About Richard Jacobsen
I'd rather watch what you do than listen to what you say.
For more than 35 years I have worked with people in situations where collaboration shows up straight away: a busy kitchen, a dojo, a management team under pressure. That taught me one thing. What people do in interaction matters more than what they say or understand. I'm based in Apeldoorn and work across the Netherlands and beyond.
The story
It started in hospitality.
My background isn't theory. I learned this work in places where you can tell within a minute whether a team works.
In hospitality, where I spent more than 25 years in operational and management roles, there is no time for an evaluation afterwards. A Saturday night with two hundred covers shows exactly who tunes in, who pushes through and who waits. That's where I learned to look.
Alongside the kitchen came Aikido. A martial art without attack, built on timing, body language and redirecting force. I have trained in it for decades, in the Netherlands and in the Japanese tradition, and earned my first dan. Later came Qi Gong, the international teacher training and working with breath, regulation and physical balance.
Those three worlds turned out to be about the same thing: what happens between people when things get tense. In 2019 I swapped the kitchen for the mat for good. Since then I have brought it all together in training for leaders and teams, in retreats and in body-oriented work for those who are ready for it.
I never took the straight path. A first dan from Japan, a Qi Gong teacher training, years of shamanic work in the Czech Republic and a few thousand shifts in the kitchen. Exactly the combination this work needs.
Experience as a foundation
Four sources, one way of seeing.
Hospitality
Operational and management roles, in the Netherlands and abroad. Team dynamics that show up directly in results and collaboration. High pressure, constant coordination, nowhere to hide.
1st Dan, international dojo experience
Timing, body language and interaction. Aikido has no attack: you receive the other person's force and give it direction. That principle runs through everything I do.
International Qi Gong teacher
Years of intensive practice and teacher training. Working with physical responses to stress and collaboration, focused on regulation, breath and balance.
Somatic movement, Play Fight, Enneagram
Body-oriented and systemic methods, applied in teams and under pressure. Author of The Embodiment of the Enneagram.
Approach
Less explaining. More experiencing.
My work centres on the interaction itself: what happens between people, at the moment it happens.
I work with behaviour you can observe directly: how people respond in contact, how they make decisions, which role they take on without thinking about it. I make that visible through experiential exercises, on the mat or in your own space. We hardly analyse. We work in the moment itself and try something different straight away.
Participants describe my approach as playful, decisive and personal. There is laughter, and I get straight to the point. Non-violence is the foundation, taken from Aikido. You don't have to knock anyone over to get things done, yourself included.
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01
Behaviour in teams and organisations
What people do when something is at stake.
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02
Communication and collaboration
The verbal part, and above all the part that runs alongside it.
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03
Tension patterns in the body
How stress gets stuck and how to get it moving again.
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04
Decision-making and roles
Who decides, who waits, and what happens when that flips.
Honest up front
Who I work with.
Yes
This work is a good fit for
- Leaders and teams who want to know how their collaboration really works
- People who would rather experience something than talk about it
- Anyone who can handle a direct, honest mirror, with humour
- Organisations that take their people seriously, including how they feel
No
This work is not a fit for
- Anyone looking for a purely theoretical training
- Anyone who wants a quick fix without changing anything themselves
- Team outings where nothing needs exploring
- Anyone looking for a guru to follow
Not sure? Call or email and I'll give you an honest answer. Start with a conversation
Images
Own photography, more to comeIn the dojo.
“Met zijn warme, geïnteresseerde persoonlijkheid sluit hij naadloos aan bij datgene wat zijn cursisten nodig hebben op hun ontwikkel pad.”
Explore further
All ratesExplore the interventions.
Contact
Start with a conversation.
A free half-hour conversation is enough to hear what is going on in your team or with you. I'll tell you honestly whether I think I can help and which format would fit. Sometimes the answer is that someone else is a better fit.
Book an introduction