Organizational culture and communication
Conscious relational leadership
Customer relations, B2B strategy and sales
My approach
I note that people these days are generally overloaded with compulsively consumed knowledge that translates little into their attitudes and behavior.
It is also clear from my more than 16 years of workshop experience that the use of training or workshop content in practice by participants is proportional to their level of awareness.
That’s why the practical and proven models, theories or work processes take up only 10-20% of the time of the workshops and programs I conduct. In the remaining time, I:
- support workshop participants in expanding their awareness by integrating what they think, feel, do and observe.
- guide participants through experiments that allow them to experience different phenomena, not just talk about them.
- stimulate dialogue, discussion and activities relating workshop findings to the realities of work in an organization.
- unlock participants’ natural abilities to deal creatively with even the most complex challenges.
- encourage participants to implement new work techniques in small steps and to be curious about the reactions of those around them.
In the following sections, you can learn more about the workshops and programs I implement to develop attitudes, skills and relational behavior.
Organizational culture and communication
Employee Experience Program
Program scope:
During this 12-month program, I identify the sources of challenges blocking the company’s growth and natural cycle of self-regulation and propose a new kind of contact, conversation and exchange of experiences between different teams or levels of the organization. Sometimes, I mediate and help employees clarify the past, communicate across divisions or resolve long-standing conflicts. Based on broadening organizational awareness and streamlining communication, I support, moderate and structure team development of new organizational solutions jointly by representatives of different employee groups. Ultimately, I support the leaders of change in implementing these solutions into the daily life of the company with the involvement and help of other company employees.
For whom:
All company employees – from managers to frontline employees.
Results:
- Expanded management awareness of cultural challenges and the effects of their behavior;
- Increased awareness of line employees about the broader context of the company’s operations;
- Streamlined, open communication within the company;
- Recovery from relational impasses, a new kind of contact and communication;
- Unlocking opportunities for change and further development according to the Paradoxical Theory of Change;
- Unlocking the organization’s natural processes of self-regulation;
- Increasing employees’ sense of empowerment and their impact on reality;
- Improving the organizational climate in the company;
- Developing needed solutions/changes or new forms of communication;
- Implementing the developed solutions with the support of the broader organizational culture.
What participants say:
- “thanks to these workshops, we really heard and saw each other for the first time”
- “during these meetings, I felt that I had an impact on the company’s reality”
- “during these workshops, I better understood how other teams see the same phenomena”
- “thanks to these meetings, the management finally understood what we were facing and started to help us in a real way”
- “thanks to your moderation of the meetings, we did not get lost in our conflicts, divisions and emotions”
Delivery:
On-site and online on the Zoom platform (mix of interventions), in Polish or English.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the program description and discuss it with your team
Direct communication techniques
Program scope:
During this 4-6 month program, I guide participants through a carefully selected set of communication experiences and exercises to develop attitudes and techniques for effective I-You communication. I have based this program on a series of interactive, hands-on workshops that provide the specific tools necessary to communicate effectively and build partnerships and long-lasting relationships in both professional and personal life.
Workshop topics include active deep listening techniques, communication from the level of the adult Self, exploring boundary contact in I-You exchanges, nonviolent communication techniques, techniques for communicating one’s needs, techniques for setting and communicating one’s boundaries in a relationship, building intimacy, techniques for talking about difficult emotions, or mechanisms for modulating or avoiding contact from a Gestalt psychotherapy perspective.
For whom:
All company employees, management, selected employee groups or individual teams.
Results:
- Fewer misunderstandings;
- Greater understanding of each other, their needs and boundaries;
- Reduced emotionality in daily communication;
- Reduced levels of stress and tension in communication;
- Faster, effective clarification of misunderstandings before they grow into conflicts;
- Greater ability to listen and hear each other, including between the lines.
