Certificate-of-the-Milton-Erickson-Institute Heidelberg

TO THE TRAINING CONTENT:

Coaching certificate and completion of the training at the Milton-Erickson-Institute Heidelberg

(Source and further information: www.meihei.de)

In September 2017, I was able to complete my 2.5-year coaching training. The advanced training "Competence Activating Hypnosystemic Concepts for Coaching, Personality, Team and Organizational Development (Hypnosystemic Cognintuition Coaching) is an advanced training recognized by the German Federal Association of Coaching.

1. conceptual basis of the curriculum

are the fast and sustainable effective procedures of the systemic-constructivist conception, the competence- and solution-focusing consulting models according to Milton H. Erickson and concepts derived from it) and the modern findings of brain research, energy psychology and related procedures.

As the center of the premises of these concepts we understand the perspective that in every individual (understood as an autonomous, self-organizing living system) and in every organizational system formed by such individuals there is an extremely diverse repertoire of competencies and potentials, whereby a very large part of this repertoire remains mostly unconscious and involuntary.
From this point of view, even if massive problems or symptoms occur in a system, this does not at all mean that the competencies necessary for a constructive solution are not present, but that they are only dissociated on an unconscious level.

The systemic and hypnosystemic concepts quickly and effectively enable these areas of competence to be activated and used in a target-oriented manner. In this way, the competencies from the cognitive experiential area can be optimally coordinated with those of the much more comprehensive intuitive, involuntary (partly also unconscious) experiential area (cognition coaching). The curriculum imparts the necessary know-how comprehensively and systematically.

The hypnosystemic concepts are supplemented in the curriculum and connected with all procedures, which have proven themselves excellently in optimizing the desired success effects in consultations, such as elements of psychodrama, focusing, various imagination methods, system sculpture and choreography work, body therapy concepts, EMDR, EMI, EDxTM, EFT, TFT, psychodrama, appreciative-provocative counseling, etc.
Systemic counseling concepts and especially Ericksonian hypno-therapy approaches and their communication strategies offer optimal possibilities here. They are excellently suited for:

• differentiated context analyses
• for the identification of relevant relationship patterns
• for effective direct and indirect communication skills and for
• optimal design of cooperative relationships
• for the development of specific direct and indirect-suggestive interventions, with which problem patterns can be quickly and effectively transformed into solution interactions
• for competence-developing team development
• for fast and effective conflict management that uses conflicts as an opportunity
• for successful, precisely tailored marketing of consulting services
• for systemically well-coordinated project management

In the curriculum, the competencies for this are taught and practiced practically.

2. fields of activity, for which the curriculum qualifies

A central task area is considered to be the professional field of coaching. Building on this, the concepts offered are then systematically applied to the field of context adequate team development (TE) and organizational development (OE). We assume that the broader the spectrum of his / her competencies, the more effective coaching will be and the more competent and flexible a coach will be in advising and supporting his / her clients. Coaching is also typically an expression of a consulting ritual, which does not only revolve around individual topics, but also around the questions, tasks and goals of individuals in contexts of responsibility (thus mostly also connected with leadership interactions, no matter from which side of the interaction processes it is started).

The learning content of the curriculum is systematically designed to comprehensively enable participants to design consulting and development processes with outstanding professionalism. These should be focused on the optimization and further development of individual and/or collective learning and performance processes, e.g. of people with leadership/control and decision-making functions and of experts in companies/organizations, so that these people can fulfill their roles with the best possible competence even under very complex and highly demanding contextual conditions. The respective clients should be offered the best possible services, which open up opportunities for a holistically coherent, competence-focused and goal-oriented self-reflection and co-reflection of their professional life against the background of their personal life and career design, which is systematically considered in interaction with their relevant relationship contexts.

The primary focus is to be on professional concerns. The central focus of consulting (e.g. of coaching) is considered to be the mutually influencing network of the areas of person, roles/functions and organization. The consulting services for which the curriculum qualifies are intended to serve the maintenance of performance and the continuous improvement of the effectiveness of the clients' own design processes ("Performance Improvement Management"). At the same time, they should also serve to optimize the health-promoting balance of life and the fulfillment of meaning for both potential clients and the consultants themselves.

The curriculum, which is based on the systemic (context-oriented) models as a central conceptual basis, also wants to consistently take into account that the optimization of human potentials should be coordinated with the contexts in which the consultants and their potential clients move. This means that the goals and the criteria of meaning of the respective clients should also be taken into account.

