Some matters in your life badly need a second mind that can look at them from outside.
- Running the company by your own convictions without wounding the generation above you takes two separate kinds of skill.
- Your head says one thing while your heart says another.
- You feel that something is off, and you cannot find where the knot is.
- Several roads lie ahead of you, and you cannot tell which one is yours.
- Sometimes you know what you want; you do not know how to bring it into your life.
- You have only just come out of one storm, still raw, and life has already asked you a new and equally hard question — and you look around for a shoulder.
- The decision forming inside you is exactly right for the business, and the beginning of a catastrophe for the family.
- The things you were once masterful at are no longer done the old way, and all those stripes on your shoulder stop working overnight.
Coaching does remarkable things
- Training alone22%
- Training plus one-to-one coaching88%
Managers at a public agency were first given conventional training; productivity rose by 22%. In the group that then received eight weeks of one-to-one coaching, the increase reached 88%.
Source: Olivero, Bane & Kopelman — Public Personnel Management, 1997.
The risk of derailment
13%26%
Today, 13% of family businesses expect that when the current generation's tenure ends, someone from outside the family will take the helm. That proportion is expected to double before long.
In other words, more and more family businesses will have to hand the reins after succession not to someone in the family but to an outside professional. That is not a “failure” — but nor should it be an “obligation” caused by nobody in the family having been prepared.
The cost of an unprepared successor is not the salary paid to them. Add up the wrong strategic decisions, the missed opportunities, the damaged morale and the capable managers who leave, and the bill grows many times over.
Successor coaching is the cheapest protection there is against that hidden cost.
It is at times like these that a capable, level-headed second pair of eyes completes the picture. Eyes that are not inside your fog: informed, curious as a child, and without prejudice.
Successor Coaching
A great many of the companies we know are family businesses. Successor coaching is usually imagined as preparation that starts once someone has been named as the next leader. The better way is for the coaching to begin the moment the leadership potential becomes visible. That preparation should be built on the successor's best version of themselves — developing the technical competence and learning to handle the relationships, both at once.
- Preparing for the handover
- The relationship with the founder, and the change of role
- Finding your own way of leading
- Separating the family from the company
- Balance among siblings and cousins
- Preparing for the board
- Building visibility and authority
- Carrying the weight of expectation
- Managing egos
- Choosing the right words
Executive Coaching (Career & Work)
In working life the real point of reference is finding out which decision serves the purpose of your life. Yet most people, tossed about by daily urgency and popular choices, end up signing agreements that were never theirs…
- Career direction and career decisions
- Changing jobs and starting again
- Management and leadership matters
- Hard decisions at work
- Entrepreneurship and business ideas
- Professional relationships
- Business partnerships
- Conflict at work
- Discovering your own potential
- Negotiating and bargaining at work
Life Strategy
There are periods when you want to look at your life as a whole, from the outside.
- Where am I going?
- What do I want?
- What should I change?
- What should I let go of?
- What should I protect?
- How do I want to design the rest of my life?
Life strategy work helps you think through your goals, your values, your priorities, your relationships, your work and what you expect from the future — all together.
This is not a prescription for a “perfect life”. It is the work of designing the version of your own life that is right for you.
Decisions & Turning Points
Some decisions carry weight in a life.
- Changing jobs
- Entering or leaving a partnership
- Continuing or ending a relationship
- Moving to a new city or country
- Starting a venture
- Accepting an offer
- Letting something go
- Having a conversation you have postponed for years
When you decide, we weigh not only the options but your feelings, your needs, your fears, your assumptions, the risks, the opportunities and the likely consequences.
The purpose is not to decide for you. It is to let you make your decision with a clearer mind.
Relationships & Private Life
A large share of the hardest matters in our lives are about people. Our partner. Our spouse. Our family. Our business partner. And sometimes ourselves.
Not every problem in a relationship is a communication problem.
Sometimes it is a matter of trust. Sometimes of boundaries. Sometimes of power. Sometimes of not being heard. Sometimes it is expectations that were never spoken aloud. Sometimes it is two people wanting the same thing in two different languages.
Family counseling, and relationship and marriage counseling, sit under this heading too.
- Family counseling
- Relations between women and men
- Romantic relationships
- Marriage and partnership
- Family relationships
- Decisions in private life
- Trust and communication
- Setting boundaries
- Difficult conversations
- Needs and expectations in relationships
- Negotiating inside a relationship
Negotiation & Settlement
Most of the matters in our lives end up requiring us to talk to another person. And some conversations are not easy.
- Asking for something
- Setting a boundary
- Resolving a disagreement
- Restructuring a partnership
- Saying what you need inside a relationship
- Negotiating an offer
- Talking about a separation
- Trying to settle a dispute before it reaches a court
All of these are matters of negotiation. I do not simply teach you techniques; I start by trying to understand what is really on the table.
- Who wants what?
- Why does each of them want it?
- What is the need behind the stated demand?
- Where is there flexibility?
- Where is the limit?
- What options could be created?
- How can this matter be carried to a better outcome?
What can we do together?
- 01
Where it helps, I teach you to negotiate.
- 02
Where it helps, we build your negotiating strategy together.
- 03
Where the situation allows, I sit at the table on your behalf — or beside you.
Before It Becomes a Legal Matter
Not every dispute has to be taken to court. Sometimes, before any legal process begins, a space can be made in which the parties can hear each other again.
By putting rights, needs, interests and likely outcomes on the table, a settlement-focused solution can be sought.
My approach is not to remove conflict at any cost. It is to find the best outcome available.
Method
How does Müjde work?
Seven steps, from listening to measuring. The same method with an individual and with an institution.
See the seven steps
From the work
F. Müjde Çetin
Strategy Consultant · Thinking Partner · Solution Artist
She gets to the heart of the matter.