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2024: At Hercules Coaching we believe in the Power of Partnership and all of our work centers around our People, Passion and Purpose. Thank you to all our Partners around the world with whom we continue to be on an amazing journey of growth, and here's to achieve even more together in 2025!
2023: On the road again
2022: The reality of Hybrid
2021 - Onwards and upwards!
2020 - What a year!
It has been a busy and engaging year for the Hercules Team throughout 2019:
We are a Talent Design and Consulting Company focused on driving performance and development at an individual and organizational level. We specialize in accompanying global organizations on their journeys of strategic transformation and cultural change, equipping their leaders to role model the essential behavioral changes and empowering all team members to feel ownership along the way.
Known for our expertise in Leadership Development, Diversity & Inclusion, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience & Mindfulness, Change & Cultural Agility and Making the Uncomfortable Comfortable.
Unique in our interactive and experiential methodologies to provide a deeper learning experience in all that we do.
Scalable in our delivery through a global team of in-house talent on all continents.
Based in Switzerland, operating globally, we develop and deliver innovative and interactive solutions for all your people management challenges. Our uniqueness lies in our ability to customize solutions to meet your specific needs through leveraging our creative and functional expertise.
The following are a selection of companies we are proud to have worked with:
Presenting Diversity Theater by Hercules Coaching
The primary goal of any of our Diversity Theater interventions is to address the behavioral challenges of building more sustainably diverse and inclusive workplaces.
While the structural elements are often tackled first by organizations, research shows that it is the behavioral elements which overwhelmingly impact individual engagement and motivation.
Our Diversity Theater format allows us to get to the heart of these often difficult behaviors, to hold space to unpack the root cause, and then to create even greater levels of awareness and committed action around them.
Working from the inside out
To create each unique experience we start with you and your organization’s unique Diversity Dilemmas. Using a focus group approach we unearth the top 4 to 5 challenges which we storyboard into scenarios for our Corporate Actors to play back as the heart of Diversity Theater.
Typical Diversity Dilemmas that we see include:
“I don’t see people like me at the top.”
“I have no allies in this room.”
“My ability to lead is undermined by stereotypes and bias.”
“I feel guilty managing work life integration.”
“In this company it pays to say nothing at all rather than to look stupid.”
“I will never fit in here.”
“I am constantly overlooked and unseen in this team.”
“Remote means unheard.”
Creating Awareness and Directing Change
Having identified the key challenges, our Corporate Actors play back these scenarios in a “worst case” format reflecting the current reality. This can create moments of discomfort as we are all about unwrapping the root causes and helping leaders to open the dialogue on the uncomfortable stuff. Our experienced moderators build an environment of psychological safety to allow participants to be drawn into confronting the status quo. As a fully interactive experience, the audience is empowered to find and drive the change required for a different future outlook.
The level of interaction is flexible, often depending on the size of the audience. We have presented Diversity Theater to audiences varying from 10 - 300 participants. Our format is also completely flexible and can be delivered live, virtually and in a mobile format as part of a wider Leadership Development Program.
Actor-based Corporate Training
Actor-based Corporate Training
In 2007, a colleague who worked in the CEO office of one of the Swiss banks approached Michelle Holmes with a support request for their upcoming Global Leadership Event. Knowing her acting background and that she was part of a theater group in Zurich she was asked to pull together 16 actors for an intervention at the event. When asked what kind of intervention the client stated "I want the actors to reenact the worst kind of leadership behaviors that our employees tell us they experience and I want the leaders to look in the mirror and see just how they are perceived. I want you to create a 3D effect of our employee engagement results." It was brave and provocative and Michelle jumped at the idea.
Sourced primarily from her theater group she pulled together 16 individuals who all had corporate backgrounds and experience and who were skilled in theatrical and improvisation techniques. Together the team prepared the scenes with the involvement of the client and as a result the impact was huge.
While confronting serious issues, the actors had license to inject some humor into the dialogue which built acceptance from the audience. Recognition of oneself in the scenes prompted a move towards action which laid the foundation for the rest of the leadership meeting. Michelle remembers thinking: how courageous an idea, how stimulating the impact....I wish we could be more involved with what happens next...
Fast forward 8 years and ACT has evolved from the courageous decision of one individual to a widely accepted and sought after learning methodology to create impact and awareness. Many of the key elements of success for the first experience are still very much at the core of what we do today:
we take time to prepare
we involve the customer directly in our preparation
we use actors with a corporate background who understand the situations they find themselves in
we apply improvisation skills to react to the audience in the moment, as our aim is to build acceptance of the issue from the audience not to create distance
we are more centrally involved in the outcome and what happens next
we use video based techniques to allow us to scale globally
we cover 8 different languages to meet the needs of an increasingly global client base
We train all our actors in the skill of feedback giving using the SBIS (Situation, Behavior, Impact, Suggestion) model so they can debrief the impact of a situation clearly. Our actors are also trained in understanding the primary communication styles and preferences each individual has. They pick up on that in the dialogues and move cross preference to challenge each individual out of their comfort zone. Depending on the client's needs they can be more challenging or more accommodating.
