Cornelis Tanis

Many of my clients are smart, successful leaders that are up for broader and bigger roles. And sometimes (not always) they can feel stuck, being quite aware of the saying ‘what got you here, won’t get you there.’ By helping them get super curious and experimental about the tension between their aspirations and their stuckness, they develop.

These leaders are then able to move beyond their comfortable ‘knowing and showing’ and adopt ways of ‘being and seeing’ that are more fit for their context. I work with them and their teams in sectors such as Construction & Engineering, Chemical, Manufacturing, Pharma, Professional Services, Big Tech & Platforms, Dutch Government, Universities.

A newly appointed CTO of a global chemicals company reaches out to us to explore how we might support his R&D team. To stay competitive, the company needs to increase the speed of innovation. They recently centralized the R&D function that used to be integrated in the business lines. In spite of a new innovation pipeline process the aspired increase of speed of innovation emerges too slowly.

Based on exploratory conversations with the CTO and team members, the initial work included a session where the R&D team shared stories about how they experience innovation today. The team identified a set of tensions between themselves that they want to learn to navigate better. It becomes apparent that successful innovation requires ongoing navigation of normal tensions across R&D, sales and product management. Several follow-up interventions and coaching helped create a portfolio of cross functional experiments and changes that, in time, result in better quality dialogues and prioritisation, proud innovation teams and speed.

In working with clients, I aim to embody principles that underpin much of our work, including:

• The process we use is the future we get
• The answers are in the room
• We meet the client where they are (not where we think they should be).
• In complexity it is rarely either/or
• We are co-learners as well as public learners

Developmental work often involves letting go of old habits and assumptions. Creating the time and space for processing this ‘loss’ requires psychological safety. We explicitly and continually co-create the conditions for this safety to emerge.

Working with people on an important complex challenge is a joy. And at the same time, there’s only so much that I can see, feel, and hold as a human in a room. This is why I often prefer co-facilitation.

My work has mostly been shaped by a collection of personal ‘high growth opportunities’. These are situations where I either chose or was ‘invited’ into a challenging situation, with just enough support. Sometimes this support came in the form of a book recommendation. In 2014 this was the book Immunity to Change from Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey from Harvard University.

Around that time I was supporting business leaders with portfolio’s of 100-day breakthrough projects as a management consultant. While this was great fun and rewarding work, I also realized that these situations also required a qualified developmental coach.

After reading the Kegan and Lahey’s book it I could envision myself becoming one. Being accepted on their Immunity to Change Coach Development Program was a pivotal moment in my professional and personal development. It created new pathways for my development and connections to leading practitioners in the field such as Jennifer Garvey Berger and others. And the rest is history.

Today, being in a global developmental community like CL is one of the biggest accelerators of my growth. This is usually hard work, good fun and surprisingly rewarding. It is a good reminder of what it is like for our clients when they choose to engage in developmental work. In my work with clients I have become increasingly fluent and creative in connecting business and developmental goals.

I am a senior practitioner who enjoys taking on a variety of roles. These include coach for individuals or teams, facilitator, designer, client lead, developer. I am also a director for our legal entity in Europe and a member of the Board of Directors that acts on behalf of the owner of Cultivating Leadership.

My personal values are independent thinking, curiosity, creativity, innovation, development, and connection. I also believe that a good sense of humor helps to keep me and those around me sane. Someone close recently attributed me ‘one of the most original combinations of seriousness and hilariousness that are always present at the same time’.

I am a big fan of our two children Sara and Boaz. Sara is our beautiful and vibrant young adult, in between secondary school and a degree. Boaz is our brave and sensitive teenager with whom I go on snowboarding and kitesurfing adventures.

My dear wife Mascha and I spend a lot of time walking, accompanied by our dog Charlie. In my local community I am involved in initiatives like teaching Dutch to refugees or helping citizens make sense of (incomprehensible) communication from government or other big institutions. I am an eager learner of different languages and I enjoy listening to history podcasts such as “The Rest is History”.

I am not a qualified therapist, which means that I will respect the boundary between developmental coaching and therapy. Assessing where that boundary lies, includes supervision and collaborating with colleagues who are qualified in this area. At the same time, it is not uncommon to hear clients say that, for example, an Immunity to Change coaching session has given them more insight than ‘two years of therapy’. In these situations, I don’t believe that I have crossed a boundary that I shouldn’t have. Instead, I believe that that the way I held the space and structured the activity has enabled the client to see depth and connections that they weren’t able to see before then. Most likely thanks to therapy, not in spite of therapy.

I try to shy away from ‘transactional’ client requests with little to no room for things I value in a collaboration: discovery, co-creation, connection, fun and partnership. It is also because the impact we can help create is often much lower.

As a collective, CL also has a set of ethical guidelines that helps us decide when to say no to or discontinue client engagements.