Monica Fix

I found the EMC programme by chance. I went to visit someone at INSEAD, fell in love with the campus and – when I found out about the possibility of connecting psychoanalysis with organisations by studying at a business school – I felt that EMC was made just for me!

To cut a long story short, I majored in psychology at university, and started my career working for a chemical and pharmaceutical company. After a few years, I did a postgraduate programme in psychoanalysis and started working as a psychoanalyst. Then I joined a local start-up and began to perceive the impact that my training could have on organisations. By the time I started the programme, I was working in HR for a large bank. At that time coaching was a new technique and Prof. Manfred Kets de Vries was still developing the EMC programme, but I think the essence and the intensity are still the same.

What did I appreciate most about it? First, the learning methodology – we learned about change by experiencing it at the same time. The programme constructs the environment needed to foster change, giving the participants the opportunity to reflect about change processes at an individual, group and organisational level. And second, I valued the diverse composition of the group, which led to some fascinating exchanges. I see EMC as a transitional space that helped me bridge from one from one career to another. I left the bank in 2004 and launched my first consultancy firm. Eight years on, I’m still building on it.

The story continues in 2009, when I joined efforts with another EMC participant (who graduated in 2010) and launched another consultancy firm. Most of the external coaches that we use also went through EMC, allowing us to have a common understanding and language about how to guide change within an organisation. So I can safely say that the programme changed my career and my life completely.