About Willem

Born in 1952.
Urban child that gradually learned how important people, nature and spaciousness are for his well-being. The space inside yourself and inside the other, the space of the natural world of beaches, dunes and polders, of sea, sand, sky and sun.

Personal development

I studied mathematical engineering at Delft University and graduated in 1979. Seven years later I took an extensive course in management consultancy. I worked for ten years at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and for seven years as a management consultant at the Dutch ICT service provider BSO, currently unspecified part of Atos Consulting.
Following my fascination with what makes people do as they do inside and outside organisations, I have morphed over the years from applying Fuzzy Set theory to counselling on career choice and development of identity.

In 1996 my wife and I founded our own company Kuipers & Van Kempen and I focused more and more on career counselling. Around 1999 the subject giftedness entered our world. I found out that there was little concern nor expertise to help uncommonly intelligent adults having career problems, but that my clients seemed to fit the description. It also appeared to me that public and expert perceptions of giftedness did not help to address the subject effectively.
So I coined the concept of extra intelligence, or Xi for short, as a new and easy accessible way to empower this group of people that is not really a group, due to their immense diversity. Since then I have developed an extensive body of applied knowledge and shared my ideas through my website, presentations, articles and books, both in Dutch and English.
Since 2013 I use the name Ximension for all of my activities in this field. Redesigning and extending the content of this website was a natural step in this process.

Discovering and developing an extra intelligent identity

For many XIPs, the Xi-facets of their personality are relatively uncharted territory. In some cases this is due to earlier convictions and/or unpleasant experiences about their intelligences being “nothing special.” In other cases it may be due to the single focus on the cognitive aspects of their giftedness.
In either case acknowledging one’s extra intelligence gives rise to an awareness of the very many aspects of their Xidentity that await discovery and development.

It is my vision to stimulate XIPs to let go of their possibly obsolete views of their uncommon qualities and to welcome their unique possibilities. Most often this also implies learning to accept and use their uncommon intensities, maybe in thinking, feeling, or moving.
Many XIPs need time and support to come to terms with parts of their personal history, when and where their talents were not seen or even despised. Most often it is possible to frame these memories in a new perspective that is respectful where respect is due, and meaningful in order for accepting the past and moving forward.

I like to support my clients in striking a sustainable and flexible balance between thinking and feeling,  logic and intuition, conceiving and acting, between adapting and remaining autonomous.
It’s about applying your knowledge, experience and creativity, following your path of life with inspiration and increasing clarity about your true identity.

But when all is said and done, it’s about going for it, in your own characteristic way of being intense, complex and driven!