. Where is it going? What is the direction we are heading into? It was very crucial. I recall that when I joined in 2011 lots of people were also made redundant, because their jobs would just not be necessary anymore in the modern world.

And at the same time you were desperately looking for people who could install or program apps, or deal with more IT-ish things, which had not necessarily played a role up until then. When I joined, HR was actually the driving force in embracing this kind of change.

So they would not just take care of all the legal stuff, writing contracts or making people redundant. They would also steer it towards solution orientation and try to figure out what the world of tomorrow could look like. That was really impressive to me, because I felt there is a huge power in shifting the perspective from, oh, this change is unfair,

my job might be at risk, what am I going to do, to a more positive perspective, saying it is a change which is necessary either way. It will come whether I am here or not. So I could make use of being here and actually drive this change forward proactively. And this is how I got to experience working as an HR business partner.

I really loved it. I liked it because I felt I could add value by helping people change their perspective and also see the good things in this major change.

Not only administering tough choices, letting people go, but also giving them a sense of security, and then optimism maybe, during those times.

They would not necessarily see HR, and an HR business partner, as the driving force when it comes to creating a modern working world. So that meant I was then more managing people, writing contracts, writing reference letters,

making sure the time to hire is really low. That is more what I was doing as an HR business partner afterwards, and I did not like it that much, because I liked the creative part of the role.

I was on a limited contract back then, and my wife and I were very sure that we needed to change something about the way we live, because both of us were not as happy as we wanted to be. And then we learned in February 2020 that my wife was pregnant. At the same time I was looking for a new job, and it was clear that we also needed to break out of only looking for jobs in the area where we live.

So we would be ready to leave the place we live, to move and resettle. In this time I got to know someone from Amazon and we were in loose contact. Then one thing came to another and all of a sudden I was in this hiring process for becoming an HR business partner in Graben, which is in Bavaria.

That is around 200 kilometers away from where we used to live. The process went really well for me. There were four to five touch points, and the last one was a really intensive assessment center over six hours, performing in front of the boss of my boss and other country leads.

And I was offered a contract, so they really wanted me. They also suggested to me that there is no Amazon tomorrow without you joining us. They do really well in their hiring process.

They really give you the feeling that they need you and that you are the best. And it also turned out that in the hiring process they would of course shed light on all the great things that they do. Turning their processes green,

striving to become the first carbon neutral company in the world, zero emissions, zero waste. They would also highlight that they are building their own electric cars. So you really get the glimpse that you might be adding value not just for Amazon, but also for the planet and the world. And as I described, I was on my journey to become a dad for the very first time. You definitely think more and more deeply about what the world is going to look like when I leave, especially when there is someone on the way.

You can order anything, and that is a fulfillment center. They have a huge stock of all of these items, and they get the items, stock them, pack them if you buy them, and then deliver them out to the customers or to other fulfillment centers.

And the HR business partners are in charge of the different business units that operate on the shop floor, but also in the offices.

You help them make people perform, so to say, especially regarding low performance or no performance. That means you need to ensure that legally everything is correct if you want to make someone redundant. They are really eager for people to perform. So if you are having a bad day, you had better not have it twice, because that might lead to an end of your employment with them.

They can measure how many items you stock in an hour, how many steps you walk. They can also see how many packages you pack, how hard you work, how many breaks you have. They have great opportunities to manage and display performance. And if you don't perform at all, well, it is a high performing company.

So you can either get yourself together and come back to a good performance if you showed it before, and if you are not able to do that, then that's it.

To help people come back to their best performance, to the best versions of themselves. And if that meant I had to have a chat with them, or two or three, then I would focus on doing that, to keep them working for us instead of releasing them.

And finding someone new.

I was trying to take care of those cases in a personal way, the way I used to do it. And that was not required of me. Back in those days I could not see this, I could not understand it. That was finally one of the reasons, I am assuming, because I was not given feedback, why I then had to leave.

I recall that my boss approached me and asked me if I had a minute for her to have a chat. And I was like, yes, sure, why not. So we went to those conference rooms, and there was this other site manager I had never worked with before, because he was not in my business unit.

