Me

JAN KIEL

Trust and Clarity
in the Boardroom.

Managing Partner

JAN KIEL

Trust and Clarity
in the Boardroom.

Managing Partner

WHAT I DO:

It's about trust and clarity in leadership, about your performance as a leader and that of your team.

I support executives in finding clarity to master critical challenges, in creating trust to build effective teams, and in optimizing the performance of their organization.

Working with me might be challenging. I will ask purposeful questions, follow up and give you candid feedback. All this takes place in a protected setting, with the sole aim of optimizing your performance and that of your team.

Are you ready to be open, honest, and critical of yourself? Breaking down old ways of thinking and established structures? Do you have the courage to create clarity and trust? Then I want to work with you.

EXECUTIVE COACHING

Creating clarity and trust is the essence of good leadership.

Clear leadership requires clear thinking. Effective teams evolve through the courage to trust. Clear thinking and trust together change organizations. I will accompany you on your way to such clarity and trust.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Sokrates

You will find the best solutions to your challenges yourself. My role is to support your thinking through purposeful questions, active listening, and forthright feedback.

These topics are regularly part of my work with clients:

  • Building trust
    Gaining trust through competence, integrity, and authenticity. Revealing own vulnerability. Putting trust in others. Transferring responsibilities downwards. Activating team engagement.
  • Finding clarity in uncertainty
    Accepting uncertainty. Distinguishing between important and urgent. Combining facts, logic, and intuition. Thinking in strategic scenarios. Using your team’s knowledge. Collective judgment under your leadership.
  • Making good decisions in good time
    Knowing when it’s time to decide. Dealing with lack of information. Trusting your experts. Listening to your intuition. Anticipating mistakes. Showing determination. Providing orientation instead of looking for perfection.
  • Implementing sustainably and flexibly
    Communicating decisions clearly. Setting responsibilities. Taking concerns seriously. Adjusting if necessary, but staying on course. Encouraging your staff to take responsibility and giving them space to make own decision.
  • Conveying clarity and appreciation
    Addressing critical issues openly. Esteeming constructive conflict. Responding to objections, but calling for commitment. Appreciating the individual and the team. Especially when it comes to tough decisions.

Individual Executive Coaching

Individual coaching with full focus on my client and his or her challenges. Often 6 to 12 sessions of 1.5 hours each, sometimes more. Safe space for self-reflection. Free and deep thinking for clarity to emerge.

Team Coaching & Workshops

Tailor-made workshops and off-sites for leadership teams. Linking content-related work and team building. Enhancing clarity and trust at team level. Dynamic alternations of reflection and interaction.

Coaching & Leadership Programs

Custom-made programs with well-defined objectives. Components include: 6 to 12 individual, tripartite or team sessions, reflective off-sites, psychometric assessments, 360 ° feedback, stakeholder interviews.

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

Precise thinking, strategic clarity, consistent programs.

Developing sustainable strategies and programs, communicating them effectively and anchoring them sustainably. These are key leadership responsibilities. I will support you in developing the necessary clarity and determination.

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.

Sokrates

Only strategies coming from within your organization will have a lasting effect. I will support you in defining your objectives and in deducing the right program. In this process, I will apply coaching methods and consulting techniques, contributing my experience as executive coach, former manager, and strategy consultant.

These topics are regularly part of my work with clients:

  • Defining objectives and strategic cornerstones
    Setting consistent goals. Obtaining relevant information. Taking into consideration your organization’s past, current situation, perspective, and values. Deriving strategic cornerstones.
  • Anticipating risks and resistance
    Identifying key risks and expected resistance and taking them seriously. Developing solutions and alternative scenarios. Defining aspired results and minimum requirements.
  • Working out change programs
    Converting objectives into comprehensive transformation programs. Defining work packages. Deriving schedules, milestones, required resources and responsibilities.
  • Creating acceptance
    Ensuring that objectives and transformation programs are well understood and accepted by all relevant stakeholders. Investing in communicating and conveying your strategy. Calling for commitment.

Strategic
Clarity

Reviewing your strategy and identifying any need for adjustment. Systematic development of strategic ambitions, objectives, and measures. Deducing comprehensive transformation programs and work packages.

Strategic
Alignment

Establishing a common understanding of your strategy on board level. Overcoming power politics. Creating individual commitment and mutual accountability. Exemplify determination and unity.

Strategic
Courage

Understanding risks and resistance and addressing them openly. Actively involving your staff. Going forward determinedly. Calling for allegiance. Staying flexible but keeping course. Staying at the forefront of change. Do not let up.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Anchoring change at all levels.

Clear goals and programs are important prerequisites for successful change. However, it is crucial to anchor these firmly in your organization. I will support you in developing and successfully anchoring the change you are striving for.

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

Sokrates

Lasting change cannot be ordered. The need for change must be communicated comprehensively. Leaders need to shift responsibilities downwards. The aim is for employees to assume this responsibility effectively. I will support you and your teams in making this change process sustainable.

