Paul Koeck, MD

Saturday afternoon, my training at the national convention of AIESEC Belgium will be on the following topic:

Title:  “How to become a Leader in 15 minutes per day”

Subtitle:  ‘Resolve challenges to grow yourself into a leader’

Dr. Paul Koeck will show how investing 15 minutes per day in your personal and professional development as a leader will help you:

• Resolve any type of stress
• Focus on who you want to become (instead of focusing on day-to-day problems)
• Discover your deepest dreams and realize them
• Discover your personal talents and utilize them
• Choose your right priorities in function of your goal

This workshop integrates elements of Stress Management with keys to successful Leadership because the path towards leadership starts with cleaning out what keeps you from progressing, resolving your issues, bottlenecks and stress. Once you master this skill, you will get a clearer insight in how you can grow as a leader and create your own vision to guide you towards discovering how you will use your existing talents better to reach your goal and fulfill your dream.

Preparation: for those who speak Dutch, we invite them to do the “online self scan” at www.mijnkwartier.be and print the results and bring them to the workshop. We will discuss your score at the start of the seminar and explain you how you can use them to grow. There is no English translation of this test available yet, so the internationals can skip this test and still attend the workshop without any problem.

Trainer: Dr. Paul Koeck (Coachteam.com)

Paul Koeck studied medicines, philosophy and sports medicines in Leuven, management at the Vlerick School for management and was professionally trained as a Solution Focused Therapist, systemic coach and therapist and as a master in Ericksonian hypnosis. He trained leaders in most continents all over the world: USA, Argentina, India and most European countries and coached leaders in several Fortune top 500 firms. His concepts are teached at different universities over various continents. Further, he works as a physician and therapist in Antwerp and developed an online self-help program to offer online psychotherapy for participants who prefer to cure themselves without attending a therapist.

He authored four books on personal development, stress management and therapy who are available at www.mijnkwartier.be

His websites are:

1. Business & Leadership coaching at www.coachteam.com
2. Online therapy at www.mijnkwartier.be
3. Personal blog at www.paulkoeck.com

I just talked to a friend. I did not see her for a year and at that moment, she had a hard time, she felt down and depressed. So, I asked her: “Hi, how are you doing?” She answered: “Hey, I am ok … very good!”

Listen to our conversation:

- Feeling better than last year?

- Much more !

- How did you make that change?

- Just understood that I am the best friend of my own and I love myself and thought that I am the best. I love my life!

She teaches us a wise lesson: as long as we look for friends or others to make us happy, we will suffer because we are dependent on others. The day we understand that we are our own best friend to love, live becomes sunny again, and depression fades away from our lives and turns into satisfaction and happiness.

Sometimes we can help others to discover their love for themselves by giving them our love. But never can we expect others to give us love … because waiting to be loved, makes us dependent, scared, helpless and depressed.

When you hear a friend talking about love with an undertone of expecting to be loved, then we know he or she will suffer more before finding inner peace. When his or her speech changes into “I desire to give Love”, then you know that Love is coming soon. My clinical practice show this truth over and over again: if a patient starts to love and accept himself, then i know i will see him with a peaceful smile the next time he enters my consultation. If a patient starts to give love (without sacrificing the own needs), then cure is happening.

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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Read today the interview by Dominique Soenens at www.vacature.com !

More Leadership video’s and interviews with CEO’s at www.coachteam.tv and in future blog posts here.  A Dutch translation of this video is available on the Dutch pages of this blog.

Full Interview at http://www.vacature.com/blog/van-rompuy-wel-een-goeie-leider

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 »

A discussion with a friend reminded me following transcript of a diaogue among two of my most important mentors. It reflects deeply my personal beliefs about Lasting Love:

In 1959, Jay Haley, the famous family therapist, asks his mentor, Milton H. Erickson, MD, the words most renowned hypnotherapist and psychiatrist: “If you were to describe what a good marriage is, how would you describe it?” Milton H. Erickson replies: When I describe a good marriage to my patients, I point out to them that there are essentailly four kinds of Love:

1. The infantile type of love, “I love me.”
2. The next stage, “I love the me in you. I love you becaue you are my brother, my mother, my father, my sister, my dog. The ‘me’ in ‘you’.
3. Then the adolescent type of love, “I love you because your dancing pleases me, and because your beauty pleases me, and because your brains please me.”
4. The adult stage of love wherein, “I want to love you and cherish you because I want to see you happy, because i can find my happiness in your happiness. The happier you are, the happier, I’ll be. I’l find my happiness in yours. Il” find delight in your pleasure and intellectual persuits. I’ll find a delight in your enjoyment of dancing.” So the mature love is the capacity to find enjoyment in the enjoyment of the other person’s enjoyment. It works both ways. 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 »

Dear friends, we are wondering what happens with our financial world. A wonderful source to learn for free more about Corporate Finance and Financial Valuation, are the free webcasts of University professor Damadoran. You can attend his full MBA teachings, with video, slides & templates on Corporate finance for free on his website: I attend his free seminars too. Join me. Paul

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