My coaching practice has connected me with some amazing and quite inspiring women in Asia over the last few years. Although unique with their own strengths, potential and challenges, there are some connecting themes and insights that coaching has brought them. This article is filled with women’s stories that inspired me. It captures some of their personal journeys and positive changes that had a ripple effect on their organizations and partners and families.

Some of the themes include:

- Supporting women to go to the next level of leadership
- Shifting to a strategic contribution
- Stepping fully into their potential
- Finding empowering perspectives
- Women and Family

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Inspiring Women 
by Joanna Brill [article written for the ICF - July 2008]

Supporting Women to go to the next level of leadership

Much of the coaching that I have done is focused on supporting clients who are moving to the next level of leadership in the organization. Understanding and believing in their power to inspire others and make a difference is a critical starting point. Without easy access to female mentors or role models, an executive coach can provide a great source of inspiration and encouragement. Coaching can be powerfully used to support a female executive to create a leadership style that is authentic and a true reflection of who she is, as well as working well for her in the organizational environment that she operates in.

With one executive that I was coaching we built a personalised executive development model that was meaningful and relevant to her and the role that she was in. It included her key strengths in business knowledge, communication, people management and strategic vision and we then co-created specific areas for her individual development and focus. Just sourcing inspiration from her predecessor and the head of the business, who were male, would not have served her well. She took an objective view of many of her male peers and realized that with very few other female role models in this highly competitive environment it was important for her to find her own style and approach to managing a large regional business. Some months into our coaching she was acknowledged by a female direct report in the region who told her that she was her ‘first female role model and a great inspiration’. This was incredibly motivating feedback for her and she continues to build her own model for success as a female leader.

Often, female executives that I work with don’t acknowledge themselves for the particular contributions that they make or specific leadership attributes and strengths that they bring to their roles. Through coaching we are able to examine together each aspect of their role in depth and to expand on what is working well. It is easy to get distracted in competitive corporate environments by your weaknesses and perceived inadequacies. This can lead to a negative internal dialogue. With one client we worked really hard to get her to consistently acknowledge what she was doing well and what was creating success in her role. She kept a written log at work of when events and meetings went well, when she was given positive feedback and when she delivered on something. This gave her evidence of her successes that supported a more positive mindset and internal dialogue. She grew in confidence and acknowledged that she was capable of taking the next step in her leadership pathway. Once she was promoted she found it easier to notice her strengths and build on them despite the pressures of bigger responsibility.

Many of the women that I have worked with also move the goal posts as soon as they achieve the goal they have been working on without taking time to learn from the experience or ensuring they receive the credit due from their achievement, .brushing off much of the recognition and acknowledgement that they receive. Just taking the time to notice what has been achieved and what it took to do it can create powerful shifts in motivation and how clients feel about their work and contribution. New, empowering behaviours or patterns of behaviour can be adopted by giving focus to self-recognition and acknowledgement.

A key role of coaching is to build self-awareness. Once we have that awareness we are better able to decide how we want to respond to situations. We often respond habitually to a situation rather than standing back and choosing how to react. One particular manager, in her effort to be very service oriented, always said yes to requests from the different business units for her team without really understanding the implications. Once she realized that this was a default response she started to use a process where she would ask qualifying questions and get clear up front on what was involved in the request. From this position she was much more able to evaluate priorities and ensure that she met expectations rather than over promising.

Shifting to a strategic contribution

Another theme that is common for female executives as they move into new levels of leadership is the shift from being brilliant at executing to becoming more strategic. Many women define their own contribution within organizations around an action-orientated, multi tasking / multi juggling approach. They get recognition for their ability to run multiple projects, with a gift for managing and juggling detail. The shift to stepping up to a more strategic contribution can be challenging when your success to date has been built on excellent delivery and attention to detail. This theme has come up in a number of different coaching relationships. Setting specific objectives around this within a coaching series can help clients to let go of what can be delegated to others. They learn how to clearly and comfortably delegate both routine and important tasks and decisions. They start to create and foster trust that people will perform and they support their team to step up to working to their potential.

