Coaching for (new) managers who want to build a strong bond with their team

Do you want to stand firmer as a manager in a scientific working environment? It can be particularly challenging to assert yourself when managing ambitious colleagues. You’re looking for a balance between providing direction whilst leaving room for their expertise.

 

Aprezo offers individual coaching for managers who wish to develop further in this area. We will work on your self-confidence and your professional and personal effectiveness. Through new ‘mini-habits’, you will develop a psychologically safe working environment in which ambitious colleagues can excel together.

Elephants protecting their herd from the danger of lions on the other side – photo by Marianne van Oosterhout, Oct 2025
pexels-valeriya-12963 chestnut cracking: growing by breaking patterns

Psychologically safe and effective leadership in healthcare, science or biotech

When you’re a leader in healthcare, science or biotech, the pressure can mount significantly. You notice tension within your team, see gossip or exclusion taking hold, and at the same time face expectations from above. Team members show little sense of ownership and staff turnover remains high. Leadership sometimes feels like navigating the gap between what you see and what you dare to say. During the day, you make decisions and have conversations, but in the evening, they keep running through your mind again.

 

In individual coaching at Aprezo, you explore these dynamics and your role within them. You learn to recognise patterns and beliefs, and understand how they influence your behaviour and effectiveness. You’ll also discover the sources of your doubt, need for control and tension, and how to overcome them. You’ll develop confidence in conversations and address colleagues’ behaviour. In doing so, you’ll create a working environment where responsibility, openness and collaboration once again become the norm.

Does this sound familiar?

What are the benefits of individual coaching?

How wonderful it would be to lead with a sense of calm and clarity, free from stress and uncertainty. With Aprezo, you’ll work on developing leadership skills that become visibly stronger. You’ll discover where your natural strengths lie and where patterns are holding you back.

 

You will experiment with new behaviours, focused on strong leadership, so that your team members can perform to the best of their ability in a pleasant working environment. You will immediately notice the difference in teamwork through open dialogue, clear decision-making and better results.

“I used to lie awake at night mulling over conversations. Now I just have them during the day and let them go with confidence.”

Are you the boss, or are you a leader?

Many managers have grown up with a single role model: the boss. Someone who gives orders, talks a lot about how things should be done and stands above the team. Someone who micromanages, punishes mistakes and demands loyalty.

 

Team members have their own expertise and often see what could be improved or done differently. They want to be involved. They want to be seen and heard. And valued. When team members leave, it is often because of a manager who holds them back.

 

Psychologically safe and powerful leadership looks different. The leader stands alongside the team. Asks questions, listens and inspires. Also provides guidance and, where necessary, structure. Gives credit where it’s due and learns from mistakes together with the team. In complete openness. They develop people, consciously and with trust. And they also work continuously and consciously on their own development.

“A boss keeps people small; a leader develops people.”

A little stone man as a metaphor for building on and with one another; photo taken by Marianne van Oosterhout, 2016

Testimonials

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Choose targeted coaching for psychologically safe and effective leadership

Effective leadership

The Leadership Circle Profile® and Pulse®

This programme begins by gaining insight into your thought and behaviour patterns and your beliefs. We quickly get to the heart of what helps and what hinders the effectiveness of your leadership, and what impact this has on psychological safety within your team. You’ll even see at a glance where your strengths and qualities lie, and what areas you can focus on developing. This helps you to become more effective, creative and successful. Following the assessment, you’ll set to work in a targeted manner, using a development programme to further develop and implement your creative competencies.

 

Your progress is measurable and can be tracked via Pulse®. This is the follow-up to the LCP, in which you measure your progress on your chosen area of development over three three-month periods.

Mental Wellbeing

Positive Intelligence® programme

Through the Positive Intelligence programme, you tackle self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviour at their core. You do this using an app, alongside supporting videos and conversations. You learn to recognise when your inner critic, perfectionist or people-pleaser takes over. You’ll train your mental fitness so that you remain calm, clear-headed and effective, even in difficult situations.

 

As well as practising, the programme focuses on embedding the skills, so that you actually put them into practice and notice the difference. The exercises in the app focus on performance, wellbeing and relationships.

Breaking patterns: Salvador Dalí painting, 1943 – *Child Watching the Birth of the New Man*

Overcome uncertainty and psychological unsafety in your work

In my individual coaching, I work on what is holding you back at work: persistent patterns of insecurity, perfectionism, people-pleasing, conforming or keeping quiet. When you don’t feel safe to speak your mind or be yourself, this leads to stress, tension and the feeling that you’re never quite able to fulfil your potential or that you don’t really matter.

 

My mission is to work with you to make these limiting patterns visible and break through them. So that you can stand more firmly, set clear boundaries and take your place with confidence. We focus specifically on building self-confidence, mental resilience and a way of working that allows you to operate with confidence, strength and professionalism.

Interested?

Book a no-obligation introductory meeting

Does any of this sound familiar to you? In a half-hour, no-obligation chat, we’ll explore together what’s going on and whether coaching is right for you. No sales pitch – just a straight-to-the-point question right from the start.

Marianne_0018kl

Frequently asked questions

Here you’ll find answers to frequently asked questions. Can’t find your question here? Please get in touch with me.

Who is the Leadership Circle Profile intended for?

Managers at various levels and leadership teams form the core of the target audience. The Leadership Circle Profile is suitable for organisations in healthcare, science, biotechnology, the business sector and the public sector.
The questionnaire is valuable for any individual or organisation seeking to make leadership more effective. It is also useful for those who wish to understand the beliefs underpinning that leadership – beliefs that are often hidden and unconscious.