What participants say:
- “Deep listening techniques enabled me to get to know my team more deeply”
- “Thanks to the messages of Self, I became more clear and visible to my bosses”
- “Thanks to such communication, I reduced the team’s resistance to proposed changes”
- “This program allowed me to start consciously responding rather than automatically reacting to what others say”
- “I discovered that skillful boundary-setting doesn’t have to mean rejection, and even helps build healthy partnerships”
- “I was surprised to find that by sharing my emotions I can reduce my stress levels”
Delivery:
On-site at the company’s headquarters or online on the Zoom platform, in Polish or English, in groups of 6-100 people.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the program description and discuss it with your team
Team Coaching
Scope of support:
I help individual teams or groups strengthen teamwork, get out of an impasse, discuss complex organizational challenges, and develop and implement concrete solutions.
I meet with teams where they are in terms of their development. I then help them expand their collective consciousness so they can unlock their natural ability to self-regulate and take effective action in their chosen direction.
Before working with each team, I establish clear rules of communication, and during the team’s work, I ensure the psychological safety of the participants.
Based on my business and therapeutic qualifications, I uniquely stimulate exchanges in a given team at the level of business observations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, possible approaches and solutions, and mobilization for action.
When necessary, I also moderate emotionally difficult interpersonal exchanges between participants or groups of participants and invite experiences that allow participants to move fluidly beyond their entrenched positions or beliefs.
In this form of support, I encourage teams to work together in movement and walking meetings that allow them to notice relational phenomena that are often not seen in the office.
For whom:
Boards of directors, individual teams or groups of managers (e.g., regional directors).
Results:
- Expanded awareness of where the team is at;
- Empowering groups of managers to build their teamwork;
- Increased level of understanding of each other and their different situations;
- Identification of systemic problems affecting the entire team;
- Discussion, exchange of perspectives, observations, practices, ideas for solutions;
- Team development of specific solutions;
- Faster, effective clarification of disagreements before they grow into conflict;
- Smoothing and clarifying historical misunderstandings, divisions, conflicts;
- Supporting the team to move out of the impasse onto the path of further development.
What participants say:
- “Thanks to these workshops, we began to openly discuss our needs and create a joint action plan that addresses them”
- “Thanks to our meetings, we have finally moved forward as a team”
- “Maciek, thanks for today’s meeting, you were a great support for us in this turbulent and emotionally difficult moment of our team’s development”
- “Thanks to the meetings of our team in the park led by you, we looked at our challenges from a different perspective and started talking to each other in a completely different way”
- “Thanks to these workshops, we have gone from being a loose group to becoming more and more of a team”
Delivery:
On-site at the company’s headquarters, in nature (Łazienki, Królewskie in Warsaw) or on the Zoom platform, in Polish or English.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the program description and discuss it with your team
Conscious Relational Leadership
Relational Leadership
Scope of program:
I created this 6-month program as a systemic response to the regular challenges of my executive coaching clients. During the program, I guide managers through the process of experiencing, self-reflecting and developing attitudes, behaviors and skills of relational leadership.
During a series of workshop meetings, I encourage participants to deepen introspection and examine their resources as a starting point for developing their individual, unique leadership style. In addition, I create a space for testing new methods of working with teams, working on participants’ case studies, exchanging experiences or relating workshop content to current challenges of the organization.
Through working with me, individually and in groups, participants develop their own recipes for how to be inspiring, relational leaders with whom people work, not because they have to, but because they want to.
The scope of the program includes topics such as deep listening techniques, attentiveness and concentration techniques, team development based on personality archetypes and awareness of different interpersonal styles, non-financial motivation based on individual values, expanding access to different leadership styles, situational leadership, stages of team development, feedback without manipulation, managerial coaching or effective navigation of difficult, complex situations.
For whom:
Executives, directors and managers with at least several years of experience in managing people. In the most progressive companies, different levels of leaders (e.g., board members + directors reporting to them) participate in the program at the same time to experience new forms of interaction together, exchange experiences and learn more about each other’s values, attitudes and perspectives.
