Publications
Articles & insights
Writing on executive coaching, team coaching, supervision, leadership and transactional analysis — published on Intact Academy.
Author and educator
Sari van Poelje’s professional work
These articles connect Sari van Poelje’s work as an executive coach, EMCC-accredited supervisor and Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst with the learning resources published by Intact Academy.
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The Agile Leadership Mindset: Why Agile Fails Without It
Most agile transformations fail not because of bad processes, but because leaders haven't shifted their mindset. What the agile leadership mindset actually requires — and how coaching can help.
The Shadow Side of Leadership: What Leaders Don't See About Themselves
Every leader has a shadow — the aspects of themselves they don't see, or don't want to see. The shadow doesn't disappear; it shows up in the team. How to work with the shadow side of leadership in coaching.
Supervision for Team Coaches: Why Individual Supervision Isn't Enough
Team coaching creates systemic complexity that individual supervision wasn't designed to hold. Why team coaches need specialist supervision — and what it looks like in practice.
Virtual Team Coaching: What Changes and What Doesn't
Online team coaching is not just face-to-face coaching on a screen. The relational field, the interventions, and the contracting all need to adapt. What actually changes — and what stays the same.
Agile Teams and Coaching: What Scrum Masters Get Wrong
Scrum Masters are often positioned as coaches — but coaching is not facilitation, and facilitation is not coaching. What agile teams actually need from a coach, and how to provide it.
Executive Presence: What It Is, What It Isn't, and How to Develop It
Executive presence is often described as something you either have or you don't. That's wrong. It is a set of learnable skills — and understanding what it actually consists of is the first step to developing it.
Agile Business Innovation: A Framework for Sustainable Change
Innovation without a systemic framework produces change that doesn't stick. The Agile Business Innovation model — and how it applies to organisations navigating complex transformation.
Team Culture and Team Coaching: Working with What's Invisible
Culture is the water the team swims in — mostly invisible, always influential. How to surface, name, and work with team culture as a team coach.
Online Supervision: What Works, What Doesn't, and How to Make the Most of It
Online supervision has become the norm for many coaches. What the research and practice tell us about what works, what gets lost, and how to create a genuinely useful online supervision space.
An Introduction to Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne's Revolutionary Framework
Transactional Analysis offers one of the most comprehensive frameworks for understanding human behaviour in organisations. An accessible introduction to the core concepts and their application in coaching.
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Ethical Dilemmas in Team Coaching: A Systemic Framework for Professional Mastery
What if the friction you feel when a CEO's hidden agenda clashes with a team's collective needs isn't a barrier to your work — but the very material of it? A systemic framework for navigating ethical dilemmas in team coaching.
Transactional Analysis in Agile Organisations: Psychological Safety as a Business Imperative
Agile transformations fail not because of bad processes, but because of unexamined psychological contracts. How TA concepts illuminate what's really happening in your sprint retrospectives.
Group Dynamics in Supervision: When the Group Becomes the Client
In group supervision, the most important learning rarely comes from the case being presented. It comes from what happens between the people in the room. How to work with group dynamics as a supervision resource.
The Leadership Identity Crisis: Why Promotion Breaks Good People
The best individual contributor becomes the struggling new manager. The expert becomes the uncertain leader. Why promotion so often triggers an identity crisis — and what to do about it.
The Art of Contracting in Team Coaching: Why Most Coaches Get It Wrong
Contracting is not a formality at the start of a team coaching engagement. It is the work. How to contract at multiple levels — with the sponsor, the team, and the system — and why getting this right determines everything that follows.
Burnout Prevention for Executives: What Coaching Can and Cannot Do
Executive burnout is not a personal failure. It is a systemic signal. What coaching can genuinely offer — and where it must refer on — when working with leaders at the edge of their capacity.
Psychological Contracts in Teams: The Invisible Rules That Run Your Organisation
Every team operates by two sets of rules: the ones written down, and the ones everyone knows but no one says. Understanding psychological contracts is essential for any coach working with organisational change.
