COURSES

Browse the list and the modular structure of my most popular courses below.

Please note that after interviews and focus groups with your team, each course gets individually tailored to meet its foremost goals, needs, and priorities in a time-efficient manner.

Looking to book individual coaching sessions with me? Please refer to this section below.
  1. Cognitive models of power: power over, power among, power with, power to. Historical overview: power across domains of politics, organizations, and families.
  2. Power and competition in the global market economy: who wins and why? Mythology and evidence. The perceived and real value of different types of power in an organization. Cognitive distortions getting in the way of assessing competitive performance.
  3. Power and scarcity. Zero-sum cognition. Hierarchical thinking. The roots of armored leadership. The viking-or-victim fallacy.
  4. Compliance and accountability. The valid and invalid scope of compliance. The anatomy of accountability. Incentivizing and measuring accountability in organizations.
  5. Power and shame. The ABC of shame and shame resilience. Shame infestation symptoms in organizational culture: cover-ups, complicity, cynicism, fear and control as management tools. Disruptive conversations about shame as an imperative for long-term success.
  6. Power and perfectionism. Exposing the difference: perfectionism vs healthy striving for excellence. Cultivating meaningful growth in an organization: on the individual and collective level.
  7. Power and groupthink. Understanding and mitigating harmful group dynamics, from sales teams to board directors.
  8. Power and commodification. The controversy of the "human resources" concept. Reassessing contribution and gain in terms of employee's motivation. Rehumanizing work.
  9. Power and privilege. Monitoring for meritocracy, favoritism, and identity oppression while shaping promotion algorithms. Facilitating conversations about diversity and belonging in the workplace.
  10. Power and narcissistic abuse in organizations. Corporate narcissism through the lens of shame and scarcity. The dynamics, scope, and consequence of narcissism in organizations. Cultural dynamics that facilitate and counteract narcissism.
  11. Power and nostalgia. The cognitive and emotional power of nostalgia, and its implications.
  1. Empathy 101. Empathy as a skillset. Cultural mythology around empathy: the personality trait, the pushover narrative, and the self-sufficiency idea.
  2. Evidence and poetry around empathy. The measurable role of empathy as a cultural value in the organization's long-term success. Empathy misconceptions: sympathy, enmeshment, and codependency.
  3. The neurobiology of empathy. Empathy and shame: the paradoxical connection. The corrosion of empathy in shame-driven and power-over-defined cultures.
  4. Relating to emotions vs. relating to circumstances: what empathy really is. Hoarding empathy as a function of scarcity.
  5. Empathy and judgment. The allure and impact judging other people's emotion. The practice of unconditional presence.
  6. Empathy and perspective-taking. The tip-of-your-nose perspective vs the dragonfly eye. Identity privilege as a barrier to empathy.
  7. Empathy and emotional literacy. Recognizing other people's emotions as a function of being connected to ourselves.
  8. Empathy and vulnerability. Communicating back emotion in an appropriate and helpful way.
  9. Empathy and boundaries. Making positive assumptions about people. The B.I.G. (boundaries-integrity-generosity) triad as a prerequisite for practicing empathy.
  10. Empathy and accountability in an organization. Holding people accountable and giving them a way out with dignity.
  11. Empathy in helping professionals (physicians, social workers, and therapists). The professional scope of empathy and the prevention of burn-out.
  1. Courage: cultural mythology and scientific evidence. Courage and vulnerability. Heads and hearts for courage: both…+and… instead of either/or.
  2. Courage and armor: why we want to self-protect. Cynicism, criticism, perfectionism, numbing, compliance, comparison: creeping dynamics that corrode courage.
  3. The knower vs the learner. Being right vs doing things right. Focus and dichotomies in relation to organizational courage.
  4. Fear contagion vs courage contagion. Modeling courage while remodeling the structure power.
  5. Courage and feedback. The brave way to give and take feedback. Outer feedback circle: distinguishing constructive criticism from self-serving rants. Inner feedback circle: groupthink and echo chambers.
  6. Courage and accountability. Shame resilience as a function of courage and a prerequisite for accountability. Courage and conflict transformation.
  7. Courage and trust. The anatomy of trust. Understanding systemic distrust and modeling trustworthiness to employees and clients.
  8. Grounded confidence. Confidence misconceptions: bullshitting, bravado, and arrogance. The pillars that make confidence grounded. Discerning, fostering, and measuring grounded confidence.
  9. Curiosity: the driver for innovation, creativity, and meaningful growth. Modeling and rewarding curiosity. Rumble starters. The reptilian/prefrontal retraction.
  10. Curiosity and dragon-fly perspectives. Leveraging curiosity to reality-check our stories about mistakes and failures.
  11. Courage, confidence and curiosity as a hybrid fuel for ethical and effective marketing. Learning from the successes and shortcomings of traditional marketing paradigms.
  1. Conflict transformation and conflict resolution. Conflict through the lens of power models.
  2. Cognitive biases, hardwired and culturally conditioned, getting in the way of conflict transformation.
  3. Rumbling with vulnerability and shame amidst conflict. Understanding hedgehog and fox perspectives.
  4. Practicing self-awareness in the heat of conflict. Rethinking priorities: being right vs getting things right.
  5. Maintaining civility amidst conflict. Understanding physical and emotional safety as prerequisites for listening and engagement. Importance of the attention span.
  6. Conflict armor: shutting down, prosecutor mode, preparing to kick back. The cost and weight of armor. Protecting a relationship: the intention/impact gap.
  7. The inherent added value of conflict. Aggregating perspectives for innovation and better forecasting.
  8. Empathy amidst conflict. Tractable and intractable barriers to empathy.
  9. Identity conflict mythology: the check-your-privilege discourse. Leveraging conflict to improve our understanding and practice of diversity.
  1. Resilience and failure. Long-term realities of organizations in a global world. Determinism and contingency. Risk mitigation and rising strong skills: the quintessential paradox.
  2. The story-making process amidst failure. Self-awareness, self-compassion, and emotional literacy. Owning our stories of failure. Three steps to Rising Strong: Reckoning, Rumble, and Revolution.
  3. The Reckoning Step. Creating perspective while managing emotional reactivity.COVID-19 examples.
  4. The Rumble Step. Story drafts and dynamics. Emotion-driven meaning-making. Conspiracies, confabulations, spurious connections. Reality-checking our stories with ourselves and our fellow leaders. Recognizing the Delta.