Results:
Participating in this program enables managers to:
- Listen deeply and hear others more often; ask the right questions;
- Be close to people while motivating and demanding at the same time;
- Vary their management style according to the competence and maturity of their teams;
- Keep the best people in the team and company without buying their loyalty;
- Talk frankly about successes and failures and support each other as a group;
- Creatively develop their teams based on their diverse resources;
- Seamlessly adapt their attitudes and leadership styles to the situation and needs of the team;
- Give professional corrective and reinforcing feedback instead of judging;
- Effectively help others solve complex problems without imposing their solutions;
- Efficiently guide themselves and their teams through difficult or crises;
- Work with resistance from people and organizations by knowing how to diagnose its sources.
What participants say:
- “This program was a kind of group business therapy for me”
- “The program gave me the opportunity to take a close look at my behavior patterns”
- “This program allowed me to take a more strategic look at my team”
- “An amazing space for discovery, personal growth and inspiration on how to work better with the team”
- “Thanks to this program, I am closer to people and better understand their strengths and challenges”
- “I discovered that when I interrupt people less, they become more engaged and creative”
- “At each of your workshops, I learned a new technique that I could apply right away”
Delivery:
On-site at the company’s headquarters or online on the Zoom platform, in Polish or English, in groups of up to 10 people.
The program is a combination of a consistent series of experiential leadership workshops and executive coaching sessions dedicated to participants’ topics.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the program description and discuss it with your team
Strategic Conversations
Scope of program:
During this program, I focus on deepening the techniques of leaders’ conversations with both teams and individuals. My intention is also to strengthen a strategic, systemic approach to working with people. To this end, I combine proven techniques for working with people from the worlds of business, strategic project management, coaching and group psychotherapy.
During workshop meetings, I encourage participants to take a closer look at the organization, formats, agendas and ways of conducting their meetings. I suggest new methods of communication in one-on-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many meetings. I also support participants in developing their own interview patterns, criteria for participation in meetings or lists of proven questions to use during difficult conversations.
The program’s topics include issues such as strategic prioritization and techniques for: moderating team and group meetings, conducting regular one-on-one meetings, discussing difficult emotions in a team, recruitment interviews with consideration of candidates’ attitudes and values.
For whom:
Executives, directors and managers with at least several years of experience in managing people. I recommend completing the Relational Leadership program before participating in this program.
Results:
By participating in this program, managers learn how to:
- Systemically prioritize their own and their teams’ tasks;
- Responsibly decide what not to do and when not to do it;
- Strategically manage their availability and participation in meetings;
- Get closer to people and build healthy relationships during one-on-one meetings;
- Experience fewer surprises and disappointments due to people’s unpredictable reactions;
- Effectively moderate team meetings on difficult topics;
- Activate teams without imposing their solutions on them;
- Confidently talk about emotions to reduce team tension;
- Understand the hidden meanings of emotions allowing them to understand what is happening to the team and how to support it;
- Recruit people to teams with the right attitude and converging values.
What participants say:
- “Your prioritization process has made me start regularly saying no to meetings without an agenda, outside my critical path to success, or ones where I don’t bring specific value”
- “Thanks to the created list of important questions for one-on-one meetings, I got to know my team better”
- “Thanks to meeting moderation techniques, I make my team regularly discuss important topics”
- “The questioning techniques discussed allow me to increase the level of independent thinking in my team”
- “When I stopped imposing my solutions on people, frustration set in… and then they started sharing their observations and proactively submitting their solutions – often better than mine”
- “Thanks to these techniques for moderating group meetings, participants feel that the solutions being worked out are really theirs and feel like implementing them afterwards.”
Delivery:
On-site or online on the Zoom platform, in Polish or English, in groups of up to 10 people.
The program is a combination of a consistent series of experiential leadership workshops, executive coaching sessions on individual participant topics, and, optionally, participant observation sessions of real-world work with their teams or groups and one-on-one feedback.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the program description and discuss it with your team
Managerial Coaching
Scope of program:
Based on my years of experience in executive coaching and therapeutic practice, I have created a proprietary model of executive coaching for leaders.
In this 6-month program, I teach leaders step-by-step how to conduct professional coaching conversations to support other people in consciously responding to complex business and personal challenges.
