{"id":4253,"date":"2023-06-01T14:15:04","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T14:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/?p=4253"},"modified":"2025-08-13T15:31:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T15:31:37","slug":"working-with-people-teams-and-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/working-with-people-teams-and-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with People, Teams and Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Team-Coaching in Conflict Areas<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Working in crisis regions is challenging. It often involves extreme stress. Nicolien Zuijdgeest supported teams in high tension frequently and describes what she found to be important as approach. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past decade I worked in conflict areas, and with teams working under high pressure. I noticed that the importance of physical and mental fitness of employees is underestimated. Yet, people learn and perform better when tension leaves their body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mainstream approach to stress and trauma is that our nervous system is divided in a rest\/digest and a fight\/flight system. The latest insights from the Polyvagal Theory – on how the nervous system has developed evolutionary \u2013 identify three main systems: a baseline of social engagement in which people feel safe, connected and open to the environment. Once the body experiences a threat, the defense system shifts to a fight or flight response. When this stage no longer works, the body freezes like in a computer crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Being trained in recognizing the physical, emotional and mental characteristics of stress, brings a vast added value to my work in dealing with teams in conflict. It has become my second nature to identify these nuances within participants and provide team members with tools to handle their stress levels more flexible. Once individual nervous systems have calmed down, people are more capable to reconnect and reach out to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to challenges in a creative manner<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The fun of working with teams in conflict and stress, is that it forces me to use creativity.
As a team trainer and coach, I supervise local civil society organizations in Libya that work with victims of violence. When the capital went through a military siege for a year, this had a huge impact on how the team could work and its performance. Social workers and psychologists did consultations by telephone from home, a dividing line between work and private life ceased to exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I adapted my team coaching approach and made short video clips in Arabic with group assignments or individual interventions, focused on self-regulation, connection and cooperation. When there was internet and electricity, team members made the assignments in their own time, in their own way. One group gathered in the car, the other had morning coffees while the militias in the neighborhood were still asleep. The focus was on: What goes well, what do we need to function better? They reported that this structure helped them to stay connected, and to experience opportunities of collective safety and social engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tailor-made solutions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Each person, each team differs from the other. Therefore, a tailor-made approach is the cornerstone of my work with organizations, teams and individuals. In Covid times, I guided a remote-working team from a human rights organization with finetuning work processes. We choose to divide our sessions in two: a cognitive, talking part and a physical part with stress management with Tension Releasing Exercises (TRE), an effective self-help method to release tension on a deep level in the body. The combination made them feel being heard to and remain connected to their own body and to their team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I could not use the same approach when I supervised a German Afghanistan evacuation team with its stress management in 2021. In the emergency phase, everyone had to be alert and available 24\/7, there was no room for talking, no room to acquire a new method for physical stress reduction. Their collective focus was on survival for their Afghan colleagues. Once the first pressure was off, I guided the team with TRE sessions every other day. That worked well. The team members reported back that they slept better, got hungrier, their muscles and bodies softened, and they took time for social contacts again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once tension or conflict is gone, the pleasure is to see how people change, arriving back to baseline. That is the reward as team trainer and coach: witness teams to grow and to develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicolien Zuijdgeest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicolien is an experienced international facilitator, trainer and coach from The Netherlands. Her background as an Arabist brings her often to the Middle East and North Africa. She is specialized on organizational and team development, but also on stress management in teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Team-Coaching in Conflict Areas Working in crisis regions is challenging. It often involves extreme stress. Nicolien Zuijdgeest supported teams in high tension frequently and describes what she found to be important as approach. For the past decade I worked in conflict areas, and with teams working under high pressure. I noticed that the importance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-teams-and-teamwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4253"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5331,"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions\/5331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coaching-expats.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}