History

In 1987, three friends (Paul Donders (Netherlands), Ingo Maxeiner (Germany) and Daniel Ehman (USA)) decided to combine their skills and vision: to connect excellent management training and coaching, in order to support individuals and organizations to combine their own skills and vision and to grow in a healthy sustainable way. To stimulate people and organizations to develop their leadership and to lead in a dignified and results-oriented way. There are currently 10 national xpand teams and over a 120 trainers, coaches, consultants and staff.

In the first year xpand focused on seminars and developed their first training product: POL (planning, organizing, and leadership). During the years that followed, trainers, coaches and consultants like Michaela Kast and Vincent Zeylmans joined the company, most of them still are driving forces within xpand today. The initial focus was mainly on Germany, but xpand also conducted training courses in other countries around the globe like Columbia, the Netherlands, Nepal and Ukraine.

As the company grew in numbers and started to serve a wide range of clients, the decision was made to expand internationally. One of the co-founders, Paul Donders (at the time the managing director), moved to the Netherlands. In 1998 the Dutch company was established.

Between 2003 and 2007, xpand Switzerland, xpand Austria, xpand UK, and xpand Norway were established. In 2005, in light of these expansions, a coordinating holding was founded: xpand International.

In 2006, Paul Donders and Wolfgang Weidner (former Vice President at Arcelor) created the LOI program (Leaders of Influence), a mentoring program for young and ambitious professionals, which today has over 500 participants and more than 500 mentors.

Since 2008, xpand’s activities in France have grown exponentially as well and in 2011 the French xpand team was officially created. In 2012 xpand Hungary and xpand South Tirol started.

In June 2011 the three leading partners of xpand Nederland undertook an exploratory trip to South Africa. Three of the most fruitful meetings were held with Alan Platt (Doxa Deo),  Graham Power (Power Group) and Pieter Fauree (Mertech Investment Group). They all became main cooperation partners in South Africa. During 2012 the first training courses were held in Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg.

In 2014 we officially opened our xpand South Africa office in Pretoria, with Paul Donders, CEO of xpand International, as the managing director of xpand South Africa. During the following year we published our first book in South Africa: ‘Resilience – live healthier & perform better’, by Paul Donders.

Currently our South African team consists of 10 consultants and we work in 4 hubs to best serve our local customers: Pretoria/Johannesburg, Durban, Kimberly/Bloemfontein and Cape Town/Stellenbosch.