Two Awards at Once and a Long-Awaited Cooperation Begins: A More Than Successful April Comes to an End

Dear coachingspace community,

there is so much great news that it is hard to know where to begin. So let's take the chronological route.

The cooperation with the Schulz von Thun Institute begins

Most of us probably first met Friedemann Schulz von Thun's four-sides model (also called the four ears model or communication square) back in school. Beyond it, there are several more communication and consulting models tracing back to the well-known communication psychologist, among them the Inner Team, the Riemann-Thomann model and the values square.

For us, it was clear several months ago: we would love to bring these models into our virtual coaching room. After several inspiring and great conversations with Kathrin Zach and Maxie Schulz von Thun representing the Schulz von Thun Institute, it has been official since the beginning of April: we are an official cooperation partner of the renowned institute!

Over the coming months we will therefore implement those models in coachingspace, as always with the goal of digitizing the tools so that they stay close to the in-person version while embracing the advantages of the online setting. We are thrilled about this cooperation and can hardly wait to finalize the Inner Team as the first official method.

We receive one of the coveted EXIST scholarships

We have known for a while, but had to wait for the official notification before announcing it: we have received one of the coveted EXIST scholarships, financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the European Social Fund (ESF), which lets us finance our two developers and our managing director for a year.

It not only makes us mighty proud to carry the well-known logo of a federal ministry. It also brings full-time structures into a project developed so far in our free time, and allows us to keep coachingspace free of charge for everyone at least until autumn 2021. So feel free to keep experimenting.

With the scholarship, we also commit ourselves to research to some extent. Together with our mentor Prof. Dr. Susanne Jurkowski (University of Erfurt), we want to pursue various questions in the area of social-emotional competencies in children and adolescents, and we are open to further cooperations with other universities. If you are interested, feel free to contact our science officer, Lukas Mundelsee. We will report regularly on study results here.

Smaller updates and improvements to the homepage and the app

Our programmers were not idle in April either. Quite the opposite! Many of the new features, however, are the kind you notice only in passing, if at all, since they mainly concern performance, but also smaller improvements in the existing methods (for example, figures on the constellation board and the Map of States of Being can now be deselected again). One big and very important update, because frequently requested, concerned touch functionality. So grab your tablet or smartphone and test it. As always: feedback is very welcome. Our homepage, especially the start page, has also been reworked further. In addition, there is now a dedicated help area.

Guests on the Coachingbande podcast

At the end of April, Benjamin and Lukas were guests on the podcast of Astrid Kellenbenz and Susanne Henkel, the two wonderful founders of Coachingbande.de. In the episode we talk not only about how a small idea became the coachingspace project, but also about which methods we are planning next for coachingspace. Well worth a listen! The podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes and podcast.de.

We win the European Training Award 2021

Okay, the probably best news comes last here as well: together with Antonia Klein-Nikolaidis, the inventor of the Map of States of Being, we applied for the European Training Award 2021 of the BDVT (the professional association for training, consulting and coaching). After an exciting pitch before well-known figures of the training and consulting scene, we fully convinced the jury and… took first place in the NEW TOOLS category! Below you see an excerpt from the short opening video of our pitch.

All in all, this month simply makes us happy. At the same time, we know we could never have done it without all those who so diligently try us out, recommend us, give feedback and support us in so many other ways, and thus contribute greatly to where we stand today.

So at this point, simply a heartfelt thank you to everyone accompanying and supporting us so magnificently! Especially in these special times, which are not easy for many, that is certainly not a given.

A fivefold THANK YOU from Benjamin, Sören, Mischa, Philipp and Lukas