So we would not work directly or closely together. And I was wondering, asking myself, what's happening? I entered the conference room. It was mid pandemic, we were all wearing masks, so you could just see the bare eyes of each other. And I recall my boss staring me directly in the eyes and telling me, Marcel, I'm sorry, but we have to make you redundant.

It's not working out anymore. And then she just gave me the termination letter and asked me to sign it, and I was completely lost. I did not expect that at all. It was as if someone pulled the floor from beneath my feet.

And then I tried not to cry or burst into tears. I tried to ask her for feedback. What is it? Why would you do that? And why couldn't we just talk about whatever it is that makes you feel it is necessary to make me redundant now, to kick me out?

And she would not share anything with me, due to legal pressure, because everything she shared could be used against her if I decided to sue them, which, by the way, I did. So she would not share feedback with me. She was just really professional, very distanced, having me sign the letter, pack my things, leave all my cards, permission cards and entry cards on the table.

And then I had to leave. That was the very last time I stepped into this fulfillment center. Then I drove home, and on my way back home, a ten minute drive, I was pretty okay. I was like, well, that's it, fine with me. And then when I finally arrived at home, I just burst into tears.

I cried all night long. That was a very, very tough night for me, but of course also for my wife.

What is it that you want? Because obviously this is the fifth or sixth business partner role you have taken over since Südwestdeutsche Medienholding, and you are not happy. That was the first time I really let myself say this to me. You are not happy.

That's not what you want to do. It is a hard thing to say to yourself if you built your whole career on this path, because it means that everything you built up so far needs to change. And first of all, that makes you very, very terrified of this step, of this transformation.

And on this way, while I was doing my very own coaching and aligning with my own thoughts and wishes and fears and everything that I feel, also dealing with my emotions, I learned that this is one of the core things I can add value with, not just for myself or my family, but maybe also in my professional life.

That was the first time I thought about becoming a coach myself. And then I decided to do a training. That was the starting point of my journey.

So I did it in 24 months. It was a hybrid setup. There were onsite meetings with peers and lots of practice hours, but it was also remote, so you would have some remote calls preparing you for the next section. It was called psychological consultant and business coach.

That is what it is called. After two years I finished it and got my degree, so to say, as a coach. You are probably aware that there is no literal degree you can get in coaching, but I did my certificate. At the same time I found a new role as a psychological HR consultant, and this is when I started to work for A Train and got to experience what the consultant life is like.

then going into consultant shoes and also changing the way you saw yourself and your role in the world.

And while doing this, consultancy was one of the possibilities I worked out for myself, which could be a fit for me, shifting from being an HR business partner but keeping the knowledge I gained over the years, and then adding value in a different kind of way.

And this was when I got to know A Train, I was introduced to them. It was really great, because I had the feeling that they operate on a very psychological level. I would definitely have a gap of knowledge there, but what I do have, coming from business, is a good business acumen, knowing how big companies function, how decision processes work and how to approach them.

And I had the feeling, or both of us had the feeling, Adrian and I, that this is a good fit, because I was then offered a contract. So I started my journey with A Train, from the point of view of what is it that I can add, how can I add value.

And I found myself shifting from adding value to a company I am employed at, to adding value to human beings who work for a company. My direct contact point is not necessarily the business or the company anymore, but the people. This is where my focus shifted from serving the business to serving the people who work for the business.

On the one hand they offer a great assessment center and development center experience. They lead or manage companies going through those centers and help people to develop, to acknowledge their strengths but also their areas of development, and then provide them with concrete steps on how to develop further. And on the other hand they do a great range of transformation consultancy.

They help companies to transform themselves holistically, from the very start to the very end, if there is an end in transformation. That is what they do.

And secondly, you had also worked in recruiting as an HR business partner. You had probably taken part in, seen and scheduled an assessment center to select talent, to select new leaders. And both of these things you were now doing from the other side of the relationship.

and then have the environment change you. It is actually you who needs to change first, and then you can change the environment. Because if you don't change your thoughts, your mind, your habits, your patterns, then you will always find a way back to what you used to do. I found this to be really impressive.

I worked three years with A Train, and it was a great time for me. I recall it as really, really great.

That means we were also responsible for managing our customers and managing our costs as a team, and for adding benefit on a monetary level. So as a senior consultant I would work closely with customers, performing on site and off site with them, but also maintaining the relationships with them.