3. cultural understanding of the curriculum

This culture in the curriculum also wants to do justice to the findings that in the increasingly complex dynamic systems in which both consultants and, above all, their clients move professionally, individual (quasi rather "for oneself") learning is no longer sufficient. Learning should therefore also take place in networking, in such a way that the type of networking patterns conducive to learning can also act as a helpful measure for stimulating similar learning networks in the organizations of the consultants and their clients - suitably oriented to the contexts there (promotion of "learning organizations").

The curriculum aims to represent forms of shared learning that are expressions of a culture of encouragement; as well as of enabling creative learning experiments with curiosity, spirit of exploration and discovery;

the mutual appreciation of the respective uniqueness of the participants and their unique resources and competencies (also as an optimal preparation for designing consultations "as unique encounters between unique clients and unique consultants in unique contexts";
respect for what has gone before. Here the manifold new learning contents offered by the curriculum are basically always offered from the perspective that they want to build and integrate the new on and with the manifold valuable competences that the participants already bring with them ("the new as the grateful brother on the shoulders of the giants of the previous - this is the best way to look further!");
the chances to translate and use together also the aspects of the participants, which were described so far as deficits and "problems/symptoms", respectfully as possible competences for a holistically fulfilling personal development.
in which expressed criticism is translated as valuable information about needs and concerns of those communicating it (instead of a devaluation of those about whom it is expressed).
of experiences that bring to life the optimal balance between individual intelligence and mutually supportive "network intelligence" (synergy between "individual mind" and "social mind").

4. our philosophy of counseling

Counseling as a ritual for the sustainable strengthening of autonomy and self-design ability (coherence experience)

The findings of the systemic and Ericksonian competence-activating concepts and modern brain research clearly prove that people have an enormous repertoire of (often underused, unconscious) potentials. The entire curriculum is therefore consistently geared towards enabling the participants in a differentiated manner to systematically design all counseling processes in such a way that

they themselves, and their clients in the counseling process, can experience their own creative and problem-solving abilities as quickly as possible,
autonomous, goal-oriented and meaningful self-management can be built up in a profound and sustainable way,
counseling is thus co-evolved as a fast-acting ritual of supporting self-help-competence and context-flexible competence,
optimal self-reflection and self-control skills are strengthened,
thus the flexible skills of the clients are strengthened; also translating their experiential processes, previously understood as "problems", as usable skills for previously dissociated goals.

5. target groups of the curriculum

for example internal and external trainers and consultants, process facilitators, personnel and organizational developers, executives, managers.

6. participation requirements

University degree or several years of professional experience in the field of human resource development, work as a consultant or coach, willingness to engage in self-experience, experience with consulting processes.

7. some basic considerations of our concepts

Systemic concepts and especially their integration with models from Ericksonian hypnotherapy offer a variety of constructive and very effective ways to strengthen solution-focused interactions and to support enriching, competence-promoting and beneficial states of consciousness of managers and employees.
Likewise, they often make it possible to quickly and very effectively transform interactions and contexts experienced as problematic into constructive, goal-oriented forms.

The communication strategies and interventions used in this process have nothing to do with classic hypnosis rituals, but systematically the diverse know-how about communication and about effective support of potential awareness from the concepts mentioned above is integrated into normal, everyday professional communication.

The following applies: Not only the people involved in the organization are to be regarded as relevant elements of social systems (although people and their personal state of mind are ultimately central also to the survival of the organization). At least as important for the analysis and optimizing design of the organizational processes (especially in the service of the people involved) are the patterns and rules for communication, for the design of relationships, for decision-making processes, for the distribution of responsibilities. These are of course made by the people, but then have a massive effect on them again and develop a kind of "life of their own", so to speak, which hypnotically influences the competencies and perceptions of the people.

Organizational consultants and promoters of OE measures sometimes unfortunately do not take this into account in their work, but focus primarily on the individual participants and their internal dynamics directly, whereby the context that is important for this remains neglected and certain personal reactions often appear only as a disturbance or deficit. However, if these phenomena are placed in their meaningful context, they can usually be quickly understood and utilized as meaningful attempts at solutions (with problematic effects) (principle of systemic utilization).

Deficit-oriented perspectives on the part of the consultants then also lead to narrowed processes of perception on their part. Then patterns also develop in their working attitude, which exhaust them (burn out) and at the same time stabilize the deficit experience of the clients.
Optimal professional action of consultants must therefore always take into account both levels (interactional context and the autonomous, also internal, process dynamics of the participants), whereby the contextual-structural level (often e.g. hierarchical levels) can become very essential (especially in OE work that takes into account social responsibility for employees).

8. situations for which our offers are useful.

The complexity of modern organizations, which can be described as complex dynamic systems, exceeds the capacity of human processing capabilities. This leads to subliminal confusion. In order to be able to re-establish meaning and orientation, those involved draw on descriptive models that are emotionally familiar to them as a stopgap for reducing complexity, e.g. family relationship models, black-and-white thought patterns and similar undifferentiated systems of belief and action.

