Things can be different than they appear! - Katrin Derboven

This week we'll have a slight change of order and we would like to introduce to you, Katrin Derboven, business consultant and personal coach. 

Katrin's Blog

Recently I was confronted with paradigms. An old video by Joel A.Barker learned me what an animal a paradigm is. It is the way that you solve problems in a certain context.

It gives boundaries and it is your thinking frame in which you filter information.
Things which are out of the boundaries of your paradigm you will not see or have difficulties to see.

A short anecdote to illustrate this. A man had a nice open top sportcar in which he loved to drive , especially on a certain street with a lot of curves. He had his own way of making curves with his sportscar. He loved it. One day he was driving on this favourite street and saw his favourite curve before him. He started to make his special manouvre when an opposite car came right out of the curve almost hitting him. The woman in the car had her windows open and yelled ‘Pig’ to him. Flabbergasted he replied with ‘Witch’ to the woman, being content that he had a good reply to the woman, and took the curve his way to actually have an accident with ...a pig which was crossing the road in this curve.

Evoking the switch of paradigms and allowing flexibility in thinking is one of the most important things that a coach can realise in his work. By tackling old paradigms and asking questions about new paradigms new insights can be realised in coaching.
One of the wonderquestions is ‘how would it be if ... ?’  When a person or an organisation is able to switch perspectives a whole new world can begin.
A new world with new rules, attitudes and solutions.

Think about this the next time you tackle a problem. What is your ruling paradigm? And perhaps which other paradigm can help you to solve this problem? You can unveil this by asking questions preferably by somebody who is not involved in the problem or the situation.

Katrin's Biography

Katrin Derboven is a consultant in value driven talent development and interim management, working in Antwerp as founding partner of  85, the consulting firm she recently founded.
Her specialities are coaching of management talent , value driven organisation development , start up of new business units or organisations,, support and training of groups