Intervision
&
Coaching
A good conversation, outside the lines
When did you last have a conversation that changed both your thinking and your feeling?
Walking, eating or puzzling: your work, your life or your current challenge on the table,
with someone who looks beyond the safe, familiar analysis. One-on-one, in a fixed group, or with your team.
Seeing the whole
before you tinker with yourself
Zooming out first, then zooming in—that is my approach to all complex systems. And you as an individual—or you as a team or organization—are also a complex system. Whether it takes the form of peer consultation or coaching, a meaningful conversation between the two of us, or a group exchange, systems thinking can be applied to your specific situation. Which patterns are holding you in their grip? Who and what are connected to them? Where is the room for maneuver that you fail to see because you are right in the middle of it all?
The shift between the broad perspective (taking the big picture into account and seeking understanding) and the narrow perspective (analyzing and grasping details)—that interplay between the two hemispheres of the brain—is a constant element of our interaction. Under pressure, our focus tends to narrow, yet that is precisely when the broad view is needed.
And I keep asking questions. Not until the answer is "right," but until the underlying discomfort is brought out into the open. That is where it all begins.
No office is required. A good conversation often flows better while walking in the woods, sharing a meal, or working on a puzzle together.
"When I started working on the energy transition at the City of Rotterdam and had completely lost the thread after a few weeks… I ran into Maarten. Talking, sparring, searching, 'no, I'm not crazy'… I found my way again."
— Marjolein Rours, urban planner, City of Rotterdam (coached during her master's thesis on complexity thinking in urban areas)
What I don't do
Therapy or therapy-like programmes, and career coaching. If a conversation shows that you need something other than what I offer, I will say so, and help you find who does offer it.
How we can work
What happens when you invite me, for whom, what do I bring and what do we want to achieve: that is what we settle in an exploratory conversation. My involvement can take different forms. Three examples:
One-on-one
SIX CONVERSATIONS OF NINETY MINUTES · OVER SIX MONTHS
A good conversation about your work, your life or the challenge on your plate right now. You bring the question, I bring the wide view and the questioning. Between conversations you do the work yourself; the next one starts where you left off.
For executives, directors, department and team managers, project and programme managers.
Intervision group
FIVE TO EIGHT PEOPLE · FOUR TIMES A YEAR, OR MORE
A dedicated group of leaders or professionals discussing each other’s cases—within a safe environment. What is shared in the group stays in the group. I facilitate the process: I safeguard the structure, ask the questions the group overlooks, and introduce systems thinking when the case calls for it. After a year, the group is largely able to manage the process on its own.
For those seeking a space where the discomforts of work can actually be discussed with peers.
Team
THREE SESSIONS OF TWO HOURS · WITHIN SIX WEEKS
A team taking a close look at its own practices: how do we work, where do we get stuck, and what are we not saying to each other? Three sessions held in quick succession, ensuring that issues raised in the first session are already shifting by the third.
For management teams, project - or programme-teams, and departments looking to collaborate more effectively.
Wired differently
Do you operate—whether in terms of speed, scope, intensity, sensitivity, or general approach—in ways that differ from the expectations of the world and the organisation around you? Call it ADHD, giftedness, autism, or "simply" neurodivergence—the combinations and manifestations are endless. These traits are often treated as problems—including by yourself. I understand this from the inside: I have ADHD and am gifted myself, and throughout my life—across various types of organisations—I have learned how to harness these qualities rather than fight against them.
Individual: six sessions, as described above, but centered on this specific theme.
Group: a peer-support group for "differently wired" individuals—five to eight people, meeting four times a year. Finding common ground and recognition is half the battle here.
What I draw on
I have no framed certificates on the wall. What I have internalized is this: eight years of academic study; ten years of activism for environmental and development organisations; ten years in a peer-coaching group; eight years running my own business; and sixteen years of leadership and coaching roles within the City of Rotterdam, ranging from project teams to executive management. I also spent five years as a guest lecturer for the "Brain in the Boardroom" masterclass series at Erasmus University. Observing and experiencing the world as a biologist and systems thinker is more than just "putting on a different pair of glasses"; it is simply how my eyes, ears, intuition, and brain function—for myself, for you, and for your team.
"Maarten was my supervisor during my thesis. What struck me most was that I soon noticed he doesn't think in a standard, linear way. He is incredibly curious, asks questions from unexpected angles, and first tries to really understand what someone means before pointing in a direction. That was enormously motivating for me and gave me the room to develop my own way of thinking about complexity theory further."
— Adrienne Acioly, project manager, City of Rotterdam (master's thesis on complexity theory in urban areas)