Actually using a tool to measure how much time is focused on strategy and how much time is in detail, process, delivery and implementation can create useful insights and a starting point for a change of focus. I often introduce the ‘Five Levels of Focus’ that suggests there are five different places we can choose to focus from, Vision, Planning, Detail, Problem and Drama. Noticing where you tend to look at things from and then shifting your focus to more vision and planning can make a big difference in productivity and performance.

A unique source of support

One Managing Director of a leading media company found that coaching was a powerful support for her as a woman at the top of the tree in an Asia based organization. With no peers to support her and a boss based elsewhere in the world, her coach provided an invaluable sounding board as she ran a fast growing and innovative business. She also loved the holistic approach that her coach took with her. As a single woman, traveling most of the time, she knew that she was neglecting key areas of her life. Coaching supported her to get a better work life balance and as a result perform better as a leader. She felt that her coach was the one person in her life that checked in on the really important things in her life and work and helped her to prioritize them – vital when you are working and traveling alone. Much of the networking that happens in Asia has a male focus and she often chose not to participate. As an alternative, she found that she could use her coach as a unique sounding board

Many women do still find it challenging to feel equal to male counterparts and can fall into the trap of saying ‘yes’ to everything, particularly if they are female executives without the counterbalance of family life. As a coach I support clients to set limits and clear boundaries to ensure that they focus maximum energy on the things that are the most important inside and outside work.

Stepping into your potential

A few clients that I have coached have a strong sense of potential change for their organization. They know what is wrong but for various reasons do not feel empowered to initiate and drive change. After helping them to look at what is the potential for the organization, business unit or team I will then help them to connect with a bigger vision of their individual potential and what their role and contribution might be in leading transformation in that area.

For example, one HR executive who reports to a centralized HR leader outside Asia didn’t fully embrace the fact that ultimately she was the one person who could create and drive an HR strategy that could support the growth of the Asia based business. Coaching her to step into and embrace the bigger purpose of her role, visualising the potential that others didn’t see and creating a plan and momentum to drive and implement the vision critically improved her performance and impact.

Setting some targets around powerful communication and expression of vision is also important. One young female executive found that our coaching sessions were the first and only time that she had felt confident to really articulate the vision that she had for a key project that she was working on. She was able to go beyond the surface of what the project was designed to achieve and could see that it had the bigger potential to create a new type of collaboration between the different business lines and shift the business to a new level of exceptional service delivery for its customers. Energized by this new focus she was more motivated to find ways to get internal sponsorship and rally support and resources.

Leader as Coach – a ripple effect

I usually find that my clients will start to adopt some of the coaching approach that I am modelling to communicate with others around them, be it peers, teams, managers or family. This includes using a solutions focused approach, using open communication and specifically acknowledging the strengths in the client. It is great to see the positive impact this can have.

An organizational development leader I coached, created a big impact with her team when she started to use the coaching approaches that she was experiencing in our sessions. She became more open in her communication with the team and demonstrated that they were listened to. She realized that she had the power to affect how people interacted with her. She had the insight that if you change your way of thinking and how you behave you can create the work relationships that you want. She started to trust others more and noticed how they reciprocated. She became more generous in how she spoke to her peers and leaders and found that they changed too.

As a trainer for ‘Leader as Coach’ programmes it is truly inspiring to see women who have a real passion for ‘helping people’ in their organization make a real and tangible difference. Many women on these programmes come with a strong desire to help people they work with and yet haven’t found the right way to do it. As they master coaching skills and presence they find that they can make a big difference in their organization especially if they are working in an human resources or learning development role.

Empowering perspectives

Many women in business hold perspectives and beliefs that can limit their contribution. I always seek to explore what a client’s ‘view of the world’ is. How we view specific situations and people will directly affect how we behave around them. I always coach people to adopt the most empowering perspective that they can. Just through a really short coaching conversation you can shift how people are viewing things.

This can be critical on many levels, especially a tactical one. A leader in manufacturing who was responsible for representing the China business on global conference calls was so frustrated with the different cultural behaviours that were exhibited on these weekly calls she was refusing to speak or contribute anymore. She felt that many of the people on the call were behaving really badly and were not listening respectfully to what was being said. I re-orientated her perspective on this to a more empowering one through a short coaching conversation. I shared with her the importance of exploring the perspectives that we often choose to see situations and stretched her to come up with 8-10 new ways of looking at this situation. Ultimately, she realized that she was the interface in the organization that could encourage more successful intercultural communication and directly impact the success of the business. She was newly inspired to create new ways to be heard on the calls.

