I’m Thomas, a psychotherapist turned executive coach.

As a self-employed psychotherapist I’ve combined my individual work with freelancing as a team and leadership coach in organizations. I would be contracted for jobs in larger companies, like banks, insurance or aviation. Often I was a part of a larger change management roll-out and was asked to coach teams and leaders to get somewhere else than where they currently were. The main focus of the change process was performance and efficiency improvement. Many of the teams and individuals I worked with where high achievers and liked to push themselves, so they also wanted external goals to strive for, but I often couldn’t help but see exhaustion and stress.

As a Gestalt psychotherapist and empathic person I started to resist these change methods louder and louder. In Gestalt we start with what is present to understand where one is in relationship to a changing environment. Given how fast that environment changes, an external change model is bound to become useless quickly.

The mismatch became too big and I had to step away for a while. During that long break, it took me a while to understand I had been complicit in and had suffered from a capitalist, neoliberal system, where more, faster, better is the norm and human needs are often secondary to that performance fetish. Having my own struggles with performance, with going fast and slowing down, I was susceptible to that system. A difficult period of recovery and deep reflection followed.

When I picked up my work again as a psychotherapist, I realized I was often supporting individuals to heal from the suffering of that same system I had been complicit in and had suffered from. Stress, burnout, depression and doubts about self-worth were often the symptoms of the ruthless growth this economic system propagates. I loved my work and my clients, but I felt frustrated that I was only ‘picking up the bodies downstream’ and wanted to have more impact ‘upstream’. I knew this time I’d need to offer my services in a way that for some leaders and organizations might be deemed too radical… although for some it might be just what they were looking for.

That’s when I coined the term ‘Slow Leadership’. Only recently my partner helped me to realize I had to add a tagline saying: ‘executive coaching for postcapitalist times’.
After all, slowing down and leading from our inner experience is a radically different thing in a capitalist system that largely leans on performance indicators. So radical, that it is remarkably empowering in a disempowering system.

I’m Thomas, a Belgian passionate about human dynamics and how they make us get stuck or make us thrive.

I started my journey in learning about humans with an MsC in Clinical Psychology and a first work experience in drug addiction recovery. Soon I  learned how limiting my academic skillset was. I had great analytic abilities, but felt insecure and awkward engaging with clients. I got stuck in conflict and didn’t know how to be authentic. I needed more human skills to feel at ease in my work with people. A four year Gestalt psychotherapy training in the Netherlands offered me ways to show up more as myself and to start with that when I would support clients. Learning about my embodied awareness and ways of relating helped me to realize I had been hiding myself behind the theoretic frameworks I had learned in Clinical Psychology. I understood how my own, authentic experience in the moment was a highly valuable source of information and a tool to support human change. On top of that, Gestalt taught me to look at the whole and not just at the parts. That helped me to humanize clients more and support them in their growth instead of analyzing their deficit.

After six years of addiction recovery work, I wanted to break free and became self employed, combining a private psychotherapy practice with freelance work in leadership and team coaching.

Exciting as it was, I was fully unprepared to run a business. I was good at my craft and at working hard, but I got so stuck in the latter that I didn’t have enough capacity to take a step back to actually develop my business in a sustainable way. I was working a lot in highly commercial, corporate settings and blindly joined the narrative of more, better, faster. It gave me financial security, but no real nourishment and most of all, it didn’t match the pace I needed to be healthy. ‘Luckily’ I burned out.

I took an extensive break to recover and reflect. My body needed to relax and I needed to go deep into myself to understand what it was that had gotten me here. It was a difficult and sad time. After all, my long standing dream of working with organizations had ended very disappointing and I was wondering if I was even capable of it. The high-performance corporate environments I had worked in often didn’t make space to treat their employees in a humane way. As a freelancer I was usually part of a larger change management roll-out and was asked to coach teams and leaders to get somewhere else than where they currently were. To put it bluntly, I often got hired to clean up the management’s mess and lubricate the jarring change processes. This way of operating didn’t align with my values of appreciating what is, of working bottom up or bringing more humanity into systems of leadership and organizations. If I ever would go back, I would need to do this differently. 

