Encouraging and giving tips

Having helped Laura Zoppi prepare for a C1 university German test in 2024, Ms. Zoppi gave me this feedback: "I would like to thank you for your encouragement and tips, which I found very helpful." 

From Daniela Castellani Sorg, who works with young children, I received the feedback that she improved in communicating to people, with whom she works, what thoughts she has and what emotions she feels. I understood from the feedback of Daniela Sorg that this improvement helped improve her quality of life. 

In September 2025, Ezeh Melody reached out via LinkedIn to get advice about mentoring. In his feedback, he wrote: Thank you so much. This is highly insightful. I am grateful you made out time to share this with me. This is helpful and has answered questions I've been seeking answers to for a long time. I'm deeply grateful. 

Among very good coaching experiences I have had is coaching students who write their thesis. For example, I recall coaching students, who wrote about business development and different topics related to digitization. I learned, for example, that each student is unique, for example by having unique interests and needs. To serve a student in the best possible ways, I understood that it is important to ask good questions and listen well to the student in order to understand his or her challenges. In addition, I learned that giving feedback to work that students do on various issues can help them improve. 

At Swiss Re workshops over a few years, I contributed to develop competencies of leaders, for example by asking questions and giving feedback. I liked this work for more reasons. Examples:

• It was more or less the first time I had experienced that people, who work for a large, old and successful company, invite external people to ask questions and give feedback to leaders.

• Several young people were invited to participate in the innovative leadership development work.

• Workshops were professionally organized and moderated.

• I recall feeling appreciated and valued for the work I did for Swiss Re.

• What I also liked about the initiative was the informal atmosphere following the workshops, as people chatted with each other over a cup of coffee.

Some time in the 2000s, I came across the blog Kolindkuren. Almost instantly, I found Lars Kolind's use of a blog a great initiative. What I liked was, for example, that Lars Kolind used social media technology for work and openly invited people from all over the world to participate in open dialogues and solving important innovation challenges. What fascinated me about the innovation work, which was continuously being done over the blog Kolindkuren was that Lars Kolind and many other contributors to the blog put focus on issues I found highly relevant for innovating how we work. Therefore, it became natural to me to invest, over a period of a few years, several hundreds of hours in this work. 

Among the questions, I recall that we worked on, were questions such as these:

• How do we learn to understand which values people find important?

• What beliefs do people have?

• How do we develop a purpose for what we do?

• How can people - including leaders - use technology to invite more external people to contribute?

• How can we rethink the way we organize, for example to enable people to feel more free and easily share ideas each other.

• How do we rethink education to help people learn better?

• How do we create more value in health care?

• How do we respond to globalization? In this regard, how can we work well globally as well as locally?

• How do we transform the way leadership is done to a leadership that serves people even better?

The more I worked on better understanding these and other related topics, the more I came to realize that problems I had experienced working for, for example, LEGO, were not problems that were particularly unique for LEGO. They were problems that are common for most companies that have achieved a certain success, existed many years, and reached a certain size. I discovered that when the sales of a company grows and more people are involved, things start to get difficult. Why? I found out that it has to do not least with the way work is organized. What I learned through the hands-on experiences I made, observations I made, conversations I had with people, and through other research I did, was that that most companies organize using hierarchies. This idea of organizing using hierachies that dates back to the beginning of the 20th century and is strongly related to 2 words: Command and control. The more people, who are involved / recruited, the more hierarchical levels managers on all levels create. This relatively simple discovery as well as lots of frustration in many work situations encouraged me to do work more on creating more value for many more people around the world by helping strengthen ways of organizing, which help people work better.

Among great initiatives of SBB, a Swiss company that helps many people every day to get from A to B, are supersaver tickets. I learned that by using trains that take a little longer to get from A to B than other trains and/or traveling at times, when few people travel, I could use supersaver tickets to save money. I have used supersaver tickets several times, for example when traveling to Zürich to Bern or from Zürich to Basel to do various kinds of work. 

Using supersaver tickets I found out that it is very important to be very much aware of the train number printed on ticket. An example: One day, as I had purchased a supersaver ticket, I accidentally entered a train, which was leaving Zürich main station just a few minutes earlier or later than the train printed on my ticket. In the train wagon, where I was sitting, there were just a few other people. In other words, the train wagon was more or less empty.  As the conductor came to check my ticket, he told me that I had taken the wrong train. I apologized for this and said that I made a mistake, which I had only become aware of, as he checked my ticket and told me. He said that I needed to leave the train at the next station and buy an additional ticket to get to the destination I needed to go to. So that is what I did. At the next station, I left the train, bought an additional ticket, waited until the next train came and took that train to the destination I needed to go to. Besides losing money I also lost quite a lot of time on this.