But I would also take over a kind of leading role within the team, to see if everybody is developing, if we are heading towards being beneficial to the company, or if there is something we need to do if there is a discrepancy between the money we take out of A Train and the money we bring in.

And that was my role.

Is that the model you also followed?

Because if not, then you are dependent on other teams overperforming. It was actually a cool way to foster collaboration within the team, but also to foster competition between the teams.

In a healthy kind of way, I would say. It was not unhealthy.

How did that work? Doing the coaching education, working on the job. What would you say were your most useful learning grounds at that time?

And now I would shift towards helping others. So it is actually facilitating, helping others to find the best possible solution themselves, creating the room for them to use their full potential to create the best possible solution and outcome. And that was completely new to me.

I had an idea about how transformation was created, or how you would perform a transformation from the HR point of view, but I had never enabled a group of leaders to find the best possible solution, to create a safe space for them. This is what I got to learn, really closely and deeply, from the other senior consultants working for A Train.

And then of course also being able to directly and immediately apply things I learned from my coaching education. Doing the facilitation and enabling leaders in this scenario, you can make a lot of use of what you learn to become a coach. It is all about active listening, paraphrasing, really crystallizing and sharing back what you are hearing to check whether it is correct or whether there is a misunderstanding in the room, and also acknowledging emotions, how they feel, whether they

act and talk the same way, or whether there is a difference. So you could definitely make a lot of use of the coaching education.

And if yes, what would be your advice?

And it hindered me, because being an HR business partner also required me to be the professional. When you become a coach, it is actually the coachee who is the professional, and you just help them enable themselves, creating the room, as I shared. That was a huge learning for me.

My self assessment is that I appeared more like the trainer, who tried to tell people how to do things. But that is not really the task you have as a coach. At some point in time, of course, you can close the room and be more divergent and convergent, but not from the very start.

I had to learn this, because I really used to try to tell people what they should do. And that is just not correct when you become a coach. So my greatest advice, if you are on your journey to becoming a coach, is that even though you might resonate with all the things people share with you, or clients share with you,

try to hold your breath a little longer than you probably do, and let them find solutions themselves. Because if you manage to stand the silence that might appear, what happens afterwards is a mighty moment.

If everyone is quiet for a while, or if your client is quiet for a while, that is a thinking process taking place. And if you don't disturb it, it is really mighty.

I would like to understand a bit better how you applied these learnings, telling less, asking more, listening more, in your day to day work. Can you get us into that room with a client? What did that look like?

They are located in Baden-Württemberg. They had a new HR lead, and this new HR lead wanted to transform the HR team, because they really worked as HR managers, writing contracts, writing reference letters, and he wanted them to become a bit more the creative part, and at the same time to divide them into units.

There is the service center for writing the contracts and the reference letters, there are the business partners who support the business in growing and scaling and performing, and then there are maybe also the HR development people who think about which classes we can offer and what development we need to do.

And as an HR business partner who did this for many other companies in different roles, I had a very clear understanding of how you could do this in an easy and efficient way. So from my point of view, being hired as a consultant to help them get there, I was adding ideas and ideas and ideas,

due to my knowledge. However, at the end of day one, it was a two day offsite that I had with them, I learned from the new HR manager that he acknowledged what I knew about how to set this up, but that he would also require me to add fewer suggestions, because he wanted

his people to get into this thinking process, to make it their very own idea, and not have someone present them the solution. Because that is what I mean with inner transformation and outer transformation. You need to transform yourself. If you don't do this, then you will find ways to go back to what you used to do, because it is not your transformation.

It is someone else's. I recall this as a really hard night for me, because it was critical feedback and I didn't like it at all. I wanted to feel acknowledged for what I know, and I also wanted him to be happy. However, it turned out not to be that good.

I really took this with me. I recall that night I did not sleep, maybe two and a half hours, because I was thinking about how I am going to do the next day. What am I going to do? I would shift the agenda and think about what I can do so that they are happy.

And then I finally recalled that one other senior consultant would have the team put the agenda together themselves. In the very beginning he would just present a timeframe and say, what do you want to do today? What is it that helps you the most? But I had never done that. I had no experience with it.

So I put together a timeframe, and the next day I just asked, what is it that helps you the most today? What shall we do?