In this way, implicit rules and forms of communication are established in the system, which often have a dysfunctional hypnosis-like effect, i.e. trigger intense involuntarily controlled actions and reactions that determine essential processes in the system without a differentiated meta-perspective.

This means that the focus of attention of the participants is shifted, especially involuntarily-unconsciously (which corresponds to the experience of trance), to rigidly restricting evaluations, beliefs and behavioral patterns in such a way that fundamentally existing solution competencies are no longer perceived. This is even true for competencies that have been practiced many times before.

The experience of "it just happens to me/us" displaces the knowledge of "I/we shape our actions according to our planning and our will". In this way, managers and employees lose contact with part of their creativity and other important potentials. One then often experiences oneself as a victim of developments to which one seems relatively helplessly exposed without one's own influence.

Suboptimal and dysfunctional states of consciousness then arise among the individuals involved. At the same time, however, this is accompanied by patterns of interaction and organization that are formed in the interplay by the participants and that work in the same unfavorable direction. These patterns have an effect on the individual experience and this in (mostly reinforcing way) again on these patterns (circular dynamics).

Although there are practically always many very functional patterns to be found, in processes of the kind described above, these patterns get out of the common focus of attention, are faded out (dissociated) from the "perception of the organization" and are thus no longer sufficiently useful.
Dysfunctional organizational patterns then gain so much influence that a distorted and more deficient image of the organization appears than corresponds to its level of competence. The potentials for optimal shaping and learning in the organization can thus no longer be effectively exploited, although they are very much present in the system (of the individual participants and of the overall system of the organization). They are unintentionally dissociated.

Especially change processes (to which every organization is exposed today as an almost permanent challenge) often lead to fear, confusion, and the experience of devaluation. As brain research clearly proves, this goes hand in hand with a restriction of the accessible intelligence; as an effect of such affective processes as fear, etc., one becomes dumber than one actually is.

Our concepts enable people to quickly and effectively develop states of consciousness that allow them to optimally shape change processes and to use all their resources for this purpose.

In the curriculum, a multitude of differentiated intervention possibilities are conveyed, with which target-oriented competencies in the system can be reactivated quickly and effectively, and very effective learning processes can be stimulated, which comprehensively enrich the competence level of the participants and the organization as a whole.

