Michael Heider

(he/him)

Denmark, Germany

Hi! I’m Michael! I am originally from Munich and currently based in Aarhus, Denmark.

I co-founded and was part of building up ProjectTogether, a nonprofit organization that brings society, politics, and business together to take joint action. Up until today ProjectTogether supported over 2.000 social innovations which tackle a wide range of today’s political, social, ecological and economical challenges.

My educational background is in Organisational Development, Systemic Leadership and Innovation. I have been trained in Design Thinking at HPI School of Design Thinking, a sister institution of Stanford University, and am a trainer in nonviolent communication. I dove deeply into process design and co-creation at Kaospilot, a unique 3-year leadership program in Aarhus, Denmark.

I have worked as a specialist within organisational and leadership development with companies such as Viessmann and Grundfos:

Bringing agile practices into the global HR function
Designing and facilitating of collaboration and strategy processes in senior leadership teams (incl. C-level)
Leading company wide change initiatives (e.g. around reducing stress levels)

Since 2023 I am working with digital product innovation in the manufacturing context at the LEGO Group.

First as a Senior Agile Coach contributing to building a highly effective product organisation with continuously improving teams
Currently as a Lead Digital Product & Service Designer and part of the experience design and innovation leadership team in OMP driving research and development of high quality experiences across digital products for colleagues in our engineering and manufacturing value chain.

I am sharing some of my most favourite facilitation methods on my YouTube channel, facilitate team building and strategy workshops as well as teach facilitation as a skill for selected clients.

Experience

Languages: Danish, English, German

Event Types: Accelerator, Conference, Hackathon, Hybrid, Offline, Online, Panel, Retreat, Team Offsite, Training, Workshop

Audiences: Adults (36–64), External Stakeholder, Internal Stakeholders, Private Sector, Public Sector, Young adults (20–35 y/o)

Certificates: CXC Online Facilitation Training CXC In-Person Facilitation Training

Thematic Areas

Team development and coaching
Design Thinking / Design Sprint
Future foresight
Save space conversation and story telling
Big scale conference
Teaching facilitation

Testimonials

“What I have seen you do:

- Developed a design-thinking inspired structure for ways-of-working that served us well
- Contributed greatly to team feeling and health, even though you were only part time
- Instilling culture for & challenging team around clear goal articulation, and ensuring clear responsibility & accountability for work, contributing greatly to team performance
- Always challenging team to be bold and think outside the box.”

— Participant

“Michael has a rare ability to create progress through others by listening deeply and asking genuinely good questions. He can hold a room filled with uncertainty and ambiguity and facilitate the road to action and next steps. I often found myself thinking differently after sessions with him.

Michael has a super power in designing and leading team, strategy and product development. He knows how to build trust, connect people across disciplines, and create networks that make progress happen.”

— Participant

“You are a true believer of best intentions from everyone.”

— Participant

“I find that you have ways of connecting with people on a more serious note, and this then cascades into the conversations that follow even if there are more people involved. You are good at establishing a safe space for people to open up and share their thoughts.”

— Participant

“You are really good at facilitation and framing a discussion, regardless of whether you understand the content (due to it being technical) or not. It's an absolute joy to experience a meeting culture with such a low amount of waste. It is inspirational, too - I feel like I have picked up a lot of good habits related to staying focused and visualizing discussions and planning.”

— Participant