Coaching

RIGSEL — clear thinking — is the heart of my coaching, and Diamond Cut is the method that carries it: recognise, meet with benevolence, and shift — mostly through the body, with attention and precision. I coach executives, founders, senior clinicians and elite performers, as well as capable people navigating transition, overwhelm, or a loss of direction. The work is a partnership: I hold and prod, you practise and decide. We talk, but we don’t stay in the story — I keep steering back to what you feel now, and stay with it when it gets uncomfortable. That is where change happens.

Over the years I have reached MCC (Master Certified Coach) level — the ICF’s highest credential — and trained in many methodologies, which I draw on as the person in front of me needs. Walk the talk: I only coach and teach what I practise myself. (Would you go to a dentist who has not practiced, but only talks about it?)

WORKING WITH INDIVIDUALS

Individual coaching. The core of the work. Using the Co-Active model as one foundation, we clarify what matters to you — your values, your purpose, the saboteurs and the inner allies — and then move it from the head into the body, where you actually live, react and decide. I hold you while you bring care to your own resistance; only then can it shift. With positive psychology and decades of practice behind it, the work is serious and, often, a pleasure.

Mental fitness and Positive Intelligence. Much of our stress, self-doubt, frustration and guilt comes from internal Saboteurs — the Judge, Controller, Avoider, Victim, Stickler, and others — in how they meet challenge. Your Sage meets the same challenges with curiosity, empathy, creativity and calm, focused action. Drawing on neuroscience and positive and performance psychology, Positive Intelligence builds three mental muscles: to intercept the Saboteur, to access the Sage, and to command yourself. (More: positiveintelligence.com)

Sport and performance. Sustainable high performance — in sport, business, work, family, personal flourishing — rests on mental preparation and a healthy mind as much as on physical training. As Michael Jordan put it: “The minute you get away from fundamentals — proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation — the bottom can fall out of your game.” From my own career in elite sport and decades of mind training, I work on: the mental and physical components of performance; an embodied approach to wellbeing; preparing the mind for a challenge ahead; guiding the sabotaging inner chatter; recovering from failure or frustration; and activating your motivational systems.

WORKING WITH TEAMS AND SYSTEMS

Team coaching. A team is not a collection of individuals; it is a living system, and the greatest leverage for results sits at the team level. Healthy teams are high-performing and sustainable; unhealthy ones block results and cause real pain. I work along both the Productivity continuum (what lets a team deliver) and the Positivity continuum (what keeps it engaged and sustainable) — both measurable — building on real strengths and developing what sits at the low end.

Systemic Team Coaching®. An evolution beyond traditional team development: it enables teams to keep creating value — for themselves, their organisation, and the wider ecology they serve. This is the frame I use when a leader’s or team’s challenge is systemic, not individual. (Trained with Peter Hawkins.)

Organisation & Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC). None of us is independent; we are all part of systems — families, partnerships, teams, communities. Relationship Systems work has one job: to reveal the system to itself. When a system sees its own strengths, obstacles and potential, it finds its own answers.

LEADERSHIP: ASSESSMENT AND STRATEGY

The Leadership Circle (TLC). An assessment that reveals the reactive patterns running in leaders and teams — and a path from reactivity toward creative engagement, self-awareness, authenticity, and real relationship.

Red Team Coaching. A disciplined way to make critical and contrarian thinking part of your planning — for a person or an organisation in a volatile, uncertain, ambiguous world. It challenges your assumptions, exposes hidden threats and missed opportunities, and stress-tests your plans before reality does.

THE SCIENCE I DRAW ON

Brain-based coaching. Research-based tools and skills for building new habits and behaviours, and reaching results more efficiently — at work or in private life.

The neuroscience of change. Neuroscience has changed how I coach. We now understand why some traditional techniques actually inhibit change, and which neural states are most conducive to insight and clarity. My toolbox is equipped with techniques validated by that research.

Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). Developed by Daniel J. Siegel, IPNB draws many sciences together around one principle: integration — the linking of differentiated parts, whether within one person or across a group — as the basis of health, vitality and creativity. It sits close to how I understand the work itself: healing as integration.

ACE — Accelerating Coach Excellence. An immersive training with David Peterson (Google) and David Goldsmith (co-founder, Institute of Coaching at Harvard) that sharpened my craft — greater impact in less time, even with the most demanding clients.

MEDITATION

The wheel of mental balance

Purpose

The main purpose of the “Wheel of Mental Balance” is to develop mental balance and resilience in a modern context. It combines techniques and methods found in classical Buddhist texts, extracting the benefits of practical application without compromising the source materials. While it is based on traditional meditation practices, the Wheel of Mental Balance incorporates and builds on insights stemming from current neuro-scientific and clinical research. 

Modules

The Wheel of Mental Balance can be taught in different modules, depending on how much time is available and how deeply participants want to explore: one day, two days, three days, five days, or spaced over a period of 10 weeks. 

All modules are based either on Attention, Cognition or Affective training, and each teaching of the program completes by including all three modalities of practice and training.

Each teaching includes a theoretical part followed by a practical application. The first practices are directed towards stabilizing the mind, followed by several exercises to enhance cognitive perception and mindfulness, and ending with tools to improve affective proficiency through developing compassion and loving-kindness.

mental balance

The Wheel of Mental Balance is structured around three domains of mental activity: attention, the cognitive, and affective spheres. In order to develop mental balance, each of these three areas of our mental world needs to be explored, understood and – preferably – be well-adjusted. The program is structured so that it addresses each domain with separate exercises. This leads to a better understanding of how our mental processes work, helps us realize early when they are out of balance, and how to bring them back to balance. The Wheel of Mental Balance provides the tools that explore our mental processes and it teaches techniques aimed at creating and maintaining mental balance.  Modern scientific research has identified four components of wellbeing: resilience and the capacity to recover from adversity, positive outlook, generosity, as well as mindfulness and the ability to control attention.

The wheel of mental balance

The teachings provided within the Wheel of Mental Balance offer methods that strengthen these four elements of wellbeing, and aim at contextualizing the original use of Mindfulness from the Buddhist teachings within a larger, secular context in order to progress towards a deeper sense of purpose; to have the experience of mental balance; and to awaken to the beauty and magic of life. 

Based on a profound conceptual framework, it represents a collection of practical methods that use proven tools with the sole purpose of enabling and finding mental balance, and overcoming hindrances in the midst of our daily lives. It incorporates well-honed and proven tools, but also expands the spectrum of the application of mindfulness towards critical and important factors of the mental world, such as enthusiasm, joy, tranquility, concentration, impartiality, loving kindness (benevolence), compassion, ethics, and wisdom.

If you have further questions, please feel free to get in touch with me: diego@diegohangartner.org

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