Coaching vs Supervision: Why Every Coach Needs Both
Coaching and supervision are not the same thing — and confusing them is one of the most common mistakes in professional development. A clear framework for understanding what each offers, and why both are essential.
Ego States in Leadership: How Transactional Analysis Explains Your Management Style
Why does a calm, thoughtful leader suddenly become critical and controlling under pressure? Transactional Analysis ego state theory offers one of the most practical frameworks for understanding — and changing — leadership behaviour.
An Introduction to Systemic Team Coaching: Working with the Whole System
Systemic team coaching goes beyond the team itself. It works with the team in relation to its stakeholders, its purpose, and the wider organisation. An introduction to the principles and practice.
Script Theory in Organisations: How Childhood Decisions Shape Corporate Culture
Organisations, like individuals, develop scripts — repeating patterns of behaviour that were once adaptive but now limit growth. How TA script theory applies at the organisational level, and what coaches can do about it.
The ROI of Executive Coaching: How to Measure What Matters
Organisations invest in executive coaching but struggle to measure its value. A framework for thinking about return on investment that goes beyond productivity metrics to capture the real impact of leadership development.
Beyond Tuckman: A Systemic View of Team Development Stages
Tuckman's forming-storming-norming-performing model is useful — but incomplete. A systemic view of team development that accounts for context, purpose, and the team's relationship with its wider organisation.
Self-Disclosure in Coaching: When to Share and When to Stay Silent
When a coach shares something personal, it can deepen trust and open new possibilities. It can also derail the work entirely. A framework for thinking about self-disclosure as a deliberate professional tool.
The Agile Leadership Mindset: Why Agile Fails Without It
Most agile transformations focus on processes and tools. They fail because they ignore the leadership mindset that makes agile work. What it actually means to lead in an agile organisation.
Parallel Process in Supervision: When the Supervision Room Mirrors the Coaching Room
Parallel process is one of the most powerful — and most overlooked — phenomena in supervision. When the dynamic between supervisor and supervisee mirrors what's happening between coach and client, it becomes a direct window into the work.
Conflict Resolution in Teams: A Transactional Analysis Approach
Most team conflict is not about the presenting issue. It is about unmet needs, violated expectations, and unspoken contracts. How TA gives coaches a precise language for understanding and working with team conflict.
Coaching Presence: The Invisible Competency That Determines Everything
Presence is the most important coaching competency — and the hardest to teach. What it actually means to be fully present with a client, and how to develop it as a deliberate practice.
Organisational Diagnosis: How to Read a System Before You Intervene
Intervening in an organisation without first understanding it is like prescribing medication without a diagnosis. A framework for reading organisational systems — their history, their patterns, their defences — before you begin.
Power Dynamics in Coaching: What No One Talks About
Every coaching relationship involves power. The coach has expertise, the client has vulnerability. Ignoring this dynamic doesn't make it go away — it makes it more dangerous. How to work consciously with power in coaching.
Team Purpose and Alignment: Why Most Teams Are Working on the Wrong Thing
Most teams have a mission statement. Very few have genuine alignment around purpose. The difference between the two — and how to help a team discover what it's actually here to do.
Supervision Models Compared: Which Framework Fits Your Practice?
From Hawkins and Shohet's Seven-Eyed Model to Proctor's normative-formative-restorative framework — a practical comparison of the major supervision models and how to choose the right one for your context.
Building an Innovation Culture: What Leaders Actually Need to Do
Innovation culture is not about ping-pong tables and hackathons. It is about psychological safety, tolerance for failure, and leaders who model the behaviours they want to see. What it actually takes to build one.
Coaching Difficult Clients: When Resistance Is the Message
The client who cancels sessions, deflects every question, or insists nothing can change — this is not a problem to manage. It is information to work with. How to understand and use client resistance as a coaching resource.
