Your Network as a predictor of your career success

Did you know that the strength of your network is the number 1 predictor of your career success? When was the last time you analysed your work relationships and though about developing networks more intentiionally? Strategic networking is more important than ever both for leaders as individuals and for organisations. I am certified in Leadership Network Diagnostic and can help you, your leadership team and organisation to take a whole new perspective on building networks for the future that will make your performance grow. Please contact me  at christel.berghall at stepbeyond.eu if you are interested to hear more.

HR is going agile- I am excited to have become a certified Agile HR practictioner

I am excited to have obtained a Certification as Agile HR practitioner by the Agile HR community . An agile way of working has always been at the core of my way of working. Now I have the formal certificate, which enables me to takes this way of working to a new level with my clients. The way HR is adding value to the business needs to change from a traditional waterfall approach to an approach which is more agile and meeting the rapidly changing business environment we are living in. Working in an means that you adopt flexible approach of how you create value to business. It means working in a customer centric way, being responsive, fast & innovative in the work approach adopting an experimental approach. Work is prioritized and stake holders engaged. Depending on the client’s mindset and culture, the way how the work is designed will be tailor made to fit that organisations operational model and maturity. Hence traditional and agile methods are combined to suit the client’s needs. If you are interested to know more, please do not hesitate to contact me at Christel Berghäll

I am a certified Foresight Practitioner by the Institute for the Future

I am pleased to have achieved my certification as a Foresight Practitioner at the Institute for the Future, USA.  The ability to look beyond and create the future is critical for any organisation. I am hoping to bring my extended portfolio of tools and practices to my clients to expand my clients’ foresight and strategic thinking both in my capacity as interim HR executive as well as a management team coach. For more information about the Institute for the Future please click on https://www.iftf.org/home/

Navigating through the dark time to the new normal

We are living in exceptional times. The Covid-19 virus has unexpectedly paralyzed the whole world (even if WHO had warned about a global pandemia). The global economy is on hold and recovery from this is expected to take a generation. But foremost our health is threaten, which is something that we have not experienced world-wide in this scale and with this speed.  We have been speaking about decades about that we are living VUCA world- a Volatitile, Unexpected, Complex and Ambiguous world. Now it is here in its true sense.

But are we really paralyzed by this? I believe we are not. I believe most of us are going through the U-shape change curve and are experiencing a kind of a initial shock phase and some resistance to everything going on (although not every one is feeling that in same magnitude) . An unwanted  change has been imposed on us and most of us would like to go back to what we know and what we like. Luckily, as psychologists have pointed out,  we are adaptable human beings and we will adapt to the changed circumstances, we have done that throughout human history. Some will adapt faster than others as in any change situation. We are already starting to see changes in adopting e-learning at school with great progress and great innovations taking place in businesses threatened by the new circumstances.

Now if ever, the notion of mental models, initially launched by Peter Senge, really matters. If we really want to move ahead on the change curve to the new normal, we must ensure we are carrying such mental models that will help us get through these challenging times. Everyone should ask themselves: Is the way I view the world, my thinking and my attitudes helping me and others to get through this dark and challenging time? Or is it slowing me/us down? Or even hindering me/us? Now it is the time for everyone to reflect and discover their thinking patterns and allow them to find the potential to renew and replace any mental models that are working against them and us in these exceptional circumstances. I have been doing this work with leaders for a decade and am continuing to support individual leaders, entrepreneurs and large organizational to help them to reinvent their individual and collective mental models about leadership. What does great  leadership look like for me and my people in these turbulent times? And what will leadership look like in the new normal? What individual thinking and attitudes do we need? And what collective cultural elements and daily behaviours do we need need to have in place to make through this transition?

Finally, I want to express an enormous gratitude to all medical workers around the world, who are working in a job with a calling and who unselfishly risk their own lives to save ours. We  have a lot to learn from the mental models they are carrying to take us through dark times to a new normal.

