The AHUM Experience

Approach

Appreciate your assets

The AHUM coaching model is based on a systemic appreciative approach. Put simply, ‘systemic’ means we analyse situations, relationships, and organisations from an inclusive perspective, connecting all the elements that can bring about meaningful and sustainable change. Systemic thinking is based on the understanding that people, issues, actions, and ideas are all inter-connected and can have a positive impact on each other. ‘Appreciative’ means we focus on the innate qualities and accomplishments that generate hope, momentum, and success: transforming negative patterns and ‘stuck’ mindsets into best practices and forward-thinking solutions.

The core of AHUM is the belief that our skills and abilities, our individual achievements and collective strengths, are the foundations on which we can build our dreams. By identifying what we do best, we can imagine and realise our potential. Our ability to create stories about the future empowers us to navigate the unchartered waters of post-modern business life successfully.

Dream a little dream

Peter Lang, one of the great pioneers of the systemic appreciative approach, defined the process as “exploring the richness of anything”.

Lang described every problem as a frustrated dream. This is the essence of the AHUM philosophy: we identify and build on your unique skills, strengths and achievements in order to transform frustrated dreams into ambitions fulfilled.

A goal is a dream with a finish line.Duke Ellington

Process

Play life in a different key

AHUM coaching is an open-ended process of exploration and discovery that follows a clear trajectory: dreams, dialogue, transformation.

The coach challenges and enables individuals and teams to deconstruct problems, situations, and frustrations and reconstruct them in a way that opens up unprecedented possibilities. In other words, the AHUM coach creates a safe space to untangle obstacles and to shape and share your dreams. We focus on what works, on what you do best, and build on that. By disrupting the habits and assumptions that are blocking progress, you will discover the courage and capacity to move forward.

Themes and variations

AHUM is about giving yourself the time and space to reflect and think deeper, to define your priorities and articulate your dreams. You will be heard, understood, and appreciated in an open environment of trust and empathy. Our conversations involve storytelling based on personal experiences. The stories we tell about ourselves shape our identity and our relationships. When you reframe the narrative, you can rewrite your future.

Our coaching sessions are like jam sessions: we tune in, explore synergies, harmonise, and riff on themes in different contexts – all in a spirit of serious playfulness. Like an orchestrator, the coach brings all the strands together and harmonizes the individual talents and temperaments of every player. Liberating and uplifting, it’s a transformative experience that reverberates in profound and surprising ways.

Improvising means coming in with a completely clean slate from the first note… the most important thing is to get away from fixed functions.Sonny Rollins

Kostis

Your Coach

If it’s possible to be a case study for your own business, then Kostis Tsounakis is the perfect example. After a successful 15-year career in sales and operational management, Kostis decided to reinvent himself. He did an MA in Business Development then trained in systemic consultation and leadership under Peter Lang. Caring, calm, and a natural connector of dots, Kostis realised that coaching was his calling.

Since 2001, Kostis has coached over 25 global organisations and brands, including banks, NGOs, retailers, telecoms, pharmaceutical, and oil companies. In 2011, he joined iDealogy, a boutique consultancy for collaborative leadership and creativity based in Athens, as a team coach and organizational development consultant. In 2014, Kostis moved to London and founded AHUM.

Combining hands-on business experience with a deep grounding in systemic thinking, Kostis has a knack for seeing the bigger picture – and bringing out the best in everyone.