Thea Bombeek

Using loyalty as a lever for empowering diversity and inclusion

Theme: Diversity & Inclusion for Practitioners

Area: Coaching & Mentoring

Style: Mainly Lecture

Session on 2 June 2020 11:15 UTC - View on timetable

Session

By birth you are loyal to your biological parents because you receive life from them. This is called existential loyalty. As you grow up other kinds of loyalties are added. You develop a symmetric loyalty towards siblings, partners, friends and colleagues. If you grew up with caretakers who are not your biological parents, you also develop loyalty, which is called loyalty by merit. At a larger scale you develop loyalty towards your social class, culture, nation etc. Sometimes you get stuck by conflicting loyalties. People with a bi-cultural background face extra challenges: how can they find a balance between staying loyal to their culture of origin and the culture of the country/organisation where they live and work now?

In this session I will demonstrate how loyalties influence your decision making in a professional context (choice of studies, career, impact on behaviour in professional environment etc) . You will learn ways to create awareness on loyalties and to explore them with your clients. You will discover how loyalty can be used as a lever for empowering diversity and inclusion. Understanding the working of loyalties will help you to make conscious choices. Living more in alignment with your essence and at the same time staying loyal to your family will empower you to being different and to experiencing a sense of belonging. Furthermore the insights you gain from this lecture will help you to address (in)visible loyalties with coachees and supervisees.

Bio

Thea Bombeek has developed a passion for everything related with potential development and interaction processes between people. She coaches people to become the best possible version of themselves and supports coaches to do the same with their clients. She considers herself as an ally. Being present and holding space for what wants to happen is her basic attitude. Thea has more than 20 years of experience in international companies (KBC and KPMG). Her strengths lie particularly in the area of authentic leadership, personal development, organisational culture and communication.

Thea holds a master degree in History of Art (University of Ghent, Belgium) and a Master after Master in Human Resources Management (Antwerp Management School, Belgium). She is the former chairman of the International Coach Federation Belgium. She is a visiting lecturer at the Sociale Hogeschool Ghent (Belgium) and she facilitates supervision for coaches and HR managers.

She is the author of the book: ‘Hoe overleef ik mijn collega’s: tools voor zelfvertrouwen op het werk’. (How to survive destructive functioning colleagues).