Marco Noordeloos
Before becoming a full-time executive coach, I worked as a researcher, programme manager, and Head of Monitoring and Evaluation in international research organisations in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Working in matrix organisations where authority and accountability rarely lined up. HQ-versus-field tensions that shaped what got reported and what didn't. Decision-making that crossed silos and reporting lines without clear authority. Running meetings where the disagreement in the room mattered more than the agenda.
The further up the work went, the more it depended on competencies my technical training as a Biologist had not prepared me for.
My background is an advantage as I coach and facilitate for the experts, managers, teams, and senior leaders who carry those institutions today. Clients do not need to explain the institutional terrain from scratch.
That difference shows up in the first conversation.
Thirty Years. Three Careers.
Technical Expert
My career began as a researcher with academic training in biology and environmental management. Science for development rewarded rigour, specialist judgement, individual performance, and delivery of technical outputs. That was the contract my first career ran on.
Head of M&E
I then spent a decade in management roles in research institutions across Europe, Asia, and Africa. I headed the M&E function in matrix organisations where authority and accountability rarely lined up, and where egos or disagreement in a room mattered more than the formal agenda.
Coach & Facilitator
Throughout my career I had enjoyed facilitating and helping research teams to think clearly when the room was stuck. Over time I realised that in a world where knowledge professionals are paid to think, the highest-leverage use of my skills was to help others think better. In 2015, after a decade of formal training in coaching and adult development, I made it my full-time job.
My coaching and facilitation draw on all three careers: the rigour of technical work, the realities of managing inside complex institutions, and the craft of helping smart people think when the room is under pressure.
My past career helps me understand clients and their organisational contexts as someone who has had to deliver within them.
It is personal
The career shift into professional coaching and adult development wasn't a single moment.
Living on four continents and working across 75+ countries helped me see the limits of my own thinking. Assumptions I didn't realise were assumptions. Values and approaches I had mistaken to be universal.
Letting go of a deeply held perspective is harder than learning a new one. It is uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing. It makes you realise that the version of yourself who held those assumptions was working with less than you thought.
My book came from the same place. What those years taught me about my own assumptions, The Systemic Self argues about institutions: the way they meet and decide runs on inherited defaults, and different defaults can be built. The personal version of that shift is on this page; the collective version is in the book.
Credentials
