ComTeam Consultants Personally: Kerstin Pille

“The world does not just function the way we know it”

Kerstin Pille, our ComTeam consultant from the North, likes to travel. Even as a child she travelled a whole lot with her parents and when asked what countries she had travelled in, there was a long list: Mexico, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Egypt, The Seychelles and U.S.A. and across Europe.
“The world does not function the way we know it, it is different everywhere and I like to know how” is her answer, when I ask her about what’s so fascinating about travelling.

She even went one step ahead then just traveling, when at the age of 16 she went to live in Seattle for one year, attending the high school there. She not just wanted to see the country; she wanted to get to know everyday life there. And it turned out that this was not the only time where she stayed abroad. After studying Business Management in Germany she got a Fulbright-Scholarship, lived in San Francisco and completed a two year MBA training focusing on International Management. “This was hard work, but it was completely worth it.” The experiences were priceless and the theoretical discussions she was involved in as well.

Those experiences of learning were very much colored by the American culture: e.g. to extract the essence out of a complex subject matter and bring it into a summary. In Germany we have a much broader sight on things, whereas the Americans are more goal-oriented and focused.
“I have learned to work solution oriented.” That’s why she in her work does not describe the problem that long but focuses more on the solution. The question is not why the problem arose, but how we can solve it.

This was why she did training in SolutionsFocus in Great Britain later on. It’s a solution focused and goal oriented method, which ComTeam has brought into the German culture.
All the cultures Kerstin visited and lived in made a big impression. And because of that, there is always a curiosity when something is different. There is the wish to get a closer and direct experience of the people, meet them in respect, independent of their origin, thinking or believes. And this strengthens her work as a consultant.
Quite often when travelling she was forced to make fast and flexible decisions and find solutions. Today it is a challenge for her to be fully in contact with people and be able to work in other cultures.
She likes to work in international projects and when there is time, she still likes travelling abroad to new, foreign countries.
More information about the SolutionsFocus you can find
here