Values & Beliefs

A core part of the coaching interaction is to explore the values that we hold and how these are reflected in our work and how they drive our performance. I will explore the cultural beliefs that a client holds with them at the initial stages of a coaching relationship. Through the application of values based tools and questioning we can identify which of these can be limiting and which of them are holding us back. Together we can re-assess and connect with new, more relevant beliefs. In respect of working with women we will explore what beliefs they have about women in business and how they need to behave and ‘be’ to succeed. Sometimes they can be holding beliefs that are not serving them at all and we can look at how she can let go of the those and replace them with more empowering ones.

A particular challenge that came up while coaching a consultant with a leading Asia based consultancy company was that she was finding herself increasingly frustrated in large meetings and as a result had a tendency to become quite combative and aggressive. We looked at her values around women in business and helped her to re-orientate how she viewed her male counterparts. She had an insight that she held a belief that in order to succeed in a male dominated environment she always had to come out fighting! Once we got clear on this and how it was actually getting in the way of her contributing as a critical part of the team we could come up with an new action plan. She found a new way of communicating and managing her emotions in the meetings that ensured her strong analytical and intellectual presence was well received.

Getting clear on what are the beliefs that are really getting in the way of success is key and two phrases often come up with the women that I coach … ‘I am not enough’ and in the same breath ‘ I am too much’. These are two interesting themes that hold women back. The first is this lack of belief that they are good enough and the second relates to a feeling that in some way they are too much for everyone around them when they speak, perform and lead in their fullest flow.

Typically, how I work with this is to get clients who voice these feelings to describe examples of when they are really performing at their best and when they positive about their performance or contribution. A discussion of what exactly they are doing in those situations enables us to explore how others react. Sometimes we carry around beliefs about how we are perceived that are simply wrong. I create what is called an ‘Executive Reality Check’ where the client will source evidence and real feedback on how they are perceived. We look at what is working and focus on doing more of it.

I often find that I coach around how women are expressing themselves within the organization. They may have great ideas and vision but are not expressing themselves well or being heard. They are carrying a belief that if they really project what they believe and who they are that others will see them as too ‘over the top.’ I will get them to give me examples of when they have expressed themselves powerfully and usually they remark that it was very well received and that others are inspired by what they have to say. From then on we will work on creating an action plan to ensure that they communicate and express powerfully to rally support and get buy in for their vision and plans.

As a coach it is my role to spot limiting beliefs that might be getting in the way of someone succeeding or feeling good about the work that they deliver. Another business leader came to me with a really strong intention of finding a new role outside the organization. I listened without judgment and helped her get really clear on what her vision was for her career and what she wanted from a job and organization. Before long it became clear that she had a limiting belief that she didn’t have the capacity to be passionate about her work. She had been intensely passionate about sport and didn’t believe that she could ever feel the same about work. Through a series of questions and visioning exercises I helped her to connect with a strong passion for a project that she had initiated. She started to see herself as a leader for something new and visionary in the organization. Once she realized that she could get really passionate about her work, her whole motivation shifted and she started to look for new possibilities within her existing role. Projects came and went and there was the usual rollercoaster of challenges but she had completely changed her view of her career and is still working happily and effectively at the same organization two years later.

Really believing in your own ability to make a difference is critical. As I worked with one client I noticed how much she was growing in confidence as the coaching series continued. She started to contact her managing director proactively with a new approach. She recognized that she needed to be more confident and specific in her interactions with him. She also found that she could use clarification as a way of getting shared understanding around a particular learning and development project that she had initiated. She had the insight that when she really believed in herself she was much more powerful at persuading and influencing. She stayed focused and committed and didn’t give up when she hit roadblocks. Instead she found new ways to go around them. She moved her own focus from ‘blame to aim’ and started to look for solutions instead of dwelling on problems and limitations.

This took a real shift in her mindset and it started when she realized that she had some really negative beliefs about the organization and its leaders. Clients usually start to become aware of any negative internal dialogue that they have as they talk things through one on one with a coach. I notice with all of the women that I coach after just a few sessions, they start to speak more positively about themselves and others and what they are already contributing to their organizations in a genuine and authentic way. They are then surprised how quickly their important working relationships change with increased openness and trust.

