The 100 Days Nobody Mentioned
A new general manager, a disappointed board, and how leadership communication coaching turned resistance into voluntary support.
When Thomas Verbeek took over as general manager of Maasveld Regional Transit Authority, a public-private partnership running the regional rail and bus network around Rotterdam and Den Haag, he did what most new leaders do: he got to work. Files, structures, stakeholders. What he didn't do was talk about expectations—his own, or anyone else's.
Nobody else talked about them either. They just had them.
And that was the quiet scandal of his first 100 days: nothing happened. No sparring partner. No coaching. No Schulterblick—nobody looking over his shoulder, nobody shadowing, nobody walking alongside. He was handed the wheel and left alone with it, while everyone around him privately expected him to have turned it already.
By the time the famous "first 100 days" were over, they had passed him by. At the four-month mark, the supervisory board's review named it plainly: too little empathy, too little felt leadership. Meanwhile, staff across three regional depots were resisting a restructuring of maintenance teams they didn't understand, because nobody had asked them to understand anything. They'd just been informed.
He wasn't failing at management. He was failing at conversation—and failing alone. Those are two different jobs, and only one comes with a manual.
How the coaching started
The board's review became the trigger. Verbeek began an eight-session coaching engagement over four months, working through opening questions that invite real answers, an empathic feedback process, and how to balance resonance—being heard, with relevance—being right. Nothing generic. Every session used his actual meetings, his actual depot leads, his actual restructuring plan.
Results of the executive coaching
The immediate effect was a different kind of meeting: change communication that named the reasoning, not just the decision, and a pace the depots could actually follow. Within ten weeks, an internal pulse survey showed the share of staff who said they understood why the maintenance teams were being restructured rise from 38 percent to 74 percent. By month nine, the two depot leads who had informally organised resistance to the plan were co-presenting it to their own teams.
Executive communication coaching by Katja Schleicher, founder of IMPACT! Communication Coaching. One-on-one leadership coaching for executives, board members, and new leaders — in English, German, and Dutch. Explore coaching options or get in touch.
“I thought my job was to have the plan right. It turned out my job was to have the conversation right. Once I started doing that, the plan looked exactly the same — but people stopped fighting it.”
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Opening questions that invite real answers, an empathic feedback process, and balancing resonance (being heard) with relevance (being right)—tailored to the leader's actual situation, not a generic curriculum.
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In this case, immediate effects included clearer change communication and realistic pacing; within ten weeks, employee-reported understanding of the change programme rose from 38 to 74 percent, and informal resistance turned into co-presentation within nine months.
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New CEOs, general managers, and executives navigating high-stakes transitions — especially the first 100 days in a new leadership role.
Katja Schleicher speaks and trains on communication, storytelling and intercultural (mis)understanding in English, German and Dutch.
Bookings: office@interview-training.eu · interview-training.eu · @MediaCoaching