Some Swiss people had told me about the expression "Bünzli". It was an expression that was new to me, and I had not thought so much about this expression before this sad experience. I learned that Bünzli describes a person, who is very focused on rules as well as on maintaining order and tradition. Reflecting on this situation  I learned that for some people, who grew up in Switzerland, maintaining order and tradition has a very high priority. Being a perfectionist myself, I know about this human trait quite well. Still, I felt shocked of the very little interest the conductor showed in adapting to user needs, thinking and acting with flexibility, using personal judgement to evaluate the situation, acting with empathy and - more generally - self managing. I had the impression this behavior was a demonstration of bureaucracy with a capital B.

Not long after I moved to Switzerland in 2006 I was invited, to go on a Winter hike in the mountains with a few other people. I had very little experience hiking in the mountains - in particular during Winter time. I felt safe when I got the information that a mountain guide, who knew the area well, was going to lead the group I was a part of. Before going on the hike, I had acquired the necessary equipment, which people in the group had told me to take with me. For example, I brought with me hiking boots, snow shoes, appropriate clothes, a bag, food and water. I was told that we would start on the hike early in the morning. 

The day before the hike, I recall that the sky was dark and that it was raining. From the other people in the group, who had several years of hiking experience, I understood that the weather was not good for hiking. I asked a few times if it would be better to call off the hike. Everyone found that we should not call off the hike. They found that we should stick to the original plan and go on the hike the next day. The next day the weather was just as bad as the previous day. I asked again if it would be better to call the hike off because of the weather. I heard some voices expressing concern about the weather conditions. However, a majority wanted to go on the hike. I recall I felt a certain group pressure in this situation. 

An important incident happened right at the start of the hike. After a few hundred meters of the hike there was a big sign warning hikers not to go any further. The mountain guide said that he knew the area very well and found that we could keep hiking, although the sign clearly indicated that we should stop. He advised us to continue. This decision by the mountain surprised me a lot. It also surprised that the other hikers went obeyed the mountains guide's decision and continued.

When we got to the mountain cabin / cottage, we had dinner and went to sleep. During the night there was a large snow storm. In the morning there was a significant amount of snow all around the cabin / cottage, and it was still snowing a lot. There was also a strong wind I recall. My girlfriend and I did not feel comfortable at all with the situation, and we expressed to the others that we had a need to go back. The other persons in the group wanted to continue up the mountain. That was really shocking for me to hear. The mountain guide decided to go with the group, who wanted to continue up the mountain. My girlfriend and I walked back in the snowstorm.

During the walk back one of my snow shoes broke. My girlfriend and I decided to continue walking. I recall that we walked very close to each other, because we could see just a couple of meters ahead of us. I had never been in a situation like this. It was a very good decision my girlfriend and I took to walk very close to each other. Not only did I feel safe walking closely to my girlfriend. We also got into a good rhythm and walked more or less like one for a relatively long period of time. Many of the poles in the snow, which help hikers find their way, were gone. That indicated that that a huge amount of snow was below our feet. It also made it very difficult to find the way in the snow storm. I remember that I felt much fear at this time. Two other hikers came from behind. They walked faster than us and walked past us. I could see in their eyes that they also felt fear.  I had the clear impression that we were in a life threatening situation.

We got to a place that I believed I remembered from the day before, when we walked to the mountain cabin / cotttage. I said to my girlfriend that I was certain that we needed to turn right. My girlfriend did not agree with me. She said that she believed we should go straight. I remember that we stood still at a crossroad and talked about this for a while. As she had much more experience than I hiking in the mountains, I decided to follow her advice. So we walked straight. Suddenly, we saw a road and also the bus we needed to take to get back. The relief my girlfriend and I felt, as we sat in the bus, was incredible. I cannot recall ever having felt such a relief. I was soaked in sweat and felt an extreme degree of joy of having made it back alive.

I asked ChatGPT about what a mountain guide should do and not do. I learned, for example, that

• a mountain guide should ensure the safety of people at all times. 

• a mountain guide should not take unnecessary risks that endanger the safety of people. 

• a mountain guide should not overlook or neglect safety protocols and procedures. 

• a mountain guide should not ignore weather forecasts or other critical information when planning expeditions.