During the workshop, I encourage participants to extract the deeper needs of their interlocutors from the content of their statements and demonstrate how to expand the awareness of interlocutors so that they can act wisely and be in touch with themselves and others. At each workshop, I also encourage leaders to try out coaching conversations on real topics and challenges they face in working with their teams.
The thematic scope of the program includes, among others, such topics as:
- managerial coaching model and process;
- goal setting and contracting support;
- the role, attitude and awareness of the manager-coach vs. other techniques for working with people;
- techniques for deep listening and coaching questions;
- mechanisms for modulating contact;
- staying connected and working on rapport;
- techniques for expanding awareness;
- hidden meanings of emotions;
- transference issues;
- expanding possible options for action;
- enhancing a sense of empowerment;
- responsibility and choice;
- exploring resistance and working with resistance.
For whom:
Executives, directors or managers with several years of experience in managing people. I recommend completing the Relational Leadership program before participating in this program.
Results:
As a result of participating in this program, managers become able to:
- Professionally support people in dealing with difficult, complex challenges;
- Professionally support people in achieving their goals, career development, etc.;
- Strengthen the sense of value, empowerment and responsibility in the team;
- Systematically increase the level of self-reliance of people and teams;
- Regularly stimulate their interlocutors to think creatively;
- Quickly identify resistance to action, become curious about its sources and know how to work with it.
What participants say:
- • “People in my team have become very creative since I stopped giving them ready-made solutions and started asking coaching questions from our list”
- “The longer I listen and question while refraining from giving advice, the more I am aware of how different my interviewee’s situation is from my own”
- “When I ask open-ended coaching questions and give people time to speak, I learn more about them, how they think and how they approach challenges than when I just question them”
- “Thanks to this program, I discovered that I can support people in their difficult situations even when I don’t have solutions or haven’t experienced something similar!”
- “Coaching conversations according to this scheme helps me build close relationships with my team during my 1-1 meetings”
Delivery:
On-site at the company’s headquarters or online on the Zoom platform, in Polish or English, in groups of 6-10 people.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the full program description and discuss it with your team
Change Leadership
Scope of program:
My inspiration for creating this intensive 3-month program came from discovering how many boards of directors have no idea what every experienced project manager knows – projects that treat people objectively end in resistance, lack of commitment, and often spectacular failures.
I also observe how many organizational changes that ignore people’s experience, knowledge, emotions, values, habits and situations have nothing to do with leadership, and a great deal to do with violent behavior, which no perks will sweeten for people later.
So I created this program for those board members, organizational change owners and managing directors who want to invite employees to co-create change to awaken a desire to participate, collaborate and take responsibility on a company-wide scale.
During the program, I guide the group in question through my proprietary process for stimulating and carrying out sustainable change in organizations. I developed this process by participating in dozens of IT projects and leading strategic projects as an advisor to mBank S.A.’s board of directors. In parallel to discussing the process with program participants, I stimulate conversations about the key issues and challenges of leading cultural change effectively and humanely. In doing so, I share my project experiences and relevant change case studies. Finally, I help participants complete a step-by-step strategic and relational action plan for the project at each stage.
For whom:
Board of directors, managing directors, organizational or cultural change owners, project teams, members of strategic project steering committees.
Results:
Through participation in this program, strategic project owners and decision-makers will be able to:
- Carry out change projects positively involving employees;
- Carry out change projects responsibly, maturely and humanely;
- Build broader support for change within the organization by reconciling different interest groups;
- Skillfully communicate the need for, status of, and effects of change on an ongoing basis;
- Effectively explain the benefits of change to people;
- Take people’s opinions, observations and objections into account in planning for change;
- Learn to treat resistance to change as information about unaddressed needs;
- Open themselves to dialogue, feedback to the change and its further scaling.
