‘Leave no man behind’

Vision Development in Nyenrode’s accountancy education

Leen Paape

Being the Dean of Nyenrode School of Accountancy & Controlling, I was able to regularly award diplomas to students. I noticed that recently graduated chartered accountants and controllers could not properly highlight the thrust of their graduation research. That frustrated me, precisely because it is essential in our profession to have good communication skills. This is why I wanted to revalue the content of the training to make our position as market leader future-proof.

“Sandra has been able to make a big difference because she puts her personal life experience in service of others. The mutual trust that she manages to realise is her great strength. I consider it a privilege to have worked with her.”

Opening the Shutters

You should leave something like this to someone who knows what she is doing and based on previous experiences I knew that Sandra Gevaert would be able to guide this vision development process like no other. We called it “Opening the Shutters” because we really wanted to look at the content, design and didactics of our programs through the eyes of the outside world.

“You should leave something like this to someone who knows what she is doing.”

It was important to me that everyone involved should participate in this process. I come from a Defense background and have been trained according to the ‘leave no man behind’ principle. Sandra’s added value is exactly that and she literally included everyone into the vision development process. She showed how vulnerability makes you stronger, not only on a personal level but also as an organisation. Her approach focuses on the reciprocity of trust, being seen and feeling that you matter. She puts her personal life experience at the service of others.

Market leader

The goal of the vision development process was to make our market leadership future-proof and we succeeded in that. In addition, I personally learned a lot from collaborating with Sandra. She works with a method called ‘Appreciative Inquiry’.

“The goal was to make our market leadership future-proof and we succeeded in that.”

The idea is that you develop people and organisations from what is already working and thus create the foundations for a further build-up in confidence. Sandra guides you in looking beyond what went wrong and how not to do it. She is particularly interested in how things can be done. In addition, employees usually know very well what is needed to achieve an improvement and Sandra can get that wisdom from a group par excellence. She is particularly interested in how things can be done. In addition, employees usually know very well what is needed to achieve an improvement, and Sandra can get that wisdom from a group. I still use Appreciative Inquiry every day in my work as a supervisor and supervisory director because I see how we are deeply institutionalising distrust. In my opinion, trust is necessary to move forward with any task whatsoever.