And they put it together. And then it was my task to manage the room, to have them concentrate, and to listen to what they are sharing with each other. What is it that they are actually sharing? Is there something behind the things they say?

We tend to put something in front of our initial concern, to not let this happen to others or to ourselves. And that was immediately my job, to listen to them, to really get a glimpse of whether there is a concern behind it, or an emotion behind it.

Are we talking about the same thing? Does person A understand what person B says or not? It turned out that I could do this, thanks to my coaching education, better than I thought I was able to. From my own understanding I was still not super happy with the outcome of the day.

But the new HR boss was happy. He was really happy. He told me it was an absolute improvement on day one. And I was super grateful and thankful for this experience. Coming from the comfort zone, being put into the panic zone and then coming back to the learning zone. It was a good experience.

And on day one you also showed that and contributed with your expertise, with your previous experience, bringing in suggestions, doing a great job from your perspective, I guess. But then you got the feedback: you need to shut up more, we want to create our own thing. That gave you a tough night, and on the next day you were able to step into the listener role, as you shared.

And then being able to listen. What are your goals? How do you phrase them? What are the words you use? Then also being able to keep those in mind instead of your own agenda and ideas. And that enables you, I guess, to remind people of their own goals when they go off track in a conversation, to hold them, to hold the space.

Is that it?

The second thing is ego. I wanted to protect my ego, because I wanted to be seen as a professional who knows it all. But that was just not required of me. It was a tough process for me to understand, but I finally did, and then I could help them get where they wanted to head.

If I could not have let this go, if I had not received this feedback, I would probably have kept on performing the way I did on day two as well. And that would probably have led to a customer who was not that satisfied. It was a hard situation, but it was a valuable experience, because I can make use of it.

And then eventually starting your own practice, your own company, offering this kind of service. What prompted this transformation?

The coaching that I did myself, because I figured out that I wanted to shift from being employed to becoming a consultant who can add value and help people grow, discover their potential and live to their full potential. And I knew that I wanted to do this in my own business.

From the very start it was just not possible for me to do it, because I was also a dad with a young daughter, providing for the family. So there was still this urge in me to also give some security to my family, to make them feel secure, because it is my responsibility now.

I don't know how to put this into words, but once you become a parent the way you see things completely shifts. It is unimaginable how much transformation happens when you have a child, and how much more deeply you think through processes or actions.

I knew that I wanted to start this business when I did my coaching, but I could also see that there was still a gap in experience and professional skills. So I had to look for an opportunity to develop and grow myself.

And with A Train I knew that this could be a really great opportunity for me.

When I started and got to learn the processes, how they work and the people, they have incredibly intelligent people working for them. This is also when I met Max, and he was partly self employed when I got to know him. He was my mentor, the very first point of contact I had at A Train.

And he runs a cool business. I don't know if you have heard of it before. It's called metaFox. So this is when I got to know him, and he also introduced me to the idea of being self employed in a more detailed and more precise way. But I needed this step. I definitely needed this step.

I needed A Train to become who I am today. If I had started being self employed right away it would have been way harder for me than it is today, because I got to experience the system they operate in, and the psychological way of the transformation business.

And I got to experience that Max was already leveraging being self employed and could provide me with inside views. What is it like to have a company behind you? How can you pay a salary? What else can you have running over the company, and things like this?

Things you cannot necessarily talk about with someone if you don't know someone who has it. So it was planned from the very start at A Train that I would be self employed one day. It then happened in the third year of being employed there, because of the great context and possibilities that I had, showing me a way to do this on my own.

I listen, I ask, I am vulnerable. And I guess that vulnerability also fostered the courage to be brave enough to transition one step further and do this on your own. How did you do that?

I really grew with the idea to start my own business and try to do things on my own. There is a difference in the legal entity.

It is a limited company, but from a legal point of view they are pretty much equal. It is just that you don't pay as much Stammeinlage as you would for a GmbH.

On my own business, so to say. But I could not earn money with it, because in the German tax system it is just not good to earn good money besides your main job. So I founded the company to create this legal entity, so that the legal entity can earn the money and not pay me out.

