Katoen Natie
After 20 years of teaching leadership within the office walls, Stefan Cruysweegs, HR Team Lead at Katoen Natie Specialty Chemicals, asks: “Can it be done differently?”. Outward Bound puts itself forward with a fitting introduction. Not around the meeting table but outside in nature, in full action.
Introduction
"very different from what we had seen so far"
Not knowing quite what the Outward Bound approach would bring, Stefaan Vanhoutte - Operations Director at Katoen Natie Specialty Chemicals goes with his Terminal Managers to our activity grounds in the Meuse valley. The group is put through a series of outdoor challenges that test their planning and collaboration skills: from slacklining between the trees to climbing through a spider web together without a scratch. There is also a coaching walk where they have conversations and discover totally new things about each other. What turns out? Katoen Natie Specialty Chemicals is a rather atypical organisation, very action-oriented. That is great, but it leaves room for improvement in planning, consultation and connection.
Tailor-made leadership program
What?
The introduction with the terminal managers is immediately the starting signal for our collaboration. Outward Bound gets to work on a leadership program tailored to Katoen Natie Specialty Chemicals.
For whom?
This leadership program is aimed at the employees of Katoen Natie Specialty Chemicals who want to grow into terminal manager or aspire to greater responsibility in some other way.
The challenge?
The people who qualify for this kind of program are typical doers. This character is part of the culture of Katoen Natie Specialty Chemicals. Every manager has stood on the work floor themselves and got their hands dirty.
Objectives of the program
To give the manager insight into the impact of their own behaviour on the team and the intended result at Katoen Natie Specialty Chemicals.
To grow in giving and receiving feedback. And to discover what the manager can work on further themselves.
To connect with other managers in order to increase personal effectiveness and improve the team's results.
How does it work?
We start with individual coaching and an exploratory conversation with the participant's manager. Then it is time for action. The managers take on outdoor challenges. Into the caves, up the rocks. They step out of their comfort zone and show themselves from a different side.
With those insights they go to the peer review sessions. In small groups of 2 to 4 people, the managers now talk within a safe environment. Now they themselves put forward challenges they experience at work. Colleagues help each other with tips and tricks and look together for solutions that help the team, achieve results and make the managers grow. Within their role and as a person.
How people learn here
The core of Elevate is a residential module at Château Varoy — three to four days outside the office environment. Not as team building, but as a learning context.
We design situations in which people need each other, choices have real consequences and behaviour becomes directly visible — to themselves and to each other. Facilitators always start from the objectives of the organisation and of the leaders themselves. The themes, tensions and questions they bring are exactly the material we work with.
Facilitators name patterns. They do not prescribe them.
Nature offers what a meeting room cannot: focus, time pressure and distance from familiar roles. That makes discussable what would otherwise remain invisible.
Ready to take the next step?
Curious how Outward Bound fits your context and ambition?
Book an exploratory conversation.