Changing Values

Many of us find throughout our working career that our values really change. The values that we hold in our early 20’s may be very different by the time we reach late 30s and early 40s. Early on I found myself very drawn to a career that not only offered international travel, weekend and evening work but that was also high visibility in the organization. Later on I became more interested in developing other people and took on a young team to manage. After having a family I wanted to work less hours and find some more flexibility.

One of the most powerful tools that my clients have used is to create a new model for success for their lives. This is an opportunity to reassess personal values and often really get clear on what are their most important values in life and work and how are these reflected in their lives at that time. One client discovered that her model of success was actually based on the values she had learned from a male role model in her family and were not relevant to her anymore (if ever!). We had great fun re-defining her priorities and, a whole new set of values that she could step into and live anew in. She had renewed focus and clarity in what she wanted and needed.

Women and family

How can we talk about women in business without mentioning the combination of work and family? I recently met two senior female executives with four children each. As a mother of two, I was really impressed how they juggled it all so successfully. There are many aspects to the discussion around women and leadership and the importance and value of retaining women within organizations. Some of the themes that come up through coaching are managing the transition to motherhood and redefining yourself in this new, additional role, managing the transition back to work after maternity leave, balancing work and family commitments when you are a centre piece for both and supporting kids through their own learning and emotional growth while managing a demanding career.

The McKinsey Quarterly September 2008 published an article entitled “A business case for women”(Copyright © 1992-2008 McKinsey & Company). Recent research conducted by McKinsey suggests that companies with higher numbers of women at senior levels are also companies with better organizational and financial performance. They also found that companies using coaching, mentoring, and networking programs have proved quite successful in helping female executives succeed—for instance, by encouraging them to seek out new positions more aggressively.

Challenges around managing a career and family can impact women before they have even had the children. One young manager was reluctant to step into the next level of responsibility in her small organization because she was planning for a family in the next year and didn’t want to find herself pulled between work and family commitments. Through coaching we were able to get clear that this was what was getting in the way for her and to re-orientate to new perspectives that were more empowering. for her. She got a clearer vision of the possibilities for herself as an important contributor to the organization as well as a successful mother and wife.

Coaching can really support women to re-create who they have become in the new context of motherhood. This transition can be a challenging time and many women feel conflict and doubt about their ability to have it all – career and family. I meet many people within organizations with older children that are extremely pre-occupied about their children’s success, especially if they are at an exam sensitive time. This can be a big distraction from the job in hand. Interestingly,]this often sparks an interest in coaching and many parents want to learn how to coach their children better and inspire learning and emotional growth for them. Clients are keen to take the coaching that I model and try it out at home!

Creating family time and being able to put the work aside to be present with family is challenging, particularly with constant electronic access. Often coaching will touch on this to help a client create a sense of balance in their life and to support them to connect more with their families and key relationships

Many women are primarily focused on others needs, being the centre piece in their family and often at the cost of their own needs. I have worked with women to re-claim their own identity and to ensure that they put themselves at the centre of their world. Prioritising your own needs both inside and outside work is critical. One client was exhausted by the endless transatlantic evening conference calls with the U.S that she had to be on. When I got her to step back and explore possible options she realized that, although most of the calls required her to speak, there was one each week that she only listened in on. From then on she downloaded a recording of the call in the morning and freed up one precious evening.

Finally, are you managing your career by accident or on purpose? A great place to start with a coach is to create a clear vision of where you want your career to go, what do you want to achieve and what are the values that drive this? Taking a real look at what you are chasing and asking yourself what it is you really want can ensure that you are doing work that you are passionate about, working to your strengths and have a whole and balanced life outside work.

Summary

My coaching practice has connected me with some amazing and inspiring women. Although unique with their own strengths, potential and challenges there are some connecting themes and insights that coaching has brought them. Sourcing from the women that inspired me I have captured some of the key impacts and transformation that coaching supported them to achieve.

Sources:

Five Level of Focus – Results Coaching Systems

The McKinsey Quarterly September 2008 - “A business case for women”