Sjors Boelaars

Leadership Trainer & Facilitator

Available for freelance collaboration

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Sjors BoelaarsLeadership Coach, Facilitator, Former Captain & Innovation Consultant

Sjors started his career with a philosophy degree, then spent years at the helm of ocean-going sailing yachts, built a food company, and worked as an innovation consultant helping corporates think like startups. He moved through the world of business, strategy, and performance until a burnout stopped everything.

That breakdown became the entry point for fifteen years of serious inner work: breathwork, somatic therapy, shadow work, and facilitation. What started as sheer necessity became the work he was built for.

He now works with leaders and teams who have hit the ceiling of the external game and are ready for the layer underneath. His work is experiential, body-based, and direct. He doesn't coach from theory. He works from what's actually happening in the room.

Alongside Beyond The Masks, Sjors is co-founder of Heroes Journey, where he guides week-long wilderness expeditions in Norway and Spain for men navigating major life transitions. He is also a trainer at Nature Quest, one of the Netherlands' leading outdoor leadership programs. Nature consistently functions as his most powerful facilitation tool: it strips away performance, accelerates honesty, and creates conditions no boardroom can replicate.

Beyond The Masks is rated 9.2 by participants. Clients include corporate teams at multinationals including Unilever.

Available as freelance trainer for leadership programs, offsites, and team development trajectories.

About me

Clients I have worked with:

  • Frisse Blikken

  • Unilever

  • BROUT Leadership

  • Nature quest

  • The School of Life

  • Albert Heijn

"It is the best team activity I have ever had at Unilever.”

— Marco, Team Lead Digital Marketing & Commerce, Unilever Germany

BEYOND THE MASKS

Is a two-day immersive team program that creates the conditions for real trust, honest communication, and psychological safety. Not through theory or frameworks, but through direct experience.

Teams leave with concrete practices they continue using independently. The work holds three months later.

Case:

TEAM: DIGITAL MARKETING - Unilever GERMANY

TEAM SIZE: 12 participants

PROGRAM: Beyond the Masks

The Challenge

The team was coming out of a demanding period. Departures, sustained overload, and accumulated loss had left the group running on fumes. Marco, the team lead, needed more than a reset. He needed the team to actually trust each other, not just function together.

The surface culture was warm and collegial. The deeper dynamic told a different story: a perfectionistic undercurrent that made honest feedback rare, risk-taking uncomfortable, and the real tensions largely unspoken. People were kind to each other. They weren't fully honest with each other.

The ask: rebuild the relational foundation and give the team tools to sustain it without a facilitator in the room.

IMPACT

"BTM was a transformational, retreat-like workshop. By far the best team workshop I ever did."

"I feel a much deeper connection to my team now, but also to my inner self. A lot of masks were dropped. I'm confident we're creating something with a new sense of family."

LONG term TRANSFORMATION

Three months after the workshop, a follow-up call with Marco confirmed the following:

  • 100% team retention.

  • The team had self-organized a monthly reflection session, continuing the format without external facilitation.

  • The majority of team members had adopted a daily 10-minute breathwork practice.

  • Check-in rounds had become a team standard. Marco reported that people showed up open and honest from the first minute, something that hadn't existed before.

  • Marco's leadership position was actively supported by the group, across seniority lines.

  • The team identified their next growth edge: moving from a psychologically safe but conflict-avoidant culture toward one where the bigger conversations actually happen.

The Approach

The two-day workshop used embodied group work, structured vulnerability practices, and peer-to-peer accountability processes to surface what the team had been carrying but not saying.

Key elements included check-in rounds that went below the surface immediately, clearing structures to address interpersonal tension directly, blessing practices to work with difficulty receiving recognition (a significant edge for this group), and tools like breath work the team could take home and use weekly.

No slides. No theory. Predominantly experiential.

Experiences from participants:

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Experiences from participants: *

  • Sjors: Human & RELATABLE

    "Sjors is very human and relatable, on top of being very wise and aware. He felt like one of us, with no power plays, guiding us with the tools he's developed while demonstrating his own vulnerability."

    — Claudia, Data Analyst DMC Hamburg

  • more connection, tolerance and fun in our team

    “I really loved doing this program with my team. Afterwards I experienced more connection, tolerance and fun in our team. It does everyone very well to meet each other's true "selves" and not have to pretend to be someone else than you are for once. Just be real. Cultivating the courage to be authentic and vulnerable. That is really the strength of the program.”

    — Pieter Olierook, General Manager Benelux Magnum & Global VP Digital Commerce at Unilever

  • Sjors: REALISM & GIVING SPACE

    “Sjors was a great teacher. He gave enough space and didn’t put pressure on anybody. He sets the perfect atmosphere and I really liked how realistic he was with suggesting only little changes at a time.”

    — Sabrina, DMC Hamburg

  • This was more in-depth than the retreats I’ve done

    “This was more in-depth than the retreats I’ve done in the past, which also meant a whole new magnitude of learning breathwork, journaling, meditation, etc.”

    — Sonal, Unilever eCommerce team

Price on request

Book a call to discuss what’s possible.

 
 
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