Strokes and Recognition in the Workplace: The Hidden Currency of Motivation
Eric Berne's concept of strokes — units of recognition — explains more about workplace motivation than most management theories. How understanding stroke economy transforms the way you work with leaders and teams.
Team Resilience: How to Help Teams Bounce Forward, Not Just Back
Resilience is not about returning to the way things were. It is about using disruption as a catalyst for growth. How to build genuine resilience in teams — not just the ability to survive, but the capacity to learn and evolve.
Supervision Accreditation: What It Means and Why It Matters for Your Practice
Not all supervision is equal. Accreditation — through EMCC, ICF, or NOBCO — signals a defined standard of quality, methodology, and ethical grounding. What accreditation actually involves, and how to choose a supervisor who meets it.
Cross-Cultural Coaching: Working Across Difference Without Losing Depth
Coaching across cultural difference requires more than cultural sensitivity. It requires a willingness to examine your own assumptions — about what a good leader looks like, what healthy communication sounds like, what change means.
Games People Play at Work: TA Game Theory in Organisational Settings
Eric Berne's concept of psychological games — repetitive, predictable interactions that end badly for everyone — is one of the most useful tools for understanding dysfunctional organisational dynamics. How to recognise and interrupt them.
Leadership Transitions: How to Support Leaders Through Role Change
Every leadership transition — promotion, lateral move, new organisation — is also an identity transition. How coaches can support leaders through the psychological as well as practical dimensions of role change.
Somatic Coaching: Why the Body Knows What the Mind Hasn't Caught Up With Yet
The body holds information that the mind hasn't processed. Somatic coaching — working with physical sensation, posture, and breath — accesses this information directly. An introduction to embodied practice in executive coaching.
Measuring Team Coaching Outcomes: A Practical Framework
How do you know if team coaching is working? A practical framework for measuring outcomes at multiple levels — individual, team, and organisational — that goes beyond satisfaction surveys.
Boundaries in Coaching: The Professional and the Personal
Boundaries in coaching are not walls — they are the container that makes deep work possible. How to think about professional boundaries in a way that protects both coach and client, and enables rather than limits the work.
Virtual Team Coaching: What Changes and What Doesn't
Virtual team coaching is not the same as in-person team coaching delivered online. The medium changes the dynamics, the energy, and the interventions available. What to adapt — and what to hold firm.
Life Positions in Leadership: The OK Corral and How It Shapes Your Management Style
Franklin Ernst's OK Corral — the four life positions of I'm OK/You're OK, I'm OK/You're not OK, I'm not OK/You're OK, and I'm not OK/You're not OK — is one of the most practical TA tools for understanding leadership behaviour.
Supervision for Team Coaches: Why Individual Supervision Isn't Enough
Team coaching is more complex than individual coaching — and the supervision that supports it needs to match that complexity. Why team coaches need supervision that specifically addresses the systemic and group dimensions of their work.
Change Management and Coaching: Why Change Fails and What Coaches Can Do About It
Most organisational change initiatives fail — not because the strategy is wrong, but because the human dimension is underestimated. How coaching supports the psychological and relational work that makes change stick.
The Art of the Coaching Question: What Makes a Question Transformative
Not all questions are equal. Some questions close down thinking; others open it up. Some questions challenge; others invite. What distinguishes a truly transformative coaching question — and how to develop the skill of asking them.
Building Trust in Teams: What It Actually Takes
Trust is the foundation of every high-performing team — and the hardest thing to build and the easiest to destroy. A practical framework for understanding and developing trust at the team level.
Reflective Practice in Supervision: How to Think About Your Work More Deeply
Reflective practice is not just thinking about what happened. It is a structured process of inquiry that transforms experience into learning. How to develop genuine reflective practice — in supervision and beyond.
Values-Based Leadership: How to Lead from What Matters Most
Values-based leadership is not about having a values statement on the wall. It is about knowing what you stand for — and making decisions that reflect it, even when it's costly. How to help leaders identify and lead from their values.
