Inside and Outside: How I Work as a Coach

Norbert Distler on his coaching stance — and why the real work often begins on the inside

When I try to describe how I work as a coach, there's a pendulum, first of all. Between the individual and the system. Between what happens inside a person and what plays out in teams, organizations, and markets. This pendulum describes me — and it describes my work. There are times when I'm very close to a single person and their inner landscapes. And there are times when I look at the dynamics of a whole organization. The two belong together. Each one needs the other.

Two Languages, One Way of Seeing

I'm a physicist and a psychologist. That sounds like an unusual pairing at first, but to me it makes complete sense. As a physicist, I know about control and predictability — and about their limits. Chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics: these aren't abstract concepts for me, they're a daily experience in working with organizations. And as a psychologist, I know that the uncertainty and the conflicts of today can't be solved with more control. The solution lies in creating room. Creative performance needs space.

This double perspective makes it easier for me to connect with scientists, engineers, and tech leaders. They speak my language — and I speak theirs. At the same time, I bring something that isn't a given in that world: the willingness to go into the inner themes as well.

Who Comes to Me

The people I work with are usually under pressure. Many of them lead teams, projects, companies. Their calendars are sometimes booked five times over. They're capable and committed — and often at a point where the old patterns no longer hold.

The issues they bring sound practical at first: conflicts in the team, a difficult presentation, the new leadership role, work-life balance. But behind the practical thing, there's almost always something else. Background assumptions that decide how someone acts. Inner voices that say: You have to pull this off. You can't come across as incompetent. You can't let anyone see your cards.

How do I recognize the pressure? Sometimes it's health issues, sleep problems, restlessness. Sometimes it's the impatience with others, the speed of speaking, this constant availability. But what really speaks to me is when I sense the suffering. That's a big word, but it fits. There has to be that real concern — and I have to feel it.

The Work Inside and Outside

When I describe the way I coach, I tell people at the start: there's the work on the outside — strategies, techniques, options. For that, you could also just read the guidebook. And then there's the question: what stops me from actually doing it differently? Those are the inner obstacles. The imperatives about how I'm supposed to be as a leader. The convictions that sit so deep I take them for reality.

I'm firmly convinced: we often produce the conflicts we carry inside us out in the open. When people are under stress, the field of perception narrows, they go into survival mode and fall back on old behavioral patterns — and then conflicts arise that are really inner conflicts. A woman who couldn't delegate, because she could not under any circumstances appear incompetent, accused her colleague of being unreliable, stepped in for him, and pushed past her own limits. The moment she could acknowledge that it's not in her hands at all whether she comes across as incompetent or not — all at once, she could let go.

That sounds simple. It isn't. It takes a basis of trust, it takes timing, and it takes the courage to go toward what's uncomfortable.

My Stance: Not-Knowing and Safety

My stance in this work is one of not-knowing. The knowledge sits in the organization and in the people. Making access to it easier — that's my goal. I'm not an advisor who shows up with ready-made answers. I'm someone who asks questions, opens spaces, and then looks closely at what comes up.

At the same time — and I only became aware of this through feedback from others — I apparently radiate a sense of safety. Someone once told me: you're not afraid when difficult things come up. I think that's true. I trust that something emerges in looking together. Trust the process, as the saying goes. It keeps coming up: this trust that something will occur to you when you create the space for it — and that you can also work with not-knowing.

At the start of my coaching career, it was different. There was more tension, more of my own imperatives, more fear of not finding the right intervention. Experience has shown me: the calmer I am myself, the more emerges in the shared space. And that's the basic idea, after all: creative performance needs space. That goes for the coachees — and it goes for me as a coach too.

The Imperative Detector

Over the years, I've developed something like an inner imperative detector. When someone is talking and I sense that inner tightness, those shoulds — "I have to," "I can't," "There's no other way" — something in me responds. I don't go straight in. But I register it, and I think about when the right moment might be to raise it, tentatively.

Sometimes it's a single sentence: "Just imagine for a moment: it's possible that I'm harming myself with this behavior." And then we look together at what happens inside. With one leader, who was in poor health but wouldn't allow himself to work from home, even though he'd made it possible for his own staff — that one sentence set off a tremor. And the week after, he did something he hadn't done before. He announced that he'd be working from home. His team's reaction? "Great. Take care of yourself."

Moments like that — where an inner shift pulls an outer one along — that's what drives me. That's when my heart opens.

In the first part, I described how I work — the stance of not-knowing, the attention to the inner imperatives. Here it's about the question behind that: why this is even necessary in the first place.

