Facilitation of teams and management teams, on your own issues.
I facilitate sessions in which a team works on real issues from its own practice, in healthcare and education. The eight steps are the structure; the content belongs to the team. Everything I offer, I offer as a certified partner of Vraagstuk Studio: facilitation, talks, workshops, Metis, and the route to the training program. In English or in Dutch, on site in the Netherlands or online.
What I offer
A facilitation program for a team or management team
A kickoff day with the Team Pulse, then VGW sessions on the chosen issues, and Team Pitstops (the look-back moment, step 8) every three to four weeks. I facilitate the process and teach your own people the skill, so the team can eventually do it itself. Including peer supervision and coaching on the job.
An interactive talk
For management and policy teams, conferences, and sector associations: why the same topic returns quarter after quarter, and how a different order breaks that pattern. That puts the thinking on the table in your organization. More about me as a speaker.
A workshop to experience it
A team goes through the first steps on an issue of its own. Not a case from outside, but something that is going on with you. That way you experience in one half-day what the order does.
Metis, if you choose it
With a Metis subscription, the AI colleague of Vraagstuk Studio is present in the sessions I facilitate, and I equip your own people to work with it independently. The subscription runs through me, at the monthly fee that is the same with every partner. Metis works in English. How I work with Metis.
The training program, to learn to facilitate it yourself
Those who want to learn to facilitate it themselves take the VGW Practitioner training program and afterward, if they wish, VGW Professional through Vraagstuk Studio. An organization that trains its own people builds the anchoring that a client in my book called, in hindsight, the most important success factor. The training program at Vraagstuk Studio.
How a program runs
In the workbook: the route, p. 7. In the book: chapters 3, 13, and 15
- Exploratory conversation. Forty-five minutes. I listen to what is going on, not to the symptom but to the pattern, and together we assess whether the method fits. You then receive a proposal with a timeline and the investment.
- The kickoff day. Check-in, getting to know each other better, and the Team Pulse: everyone writes down for themselves what is going on. Together the team chooses a first issue and who takes it on: the issue team, preferably four to six people.
- VGW sessions on the issue. Steps 2 through 7, in one or more sessions. At the end of every session we update the Current Shared Picture: key points, action list, and discussion record. The manager takes part as a team member.
- Team Pitstops. Every three to four weeks: what have we learned, and what do we do with it? Actions are reported back. Here I see with the team where it stands in single-loop, double-loop, and triple-loop learning.
- The next round, more and more on your own. After closing an issue, the team picks up the issue list again. Round after round I do less and the team does more, until it masters the steps. Then my work is done.
A team that is just starting often takes a full day for an issue; an experienced team does it in an hour. A step gets the time the team needs. Every issue goes through all eight steps, in the same order. Tailoring is not in the steps but in what I add around them: for instance Lencioni’s team dysfunctions model as a conversation frame for one session, or the micro-habits from Samen safe by Hans van der Loo to build safety in small, repeated steps.
Reading along with a proposal? This is what you can expect from me
From me, and from every certified partner of Vraagstuk Studio. Use it as a checklist.
- I facilitate the process, not the content. The solution comes from your team, not from me. I impose no ready-made solutions.
- All eight steps, in the fixed order, for every issue. I skip no steps and I do not cut them short; tailoring is in the exercises around them, not in the steps.
- After every session an updated Current Shared Picture, even when a session is cut short.
- Consent at every transition: everyone is asked whether they can move on with this. I never infer agreement from silence.
- No assessment of people. Not by me, not by Metis. The Team Pitstop is about result, process, and collaboration.
- Openness about what it delivers: as a direction, not as a proven result. I promise no numbers.
- My own fee for my facilitation, which we agree directly. For the Metis subscription the same monthly fee applies with every partner.
- Your own, shielded environment if you work with Metis. Only your organization has access to your data; I and Vraagstuk Studio do not.
- The intention that you can do it yourselves. I work toward a team and a manager who carry on without me.
- A realistic expectation of the time. Results only appear after teams have logged enough flying hours, and only if the attention to support and anchoring continues.
What I do not do. I am not a general personal-effectiveness trainer, not a loose brainstorm facilitator without a methodical basis, not a generic AI consultant, and not a consultant who imposes ready-made solutions. My work is not about meeting faster, but about discovering, weighing, deciding, executing, and learning better.
When is this not a fit?
In the book: chapters 2 and 10
Not at the moment of an acute crisis itself; afterward it is, in the Team Pitstop. For a decision that legally rests with one person, the team can still do the picture-forming together, but the decision stays with that person. And in a team where nothing is broken, the method is not needed. Three team characteristics decide whether it takes: size, interdependence, and a shared task. Those are the first things we look at in the exploratory conversation. Not sure? Do the tool Does Issue-Focused Working fit us?