The Leadership Circle Profile® (LCP) is particularly valuable for C-level leaders. It highlights the urgency of the impact that a leader’s behaviour has on the organisation.

Why?

  • The behaviour and attitudes of leaders have a significant influence on the entire organisational culture. The LCP highlights what stands in the way of this and what helps.
  • The demands on cognitive ability and emotional maturity are high at this level. The LCP reveals the extent to which a leader acts out of dependence, self-direction or control.
  • Blind spots at the top. The higher your position in the organisation, the less direct feedback you receive. The LCP breaks through this barrier with 360° data that colleagues rarely dare to voice aloud.
  • Strategic scalability. The effectiveness of leaders in the top 10 per cent is directly linked to the best business results. Conversely, the less effective the leadership, the poorer the business results.
  • Leadership development is transformational development. It starts from within: identity, motivations and beliefs. Uncovering these provides immediate, practical tools to put into action.

A 360° leadership assessment gathers feedback from people close to the leader who observe his or her behaviour at first hand. Managers, colleagues, team members, staff and others outside the immediate work environment, such as partners, friends, etc., all share their views. Together, they provide a rich and multifaceted perspective.

These assessors evaluate a leader’s skills, attitude, influence and overall effectiveness. They focus on the competencies that really matter in practice.

The Leadership Circle Profile goes a step further than a standard assessment. It measures two dimensions simultaneously: Creative Competencies and Reactive Tendencies. In this way, it maps out both a leader’s observable behaviour and their inner motivations. The Leadership Circle Profile is unique in this respect; no other 360-degree assessment does this.

The outcome provides the leader with a clear insight into how others perceive them. Strengths are highlighted, as are the areas that are currently hindering their effectiveness.

The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) combines insights from leadership, psychology and personal development into a single, coherent whole. This makes it the first tool to provide a truly comprehensive overview of leadership development. So, in addition to behaviour, it also examines thoughts and beliefs, revealing why someone behaves in a certain way. And the results can be seen at a glance within the circle. With the LCP, you can therefore quickly get to the heart of what helps and what hinders the effectiveness of your leadership. This provides several starting points for initiating transformational change.

The LCP is based on extensive scientific research and a universal leadership framework.

No, this is completely anonymous, and we take this very seriously. The people evaluating you must feel free to give honest answers. The only exception is your manager. They have a responsibility to help you with your development, and that includes giving honest feedback. This enables you to learn from it and continue to develop yourself.

A leadership programme typically lasts between 9 and 12 months. People are ‘creatures of habit’ and may hold fixed beliefs. These are often linked to how you see yourself – your identity. They cause you to exhibit certain behaviours. This is related, amongst other things, to the connections in our brains.

Developing new, effective habits requires time and plenty of practice and repetition. The same applies to challenging old beliefs and habits that stand in your way. By working on this regularly, new, strong connections are formed in your brain.

Developing your leadership begins with self-insight and awareness of your own thought and behaviour patterns, as well as your beliefs. This enables you to recognise them and decide what and how you wish to change them. You can make this visible to yourself and others through interim assessments using Pulse®.

Becoming more creative is about the skills and behaviours that deliver results. So this isn’t directly about artistic creativity. This form of creation involves a sense of purpose with a vision for both the short and longer term. You act out of passion and strength. “Play to win-win.”

The creative leadership competencies in the Leadership Circle Profile measure key behavioural patterns and inner assumptions that result in effective and capable leadership.

Reactive tendencies relate to the inner beliefs that hinder a leader’s effectiveness and inspiring leadership. They also concern how authentically a leader speaks and behaves. You (unconsciously) feel you must meet others’ expectations in order to feel successful, safe and valued. You react to problems out of fear and a desire to avoid certain outcomes. “Play not to lose.”

Examples:

  • You don’t dare speak out about something that isn’t right. Because if you did, you might well end up being told off.
  • As a manager, you keep a very tight rein on things and control everything. Because what if something goes wrong and you’re held accountable for it?
  • Someone is withholding information and not being open and honest.
  • You don’t give (honest) feedback because you want to be liked.

Positive Intelligence offers a new perspective on resilience, mindset and inner strength. It encompasses the ability to respond to life’s challenges with a positive attitude, to tap into untapped potential and to develop better leadership practices.

Sabotaging thoughts (also known as ‘saboteurs’) undermine your self-confidence and success in various ways. For example, by causing you to people-please, control (to the point of micromanagement) or procrastinate. Or by striving for perfectionism.

As soon as you make the shift from reactions driven by Saboteurs to the positive mindset of the ‘inner Sage’, you increase your personal satisfaction and your professional effectiveness. As a result, leaders provide purposeful leadership with clarity, compassion and creativity. These are qualities that are indispensable for fostering a thriving, supportive work culture.

The concept and methodology were developed by Shirzad Chamine, based on scientific research from fields including positive psychology, neuroscience and cognitive behavioural science.

The Positive Intelligence Programme lasts from three months to a year, depending on your requirements.

Over the first seven weeks, you’ll build the foundations of your Positive Intelligence through weekly videos, daily mini-exercises and in-depth online discussions with Marianne from Aprezo. This is followed by consolidation through the integration of the content with daily mini-exercises and in-depth exploration. In addition, there is a wealth of content applicable to various situations, such as conflict management, stress management, productivity and resilience.