Just maintaining it. And then, when I had the UG, I started to perform two to three gigs, transformation workshops. In one of those transformation workshops I got to know another consultant, and he introduced me to another company that was providing lots of assessment and development centers to customers all over Germany, but also internationally in the EU.

And he arranged a conversation between one of the founders and myself. One thing came to another, and I did a short assessment for them. They assessed me to be a consultant who could perform in a partnership with other customers. And then it was a really concrete starting point: now I am ready to leave A Train.

Not necessarily having my own customers, but due to this partnership and two other partnerships I could already deliver services to customers and earn money with that. So this was a smooth way for me to head out of the employment contract and be self employed, because of the partnerships I had.

And that enabled you to take the step further and say, okay, now I actually leave A Train, where I learned the craft, and start offering that craft together with other partners, as a self employed consultant with my own legal entity.

When I tried to become a radio moderator I started an apprenticeship in a media group that also has radio stations, so getting close there. It was the same with A Train and then my very own business. I started with A Train because I knew this would benefit my personal journey of growth

and enable me to later do what I was actually striving for, which was becoming self employed. And then I saw the opportunity to do it in a good way, so that my family and I would not be in a situation of zero income, because it was just me working. My wife delivered in 2023, and I would become 100 percent self employed in January 2024.

That means she was not working, she is not working. So there is no income from her end. It is up to me to be responsible, to earn and provide for my family.

Can you take us a bit into that problem space? What kind of companies are your customers, and what are they looking for?

Most of the time you have a company offering a concrete job role, and there are candidates applying for it. After one or two instances, like a phone interview or a personal interview on site, they would be required to perform this assessment center. And this assessment center is completely moderated and facilitated by external companies.

For instance, I have a really great cooperation with a company called Profil M. They are really advanced in offering those assessment centers and development centers.

They are really experienced, they have great knowledge and they are established. They have a huge range of customers already, and I cooperate with them. That means whenever they receive a request for someone performing or moderating an assessment center, they reach out to me and ask if I have time.

Would you like to do this or that? And that means I go to the companies and perform and moderate those assessment centers.

It depends on what the role is and who is involved or affected by the hiring. And in this assessment center there is a variation of exercises the candidate has to perform. Most of the time it is three to four exercises, and it always starts with a prepared presentation, so that the candidate can come with a presentation they were able to prepare beforehand, to gain some security and to arrive in the situation and in the day.

It is also linked to a short question and answer session afterwards. So they present for 15 to 25 minutes, depending on what they are asked to do, and afterwards the observers, myself and the other people in the room except the candidate, can ask questions for a certain amount of time.

That would most likely be exercise number one. Then the second exercise, and it also depends on what you are looking for, can be a case study. Sometimes you need to understand how able people are to navigate through complexity, to deal with a huge and complex amount of data in a short amount of time and maybe derive a strategy from it.

Then you would use a case study. Sometimes it is more like a team speech that you hold in front of your team, which is then represented and played by us as the observers, to see what their focus is and how they would position themselves, maybe as the new team leader. So that could be a variation.

It always includes an interview. In the interview we really dive deeper into psychological behavior and try to derive behavioral patterns from candidates. For instance, we would ask questions like, have you ever received critical feedback? If so, why do you consider it to be critical, and what did you make of it?

Another question I like to ask people who are becoming a team leader is, what is your definition of potential, and how can you detect but also embrace it in your employees?

So you ask what happened in the past, and you don't ask how would you behave if X, Y, Z happened. Is that right?

ability they have to reflect on themselves and on their behavior. Do they address and acknowledge emotions? Can they derive certain behavior from the way they felt? And do they maybe know how to manage it already? Is there an ability for them to steer their behavior, or is it more impulsive?

I guess I also get a bit of preparation time, do I?

So it is most likely 20 to 75 minutes. For a case study it is longer, up to 75 minutes, but for an impromptu speech or for the role play it is 20 to 25 minutes.

Does this guy, this girl have a good grasp of the business, of the problems we are facing? And then eventually we go through that interview. What is that role play part about?

It can be on the same level. It can be between competing business units. It is really up to the role that we are assessing at the moment. But most likely it is either you talking as a team lead to your employee, so a hierarchical dependency, or you are on the same level, team lead to team lead for instance, or even above, and you need your conversational partner to change their behavior in order to progress on a goal you have.