  5. The Revolution Step. Getting up supported by critical thinking and integrity. Differentiating failure learnings from adverse contingencies. Embedding the Delta learnings.
  6. Failures of competitors: what, when, and why to learn. Nurturing a culture of healthy competition within and outside an organization.
  7. Modeling hope, clarity, and kindness. Hope as a mode of cognition. Goals, pathways, and the sense of agency. The mythology and evidence around Plan B.
  8. Models of power facilitating and interfering with Rising Strong. Leading with courage and leading from behind armor.
  9. Trust and Rising Strong. The B.R.A.V.I.N.G. component model of trust by Brené Brown. Self-trust and trusting others amidst failure. The distinction and interconnectedness of trust components.
  10. The COVID-19 pandemic as a leadership case study: Rising Strong, doubling down, and contingency planning exposed.
  1. Privilege: the definition and history of the term. Earned and unearned privilege. Privilege in a culture of meritocracy. Identity privilege and circumstantial privilege.
  2. Privilege and shame in the context of identity oppression. Mythology and evidence around historical responsiblity.
  3. Privilege and intersectionality. The random and independence of privilege and disadvantage. Affirmative action in organizations and institutions: benefits and challenges.
  4. Four functions and the vicious cycle of privilege: invisibility, denial, rationalization and complacency. Courage, critical thinking, and curiosity as essential tools for privilege awareness.
  5. Focusing on privilege as an alternative way to create diversity. Privilege from the lens of power to and power within.
  6. Deconstructing the role of diversity to long-term success of organizations: agility, creativity, and dragonfly-eye benefits.
  7. Ethical equity policies. The scope of affirmative action. Monitoring for policy abuses, creating boundaries, and accountability.
  8. Equity, diversity, and nostalgia. Dealing with "we always did it that way" narrative. Diversity leadership with integrity as opposed to bullshitting. Watching out for reverse discrimination.
  9. Modeling and facilitating conversations about diversity. Defining boundaries and practicing trauma-aware approach to identity oppression.
  10. Creating a culture of beloning in the workplace. Belonging cultures vs fitting-in cultures, and the direct economic impact of the difference.
  1. Introduction. The neurobiologic basis of cognitive biases. Machine-learning: a competitor or an ally to human critical thinking.
  2. Story-making and the law of large numbers. The draw-a-person test and spurious correlations. Correlation vs causation: the compartmentalization problem.
  3. Formal logic and dialectical reasoning. Inverse and converse error. Propositional logic and pragmatic reasoning schemas.
  4. Confirmation bias, actor-observer bias, and sunken cost fallacy: from the obvious to the subtle.
  5. The anchoring effect. Projection bias. Representativeness heuristics and stereotyping. The Emotional context of critical thinking failures.
  6. The KISS principle and in the era of big data. Grounded theory methodology extrapolated to quantitative research.
  7. Grading of evidence strength and exposing the nature of experiments. Leveraging the methodology of clinical trials in finance and tech.
  8. Base-rate neglect and its implications for the healthcare, tech, and finance industry.
  9. Hindsight bias and present bias. The endowment effect. Under- and overvaluing projects depending on situational factors and group dynamics.
  1. On the nature of forecasting skills. Pundits and experts in the era of evidence-based science.
  2. Vague verbiage, politics, and calibration: what gets in the way of effective forecasting, and how much it costs organizations and governments.
  3. Forecasting essentials: definitions, precision questioning, triaging, Fermi-izing, and balancing inside and outside views.
  4. The fox and hedgehog metaphor. Ideology and moral judgment in the way of updating forecasts. Overreacting and underreacting.
  5. Dialectical vision of causal forces in a forecast. Probabilistic thinking vs determinism. Grading probability.
  6. Curiosity and critical thinking as calibration tools in case of forecasting failures.
  7. Prudence and decisiveness: what does the sweet spot look like?
  8. Contextualize, normalize, demystify: the role of critical perspective in forecasting.
  9. Rumbling with hindsight bias and shame in the aftermath of forecasting mistakes. Distinguishing failure learnings from adverse contingencies.
  1. Introduction: sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and gender roles. The relatedness and independence of individuality traits.
  2. Contextualization of identity trauma. Depathologization and critical awareness. The root causes of LGBTQ-phobia and cis-heterosexual supremacy.
  3. The mechanisms of homophobia and transphobia. Major cultural LGBT stereotypes: choice, gender deficit, and shallowness. Misconception of LGBTQ identity as a type of personality.
  4. Dehumanization and its historical analysis: towards and outside the LGBTQ+ people.
  5. The "wiped identity" phenomenon as a result of internalizing LGBTQ stereotypes. The quality and quantity of LGBT media representation. Contextualizing and dealing with "wiped identity" in therapeutic practice.
  6. Privilege and intersectionality. Four functions of privilege. Privilege exposure triggers and their emotional makeup. The role of intersectionality in practicing empathy and critical perspective.
  7. Language used around LGBTQ+ identity in terms of communication and trust. The role of privilege in learning and reinforcing discriminatory language. Substantivation as a premise for dehumanization.
  8. Building trust and empathy with LGBTQ+ clients in clinical practice. Why "outing" a patient is unethical and ineffective. Perspective-taking across sexual orientation and gender identity. Modeling empathy for LGBTQ+ clients' social circles
  9. Diagnosing and healing empathic failures with LGBTQ+ clients. Privilege, perspective-taking, and power issues as main contributors to empathic failures in a clinical setting.
  10. "Homosocialization" and risks associated with it. True belonging vs ersatz belonging in LGBTQ+ people. The hookup culture. Segregation and integration, and their effect on LGBTQ+ people's cognition and behavior.
  11. Suicidal ideation and self-harm behaviors in LGBTQ+ people. Family education about mental health risks of LGBTQ+ members.
  12. Dysmorphia in LGBTQ+ people. Body image at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and gender identity. Gay men's dysmorphia within the "pink capitalism".
  13. LGBTQ+ patients with religious backgrounds. Re-conceptualization of faith and spirituality. God Above vs God Within. Eradicating shame and power over from LGBTQ+ people's spiritual life
  14. Coming out in early and late life. LGBTQ+ clients coming out while in heterosexual relationships and marriages.
  15. Violence and abuse in LGBTQ+ people's relationships: commonalities and differences compared to cis- and heterosexual clients.
  16. Shame resilience basics for LGBTQ+ people. Operant conditioning around shame and shame resilience.
  17. Reproduction and parenthood for LGBTQ+ people. Restoration of oppression-affected family notions. Reshaping social institutions of parenthood towards inclusivity.