Drivers and Working Styles: How TA Explains Your Stress Behaviour
Taibi Kahler's five drivers — Be Perfect, Be Strong, Please Others, Try Hard, Hurry Up — are the conditioned messages that drive our behaviour under stress. How to recognise them in yourself and your clients, and what to do about them.
Designing a Coaching Programme: From Single Sessions to Systemic Change
A single coaching session can be powerful. A well-designed coaching programme can transform an organisation. How to design coaching programmes that create lasting change — at the individual, team, and system level.
Team Coaching Interventions: A Toolkit for Working in the Moment
The most important interventions in team coaching are not the ones you planned. They are the ones you make in response to what's happening right now. A toolkit of in-the-moment interventions for team coaches.
Ethics in Supervision: When the Supervisor Becomes the Last Line of Defence
Supervision is where ethical issues in coaching practice are caught, examined, and resolved — before they cause harm. The supervisor's ethical responsibilities, and how to create a supervision space where difficult issues can be raised.
Coaching Agile Teams: What Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches Need to Know
Agile coaches and Scrum Masters are often trained in process but not in people. What team coaching brings to agile contexts — and why the human dimension is where most agile transformations succeed or fail.
Executive Presence: What It Is, What It Isn't, and How to Develop It
Executive presence is often described as something you either have or you don't. That's wrong. It is a set of learnable skills — and understanding what it actually consists of is the first step to developing it.
The Supervision Relationship: What Makes It Work
The quality of the supervision relationship is the single most important factor in whether supervision is useful. What the research says about what makes supervision relationships effective — and how to build one.
Team Coaching with Large Groups: Principles and Practice
Most team coaching models are designed for groups of 5–12. What happens when you're working with 20, 50, or 200 people? Principles and practices for scaling team coaching to large group contexts.
Rackets and Substitute Feelings: Why Leaders React the Way They Do Under Pressure
In TA, a racket feeling is a substitute emotion — one that is familiar and permitted, but masks the authentic feeling underneath. Understanding rackets explains why leaders often react in ways that surprise even themselves.
Neuroscience and Coaching: What Brain Science Actually Tells Us
Neuroscience has become fashionable in coaching — but much of what's claimed is oversimplified or misapplied. What the research actually says, what it means for coaching practice, and what to be sceptical about.
Endings in Team Coaching: How to Close Well
The ending of a team coaching engagement is as important as the beginning — and far more often neglected. How to close a team coaching engagement in a way that consolidates learning, honours the work, and sets the team up for what comes next.
The Shadow Side of Leadership: What Leaders Don't See About Themselves
Every leader has a shadow — the aspects of themselves they don't see, or don't want to see. The shadow doesn't disappear; it shows up in the team. How to work with the shadow side of leadership in coaching.
Contracting in Supervision: Setting Up for Success
Good supervision begins with good contracting. What needs to be agreed at the start of a supervision relationship — and how to revisit and renegotiate the contract as the work evolves.
Psychological Safety in Teams: Beyond Amy Edmondson
Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety is foundational — but it's often misapplied. What psychological safety actually is, what it isn't, and how to build it in teams without creating a culture of comfort over challenge.
Transactions and Communication: How TA Explains Why Conversations Go Wrong
Every conversation is a series of transactions. When transactions are complementary, communication flows. When they cross, it stops. How TA transaction analysis gives coaches a precise tool for understanding communication breakdown.
Feedback in Coaching: How to Give It, How to Receive It, How to Use It
Feedback is one of the most powerful tools in coaching — and one of the most misused. How to give feedback that lands, how to help clients receive it, and how to use feedback as a catalyst for change.
Team Assessment in Team Coaching: Tools, Approaches, and Pitfalls
Assessment tools can be valuable in team coaching — or they can become a distraction from the real work. A guide to using team assessment tools wisely: what they reveal, what they miss, and how to integrate them into the coaching process.
