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Individual coaching for VIB group leaders & managers
Being a group leader or manager at VIB comes with many challenges — balancing scientific excellence with team leadership, strategic priorities and personal wellbeing. To support you in this role, VIB offers fuel sessions: short, individual coaching sessions (90 minutes) where you can reflect, recharge and gain new insights to tackle your leadership challenges.
These sessions are safe, confidential conversations with experienced coaches who know the academic and research context. They act as your sounding board, helping you prepare for key conversations, strengthen your leadership approach, or clarify your next career steps.
Examples of topics:
- Handling conflict or tension within your team
- Finding balance between priorities, expectations and personal aspirations
- Delegating and motivating your team effectively
- Preparing for a difficult conversation or decision
- Organising a team event or retreat that truly makes an impact
- Developing your group’s strategy and long-term direction
- Reflecting on your career path and next steps
All sessions are strictly confidential.
If, after one or several fuel sessions, no structural solution can be found for the challenge discussed, we encourage participants to reach out to their HR representative for further guidance and support.
Approach
You can freely choose your coach based on your needs and preferences:
- Herwig Deconinck (True Colours): Book your session by sending Herwig an email
- Lisa Boelaert (True Colours): Book your session by sending Lisa an email
- Lucia Smit (Braingain): Book your session by sending Lucia an email
- Robin Lefebvre (Grow2Excel): Book your session by sending Robin an email
Each coaching session can touch on one or several of these domains. You are free to choose the coach who best fits your current question — the themes and names are intended as guidance, not strict boundaries.
Lisa Boelaert, True Colours
Lisa Boelaert is a founding partner of True Colours and has been coaching and training VIB group leaders since 2007. With extensive experience in leadership development within academic and scientific environments, she supports leaders on topics such as self-leadership, communication, leadership styles, team dynamics, strategic decision-making and wellbeing for leaders. She has also guided numerous VIB teams through complex collaborative challenges and provided hands-on training in essential soft skills including communication, conflict management, collaboration and self-management.
Lisa’s coaching approach is highly practical, empathetic and future-oriented. She creates a safe environment in which leaders can reflect openly, while also offering “carefrontation”: honest questioning and gentle challenge that help bring underlying patterns to the surface. Her deep understanding of the scientific context — combined with her ability to translate insights into concrete actions — makes her a trusted coach for researchers and leaders across VIB.
In Fuel Sessions, participants can expect a supportive and engaging space to discuss their leadership challenges, gain clarity, and explore new strategies they can apply immediately in their daily work.
Fuel sessions
Lucia Smit, Braingain
Lucia Smit is career and leadership coach for PhDs and scientists. With a PhD herself and more than 15 years of experience coaching over 1,000 researchers, she is familiar with the daily realities of academic leadership: high expectations, limited time, complex team dynamics, and continuous performance pressure.
Many PI’s describe similar challenges, such as navigating constant overload, balancing competing demands, and supporting highly independent researchers who do not always move in the same direction. Miscommunication or interpersonal tensions can slow down collaboration, while unclear roles and difficulties delegating often lead to inefficiencies in the lab. At the same time, perfectionism, stress, and early signs of burnout may affect both well-being and scientific progress. Giving timely, honest feedback can feel difficult, and postponing these conversations rarely helps. Questions about long-term direction, shifting priorities, and difficult decisions in a context of limited resources only add to the complexity.
If any of this feels familiar, coaching can offer a dedicated space to reflect, gain clarity, and explore practical approaches to support both your team and your own scientific work. If you’d like to explore one of these themes further, you’re welcome to reach out to Lucia.
Robin Lefebvre, Grow 2 Excel
Robin Lefebvre, PhD, is an experienced leadership coach with a strong track record in supporting researchers and academic leaders across Flanders. With more than 5,000 hours of training and over 1,000 hours of coaching delivered to PhD researchers, postdocs, group leaders, and professors at institutions such as VIB, UGent, UA, UHasselt and VUB, he brings deep and broad expertise in scientific leadership development.
Building on his earlier career as a senior R&D manager and corporate trainer at Procter & Gamble, Robin combines real-world leadership experience with a solid understanding of the academic research environment. His coaching focuses on self-leadership, effective communication, team dynamics, and leading for sustainable impact.
Known for his practical, supportive, and forward-looking approach, Robin helps leaders gain clarity, strengthen their confidence, and develop strategies that enhance collaboration and performance in their research teams.
Herwig Deconinck, True Colours
Herwig Deconinck is a senior change consultant, leadership coach, and leadership trainer with nearly 20 years of experience supporting VIB group leaders. As one of the founding partners of True Colours, he has facilitated leadership development programs, individual coaching trajectories, and team coaching sessions across a wide range of topics, including self-leadership, communication, navigating difficult situations, team dynamics, strategic decision-making, and organisational development.
With a long-standing focus on academic and scientific environments, Herwig brings deep familiarity with the realities of research teams and leadership roles within universities and research institutes. His coaching style is evidence-based, hands-on, and future-oriented, combining clear structure with empathy and “carefrontation” — offering honest reflection in a supportive way.
In Fuel Sessions, leaders can expect a safe, focused space to explore challenges, gain new perspectives, and develop concrete next steps that strengthen their leadership in practice.
| Focus | Examples | Suggested coaches |
|---|---|---|
Personal leadership & wellbeing Leading yourself: gaining self-insight, setting priorities, managing energy and stress, finding balance |
| Lucia Smit (Braingain) |
Interpersonal leadership & team functioning Leading others: building trust, communicating clearly, handling conflicts, motivating people and fostering collaboration |
| Herwig Deconinck (True Colours) Lisa Boelaert (True Colours) Robin Lefebvre (Grow2Excel) |
Strategic leadership Leading the group and its future: defining direction, setting priorities, aligning people and projects |
| Herwig Deconinck (True Colours) Lisa Boelaert (True Colours) Robin Lefebvre (Grow2Excel) |