These topics are regularly part of my work with clients:

  • Recognizing the need for change
    Critically questioning the status quo and yourself. Avoiding group think. Trusting in intuition but backing it up with facts. Anticipating the effectiveness and acceptance of change.
  • Providing orientation
    Developing a tangible vision and path to get there. Identifying requirements and risks. Communicating actively and clearly. Going ahead determinedly. Proving your own willingness to change.
  • Inspiring employees for change
    Recognizing and openly addressing individual interests, resistances and driving forces. Involving those affected. Passing on responsibility for implementation. Open and honest communication at all levels.
  • Never let up
    Recognizing relapses in old habits and addressing them openly. Creating a culture of mutual accountability. Never losing sight of your objectives. Demonstrating determination. Forgiving mistakes.

Conflict
Manage­ment

Encouraging constructive conflict. Recognizing and disclosing when conflict becomes destructive. Hearing and understanding subjective truths. Creating clarity and helping those involved to find constructive solutions.

Crisis
Manage­ment

Capturing crisis quickly. Staying focused. Avoiding disaster thinking. Facing the storm. Making clear decisions under pressure and acting decisively. Maintaining reflection and mental agility.

Inte­gration Manage­ment

Understanding differences between corporate cultures and addressing them openly. Establishing desired values and behaviors. Actively designing cultural post-merger-integration. Strengthening leadership. Integrating teams.

WHO I AM

I advise and support leaders and their teams in mastering critical and strategic challenges. My client, his or her team and their performance are in the focus of my work.

In more than 20 years as executive in the finance, investment, and start-up industry and as strategy consultant, I have experienced and mastered a variety of challenges myself. These experiences are very helpful in understanding my clients’ situation both rationally and emotionally.

As executive coach, I trust in the ability of my clients to master their challenges themselves. I support them with purposeful questions and active listening. As a leadership & management advisor, I take on the role of a sparring partner and moderator.

I work across Europe and North America in English and German. My customers are executives, entrepreneurs, and their teams.

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Jan Kiel – Rothenbaumchaussee 193 – 20149 Hamburg – Deutschland – humans@thehumanimpact.group – +49 40 4501 7929 – www.jan-​kiel.com

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To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

Sokrates

More about Myself

Time with my wife and children, long walks with our dog, lots of reading (Stefan Zweig, Gore Vidal, Irvin Yalom), all kinds of outdoor activities (water sports and mountaineering), and my early morning meditation are an important counterbalance to my professional life.

My key character strengths are curiosity, bravery, enthusiasm, fairness, leadership, and the ability to love (VIA Character Strength Survey). In complex situations these help a lot in being clear and appreciative at the same time.

Born 1969 in a little town in Germany’s southwest, I lived in various places of Germany, the USA and France and found home in Hamburg, enjoying its lake and parks every day.

I love people, inspiration, all kinds of challenges and the calm in the eye of the storm. My daily newspaper reading is Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the New York Times. I speak English, German and French.

The purpose in life is to develop a strong character.

Sokrates

My Education

Excellent training, own experience, and the courage to follow my intuition are essential components of my non-directive coaching approach.

Executive Coaching & Coaching Supervision:

  • Master Executive Coach, Association for Coaching, London (accredited)
  • Mastered Executive Coach, Meyler Campbell, London (certified)
  • Coaching Supervisor / Diplôme CSA francophone, Coaching Supervision Academy, London & Geneva (certified & accredited)

Studies:

  • Positive Psychology, Prof. Martin Seligman, PennState University (certified)
  • Introduction to Psychology, Prof. Paul Bloom, Yale University (certified)
  • Volkswirtschaftslehre und Internationales öffentliches Recht, Mannheim & Kiel (Master of Economics)

Certifications & Trainings:

  • MBTI & TKI, The Myers-Briggs Company, London (certified)
  • Strengths Profile Training, Cappfinity, London
  • Hogan Assessment & Hogan Agile Leader, Tulsa, USA (certified)
  • Change and Conflict Management, Klaus Doppler, Munich (certified)
  • Time to Think Training, Nancy Kline, Oxford
  • Unleashed Training, Anne Scoular, Meyler Campbell, London
  • Reflective Practice in Organisations, The Institute of Group Analysis, London

Memberships:

  • Association for Coaching (AC)
  • Institute of Coaching (IOC) at McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School
  • International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA)
  • Hogan Independent Consultants Network (ICN)

Des O’Connell (CSA Accredited Coaching Supervisor and Faculty Member of Meyler Campbell) ist my great supervisor.

A man who preserves his integrity no real, long-lasting harm can ever come.

Sokrates

My Professional Experience

I am a Leadership & Management Advisor, Executive Coach and Co-Founder & Managing Partner of The Human Impact Group in Hamburg.

In my previous life, I was CEO, CFO, managing director, turn-around manager, investor, and strategy consultant for more than 20 years. I was an investment banker at Kleinwort Benson and a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group before heading the strategy and principal investment divisions at HCoB and DZ Bank. Later I was managing director of private equity companies of Bankhaus Lampe and Brookfield Asset Management. As CEO, I was responsible for the successful restructuring and strategic realignment of various portfolio companies.

During this time, I have experienced and mastered a variety of challenges myself. Examples of such challenges are change processes, M&A transactions, spin-offs, post-merger integration, start-ups, portfolio adjustments, turnaround situations, strategy development and implementation, insolvencies, and downsizing programs.

The main success factors in overcoming these challenges were my ability to lead highly qualified teams, to make best possible use of the strengths of each individual team member and to work effectively and trustingly with a variety of stakeholders. Today I share my experiences and skills with my clients.