The Space Between Optimization and Calm

Many of my coachees come from a world that's geared toward optimization. Faster and more efficient, always more of the same. And I see the same mechanism again and again: the more pressure there is, the more people fall back on familiar patterns. More control, more planning, more of the same. That's understandable — but it's also a trap.

The more I optimize myself, the more everything unplanned becomes a disruption. The employee who asks me for help. The market shift no one saw coming. My own exhaustion. Everything turns into an interference in a system that has no room left.

What it takes instead is the opposite of optimization: room. Time that isn't already spoken for. Resilience can't be created by compressing things further. It needs the kind of open space you plan for deliberately — in organizations just as much as in individual people. I've watched this for more than twenty years, in every organization I work with.

Watzlawick put it so well: you try to find solutions on the same level where the problem arose. More control in the face of losing control. More speed in the face of too little time. What it takes is a solution on a different level. And I believe that the work on the inside — acknowledging that things are uncertain, that I don't have it fully in hand, that it's allowed to feel threatening — is exactly this shift of level.

Once that acceptance is there, I can finally ask: where does safety come from when the outer safety is gone? From your own strengths. From the team and the relationships that hold. Instead of chasing after a feeling of safety, I can look at what I can actually rely on.

The Tools — and Why It's About More Than Methods

I work with a range of approaches. Introvision, IFS, PEP, mindfulness, solution-focused questions in the tradition of Gunther Schmidt, Nonviolent Communication — the list is long and has grown over many years. But the methods are tools, not the essential thing.

The essential thing is the encounter. Looking at what's uncomfortable, together. In the presence of another person, not having to carry your own suffering alone. That's something even an AI can't replace — even if you can do a lot on your own these days, and self-regulation is enormously valuable. But going through what's uncomfortable together — that's one of the things that really makes it work, I'm convinced of that.

What guides me in this is transparency. I tell people what I'm doing and why. When I move into an Introvision process, I name it. When I step out of pure Introvision and try something else, I say that too. And I keep asking: does this feel right to you? Are you curious to look at this more closely? The responsibility stays with the other person. Always.

Slowing Down

When I bring all the threads together — the inner work, the strengths orientation, the mindfulness, the trust in the process — I keep arriving at one word: slowing down.

In a world that's optimized for speed, where our whole environment is built to hijack our attention, slowing down is almost an act of resistance. But it's also the key to change. Because only when I slow down do I even notice what's happening right now. Only then do I have access to my resources, to my calm, to new possibilities.

The calmer I am, the better I can deal with whatever comes. And that's not just my conviction — Gunther Schmidt says it again and again: "When I'm doing well, I have the best possible access to my resources." It's why the good ideas don't come to us under pressure. It's why conflicts escalate when the inner tightness is there. And it's why change doesn't need more pressure, but first of all room.

If someone were to ask me where to begin — I'm under pressure and I don't know what to do — then I'd say: don't try to change anything right away, but over the course of the day, again and again, give yourself a minute or two of room to perceive what's there right now. A state check. What does the pressure feel like? Where does it sit? That's not self-optimization, it's the opposite. It's perception. And it's the first step.

It Begins With Me

Taking your own self as seriously as the company — that's a real challenge for many of my coachees. And to be honest, it's an ongoing task for me too.

Staying calm begins with yourself. Translated, that means: making room for your own well-being. Taking sleep seriously. Physical fitness. Questioning your own imperatives again and again, examining your own standards and habits. If I'm not a good example of this myself — and I keep working on it too — then I can't convey it to others. Then the credibility is missing.

What drives me, after all these years? It reduces suffering. That really is my motivator. When I witness how a person who was driven and under pressure suddenly takes on a different presence. When the feedback comes from those around them that someone is more relaxed, takes more time, even performs better than before. When even the children are more relaxed, because a parent has arrived within themselves. Then I know: this is what I do this work for.

I'm a person who loves what he does. Bringing complexity and simplicity into balance and drawing on that — for myself and for others — that, for me, is an expression of being alive.

This is Part 2 of two. Part 1 describes how I work — the stance of not-knowing and the attention to the inner imperatives.

Norbert Distler is a psychologist and physicist by training (Dipl.-Psych., Dipl.-Phys.), a systemic coach (ICF PCC, with SG- and DBVC-accredited training), a systems-oriented organizational consultant, and certified in Introvision (University of Hamburg) and PEP. Since 2004 he has worked independently as a coach, consultant, and trainer, focusing on innovative mid-sized companies and grown-up start-ups. He leads courses on Insight Timer and speaks at venues including the Metaforum in Abano.