Coaching impact post-assessment

As Coaching continues to grow in demand at TimmerHaus, we pause to examine some of the themes that are emerging with heightened frequency and consider their importance.

We often work with senior female leadership as part of the DEI programmes we run, to guide them through bespoke Assessment Centres and afterwards, to provide them with personalised Development initiatives, many of which involve a series of Coaching conversations. This affords us a unique, panoramic view of cause and effect, and invites recognition of where the professional gaps lie for executive women, why they occur and what is needed to cultivate positive change.

Without overgeneralising, we have some valuable, if not obvious observations to share that will likely resonate with our female audience and additionally, might also bring comfort to those who recognise themselves in our reflections.

Following an Assessment Centre, it is not uncommon to advise female leaders to: cultivate a stronger, more outwardly confident leadership identity, to heighten their self-advocacy, and to create bigger, more robust strategic networks. Additional gaps identified include a growing need for women to match many of their male counterparts in the art of negotiation and to navigate political influence with elevated dogmatism.

These themes are, of course, pertinent to our male Clients too, but in lesser quantity and usually with diminished resistance. What then, is holding our powerful female leaders back?

During the Coaching relationship that ensues, we help elicit the blockers that prevent these pragmatic actions from being realised with greater spontaneity & conviction. To quote a well-coined metaphor, we ‘peel the onion together’, sometimes with a healthy dose of onion tears and almost always accompanied by self-discovery, learning and laughter!

Women recognise the gaps we identify and feel the disinclination to execute the necessary action. Some believe they are inflicted by impostor syndrome – something that, despite its almost medical inference, is neither an ailment nor a disorder, and does not require a cure. Beneath its condemning characterisation, the term ‘impostor syndrome’ is almost always purely an emotional response to other things, like setting brave goals or existing in a ‘stretch’ zone that invites learning and development, all of which can generate an obvious element of discomfort. But feeling like an imposter can encompass other sentiments for women and men stemming from bias, uncertainty, and impoverished self-worth in today’s newly emerging professional landscape. Either way, how we view and use this discomfort is an all-important part of acceptance and progression.

For women, a crisis of confidence is another key contributor that limits self-assertion and will likely negatively impact how to project a self-assured identity. This will additionally destabilise the positive approach to building supportive and pertinent professional networks, and may impede balanced, healthy negotiations or debates, especially in male-dominated circles. Working through the ill-founded, limiting beliefs that threaten such confidence supports women in reinstating the conviction that they have, but may be suppressing.

The practical goals and suggestions generated during an Assessment Centre are intrinsic to starting a journey of reflection and realisation. The Coaching relationship thereafter administers our participants with personal power to achieve and own those goals from authentic, well-structured foundations, rendering future growth and development more stable, consistent, secure and personally owned.

We are increasingly reassured to see the powerful impact of the work being done on DEI within many of our clients, but there is still so much more to invest. The gaps we are rhythmically identifying, certainly for our female leaders, are a culmination of numerous emotional layers formed throughout history, but which, together, we are dissipating to transition forward to a new tomorrow. Coaching underpins this transition, fuelling realisation, shifting mindsets, and re-educating and empowering ourselves and others. The demand continues to grow, and the results continue to support a powerful journey of evolution and development in our leadership communities and beyond.