New research shows what coaches are focusing upon with their senior female clients and what lessons they have learnt through coaching them.

As a number of reports have highlighted recently, women are still under-represented at senior levels in many organisations1. Many books about leadership and diversity recommend mentoring and coaching as useful interventions to help women break through into the higher echelons of the management structure. Until now, however, little research has been conducted specifically into what coaches are focusing upon with their senior female clients and what lessons they have learnt through coaching them.

Louise Sheppard’s research in the above areas revealed that the top four most common issues that women bring to and which emerge during coaching, in order of frequency, are: managing the job; developing self-confidence; managing relationships and influencing; and managing work and non-work needs. She identified four other common issues too: managing and leading others; managing their own career path; being assertive; and knowing and being true to self.

Managing the job

This includes transitioning into new roles, being focused on the most important deliverables and letting go of less productive uses of time, according to Sheppard. “Some senior women are too perfectionist, get too immersed in detail and don’t delegate enough,” she said. One coach participating in her research remarked that “women make themselves too vulnerable to stress and failure by getting themselves trapped on the hamster wheel, trying to display how self-sufficient they are”. Often this behaviour has enabled them to get to where they are, but will stop them from getting any further.

Developing self-confidence

Women can compress their vision of themselves to be smaller than they are, said Sheppard. “When women are on the brink of a senior role, they can be reluctant to push themselves forward and need encouragement to do so.”

Managing relationships and influencing

This is about making more impact, building alliances, gaining recognition, finding an effective influencing style and developing organisational savvy, said Sheppard. One coach remarked that it is only when senior women want to become a partner that they suddenly ask, “Who do I have to influence here?”

Managing work and non-work needs

This issue can be about how to combine managing a client’s home and/or family with their work role. It may also be about exploring life choices and, for some women who have wholly devoted themselves to work, how to develop a personal life.

Managing and leading others

This is about managing teams and identifying what type of leader the client wishes to be.

Managing their career path

Coaches reported that many senior women do not have career plans. Clients tend to raise questions with their coaches about their next career move and coaches encourage them to take a longer-term perspective, focus upon reaching their potential and be the best that they can be.

Being assertive

This is about learning to push back, handle constructive feedback and ask for support when they need it. Many coaches commented that their senior female clients found it difficult to assert themselves with their male bosses.

Knowing and being true to self

This theme is about becoming more self aware, helping individuals to bring their whole self to work and facilitating the client to find meaning in their work. As one coach put it, “giving the client the energy and motivation to be herself and releasing her from the burden of struggling with this”.

Sheppard carried out the research as part of her masters in professional coaching with i-coach academy. She found that there is a difference in the issues that women present at the start of the coaching and those issues that emerge during coaching. The issues that emerge are more personal, underlying issues such as, “how do I honour myself in a man’s world?”

Sheppard asked coaches how issues differ between female and male clients. Most coaches felt that no issues are unique to women but that there are key differences:

  • Timing of raising issues – women raise core issues, such as lack of confidence, earlier on in the coaching relationship.
  • Focus – on issues of confidence, women may question whether they have “a right to be in the role”, while men are more likely to attribute their lack of confidence to other factors, such as a poor education. With managing career issues, women are concerned before they step up to take a bigger role about whether they can do it, while men tend to take on the role and then become concerned that they are out of their depth.
  • Outcome sought – women tend to take an exploratory approach to issues and men a “let’s fix it” approach.

Sheppard looked at three aspects of how coaches are working with senior female clients – what tools they are using, how they are “being” and what process they are using – and subsequently developed a set of guidelines (see panel, below). She urged employers to provide coaching for high potential women at key transition points in their career and hold workshops on topics such as developing political savvy, networking and career planning.

Reference
1 In the UK, for example, women hold only 11 per cent of FTSE-100 directorships and the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission’s annual report, Sex and Power, revealed late last year that there are fewer women in top posts in almost half of its 25 categories.

  • Louise Sheppard is an executive coach. She held focus groups and in- depth interviews with experienced coaches, accessing data on more than 500 senior, professional women (vice-president level and above) across a range of sectors. For a copy of the research, email louisesheppard1@btinternet.com

Top ten tips for coaching women

1. Understand how gender issues within the work environment can affect female clients. Explore the client’s experience of gender issues, helping her to understand her situation and how she can adopt effective coping strategies.

2. Treat all clients as individuals; there are vast variations among women. Be aware of your own expectations and stereotypes of women and do not impose these on clients.

3. Some female clients do not feel entitled to receive coaching initially so spend time up front reassuring the client that she is “worthy” of the attention and investment.

4. Women learn best through their relationships, so establish trust at the beginning of the relationship. Share personal information and role model being open and authentic.

5. Familiarise yourself with typical issues that senior women bring to coaching. Be aware that there is a relationship between coaching issues and age. In addition, use this knowledge while coaching men to help them to understand women’s behaviour and how they can help support women to move into senior positions.

6. Many senior women feel relatively isolated in their roles. Give them the space to explore both work and non-work needs during coaching. Support women to make choices that they are happy with by listening with “riveted detachment”, sharing your intuition and providing feedback about how you experience them.

7. When discussing the future, use the word “aspiration” rather than “ambition”. Help your clients to develop career plans. Hold a vision of the future for clients and support them to explore whether they feel ready for the next step and what the real opportunities and costs will be.

8. Encourage female clients to work with and through others rather than to be self sufficient. Focus clients on assessing their alliances and mapping out where they need to build relationships and networks. Explore their beliefs about engaging in organisational politics and work with them to find acceptable ways of being effective in this arena.

9. Help your clients to understand who they are, what is important to them (their values) and how they are perceived by others (their communication style, image and presence). Support them to develop their own authentic leadership styles which they feel comfortable with.

10. Be transparent about what you are doing so that clients learn to self coach and coach others. Ask clients to consider where they are going to get their support from once the coaching is completed, and encourage them to find themselves good mentors.