About Merlijn

Let yourself be enchanted

The name Merlijn is, of course, related to Merlijn the wizard, who takes the young Arthur under his wing after Arthur’s father dies in a battle with the aim of uniting Britannia. Merlijn succeeds in safely bringing the boy and prepares him for his future role as the king. If the young Arthur indeed becomes king, he fulfills his father’s wish after all: he unites Britannia.

King Arthur regularly invites the twelve knights from all counties within Britannia to discuss various matters. They take their seats at the famous round table, where none of the twelve knights, nor the king himself, can sit at the head. Everyone sits equally and is heard. This keeps the land together and aids in its defense.
Bij conflicten is het van belang dat conflictpartners elkaar horen en zien. There is no hierarchy, unless it has been agreed upon beforehand and for clear reasons. We don’t use the round table much anymore, but the principle of hearing everyone is still our guiding principle. Both in our training sessions and in the various conflict resolution methods.
The Merlijn Groep can support you in the prevention, guidance, mediation, and resolution of conflicts. Additionally, we can assist you by providing training for you and your employees in the areas of conflicts, conflict resolution, and communication.
So that you, like Merlijn, can fulfill your promises and goals.

We teach you magic! Of course, based on scientific research.

Merlijn is a family-owned company. The organization was founded by Dick Bonenkamp and is now gradually being taken over by his daughter, Karien. It is a network organization with a permanent core of employees on the payroll (Backoffice, Sales, Management, and Innovation) and currently about 200 partners, freelancers with specialized knowledge in one of the areas in which Merlijn is active. The number of partners grows with the demand.

Merlijn is a medium-sized player in the overall education market, but in its specialties, mediation and the developed triage model (conflict prevention, guidance, mediation, and resolution), as well as employee participation, it is one of the largest in the Netherlands.

All our services are also available online!

Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, Merlijn has dedicated a lot of attention to being able to work online with all our products and services. That process is complete. The development of ‘Merlijn Online’ has made it possible for us to offer all our services live and online. The customer, of course, chooses for themselves.

A customer wrote about us: ‘Merlijn enhances the effectiveness of individuals and thereby of organizations by a more effective way of interacting with others and with each other.
Merlijn increases the level of control or action of individuals and organizations through training, coaching, and consulting, within which a cohesive development of knowledge and skills (rationale, above the surface) and attitude and behavior (emotion, below the surface) is central.
In the context of more effective interaction within and outside organizations, Merlijn focuses on conflict competence. Conflict competence, which through preventive conflict management and the utilization of the opportunities that conflicts offer, leads to conflict effectiveness. Both in shared as well as in different interests.”