Click here to meet our Corporate Actors.
Our creative thinking around types of methodologies has increased significantly since 2007. In addition to classic role play we have developed all kinds of approaches, often coming from the world of theater, to support the impactful learning: real play, play back, back to the future, speed circuits, among others.
These techniques can be applied to many personal development areas such as:
Giving & Receiving Feedback
Interview Techniques
Managing Difficult Conversations
Diversity & Inclusion Awareness
Unconscious Bias Awareness
Showing Presence
Moderation Presence
Public Speaking Training
Effective Presentations
Customer Management Techniques
“Role plays are usually so unrealistic as we role play with each other. What I experienced by role playing with your trained corporate actors, is on a totally different level. It was realistic, challenging and I got fully absorbed by the conversation and forgot is was any kind of "play".”
“Authentic”
“Great preparation made it easy to be at ease when in front of the candidate”
“Actors were professional and totally believable”
“Event was fun...no PowerPoint!”
“Your team are so much more than just actors, they are great coaches able to give insightful and helpful feedback.”
The Core Team
The Coach and Trainer Network
The Corporate Actors Network
Our Creative Director from augenblick media GmbH
Humans At Work
In all that we do at Hercules Coaching, we remain passionate about keeping people front and center in a world of ever increasing digital disruption and automation. Personally, I've been truly inspired by some of the people we've met along the way and the stories which they have shared about their own development journeys. Sparked by the Humans of New York and other similar series, we have developed our own series, entitled simply Humans at Work.
We reached out to our whole team, our key clients and partners with whom we work closely and asked them if they were inspired enough to make a personal contribution to our series. As a result, we are pleased to share the first installment of inspiring experiences, further installments of which will be launched throughout the year. If you have an inspirational story you would like to share, please let us know – we’d love to hear it!
Tom
In a world where facts and especially figures are becoming more and more important, I have found that injecting a bit of a human touch into the equation goes a long way. In a one-on-one situation, I try to pick up on something that goes a little beyond the business setting to show some genuine interest in the person sitting opposite me. Conventional wisdom will tell you that such info is off limits, but the practical end is that we both leave the meeting knowing something more about each other than just job title, who we work for and business needs. Our next meeting is going to be easier, because we’ve also met on a more personal level. It opens channels of communication not necessarily available in a strict business environment. Both partners gain!
Michelle
Having trained many Senior Leaders on the art of giving feedback, it’s always fantastic to hear how the learnings are applied. I remember vividly when one individual told me that they had received genuine, positive feedback from their boss for the first time in 5 years. They were so euphoric that they dropped everything, ran outside and bought a treat to mark the occasion. The treat stayed on the desk as a reminder of how good it felt and as an encouragement to create that feeling in others.
Claudia
As an actor and director, I work with many people of different backgrounds and levels of experience. Producing theater requires a high level of collaboration and exchange of ideas. I recall working on the set of a play and through discussions with the set builder he came up with a perfect idea. I was thrilled. Then his idea was taken by someone else and heightened in quality. After that working with the lighting people, that idea was quite literally highlighted. It was the “frosting on the cake” of a truly collaborative and enjoyable developmental process.
Patricia
In a highly theoretical world, it is of high value to add practical skills. Through acting, the course participants face scenarios as in real life and develop their social skills by adding practical experience.
I saw people getting nervous as it was so real, but with the encouraging feedback they get, they usually tackle the next scene very nicely and leave with a great win and experience.
It is fun for both sides – the participants of the courses and the actors.
Sven
Besonders beeindruckend und befriedigend finde ich die Momente, in denen die Mitarbeiter der Unternehmen nach den Rollenspielen ihr eigenes Verhalten reflektieren und umgehend zu neuen Erkenntnissen gelangen. Was habe ich wie getan, wie hätte ich anders machen können und wie werde ich beim nächsten Mal anders handeln und interagieren? Es ist ein Erkenntnisprozess, der an eine physisch und psychisch real erlebte Interaktion anschliesst. Ein Erkenntnisprozess, der sich in Körper und Geist abspielt. Echt, authentisch und nachhaltig.
Petra
'Let's be smarter together' is one of Swiss Re's core values and this year I can say that I really experienced this several times. One of the examples I'd like to share with you is the great collaboration with Michelle that ended in a very successful new Recruiting training for our Line Managers. Michelle and I started on a pretty green field with only a few key inputs from the Recruiting experts. This was great as it allowed us to be creative and think out of the box. It was such a nice experience that Michelle and I built on each other's idea and that we could openly, without any bad feelings, challenge each other's ideas so in the end we co-developed a great new training that is globally very well perceived.