9. essential focal points of the content of the overall curriculum

• Systemic and constructivist methods for analyzing patterns of organization and interaction.
• Theory of dynamic complex systems, management of instability, and optimal balance between stability and instability.
• Theories of competence-focusing hypnotherapy, shaping of experience through processes of attention-focusing, priming research, results of modern brain research relevant to the concepts, etc.
• Methods of solution-focusing and competence-focusing hypothesis generation.
• Development of helpful, solution-focused reality constructions.
• Circular questioning methods in organizational consulting as indirect competence-stimulating invitation techniques.
• Systemic description and analysis techniques for identifying contradictory and/or problem-stabilizing orders and intervention strategies for transforming and using them to promote solutions (from "unsolvable" orders to constructing solvable problems).
• 2nd-order cybernetics - construction of the counseling system.
• Hypnosystemic intervention tools for building constructive cooperation patterns (pacing and invitation strategies) and intervention techniques for unfolding client motivation and goal-directed engagement.
• Solution-focused design of diverse settings of coaching as solution-focused short-term counseling.
• Strategies for the utilization of the consultant's own experiential processes in the cooperative encounter with the client in a way that serves both the assignment and the goal.
• Hypnosystemic strategies for the development of precise, fitting goal constructions and for the development of competence-focused perception and interaction design.
• Competency-activating communication strategies from Ericksonian hypnotherapy.
• Hypnosystemic strategies for identifying unconscious, dissociated competencies and for reactivating them.
• Systematic work with various scaling strategies.
• Systematic solution-focusing strategies for self-management and self-coaching.
• Possibilities to transform unconscious internal problem self-hypnosis into creative cooperative states of consciousness and everyday rituals.
• Future questions as induction of solution consciousness ("solution trance") and an-other strategies for imagining solution design.
• Strategies for identifying "problem-trance"-inducing communication and using it as an anchor for resource-enhancing states of consciousness.
• Problem behavior treated as an expression of involuntary ("trance") phenomena. Problem-trance reconstructions and their transformations into solution-experiences.
• Hypnosystemic intervention strategies to make problems / symptoms understandable as appreciative competencies for hidden goals and loyalties. Concepts of solution-oriented ambivalence coaching.
• Concepts of indirect communication and invitation techniques (formerly called "suggestion") for coaching, TE and OE as the basis of peer, appreciative cooperation with autonomous partners.
• Spectrum of diverse hypnosystemic intervention possibilities, e.g..: Positive connotations, system sculptures/ system and team choreographies, utilization techniques, design of competence-focusing tasks, so-do-as-if interventions, systemic facilitation, work with metaphors, rituals, symbols, and
• Many other systemic and hypnosystemic intervention techniques.
• Utilization of multiplicity, work with models of "inner team conferences" and "side" models and their synergetic optimization.
• Leadership models and leadership models from a hypnosystemic perspective.
• Findings of modern brain research and their implications for consulting processes for leadership tasks and OE measures. Strategies for strengthening so-called "emotional intelligence" and "social competence".
• Competence-enhancing approach for optimizing the multiple roles of leaders, e.g. optimizing the tasks of leadership and coaching of employees and their utilization possibilities from a hypnosystemic perspective.
• Resolution of role confusion and task ambiguity in organizations.
• Hypnosystemic models and intervention concepts for optimal life balance, meaning development and career planning.
• Context-specific promotion of leadership and employee potential and strategies for motivational enhancement.
• Solution-focused collegial forms of consulting.
• Aspects of a value economy, responsibility of the consultant for loyalty to the client, but also for loyalty to the fit of the consulting service in the corporate culture and to the corporate goals and to the overall social responsibility (stakeholder loyalties). Solution-focused strategies for building an organizational culture with responsibility ethics.
• Hypnosystemic intervention techniques for identifying value systems and informal rules of behavior in organizations and strategies for their cooperative use.
• Team development models and change management models, especially hypnosystemic, solution and competence activating concepts for them.
• Symbolic interventions for using problems and effectively imagining solutions (problems and solutions treated as symbolic team members whose power can be used to best advantage).
• Intervention planning and design for team interventions that promote cooperation and make competencies perceptible - target synergy in team systems. Solution and competence-focused intervention strategies for co-creative management of team development processes/ Systemic solution-focused intervention techniques for working with groups and teams.
• Strategies for transforming deficits into activating team skills.
• Methods of scenic presentations and solution-oriented work with organizational sculptures and choreographies.
• Hypnosystemic strategies for "change management": developing the optimal balance between change and what is worth preserving - change processes as building systemic organizational patterns for "win-win" situations. Systematic building of order cascades in hierarchical organizations, hypnosystemic strategies for motivating involvement of diverse subsystems in larger change processes.
• Solution-focusing aspects of systemic knowledge management, theory and practice of solution-focusing "learning organizations".
• Hypnosystemic conflict management and hypnosystemic mediation strategies.
• Possibilities of personal development of the participants of the curriculum, also through trance work, imagination and the inclusion of non-verbal intervention concepts (e.g. body interventions etc.). The various intervention strategies are not only practiced in direct case work/ e.g. coaching of the participants, but are also offered in each case as opportunities for the participants to work on their own issues.
• Case studies from own professional practice, supervision.
• Audio- and video-supported consolidation of the course content.
• Peer group work (learning partnerships).

The described main topics are developed together in a didactically meaningful way as listed and made usable for the practical work of the participants. They are directly related e.g. to the "case/assignment needs" of the participants and in each case coordinated with the current desired economy of the group, in order to also do justice to the self-organiation potentials of the group.

10. to the head of the curriculum

Dr. med. Dipl.-Volkswirt Gunther Schmidt, specialist for psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, himself in leadership responsibility (besides the management of the institute) from 1996-2007 at the clinic at the Hardberg as head of the dept. "Systemic-hypnotherapeutic psychosomatics" and since 2007 founder, chief physician as well as managing director of the SysTelios clinic for optimal health management and competence development. Working as a coach, in team and organizational developments since 1984, conducting coaching trainings since 1992 (2-3 curricula annually), working in diverse practice fields such as profit and non-profit organizations, clinics, clinic concept developments and consultations, supervisions.

Dr. Schmidt is co-founder and trainer (until 2002) of the International Society for Systemic Therapy and Consulting (IGST), co-founder and trainer of the Helm-Stierlin-Institute (since 2002) for systemic consulting, therapy and research, trainer and (from 1984-2003) 2nd chairman of the Milton-Erickson-Society (MEG), Scientific Advisory Board of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), member of various other scientific advisory boards. Founding member of DBVC (www.dbvc.de). References e.g.: Siemens, Daimler, Migros, Allianz, Hewlett-Packard, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Dresdner Bank, UTA, VOEST, BASF, SAP and many others.

I will be happy to answer your questions about my approaches to recruitment and personnel development in purchasing by phone or e-mail. Or you can schedule a personal meeting.