How I met Willem Radder
Aug 02, 2019
Willem and I met in 2004 when a friend of mine from university invited me for a diner with the company she worked for at the time. As it turned out, her managing director Willem Radder, needed some information about psychological protocols for treating patients that were suffering form burn-out and trauma's. Since I had just finished my degree in Psychology at the university of Leiden -like my friend- he was wondering if I was the right person to inform him and his team. At the time my first impression of Willem was that he reminded me of a strict and butch fireman with his sturdy posture and his mustache to match.
But he turned out to be a very pleasant and open-minded person, that was not only looking for information, but was also looking for an addition to his team and trying to find out whether I would fit in. Since I was looking for a new job-opportunity as well and I really felt like working with my friend, that meeting unexpectedly turned into a subtle job interview at the end of the evening. My friend persuaded Willem to have a serious job interview so he could get to know more about me in a more personal setting. We met a week later and in that meeting we both came to the conclusion that I could be a useful addition to the team and to my surprise Willem offered me a job on the spot. Several weeks later I started in his team and from day one it felt like a family to me.
Willem turned out to be a real 'people manager', managing his team and now me on trust, expertise and flexibility. He trusted us and our own professionalism, to do the job he hired us to do. Even though I really appreciated his managing style, our visions back then when it came to coaching and training turned out to be worlds apart. I had been trained in the western tradition of psychology with its strict mind-based rules and protocols and its detached way of approaching clients versus Willem was coming from a Zen Buddhist background and making a true heart-based with his clients and being very personally involved with the process of healing his clients. He was convinced that having time restrictions when talking to a client was detrimental to the healing process of that client, were I was used to having strict 45 minutes sessions. That being said, in the years to come I discovered that we had much more in common than I initially thought; in fact we turned out to be 'spiritual brothers in arms...'
At the same time I wanted to focus more on my art career and decided to leave the company, Willem decided to focus more on his coaching career and started his own consultancy company, helping people with burn-out and trauma's and teaching meditation. For a while we had little contact but when -after a holiday in Sri Lanka- I got seriously interested in Buddhism and meditation again, so I contacted Willem to see if he would like to teach me about ZaZen as a daily practice to put my restless mind at ease. This turned out to be the start of a inspiring spiritual partnership that has lasted until this day.
Not only did Willem teach me a lot about Buddhism, meditation and spirituality in general, one Christmas he also gave me the book 'Zen seeing, Zen drawing' by Frederick Franck as a present. This book completely changed the direction of my artistic life, as you can read in the 'a touch of Zen' section of this website. From that moment on Willem became a 'sounding board' and co-writer of my books about Zen drawing. Not only that, with his extensive experience in sales and marketing from his previous 21-year career as a international business manager he was also instrumental in the start of my company. It is far to say that without Willem my business would have never seen the light of the day.
Willem is now responsible for all of my worldwide sales and marketing. He is also the co-author of all my Zen drawing books and is responsible for most of the photographs on this website. He also takes all the photos for this blog.