Coaching What Happens Between Us

Profile of Mogens Ejby Villadsen, Founding Partner, Better Change Consulting

“Team performance is mostly about what happens between us.”
That is how Mogens Ejby Villadsen begins when asked what makes a team thrive. His view is simple yet powerful: individual contribution matters, but the real performance gain comes from the space between people—how they interact, align, and learn together.

Before becoming a coach, Mogens worked for many years inside development teams himself. He experienced first-hand how talented specialists often struggled not because of lack of skill, but because collaboration, expectations, and purpose were unclear. Those early years shaped his approach. They set the foundation for the work he does today: helping teams understand each other’s intentions, find shared direction, and reduce unnecessary friction.

This early insight became the starting point for his professional journey.

Over the past twenty years, Mogens has helped organisations across Europe and the Middle East turn those insights into practical improvements in how teams collaborate and deliver.

As a founding partner at Better Change Consulting, he works with teams in sectors ranging from healthcare and energy to advanced manufacturing. His coaching sits where human dynamics, learning, and system design meet—a blend of empathy, clarity, and data.

I’d say about 70 percent of my work is shaping the social system..

“I’d say about 70 percent of my work is shaping the social system, and the rest is about the mechanics,” he explains. “Some teams already know Scrum or Kanban. Others need the basics. But in every case, what unlocks progress is when they start to see how their work connects.”

Seeing What Blocks Flow

When Mogens steps into a new team environment, he observes before he intervenes. The clues he looks for aren’t found in the backlog but in the behaviour.

“Confusion around goals, hesitation to speak, overly polite conversations—those are signs,” he says. “You also notice when people make excuses or go quiet in stand-ups. Body language tells you a lot.”

Instead of correcting the process, he begins with reflection. “I describe what I observe and invite the team to wonder why it’s happening. I’m deliberately and explicitly curious. That tone matters because it signals safety. Sometimes I’ll teach a small concept—like how forecasting or velocity works—just to clear up noise and show I can help.”

The early teaching serves a double purpose: clarifying misunderstandings and establishing credibility without taking over. “It’s important they see that I know my craft, but also that I’m not there to make them do it my way. My role is to help them find the way that makes sense for them.”

Moments When Trust Becomes Visible

As the conversations deepen and the team grows more comfortable examining its own patterns, a different kind of signal begins to appear.

Mogens sees trust forming through a pattern of small but meaningful signals. One appears when a team, in the middle of a tense discussion, pauses and asks for his perspective.

“They’re not asking me to decide for them. They’re asking because they believe I’ll help them think. That’s when I know they’re letting me in.”

Trust can also show up in quieter ways. He recalls a team member who once said: “I don’t know what you do, but I’m better at my work when you’re here.” Comments like that reveal a deeper shift: greater clarity, focus, or confidence simply because of the conversations he facilitates.

For Mogens, trust is not compliance. It’s an invitation to join the team in making sense of their work. Research aligns with this view. A large meta-analysis by De Jong and Dirks, covering more than 7,700 teams, found that intrateam trust is consistently associated with stronger performance.

Methods That Build Connection

Mogens’ practice draws on systemic and appreciative inquiry. Two of his signature formats—Market of Skills, developed by Peter Lang, and Future-spective 5F, which Mogens created as an adaptation of the 5F team coaching framework—help teams rediscover strengths and shape how they want to work together.

“If I can get the time and place with the team, I run the market exercise,” he explains. “It’s a way for people to share what they bring and what they want to learn. It builds awareness of how they can support each other.”

Expectation alignment runs through all his engagements. “Clarifying expectations—to and from and within the team—is ongoing. Training people to align expectations is one of the foundations of teamwork. It’s closer to navigating a course than following a planned procedure; you check direction often, especially early on, and you continue as conditions change.”

Coaching Where Structure and Learning Meet

Better Change’s wider approach blends human insight with data. Lead time, flow metrics, and learning loops act as mirrors rather than targets. “In my view team performance equals value achieved divided by cost of achieving this value,” Mogens says. “If you want to improve it, you need to learn faster and spend your effort where it matters.”

For leaders, this matters because it creates systems where teams learn faster, coordinate more effectively, and deliver with fewer surprises.

This captures his philosophy: value grows out of shared learning, and shared learning grows out of strong relationships.

A Coach Who Connects

Clients describe his sessions as engaging, brain-friendly, and grounded in practice. He listens, challenges, and helps teams see patterns in their own work.

“Real agility starts when people see how their work connects,” he says. “When learning is continuous and decisions are based on what delivers value, not what fills plans.”

Whether he is in a workshop in Denmark, working with a product team in Norway, or facilitating a virtual session with leaders across Asia, Europe, and the US, his approach stays the same: make what happens between people visible, guide reflection, and turn it into collective capability.

His work is ultimately about helping people succeed together, not by trying harder, but by understanding each other better.