Countertransference in Coaching and Supervision: Using Your Reactions as Data
Countertransference — the coach's emotional reaction to the client — is not a problem to be managed. It is information to be used. How to work with your own reactions as a source of insight in coaching and supervision.
Agile Business Innovation: Why Most Innovation Programmes Fail
Most organisations invest in innovation but get incremental improvement at best. Why genuine business innovation requires more than new processes — and how agile principles, applied systemically, create the conditions for real breakthrough.
Goals and Outcomes in Coaching: Why SMART Isn't Smart Enough
SMART goals are useful — but they are not sufficient for coaching. What coaching goals need to capture that SMART misses, and how to work with clients to set goals that are both meaningful and achievable.
Working with the Sponsor in Team Coaching: The Relationship That Makes or Breaks the Work
The sponsor — the leader who commissions the team coaching — is not a bystander. They are a key part of the system. How to work with sponsors in a way that supports the team coaching without compromising it.
Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: Beyond Goleman
Daniel Goleman's emotional intelligence framework is widely known — but often misapplied. What EI actually means in leadership practice, how it connects to TA and other frameworks, and how to develop it in coaching.
Online Supervision: What Works, What Doesn't, and How to Make the Most of It
Online supervision is now the norm for many coaches. What the research and practice say about what works in online supervision, what is genuinely lost, and how to adapt your practice to make the most of the medium.
The Miniscript: How Your Script Plays Out in Real Time
Taibi Kahler's miniscript shows how our life script — the decisions we made in childhood about ourselves and the world — plays out in real-time sequences of behaviour. One of the most practically useful TA concepts for coaches.
Team Culture and Team Coaching: Working with What's Invisible
Culture is what a team does when no one is watching. It is the accumulated habits, assumptions, and unspoken rules that shape how people work together. How to make culture visible — and workable — in team coaching.
The Executive Coaching Process: From First Contact to Final Session
What does a well-designed executive coaching engagement actually look like? A practical guide to the full arc of executive coaching — from initial contracting through assessment, coaching sessions, and closing — with attention to what makes each phase work.
Peer Supervision: How to Make It Work
Peer supervision — where coaches supervise each other without a designated supervisor — can be powerful or superficial. What makes the difference, and how to structure peer supervision groups for genuine professional development.
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: How Coaching Helps Leaders Think Better
Leaders make decisions under uncertainty every day. Coaching doesn't give them better information — it gives them better thinking. How coaching supports the cognitive and emotional dimensions of decision-making in complex environments.
Autonomy in TA: The Goal of Coaching and the Goal of Life
Eric Berne defined autonomy as the recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy. It is both the goal of transactional analysis and the deepest aim of coaching. What autonomy means in practice — for coaches and for clients.
High-Performance Teams: What the Research Actually Shows
The research on high-performance teams is extensive — and often contradictory. A clear-eyed review of what the evidence actually shows about what makes teams perform at their best, and what it means for team coaching practice.
The Coach's Identity: Who Are You When You're Coaching?
The coach's identity — who they are, what they believe, what they value — is not separate from their coaching. It is the instrument. How to develop a clear, grounded coaching identity that serves your clients.
Redecision Therapy in Coaching: Changing the Decisions That Run Your Life
Bob and Mary Goulding's redecision approach offers one of the most powerful methods for helping clients change the early decisions that limit their lives. How redecision work applies in coaching contexts.
Diversity and Inclusion in Team Coaching: Working with Difference
Diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones — but only when the diversity is genuinely included. How team coaching can help teams move from diversity as a fact to inclusion as a practice.
What to Bring to Supervision: Making the Most of Your Supervision Time
Many coaches arrive at supervision without a clear sense of what they want to work on. How to prepare for supervision in a way that makes the time genuinely useful — and what kinds of material are most valuable to bring.
Systemic Leadership: Leading in a World of Complexity
The problems leaders face today are not complicated — they are complex. Complicated problems have solutions; complex problems require ongoing navigation. What systemic leadership means, and how coaching supports it.
