Sylvia Vriesendorp

“[…] in the few months that I have been working with Sylvia, I am seeing my career and my life move in the direction I have long desired. I have been able to make choices for positive change in my life and take full responsibility for the changes. I am now better able to consciously influence myself and choose how I respond to changes in the world around me. Now I find myself in this wonderful cycle of influencing and helping to move people and myself, into action more effectively. I am no longer a helpless victim, but an active participant in positive change!
Working with Sylvia has helped me develop conscious awareness, confidence and presence; to overcome the feelings of self-doubt and has strengthened my self-acceptance. Her penetrating insights regarding my dilemmas have allowed me to take meaningful action to make situations in my career better, and my life overall less stressful and more enjoyable!”

“Prior to beginning my coaching sessions with Sylvia I was a “task-oriented” and “people focused” director who was managing and leading a highly talented, high performer and high achiever team whilst working under the pressure of very high expectations. What I had failed to realize is how the people working for me and those higher up really needed leadership from me in order for them to be at their best. I also needed to show my supervisor that she could be confident of my ability to project ‘executive presence,’ both within and outside the company. Sylvia helped me with tools that improved my leadership style and helped me to recalibrate my approach to influencing people in a different way. She gave me toolsets I will never be able to do without. In the course of two years I saw positive changes in the team dynamics and I watched my staff grow.

The key ingredient to this success was Sylvia’s extraordinary talent of giving highly personalized insights that led to a very positive and valuable coaching experience. She helped me to find, trust and act on my own best assets whilst giving me a birds’ eye view of me as a whole person. She gently but firmly helped me to see my untapped potential as whole person and as a leader. At the end of two years’ journey I felt confident and with a sharpened “leadership style.” I was able to fly solo with the understanding that I could always return to those sessions at a moment’s notice. This is an extraordinary talent and service.”

“Sylvia Vriesendorp recently facilitated a set of strategic planning meetings for our organization. It was a challenging assignment, as the meetings, based in Lusaka, Zambia, brought together American board members and Zambian staff and required the use of Zoom to include the 4 board members who remained in the United States. Sylvia’s flexibility came to the fore as we balanced the 7-hour time difference with the need to use the time in Lusaka efficiently. From the outset when she first became engaged in the project, Sylvia’s enthusiasm and impressive work ethic made all the difference in its ultimate success. She Is a careful planner, taking pains to interview as many of the players as possible to ensure inclusiveness. I felt she really understood our organization and designed her process around us, rather than forcing us into a preconceived process. Her sense of humor and positive attitude as well as her obvious love of people all served to keep us moving ahead even through those rough moments that inevitably occur in such sessions when everyone wondered how we’d ever reach consensus. In our case, the process succeeded in surfacing and laying to rest sub rosa disagreements, some long-standing, that could have derailed us but instead became the ingredients of stronger unity and clarity of vision. Sylvia manages at once to be fully professional and easy to work with, generous with her time, and dedicated to her clients. She was at all times deferential to our needs, adding a meeting here, altering her plans there, giving us in the end a lot more than we’d contracted for. Above all, the process worked, giving the basis of a strategic plan for the next five years. ”