Paul Koeck, MD

He was sitting in my office: tense, tired, stressed and depressed. He lost pleasure in the small stuff of life. There were plenty of complex interpretations that could be the source of his depression. I wondered if I would dive into them, but decided not to. I decided to look for more simple solutions to break the vicious circle. How to find out? Asking questions, simple questions, often help. So i gave it a try …

- “When exactly do you feel most stressed? What happens at that specific moment?

- “Well, phone calls are happening all day long and I do feel overwhelmed and not prepared to answer”. (He works in the financial sector and get phone calls from anxious clients who are worried about their investments during this financial crisis.)

- “How many of the phone calls you receive are from this type of overstressed clients?”

- “About six of them”

- “Are those mostly the same six clients calling you?”

- “Yes!” , he replied.

- “Ok, and how many of them are really important clients that you cannot afford to lose?”

- “Two, and they call me almost every single day”.

- “How much time would it take you to study their file as your first job when you enter the office in order to prepare your answer to their questions?”

- “I guess about 5 minutes for each of them, that means 10 minutes all together”

- “Would it make a difference to you if you prepare as your very first job in the morning their file and call them yourself before they call you?” , was my next question.

He smiled and said “Yes, of course. I would feel much better. I would not be afraid to be overwhelmed by their calls any more!”

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In October 2009, I trained members of Parliament and staff members in the Lithuanian Parliament. Feel free to have a look at a selection of this training in both languages:

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Chess World Champion Gary kasparov came over to Belgium this week. He analyses his own success secrets. Since it connects very closely to my personal experience as a Business Coach of highly effective leaders, I wanted to summarize some key idea’s:

1. Reflect on your ‘Decision Process’:
   1. analyze how you take decisions in your life: become counscious of how you took your succesfull decisions and make reflecting on your decisions a habit. This will lead to creating a personal decision style.
   2. success is the consequence of the quality of your decision processes, and long term success of the quality of your improvement process of making better decisions read more »

Today was a usual therapy day. Some other days, I am more into business coaching and building our new e-business. This morning, I felt peaceful, happy and calm. I know this feeling. It often occurs to me while working with clients. And my 10 o’clock client, mentioned the same: working with people makes him feel calm and good. Why is this so, I wondered?

1. First, I remembered that I started to develop this pleasant feeling right after my first years of being a professional. Probably one needs to build ‘competence’ first, to feel selfconfident in what one is doing. So, if you read this and are still building competence in your profession, just accept that learning takes effort. And that there will be a day where you feel ok with what you do. Your customers will let you know when you do a good job and that will reinforce you.
2. Second, this pure concentration on one person – no phone calls, no interruptions – gives our brain the time to tune in, the time to focus and as we know from litterature: focus is that what provokes “flow” in a human beings. Focussing relieves stress & tension and opens us up for joy. I remember from my philosophy classes the quote of Jean-Paul Sartre, in “L’Être et le Néant”, describing self-consciousness as  ”Conscience de soi de quelque chose” (being aware of yourself through being aware of something).  Now, years later, I start to see that we become more ourself, indeed, when we focus on something else with dedication and concentration. read more »

Paul Koeck, MD, BA, is president and founder of Coachteam® International. He works as business coach for top-executives, and is in surplus an excellent therapist and physician. He created the Coachteam® philosophy ’Goal-Directed, Solution-Focused Coaching‘, being the pioneer in Europe in Solution Focused Coaching for Business Leaders & Organisations! Paul defines the keys to success clearly: ‘Successful people know what they want to achieve, how to get there, how to mobilise thé required resources and … they dare to be thé Captain of their soul’. Dr. Paul Koeck is an authority in the field of business & career coaching and competence development. He is a frequent keynote speaker, coach & trainer on international scientific conferences and at universities, all over the world. His model and techniques are used in different continents, countries and languages. He is the creator of several expert systems for managing the change of human behaviour.

Paul studied medicine, philosophy and sports medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain. After his management studies, at the VLERICK School for Management, he was profoundly trained in systemic coaching, brief therapy an hypnotherapy in Europe an the U.S.A.

As a trainer, consultant and coach he served important business leaders and organisations like  Alcatel-Lucent, KPMG, BASF, Siemens, Borealis, IBM, Swift, Nextiraone, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Banksys, HP, Junior Chamber International, Haribo, Proximus, Belgacom, Delta Lloyd Life, Generale Bank, Belgian Military Police, Anco, Givi, Axias, IPPA, HBK Spaarbank, Vlaams Centrum voor Kwaliteitszorg,  Socialistische Mutualiteiten, Onafhankelijk Ziekenfonds, Arenberg Group, Partena, Prayon Ruppel, Pandora,  … He coaches fluently in 5 languages: Dutch, English, French, Spanish, German and studied Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Esperanto, & Russian.

Radio Interview with Dr. Paul Koeck about digital stress: Part 1 -  Part 2