What participants say:
- • “The project discussions in this group allowed us to identify additional change stakeholders and plan how to gain their support”
- “The simulations of leadership styles and discussion of their effects gave me a lot of inspiration about which styles I should use at each stage of the change”
- “By going over our planned changes, we avoided many mistakes”
- “I was surprised how much of people’s resistance to change has total rational reasons, and how small changes in project assumptions are needed for resistance to naturally disappear”
- “I was surprised by what power just listening to a person and noticing him(her) beyond his role in the company sometimes has”
- “I noticed that the better people understand the changes, the more understanding they have of mistakes and what is not yet working 100%-well”
- “Participation in this program allowed me to change the optics from “we alone plan and force change in the organization” to “we invite people to develop a plan for change and implement it”
- “The broader consultation with our company’s employees planned during the program allowed us to better plan the scope and type of changes needed”
- “The focus groups we planned at this workshop were painful for us, but they made us confront the real challenges of employees instead of guessing at them”
Delivery:
On-site, in Polish or English, in groups of 6-10 people.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the full program description and discuss it with your team
Customer relations, B2B strategy and sales
Executive Alignment
Scope of program:
In this short series of strategy workshops, I guide the company’s board of directors through the process of jointly developing reconciling a mission, business model and operating strategy. During this workshop, I ask boards a series of strategic questions and invite in-depth reflection and dialogue. I also share my insights from working with different employee groups in different companies and industries. I stimulate an intense exchange of perspectives and provoke agreement on often divergent business visions, after which I write down the findings and share them with participants in the form of a staged expanded presentation.
The result of this program is a corporate strategic presentation responding to a range of issues such as:
- What are we for as a company? What is the deeper meaning of our actions for the world?
- What values do we follow and want to apply?
- Who are and who are not our customers?
- What business or life needs do our customers have?
- What value do we bring and how do we want to bring it?
- What is our sales and go-to-market strategy?
- How do we differentiate ourselves from our competitors?
- How do the various functional areas support and implement the agreed-upon strategy?
Who is it for?
Board of Directors and key executives.
Results:
By going through the process together, the company’s board members:
- Get to know each other better;
- Gain a better understanding of other members’ perspectives and business visions;
- Confront with deeper issues related to the company’s existence;
- Develop, agree upon and write down their key business assumptions;
- Develop a strategy document that can then be discussed within the company.
What participants say:
- “Thanks to this workshop, we started to understand each other much better in the boardroom instead of pushing each other around”
- “I was surprised how differently people from different divisions of the company see the same phenomena”
- “Thanks to this workshop, we discovered how little we know about our customers and their needs”
- “Our meetings were an extraordinary time to talk about the company as a whole, beyond the current business”
- “Super material emerged from it, which I later discussed with my directors”
Delivery:
On-site at the company’s headquarters or on the Zoom platform, in Polish or English, in groups of 6-10 people.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF with a full description of the program and discuss it with your team
Sales Excellence
Scope of program:
I created this 5-month program by combining coaching conversation techniques with my 16+ years of experience in building relationships with business clients and negotiating multi-million dollar global IT contracts (my experience with IBM and mBank, among others).
The result is an incredibly practical program that teaches how to sell without selling, based on long-term partnerships with clients and co-creating tailored solutions with them.
So here, participants in the program will not find any techniques to “push” their products to customers. Instead, I introduce them to the world of advanced business conversation techniques, selling customized integrator solutions, building and presenting the business value of solutions, and multi-step negotiation of large B2B contracts. I show how to effectively plan the sales process to avoid unforeseen situations. I also demonstrate what techniques can be used to effectively verify what’s happening inside client organizations to accurately forecast sales opportunities.
During this program, I invite participants to numerous simulations of real-life situations with their customers based on actual solutions, services or products of a particular company.
In the program, I focus on developing actual attitudes and behaviors with customers based on new relational skills, rather than simply discussing sales techniques and processes.
For whom:
B2B key account advisors (client executives, account managers, deal makers, business development managers), client-facing roles in B2B relationships (consultants, business solution architects, product salespeople, pre-sales specialists, project managers), people establishing and negotiating strategic partnerships between companies (founders and management of smaller companies).
