Career Coaching GGL

                                                            

Dr. Martin Blaser,

Postdoc Programme Coordinator

Currently the PCMO@GGL Postdoc Programm offers counceling and coaching for (young) reserachers at the Justus Liebig University Giessen. Here the main topics concern:
• Career orientation
• Conflicts with coworkers and supervisors
• Work life balance
• International mobility
We coach and counsell in different locations at the University. The offer is for free.
Part of the offering is an initial meeting to clearify your needs and to validate that we can work together effectifly. Counselling is the request of ca 80-90% of the postdocs we currently support and is oftentimes one session. Coaching may take longer times. The maximum we offer is three to five sessions a 1,5h roughly spaced in two to three week distance each. A follow up 4 to 8 weeks after the last session will check in on your transfer. For more complex settings the PCMO is also offering external coachings and can help you find a coach for your individuall need.
If needed, another round of coaching can we booked.
We currently offer our councelling and coaching in English and German.
Our main target group are PhD students and Postdocs mainly from the life and natural sciences.

Counselling and Coaching Attitude

We see counselling as a goal oriented top-down approach. Here the counselor has an advantage in knowledge and / or experiences and is willing to share that with the client. As a counselor one may offer own solutions and share ways that worked or did not work in the respective own worldview of the counselor. In contrast coaching means for us that two parties meet on the eyelevel. As a coach, we are experts in the management of the coaching process and in holding the space of the coachee; the coachee is an expert in his/her problem and world view. Hence, it is important for us as a coach not to offer the solutions, but to help the coachee with questions and mirroring to reflect upon the problem, the resources at hand, the obstacles, and the possible ways to own solution. In many cases both processes cannot be easily separated.

Counselling and Coaching for us also needs to be separated from therapeutic approaches, where the psychotherapist focuses on patterns and dynamics from the past. Therapy usually tries to solve a problem, while coaching and counselling is oriented towards the future and is solution based.

2008 Certificate as Course leader and Counselor
2019 Certificate Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning experience
2019 Certificate Systemic Coach, DCV

I studied Food & Nutritional Sciences in Giessen (Diplom Ökotrophologe, 2003), did my PhD in microbial biochemistry at the University in Marburg (Dr. rer. nat., 2007) and continued for 10 years as a postdoc and project group leader in microbial biogeochemistry at the Max-Planck-Institute for terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg. During this time, I implemented the postdoc representation at our institute. (Co-)Organized two career days, a postdoc barbeque, several workshops and events for postdocs.
As a postdoc coordinator at the Justus Liebig University I have deep insights into the world and problems of postdocs in different academic settings especially in the life sciences.