An Introduction to Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne's Revolutionary Framework
Transactional Analysis is one of the most comprehensive and practically useful frameworks in psychology — and one of the least well-known outside specialist circles. An introduction to the key concepts and why they matter for coaches and leaders.
The Future of Team Coaching: Trends and Directions for 2026 and Beyond
What will team coaching look like in five years? An analysis of the key trends shaping the field — from AI and technology to systemic approaches and the growing demand for evidence-based practice.
Annual Review in Supervision: How to Use It Well
An annual review of your supervision is one of the most valuable — and most neglected — professional development practices. How to structure an annual review that genuinely deepens your practice.
Scaling Agile: Why SAFe, LeSS, and Spotify Fail Without the Right Culture
Scaling frameworks promise to extend agile benefits across large organisations. They rarely deliver. Why scaling agile is fundamentally a culture and leadership challenge — not a process one.
The Path to Coaching Mastery: What It Takes to Become a Master Coach
Mastery in coaching is not about accumulating hours. It is about the quality of reflection, the depth of supervision, and the willingness to keep learning. What the path to master coach level actually involves.
New Theory and Practice of Transactional Analysis in Organisations: Key Themes
An overview of the key themes in Sari van Poelje's book on transactional analysis in organisations — from ego state theory and script analysis to systemic TA and its application in coaching, consulting, and leadership development.
7 Perspectives on Leadership: An Overview
Leadership can be understood from many angles — psychological, systemic, relational, cultural. An overview of the seven perspectives on leadership explored in Sari van Poelje's book, and why each one matters.
How Often Should You Have Supervision? A Practical Guide
There is no single right answer to how often coaches should have supervision — but there are principles that help. A practical guide to thinking about supervision frequency based on your caseload, experience level, and professional context.
What Is Team Coaching? A Clear Definition and Why It Matters
Team coaching is often confused with team facilitation, team training, and team building. A clear definition of what team coaching actually is — and why the distinction matters for coaches, organisations, and the teams they work with.
Coaching Accreditation: EMCC, ICF, or NOBCO — Which Is Right for You?
The three main coaching accreditation bodies — EMCC, ICF, and NOBCO — each have different philosophies, requirements, and recognition. A practical comparison to help coaches choose the right path for their context and goals.
Keeping the TA-O Torch Alight: The History and Future of Transactional Analysis
Transactional Analysis has a rich history — from Eric Berne's original insights in the 1950s to the contemporary developments in organisational TA. An exploration of where TA has come from, where it is now, and where it is going.
Coaching for Wellbeing: Beyond Performance to Flourishing
Coaching has traditionally focused on performance. But the most important work often happens at the intersection of performance and wellbeing — helping leaders not just to achieve more, but to flourish. What coaching for wellbeing actually involves.
Leadership Intentions for 2025: What Will You Stand For This Year?
The new year is a natural moment for reflection and intention-setting. Not resolutions — intentions. What kind of leader do you want to be in 2025? What will you stand for? What will you let go of?
Selected archive
Earlier Intact Academy publications
A curated selection of Sari van Poelje’s pre-2025 writing on leadership, supervision and Transactional Analysis. Each reference leads to the Intact Academy publications archive.
Boundaries and Boundary Crossing
A Transactional Analysis perspective on the boundaries that shape organisational life, leadership and professional relationships.
Dealing with Organisational Crisis
An exploration of how leaders and organisations can work with uncertainty, disruption and the relational dynamics of crisis.
Supervisie in organisaties
A practitioner article on supervision in organisational settings and the reflective practice needed for complex coaching work.
Creating cooperation & belonging: Are you living up to your promise?
A practical reflection on cooperation, belonging and the promises organisations make to the people within them.
Innovation in TA
A contribution to the continuing development of Transactional Analysis and its relevance for contemporary organisational practice.
Learning for Leadership
A foundational article on leadership learning, development and the organisational conditions that make growth possible.
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