But they would not do it, for many reasons. In this scenario you have pretty detailed instructions. There are fake names, fake ages, fake family background information. They get to read through their instructions, and I as the moderator get to prepare for the role I am playing.

And then we really dive into those role plays. And it is astonishing. It is an artificial situation, but the speed at which candidates can really dive into it is insane. They manage to accept the situation and take over the role they are playing very fast.

So, you are my new boss. You are my new team lead. You joined recently, a couple of months ago, and I have been here for five years. And you recognize that my performance is getting lower, so something is odd. Now it is up to you to find out what I am struggling with. You overheard people on the floor talking about me, that I am not identifying with the new course of

accepting customers, internal customers. Marketing can be an internal customer, or HR can be an internal customer. We are working in the IT department. You and I are working in the IT department, and you overheard people say that I do not acknowledge that we have internal customers. And also that I had a fight with the HR head, because he was really

mad that the internet was down, and I fixed the bug but I did not tell him it was fixed, or did not tell them at all that something was wrong.

Something was going on. And now it is up to you to share the feedback with me that in the future I need to let them know what is going on. I need to pick up the phone and call them and say, hey, I detected there is something going on with the internet, I am already looking for the mistake, and I will let you know once we are there.

Right. Okay.

Has anything been going on with you and him?

So I immediately started looking for the error and fixed it eventually. I found a really quick solution, thanks to me diving into it and trying to grasp what was going on. I could find it and fix it. And now Chris is telling people how unhappy he is about me not communicating.

I mean, it was absolutely clear that the internet was working again.

That's good. Has something like that happened in the past also?

So maybe that is something Chris and his guys and girls could also do more often. Should we maybe pass that message on to them? How would you feel about that?

And that's what I've been doing so far. My previous boss was absolutely happy with me doing this. And now I need to talk to people and listen to the garbage they are sharing sometimes. I'm not willing to do this anymore. That's just not motivating for me.

I can do that to some extent, but probably not every day, because we don't get to speak that often. Do you have other ideas? How can you get help with this communication job that you don't like?

I'm not sure whether in an actual assessment center I would have more information on that. And that would also possibly be uncomfortable for me, because then of course I cannot just please Peter. I also have to deliver uncomfortable news, I guess.

However, I now tend to say no, actually no. If you are applying for the team lead role, this could be a good scenario, and as a matter of fact this would be the amount of information you get. There is a demotivated employee and you need to find out what is going on with him.

He was motivated under the person performing this role prior to you, and now it changed, and you initiated the strategic change towards acknowledging internal business units as internal customers. Based on this amount of information you would start. There would maybe be more information about how he behaves in breaks, that he is sitting all alone, that he is not talking to his peers anymore, things like this. But as a matter of fact, that's it.

And based on this and on what you just shared, that you were uncertain about what your goals were and what you can do. You said you were unsure about how much you can force Peter into performing what you want him to do, and on the other hand how much you can be pleasant and try to maintain the relationship. What kind of behaviors do you see behind those two options?

What is behavior one, forcing him, and what is behavior two, being pleasant?

And I guess that is a bit of what was coming through here in my conversation with Peter.

the room and the space for him to share what is going on within him. And it is fair to mention that in those role plays there is most likely no hundred percent solution you can reach or derive. It is more that we want to observe the behavior you show us. So if you are over-pleasant and just say he can do whatever he wants and he doesn't need to talk to customers,

that could mean that you easily give in and do not necessarily stand your ground and defend the business, defend the company. And on the other hand, if you were extremely hard and tried to force him into the behavior you want him to show,

then this could mean that you might be risking losing people in order to maintain your own goals and reach them, and that could be a risk for the company. It depends on which department we are talking about and what the other layers of complexity are, but in this scenario we could really observe the behavior you show us.

And then there would also be a reflection afterwards. What I did with you, asking you how do you feel. Other questions would be, what was your goal, how much did you reach it, what prevented you from choosing another way. That would also be part of a role play. I would literally ask the candidate right after the role play those kinds of questions, to see, if they did not make good progress, whether they can understand why.

Is there a certain ability to reflect on it, and do they maybe instantly see another possibility, or a key moment in which they could have decided to do something else to drive the conversation in another direction?