Adopting an intrapreneurial mindset

It is fascinating to experience how digitalization and AI forces large corporation to create a culture more as start-ups. I have during my career worked with numerous amounts of clients who recognize that their culture will need to shift if they have to stay ahead of the game. Very often these organizations are referred to as “adopting an intrapreneurial mindset”. Google is probably on of the most known organizations to have succeeded in doing this. However, more traditional large companies such as GE have notably also made some great progress and have been praised for internal approach to  translate lean startup principle and other disruptive strategies across its ecosystem. Last week I facilitated a module with high potential leaders and our module took place in Moscow Russia. During this week we had a chance to visit Sberbank HQ in Moscow and hear about their digital transformation. This 200000 employee organisation has 138 teams working on their bank’s on-line products and all product managers act as CEO’s. Another interesting example of a large corporation which has been able to transform itself, its business and culture in the past 3 years.

I am an EMCC Accredited Coach at Master Practitioner level

I am in celebration mood. I have today, as the first Executive Coach in Finland, been awarded with European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) Individual Coach Accreditation at Master Practitioner level. The European Individual Accreditation (EIA) is an internationally recognised accreditation that distinguishes individuals as a professional coach, with sound underpinning knowledge and the ability to demonstrate ability against demanding and rigorous standards. There are four levels of individual coach accreditation of which Master Practitioner level is the highest. I feel so blessed to continuously work with clients around the world who challenge me and help me to grow as a coach and as a person. masterpractitioner professionalcoaching coachingstandards accreditation personaldevelopment lifelonglearning gratitude emcc

Mentoring and Coaching in the digital age

Yesterday we celebrated 10 years of Euopean Mentoring and Coaching Council in Finland with a national conference about “Mentoring and Coaching in the digital age”. As the President and Chairman of the Board I was very pleased with the high level key notes during the day and the high energy conversations. Mikko Kosonen, President of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra opened the seminar and talked about the megatrends our society is facing and how it impacts work life. Raija Hämäläinen, Professor of Pedagogy at Jyväskylä University talked about the interaction between technology and humans and the changing nature of communication. We also had an input by David Clutterback on the global trends of mentoring and coaching. Anne Ribbers shared with us what e-coaching is all about and how to enhance learning and impact through an e-based coaching approach. Irja Leppisaari, teacher at Centria shared some interesting experiences about e-group mentoring at their college.Finally we had a best practice clinic were we shared best practices in how to lead your coaching business in the digital age and how to use flash mentoring with digital tools for entrepreneurs. All in all, my takeaway from the day was that coaching and mentoring has bigger than ever opportunities to serve organisations and individuals in the big transformation we are going through. We need however to re-invent how we do coaching and mentoring and embed more bravely new technology in the learning process. Go with the development needs and let the technology follow (not the other way around)

The True Source of Healing

I had the opportunity to get inspired on the  Ancient Tibetan medition retreat last weekend in Helsinki under the guidance of the amazing Tenzin Wangyal Ringpoche, the founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha International. ” The True source of Healing” course gave me lots of tools for restoring healthy balance through discovering the strength within myself. I got reminded me of many things which are so cruicial for sustainable wellbeing, joy and happiness. Most of all what struck with me is the power of our pain stories we create for ourselves in our lives and how we through meditation practice can release these stories. The pain in our lives often stem from these stories and we often get lost in these stories and create our own truth which is disconnected from the reality. It is so important to firstly recognize our own pain stories. Then we need to rest and calm ourselves in order to be able to create space for awareness in order to be ready to let go of  these stories. Through continuous meditation practice we can access our inner temple and find the strength to release these stories. What are the pain stories you are carrying? I warmly recommend this course to anyone interested in deeper self-discovery.

Modern leaders create engagement

Strategy implementation is not easy and it is no surprise that 60-80% of companies report that they are not successful with their strategy implementation. As I am getting prepared to facilitate my next workshop in strategy implementation , I was interviewed about this subject in Niord bladet , one of the magazines for the associations for economists. Article below in Swedish language.