Blog - salomons.coach

27 Jun

You Don’t Plan a Career Switch. You Explore One.

Blue gradient hero with a golden dotted path winding from left to right toward a compass on the right; headline reads 'You don’t plan a career switch. You explore one.'

Senior leaders are trained to remove uncertainty, yet a career switch resists exactly that. You can't analyse your way into a new identity; you have to explore your way in. Here's how the Pioneer Map and The Expedition guide the senior career pivot — and the theory beneath the method.

26 Jun

Transactional Analysis for Leaders: The Foundations, and How to Use Them

Infographic showing three TA ego states—Parent, Adult, Child—on the left and three leadership actions—Develop, Manage, Stay strategic—on the right, with a central 'A' node labeled Lead from Adult.

A clear, deeper introduction to transactional analysis: where Eric Berne's Parent, Adult, Child model comes from, the psychology of why we shift between stances, how it connects to Kahneman, Rogers, and psychological safety, and how to apply it in everyday leadership.

26 Jun

The Daily Firefight Hijacks Your Leadership, Not Just Your Calendar

By salomons.coach
In Blog, Self & Personal Growth, Teams & Collaboration, VUCA & Leadership

Diagram titled 'The Operational Pull' showing an adult at center (A) with a glowing circle, arrows pointing from A to three top categories: 'Mid & long-term goals', 'Developing people', and 'Managing up'. Text 'ADULT' and 'the stance you choose' under A, and 'the daily firefight pulls your stance down' with a downward arrow toward two circles labeled P (Parent) and C (Child) at the bottom, indicating rescue and control dynamics.

Every leader knows the day that vanishes into ad-hoc fires. The real cost isn't lost hours, it's a hijacked stance. A transactional analysis lens on staying strategic, developing people, and managing up when everything is urgent.

20 Jun

The Reliability Paradox: 5 Habits of Reliable Operations

Promotional banner for 'The Reliability Paradox' featuring a dark blue gradient, bold left-aligned title and an illuminated orbital diagram on the right.

Efficiency makes an operation look strong. Reliability under the unexpected asks for almost the opposite. Karl Weick's five principles of high-reliability organizations — and what they looked like on a real hub floor.

11 Jun

You Don’t Have a People Problem. You Have a System.

Systems-thinking infographic: scattered people icons, curved arrows around a glowing central circle on a dark blue gradient with the phrase 'You don't have a people problem. You have a system.'

Your team won't take ownership. The same crisis keeps returning. You replaced the problem person and nothing changed. These aren't character flaws — they're the shape of the system you're standing inside. Drawing on three decades in the leadership chair, Jan Salomons on why so much competence produces so little change, and where the shift actually begins.

10 Jun

AI Can Coach Your Career. It Can’t Coach You.

By salomons.coach
In AI, Blog, Change & Transformation, Self & Personal Growth, Tools & Methods

Silhouetted heads in a line with one highlighted gold figure and a glowing vertical bar, against a dark gradient background; text mentions AI and coaching relationships.

Generative AI is a superb career thought partner — for CVs, interviews, search strategy, and rehearsal. But coaching isn't information. Drawing on systemic and provocative coaching and three decades in the leadership chair, Jan Salomons argues that the deeper work, seeing your system, facing your blind spot, growing past your own comfort, is precisely what an AI built to agree with you can never do.

09 Jun

The Contracting Conversation: Why Some Yeses Hold and Others Evaporate

By salomons.coach
In Blog, Self & Personal Growth, Teams & Collaboration

Infographic 'The Contracting Conversation' showing six steps to turn an agreement into commitment, with numbered cards.

Getting someone to say yes is easy. Getting a yes that survives your absence is the real work of leadership. Six research-backed moves that turn polite agreement into commitment people genuinely own.

07 Jun

Your Personal Stress Coping Profile: Turning Pressure Into Insight

The Personal Stress Coping Profile™ provides a structured mirror of current pressure, coping responses, resilience resources, boundaries and recovery. It creates insight without diagnosing or labelling—and connects personal awareness with the wider team conditions that influence how people cope.

29 May

Parent, Adult, Child: The Three Modes You Lead From

By salomons.coach
In Blog, Self & Personal Growth, Teams & Collaboration, VUCA & Leadership

Diagram showing P, A, C nodes (Parent, Adult, Child) linked in a row on a dark blue background with the headline below.

Parent Adult Child leadership explains why the mode you default to — Parent, Adult or Child — quietly shapes whether your people grow or stay dependent.

15 May

The full logic (and context) of yes and no

Hero banner: dark blue gradient with concentric rings and a gold 'yes' at center, title 'The full logic of yes and no' on the right.

A yes from Beijing and a yes from Amsterdam can come out of the same mouth in the same meeting and mean radically different things. A reference-grade walk through the four cross-cultural frameworks — Hofstede, GLOBE, WVS, Schwartz — and the two psychological theories underneath that explain why.