Willemein van der Wal is the Founder of Elevate Coaching & HR Consulting. She provides executive career coaching, enabling her clients to achieve their ambitions, as well as HR consulting services with a modern and results-focused approach.

Previously VP People & Culture at Sircle Collection in Amsterdam, Willemein has extensive international HR experience leading the People function in the Netherlands and Canada.

Can you share a high-level overview of your career to date?

I have worked in HR for most of my career. After falling into it unexpectedly, I ended up loving it. I’ve gone back and forth between leading the overall HR function and focusing on culture, leadership development, and training.

I’ve always had a passion for culture, employee engagement, leadership, development, and training. I’ve worked in many different industries, initially in Vancouver (Canada), before I got homesick and returned to the Netherlands nine years ago.

This year, I launched Elevate HR Consulting and Coaching to support leaders as they transition into new roles through what I call Accelerated Integration. I work with leaders to create a 90-day plan to enable them to become a fully functioning and contributing member of the team as quickly and smoothly as possible. I assist them to establish their elevator speech introduction, and to assess the culture, the team, and to determine their priorities for the first 90 days. This elevates their confidence and their ability to create impact and achieve early wins.

I also do HR consulting and training in the areas of culture building, employee engagement, leadership development, and training. Recently, I ran a well-received workshop on giving and receiving feedback.

And, finally, I have a coaching practice to help people with their job search, career development, and to enhance their leadership skills.

What's particularly rewarding in your role?

Enabling people to do great work and become their best selves. Culture, employee engagement, and training feed into that to support their growth. To me, the purpose of HR is to lead through values, rather than policies, rules, and regulations.

Thinking back to your best manager, what about that person’s management style made them so effective for you?

I’ve been lucky to have a few good managers. A common factor was they saw my potential for magic. They believed in me, helped me to leverage my strengths, and championed my successes.

When you work for someone like that, it creates trust and this, in turn, makes you more open to receiving and acting on constructive feedback. They gave me the overall vision and empowered me with the freedom to figure things out myself. Of course, there was communication, but no micromanaging.

Is there a memorable moment that stands out from your career?

When I worked at Intrawest, a Canadian travel and leisure company, we created an amazing leadership development programme, all in-house. We developed a leadership model through incredible internal collaboration. We created a 360-degree feedback process based on that model, and supported the development of our people with a training programme and numerous resources, including a development guide.

The training programme was facilitated by leaders from different functions across the organisation and it was amazing to work together. It received very positive feedback and great results; that is a real highlight for me.

How do you expect leadership roles and skillsets to change as technology advances?

I believe some aspects of leadership - such as establishing a vision and inspiring colleagues to deliver on it - will remain the same, as well as having self-awareness and conscious leadership. Empathy and resilience continue to be important in today’s workplace, because things are indeed changing so rapidly.

It will become even more important to be curious, open to continuous learning, and creative in how we respond to change and leverage technological advances.

The ways to use AI to support leaders and HR teams is evolving very rapidly. I have seen some interesting tools to enhance recruiting and also to use AI for predictive analytics.

Do you have any advice for those seeking to build a strong network?

Most young people don’t enjoy networking - and I didn’t either earlier in my career. However, years ago, I came across a book called Work the Pond! by Gayle Hallgren and Judy Thomson. They introduced me to the concept of positive networking.

Effective networking is based on what you can do for someone else, and this idea took away the pressure of my original perception that it was insincere and self-centred. It enabled me to be more deliberate in attending events and initiating conversations with people.

I was at a recent networking event with a colleague, and we were just standing next to each other catching up, and we realised that is not what we should be doing at such an event. So, we both made a deliberate effort to talk to a couple of new people and I ended up making a great business connection.

My advice would be to be genuinely curious about others and their interests, share information, make connections for people in your network, and support each other's goals.

Think of two or three questions to ask people before attending networking events.

Also, I am not shy about inviting people for coffee – and I’m always pleasantly surprised that most people say yes.

What do you do outside of work to switch off and relax?

I am a huge foodie, so I love to cook, bake, and try new restaurants - I have actually flown to different cities in Europe to go to specific special restaurants.

To make up for that, I am active and work out six mornings a week doing weights, cardio, and high-intensity interval training. I have a race bike, which I enjoy, and I love to go to Italy and ride my bike, eat pasta, and drink wine!

Is there a meal that stands out as your favourite?

In January 2020, just before Covid, we were lucky enough to snag a reservation at Noma, which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was everything I expected it to be. We were welcomed in a greenhouse with a warm drink, and then walked to the restaurant. We were served 21 stunningly beautiful courses and six wine pairings. It was spectacular - the flavours were unbelievable, each course was a piece of art, and the service was outstanding. It will be hard to top that experience!

Thank you to Willemein for speaking to Katie Insley, Director in our Human Resources recruitment team in the Netherlands. 

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.