Thank you Michelle, for letting me experience what it means to 'be smarter together'!'
Stephanie
Having been given the task of selecting inspiring and motivational tracks for a conference for senior leaders, I set about trying to whittle down 1000’s of tracks to just 4.
I was thrilled to hear the feedback that the music was really well received and became the ‘anthem’ for the conference. The image of the CEO rocking away and being inspired by my choice of music was a great feeling.
Lisa
What drew me to coaching and what I find most powerful about it is that the client has all the right answers. At the end of each coaching session, I ask the client what they’re taking away. One client in particular told me how much I had helped her to see clearly where she needed to go with her business. Then I reminded her – I hadn’t told her anything; she was the one who had the wisdom to find the solution. Watching her in that moment is what our work is all about. We’re helping to build the confidence and trust from within to be the leader that you truly are.
Nicole
In one of my workshops there was a young woman, trying to find work after having finished her education. She already had over twenty interviews, all without success, and the repeated rejection had made her weary. The interview simulation and the following camera feedback analysis showed that what she said was fine. But how she did it… it was too wooden, without any spark of interest or motivation, despite the fact that she really liked her work.
As this particular group consisted mainly of young people with quite a bit of playfulness in them, I decided to take them on a stroll to the world of acting exercises. I told them that yes, life sometimes can be tough, but whatever happened, we should never lose our light. And when we walk through that door to the interview, we want to light up the room. And yes, I admitted, there are those days when it’s difficult to find that light within ourselves, but luckily there are exercises that can help us with that. For me, it was beautiful to see that the exercises had succeeded in bringing back some sparkle into the eyes of these young people.
At the end I told them that there are actors who do the same show 300 times. And each and single time it must be as fresh as if it was for the first time – it was the first time, after all, for their audience. The analogy seemed to have hit home with that young woman. When she left, she held her head high and determined and said she would go in there and lit up that room and show them her enthusiasm and keep it fresh until she finally succeeded. Meanwhile, I keep all my fingers crossed for her.
Gravitas: What is it? Do you have it?
What makes you stand out from the crowd?
Everyone possesses Gravitas - how much do you have? How do you use it? How do you grow it? Our approach is to identify your personal start point and to train ways to enhance and develop what you have while remaining authentic to who you are.
Hercules Coaching: Our approach to Gravitas
Authenticity. BE YOURSELF. Discover your values, develop your personality and find out about yourself. Go on self discoveries, travel and explore. Be congruent with your beliefs, thoughts and actions. Be honest and have a grounded sense of purpose and clarity.
Centricity. IN YOURSELF. Be and think positively. Develop a sense of balance to keep you grounded and resilient to external forces. Be self aware and show confidence. Be mindful of your energy, your impact and your influence.
Connectivity. WITH OTHERS. Listen and have empathy while staying true to yourself. Show respect. Be flexible in your thinking, keep your ego in check and allow others to be what and how they are. Strengthen social and communication skills and demonstrate your emotional intelligence.
We help you to grow in each of these areas according to your specific needs and by using a variety of traditional and experiential techniques, all of which are customized to you.
Who can benefit from our support?
Through our work we are often confronted with individuals who would like to advance in their career, who want to create an impact, who want to be inspiring and show presence, or who need to develop new business and increase their customer base. All of these goals describe an outcome, none describes a way to get there. This is where Hercules Coaching with our unique Gravitas offer steps in.
All of these goals are linked to personality, as we tend to buy from and connect with people we like and who inspire us. Participants learn that in order to advance in their career they first have to increase their Gravitas. This allows them to have a bigger impact and visibility, key steps to achieving any personal goals.
Choose your approach. Should it be an individual coaching? A collective training as part of your in-house leadership development? A combination of both of these approaches by integrating "Grow your Gravitas" into your talent development programs or development center structures? We will gladly assist in finding the most helpful offer based on your needs.
We partner with Edith Hauser to deliver a powerful combination of approaches on the Centricity dimension of Gravitas.
Edith is a Yoga Alliance certified Yoga Instructor (B.K.S. Iyengar, 200 h), a certified Yoga Therapist (Ayur Yoga Zurich) as well as a qualified Shiatsu Practitioner and Teacher.
She has more than 10 years of experience in teaching people in mindfulness, meditation, yoga, qi gong and other movement and awareness practices.
With her sister Brigitte Hauser she owns “Aus der Mitte Yoga & ZenShiatsu GmbH“ in Zurich.
We will be featured at the UBS Health Day on November 15th, 2016 where we will share with a key group of participants our approach to achieving Centricity.
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