James Burke

How did I come from managing director and VP of a large group to executive coaching and sparring? Actually this was probably based on the realisation that many leaders could enjoy their role more and then became even better leaders, if they would take the time to reflect on their situation in a confidential environment with an other experienced person.

During my activity on divisional level in the group I interacted continuously with managing directors, plant managers, division leaders of different sized organisations across the globe. As it became my speciality to take care of operational or structural improvement of businesses, the sparring and coaching started probably already then. Today I can participate and see how my clients develop and succeed. This is personally very satisfying and enriching.

The clients, which means you, already have the solutions somewhere within them. Often these solutions are just covered up with "stuff" and hence does not appear as readily as you would like it to do. To capture that latent knowledge and to see how this frees up your energy is just... great. Next to my activity as coach I am still engaged as board member which helps to stay in touch with the real world and the continuous rapid evolution in the business world.

It happens that in my role as coach I have interactions with management teams on different levels. Within the context of executive business coaching this may even lead to facilitation or what ever else makes sense to support the client to reach his objectives

Coaching relevant training

• Certified systemic Coach - ECA   (ECA stands for European Coaching Association approved)
• Certified Leadership & Master- Trainer ECA
• Psychological compentencies for coaching and consulting at IPSYT - Institut for Psychology Transfer Zurich a spin-off of the University of Zurich (Psychologische Kompetenzen für Gesprächsführung und Beratung)
• Certified Hypnotherapist from Arvadis Hypnose Akademie, certified by the NGH the Nataional Guild of Hypnotists
• Mentoring training
• Change management training
• Lean Six Sigma, Green Belt and Kaizen Leader certified as well as trainer for top management and LSS experts on Lean deployment and Lean transformation
• Conflict management, Monitor
• Member of the European Coaching Association
• Member of Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Forschung und Ausbildung in Unternehmenswissenschaften an der ETH Zürich

My business background as dipl.oek (bachelor in business administration):

• An experienced manager with over 30 years in business, most of which in international groups - more details see my Linkedin profile
• Managing Director of three different companies in the field of Textile, Inorganic Chemicals, Aluminium Production and transformation, most with a global scope
• The companies/groups I managed went from 10 to 60 to 500 million US$ turnover in textiles, Synthetic Graphite, Aluminium production, rolling and extrusion
• General Manager on regional level 2 billion USD turnover and VP on global level (6 billion USD turnover) in large international groups, mostly dedicated to improve companies performance
• Experience in General management, Lean and Six Sigma, Restructuring of companies
• Since 2000, coaching CEOs, plant managers, in private and public companies/groups
• Focusing on Executive Coaching within JBEC whilst maintaining few industrial mandates to remain close to the reality of clients

Languages for Coaching: English, German, French and Italian

You can reach me on Twitter, Linkedin and Xing