“Change does not mean you have to get rid of the old.”

Daniel Veenboer

Daniël Veenboer (40) lives in Amsterdam and is the Commercial Director of Telecom at Guidion. He participated in the company program for Guidion in 2023/24.

Ten years ago, I more or less accidentally ended up at Guidion, back when it was still a very different company. Things were much less professional then. We were good at delivering the right skills at the right time, but we were also just a lot of happy people working incredibly hard, more dynamic and flexible than traditional tech companies. Since then, we’ve professionalized our ability to deliver capacity with a well-developed platform, there’s more focus on entrepreneurship, and we’re more results-oriented.

At the same time, we still want to maintain that dynamic Guidion culture. To do that, we’re working on our vision of leadership across the organization, and we want to help people discover their strengths. Offering programs like Rebel Leadership is part of that. For me, there was still plenty to learn, especially in discovering my natural leadership style and the pitfalls that come with it.

I’m a coaching, empathetic leader. But when I looked for examples, I often looked to the other side of the spectrum, to visionary or directive leaders. I thought I lacked those qualities and that I should be like that in my role. So, it was a fairly negative approach. Now, that’s been flipped. I don’t want to lose my personal and leadership qualities, but I do want to develop the tools to apply other leadership styles more easily. But at its core, everything is fine; wanting to change something doesn’t mean the old has to go.

I’m just naturally ‘caring,’ as we call it, positive, and I want to make people feel good. My natural reaction is to make a joke when things get tough, to smooth things over, while by asking where the friction comes from, you make things open for discussion. Concepts like ‘caring’ and ‘daring’ are now also being picked up by colleagues who haven’t attended the program. And I’m working on that too, both within my team and personally, in my own way: saying that I disagree with something can also be done in a friendly manner.

Overall, during the program, I saw again how everyone has their own plate with things they’re worried about, and I realized that I can’t determine how heavy that plate feels for someone else. That awareness is very valuable and strengthens the personal bond.

Additionally, it was good to see how many different leadership styles there are, and how beautifully those were distributed within the group – and thus within Guidion. We need those differences.

My view of leadership has shifted a bit in that regard: There’s no one style that’s better than another; personally, the coaching style works best for me, and everyone should follow their natural style. But I do think a good leader should have enough in their toolbox to draw from other leadership styles when necessary. In that, we can learn from each other.

I’m working on that myself when we, as the management team, step up on the soapbox every Monday and share what’s going on. Before, my stories were pretty businesslike and factual, now I consciously reflect on it and try to share on a different level, really showing something of myself to my colleagues. That gives new energy, it feels like I’m finding something of myself again.

The story I tell matters in how we interact with each other and, on a broader scale, in what kind of people we attract. Our professionalization might rub some people the wrong way, but the Guidion culture we envision, we’re creating it together.