Also I, as Dan, am a service provider towards Peter. Peter is my customer, Peter has customers in the HR department. And maybe see if I can find a way to help Peter understand that, because that is actually what I genuinely believe in, both as Dan and as Tobi, I guess.

What is it that they try to make progress with? And on the same hand I would also look at how authentic they are. Sometimes they mimic being the heart-led leader, but they are actually not. And you can really tell, because they don't make any progress with it.

And on the same hand you see dysfunctional behavior, where the body language or the facial expression does not really fit the words they are expressing. This is also something I am really looking at and observing.

And then finally, last but not least, the ability to reflect on this.

How do they assess themselves? Was there progress? Did they reach what they wanted to reach or not? What was the turning moment? Was there a key moment? Do they acknowledge it, do they recognize it or not? Those are the things I am really looking for, and then trying to put at the center of the evaluation with the observers afterwards.

The only real difference you can spot is that in a development center it is not about getting a job. It is purely about having a glimpse of your development, of your growth. What is it that you can develop? Where are you in your journey of becoming a leader, or becoming a greater and more experienced leader?

So this is the only real difference between an assessment center and a development center. An assessment center is linked to getting a position, a job, and a development center is a pure focus on your development journey.

Then there are two different role plays. One has a hierarchical dependency, one is without. And then there is finally a self assessment, a reflection exercise in which we have them reflect on what was a good performance and what is an area of development. Afterwards there are 45 minutes set for feedback,

in which I would share my observations about key strengths, key areas of development, and also possibilities for how to build them up.

That means Monday morning, Monday afternoon, then Tuesday morning, and Tuesday afternoon was all the feedback, for candidates one, two and three.

Because with the observed areas of development and the shared feedback, the common understanding of what I as the candidate need to work on, they start their internal development journey.

So it is a huge investment from this company in their employees. It is absolutely great what they do there.

Whenever they receive a request, they reach out and ask, would you like to do this or that? And that means I go to the companies and perform those assessment centers.

So you are working with an intermediary between you and the end client. Is that correct?

who maintain the customer relationships and ensure the processes flow smoothly. And they also have this pool of external, freelance facilitators they contact. Since they operate all over Germany, but also internationally in Europe, they would call me if they have customers in southern Germany, because it is easy for me to reach Austria and Switzerland too.

That is the way we collaborate.

And at the same time, when business is going well, they can call you up and you would take over the work.

Of course there is no guarantee that Profil M will be blessed with lots of requests all the time and forever. However, I can definitely recommend it for the very start.

Because it takes pressure off you. You trade in some security, because if business is not going well for your partner company, then you might also end up without any jobs.

You don't need to deal with it, so you can concentrate on the content.

But I can tell you that my daily rate is between 1100 and 1500 net per day.

at the same rate. So this could lead to charging 1.75 daily rates for a one day assessment center, for instance.

The company also has some operating costs. And on top of that you also trade in some security that you would have as an employed consultant, because as soon as things don't go so well for your partners, you might end up without jobs.

Is that correct?

It has many connection points to my attitude and my personal life, but one is especially worth sharing. An initial idea for starting this company was offering leadership retreats at the Arctic Circle or above, to foster a sense of responsibility for nature in leaders and people who run companies and drive decisions, and to gather leadership teams off grid, putting them in raw surroundings, having them face what it is actually like to survive and to live life at its purest.

So, similar to the experience I had in 2019 with the aurora lights.

This is at the very end of my strategy, of my vision of what Friluftslove shall become one day. If I reach it, if I am lucky and disciplined enough to follow the way, then this will happen eventually with Friluftslove.

they work all over the world, or profil-m.de, they are mainly focused on the German market. If you want to discover other powerful coaching interventions, I can recommend checking out the brand new metaFox coaching tools handbook. In it, the metaFox team and the metaFox coach community collected over 50 methods with clear how-to recipes,

as well as some theoretical background.

You can download it for free on metaFox.eu/handbook. Thanks for staying with us until the very end. Our next episode is only a week away, when I'll be meeting Helene, a Belgian coach who runs a thriving corporate coaching and training business. Do not miss this. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and send me your feedback on today's episode through the metaFox coach community, or simply as an email to tobias@metafox.eu.

Much success and joy on your journey. Cheers and bye bye.