Despite my reflections, I needed more time to fully grasp what I had been part of and how it had been so damaging for me. After all, I value performance and efficiency, an organization can’t do without them and neither can I.

I was confused about this whole experience. For now my sick leave helped me to slow down and a month long solo mountain retreat brought me back to myself and to my own path.

After a year I felt ready to go back to part time work, but only long after my return to work life would I understand what had really brought me down.

I picked up my work again as a psychotherapist, but felt reluctant about going back to organizations. I was still passionate about that world, but I first needed to figure out how I could support leaders and organizations in a way that also made sense for me.

Meanwhile, through my work with clients in my private practice it started to dawn on me. I saw how I was often supporting individuals to heal from the suffering of larger systems they were part of. Stress, burnout, depression and doubts about self-worth were often the symptoms I was dealing with and I understood how they were symptoms of a capitalist, neoliberal narrative with its incessant focus on growth, efficiency and performance. It was that same capitalist system I had been complicit in and had suffered from. Every organization needs to perform and be efficient, but without clear values, a deeper why and attention for people and their needs it can’t nourish itself nor its employees. It will eventually perish after the people in it have done so long before. No wonder my soul had starved and my body told me to step away. Although I loved my work and my clients, I felt frustrated that I was only ‘picking up the bodies downstream’ and wanted to have more impact ‘upstream’. 

My ideas about how to work ‘upstream’ in organizations were taking shape and I knew I’d need to offer my services in a way that for some leaders and organizations might be deemed too radical… although for some it might be just what they were looking for.

That’s when I coined the name ‘Slow Leadership’, feeling how right that was for me. I also knew this name might push some people away, but also pull those people in that matched with my values. 

This might sound like I had found clarity, but I was only just at the beginning. I was struggling in my life, felt stuck in my city and needed a new chapter. A study in the US called me. I enrolled in a two year M.A. in Process Facilitation and Conflict in Portland, Oregon and learned about the value of conflict, about the constant undercurrent present in human interactions and about the layers of rank, power and privilege. Through my own conflicts and tensions I gained an intimate understanding of my ability to impact the world and how I can use that for the better in my life. To give an example of the layer cake of rank that I hold, I am much more aware of my size as a tall man, how that makes me feel safer, can offer safety to others and sometimes can also be a source of intimidation. Knowing this has helped me to relate better to people. This was a simple learning, but other insights came with more hardship. It was confronting to  discover how my socio-economic background has made my life so much easier in certain ways, but also limits my abilities to understand the experience of people who had less advantages. It has humbled me and weirdly has made me feel more connected to people.

The learning in the US helped me to understand that leadership that wants to serve the organization as a whole, needs to attend to conflicts, polarizations, overt and covert power dynamics and different levels of influence. In other words, a leader needs to grasp what’s happening below the surface of the performance of their organization to really understand what makes it get stuck and what makes it thrive.

I’m writing the final version of this text in December ’23. It’s been five years since I burned out. It’s been a long journey and only recently, with the help of my partner, I found the last piece of the puzzle, when she told me during a random dinner night ‘Thomas, I think your leadership work is about unlearning capitalism’.

That observation made it all click. I saw my own struggle with going fast and slowing down, with performing an external model and staying close to myself and I saw how I’m passionate about bringing a philosophy to organizations that gives an answer to all that. That’s the moment when I added the final tagline ‘executive coaching for postcapitalist times’.

‘We hired Thomas to help me and my team better support our clients throught uncomfortable emotions and help them push past their comfort zones to achieve their physical goals. We were coached through a blend of digestible education, integrative activities, and actionable take-aways to be able to start practicing our new skills immediately.

Thomas instantly created an emotionally safe environment where my team and I felt comfortable exploring and addressing our own triggers and difficult client relationships with no judgement, just awareness.

We all came out of the session with a deeper understanding of ourselves and more confidence to really support our clients in more advanced ways, adding value to our service and our personal lives.’

Gina Daley, Portland Integrative Fitness