{"id":306,"date":"2010-06-20T16:21:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T16:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/?p=306"},"modified":"2021-06-08T16:28:04","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T16:28:04","slug":"henin-herge-or-merckx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/06\/20\/henin-herge-or-merckx\/","title":{"rendered":"Henin, Herge or Merckx?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Or even Plastic Bertrand. Or perhaps someone else is the most famous Belgian ever. It is a question that is sometimes discussed when the subject of Belgium comes up, and if it is of particular interest to you, you can see all the possible candidates at http:\/\/www.famousbelgians.net<\/a>. I don\u2019t know where this question originates from \u2013 possibly the French as they generally don\u2019t have a lot of time for the Belgians \u2013 however, the nominations for possible recipients of the title may soon close \u2013 for ever. Last week\u2019s elections in Belgium were widely seen as possibly the beginning of the end of Belgium as a country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Flemish Party, led by Bart De Wever, gained 27 seats, up from 6 in 2007. He hopes that the country will \u201cgradually evaporate\u201d and that Flanders will part from Wallonia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main problem for Belgium is that it speaks two languages \u2013 Dutch in the northern Flanders region and French in the southern Wallonia \u2013 and that has stopped it from becoming integrated. I undertook some diversity work with the Belgian police service in the mid 1990s, and I was amazed to see that when they trained their trainers, they had two separate courses, run by two separate groups of people \u2013 working from separate rooms in the same building. There was little or no interaction between each group of trainers. I really struggled with this lack of harmony and efficiency, but they didn\u2019t see it as an issue. Perhaps I was ahead of my time \u2013 but I don\u2019t think so. It\u2018s just that it is so much easier to see things objectively when you are outside than when you are inside or part of the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was discussing this on Friday with one of my coachees who starts a new job tomorrow \u2013 and the value that this objectivity can bring to an organisation. I always used to meet with new staff when they had been with us for six weeks as they were not yet part of the culture. They were able to make some really great observations about ways of working that were effective or ineffective. Once they had been with us for three months the moment had passed \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I had those discussions with the Belgian police officers, they were very open about their country being a \u201ccosmetic\u201d country, which takes me back to the original question about famous Belgians. Teams and organisations \u2013 and individuals within them \u2013 will achieve greater things when united and focussed rather than divided. If the country does separate, will there be more famous Wallonians and Flemish than there were Belgians? Does this lack of cohesiveness and sense of being for Belgians lead to unfulfilled potential?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or even Plastic Bertrand. Or perhaps someone else is the most famous Belgian ever. It is a question that is sometimes discussed when the subject of Belgium comes up, and if it is of particular interest to you, you can see all the possible candidates at http:\/\/www.famousbelgians.net. I don\u2019t know where this question originates from \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,30],"tags":[204,296],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}