Work with individuals

My initial practical experience in mental health was in the area of cognitive behavioral therapy. I focused on working with major depression patients, narcissistic abuse survivors, and LGBTQ+ people around a diverse range of issues, from anxiety and eating disorders to dysmorphia and suicidal ideation to codependency and addiction. Along with my concurrent research on vulnerability, shame, and shame resilience, that work gave invaluable insights into ways in which social and structural issues lead to individual struggles which then translate back into enormous collective costs. That was a springboard for my following leadership research.

These days, as the majority of my work happens with teams and organizations, I have limited time availability to continue my practice in a clinical setting, both as a medical specialist and as a therapist. However, don't hesitate to contact me if you feel like you need professional help around mental health: even if I happen to not have a chance to work with you in person, I'll figure out a way to help you through the network of my fellow evidence-based clinicians. Don't waste your money and time on bullshit-driven coaches, Instagram-marketed self-help books, and meditation programs at your summer retreat. Mental health problems require professional diagnosis and intervention, which sometimes may be time-critical and ultimately life-saving. Dismantling mental health stigma and structural barriers that limit access to mental health care for people who need it the most is a big part of my activism. Please do rememeber that you're not alone, and help is not just a possibility — it's an imperative.

The world needs to see you in good mental health, because only this way are you able to actualize the unique gifts and talents that only you have. This I know from neurobiology, not poetry. Reaching out around mental health issues feels scary, but so does every act of courage in our lives. Remember: real courage is not heroics. It's doing choosing what is right over what is easy, accepted, or comfortable. By taking care of your health despite shame and stigma, you're making this world a braver place. And I'm here to help you, just like I help teams and corporations.

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