A successful executive and head of a department, learns that the publishing house he is working for was bought by a large competitor. He also discovers that a new leadership concept will be introduced: from now on there will be “tandem” leadership. He will share the responsibility for his department with another executive from the new publishing house. He will even have to share an office. When entering the office on his first day, the enthusiastic new team partner says: “Ok, let’s start with really sorting things out here.”

The executive resolves to not be bothered by his new coworker’s manner, but this doesn’t work out. “To be honest, I have to admit that I boil with rage every time I sit down at my desk,” he says, after having worked with his colleague for three months. He feels his achievement potential is now limited, “especially when we show up together, I feel tense and switched off.” The client cannot come up with a method of his own to overcome his constant anger. “This anger reduces my powers of persuasion and my charisma. Our joint appearance becomes a charade.”

The intervention in this case is carried out according to real-life examples like having to work in a team or giving a speech together. When he’s thinking of his coworker, the client feels his anger as a tension in his arms. After a waving session of 10 minutes he suddenly laughs out loud. “Speedy Gonzalez – the fastest mouse in all Mexico,” he bursts out. The tension is gone and the muscle reaction test is strong.

“Now I’m always smiling to myself whenever I work with him. The most important thing is that I regained my sense of humor,” the client reports. “Then I did something really obvious; I let go of being hurt and offended and gave him feedback in a friendly way. And it turned out just fine. “Speedy” had no idea of how he came across to me and we found a way to come to terms with each other.”

This coaching example shows that when working with wingwave, the coach hardly makes any suggestion at all to the coachee about how to change his/her behavior or way of thinking. Telling a coachee, “Why don’t you go and talk to your coworker,” will not lead to positive results as long as the client still feels angry. It is the re-established access to one’s own internal sources of strength that inspires the coachee to come up with solutions and ideas that can be unusual or obvious.