Results:
By participating in this program, advisors to corporate and corporate clients will be able to:
- Build closer partnerships and long-term relationships with their clients;
- Better understand the market and business context of their key clients;
- More effectively work out issues of power, internal politics and relationships at key clients;
- Systemically analyze and understand their clients’ organizations and their needs;
- Build integrator offerings tailored to their clients’ needs;
- Communicate the business value and not just the functionality of their solutions;
- Identify more sales opportunities by building a solid project funnel (pipeline);
- Systematically improve their sales performance;
- Systematically increase their conversion, cross-sell and up-sell rates;
- Negotiate more profitable deals;
- Effectively verify what customers are saying at different levels of their companies;
- Plan sales processes more accurately and forecast results better;
- Deal effectively with customer concerns, complaints and grievances.
What participants say:
- “I now approach each meeting more consciously”
- “Thanks to participation in this program, my confidence in dealing with customers has increased”
- “Thanks to this program, I have increased the effectiveness of meetings with customers”
- “I now have a better understanding of customer needs and how to build rapport and contact”
- “As a result of participating in this program, I better adapt my contact strategy to changing conditions and the style of the interlocutor, propose and offer more effectively, and negotiate more effectively”
- “As a result of this program, I have gained a great deal of knowledge on how to act with clients and a productive blueprint for conducting future projects”
- “Looking at the interlocutor from a different perspective, a lot of good practices from other trainees that can be implemented at home”
- “I gained a greater awareness of the entire sales process and a greater ability to influence the customer’s decision”
- “I became aware of many of my strengths and weaknesses and what to do to work more effectively”
Delivery:
On-site at the company’s headquarters or on the Zoom platform, in Polish or English, in groups of up to 6 people.
Download a PDF
Download a PDF of the full program description and discuss it with your team
Sales Performance Program
Scope of program:
In these programs, I support small and medium-sized companies in building efficient B2B sales teams and larger companies in increasing sales effectiveness or sales management.
At the beginning of the program, I conduct a comprehensive, multidimensional review of more than 15 organizational elements that have a key impact on B2B sales effectiveness. In my analyses, I consider both hard elements such as structure, role, or sales processes and soft elements such as motivation, team climate, advisor skills and attitudes, and leadership skills of sales leaders.
Based on these analyses, I identify key areas of need or inefficiency around which I focus on proposed support activities.
Depending on the results of the initial analysis and the needs of the sales organization, I implement various forms of support – I conduct workshops that enable sales teams to develop new solutions, train, and support sales executives in coaching and mentoring processes, observe meetings and provide feedback, share knowledge and observations, assist in pipeline reviews or key sales projects, advise on building effective processes and structures for the sales organization.
Importantly, in this program, I accompany the sales team throughout the implementation of new techniques, processes and solutions into practice until they are adopted, evaluated and finally scaled.
For whom:
Sales divisions and teams – from CEO/Founder/VP Sales to director and sales managers, team leaders and business client advisors.
Results:
Referenced results of the Sales Performance program include:
- Tripling the value of global enterprise software sales (ANT Solutions);
- Changing a declining sales trend to 20% year-on-year sales growth across 11 sales regions and 90 banking outlets (Credit Agricole Bank Polska S.A.);
- Promotion of the supported sales region from 24th place to 1st place among 26 sales regions (Credit Agricole Bank Polska S.A.);
- Support in building a new multi-million dollar business line for mBank S.A. (mBox) and leading to the signing of the first contract – a project recognized by Gartner Eye on Innovation.
What participants say:
- “Thanks to Maciek’s support, we have successfully tripled our company’s turnover within 2 years of completing the Sales Performance program, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. I greatly appreciate working with Maciek and can fully recommend his support in reorganizations, scaling of sales operations or company culture development programs – wherever both sensitivity to people and deep business expertise, as well as high leadership, coaching and mentoring skills, are needed.” Szymon Piróg, CEO of ANT Solutions;
- “I recommend Maciek’s services to anyone looking for efficient and substantive consulting and management of strategic projects related to B2B sales, retail banking and IT.” Cezary Stypułkowski, CEO of mBank S.A.
Delivery:
On-site and remote (mix of services and interventions), in Polish or English.
Download PDF
Download a PDF of the full program description and discuss it with your team