1. Strengthening support networks,
including both personal and
professional relationships.
2. Enhancing self-care, including
diet and exercise.
3. Building self-awareness.
4. Broadening coping skills,
including reframing adversity,
asking for help and embracing a
growth mindset.
5. Actualizing strengths, including
confidence, self-regard
and self-esteem.
6. Clarifying purpose, including
core values, whole life
perspective, and personal
mission or purpose.
In addition to inviting clients to adopt
the six resiliency strategies, we found
that Executive Coaches needed to
demonstrate an especially high level
of competence in five specific ICF
Core Competencies:
Establishing Trust and
Intimacy with the Client
The ability for the coach to
create a safe and supportive
environment based on mutual
trust was very important,
especially in situations where the
client did not choose coaching.
Coaching Presence
Given the nature of derailment,
the coach had to be comfortable
working with strong emotions
without being overpowered.
Creating Awareness
The coach was required to
create awareness in a very
direct way to defuse the denial
the client may have been
experiencing and to help the
client recognize the choices she
had to grow from adversity.
The leaders were able to thrive
personally and professionally when
the six strategies were combined
with skillful coaching. The four
transformative outcomes that
women leaders experienced were
improved self-development, stronger
support networks, enhanced
leadership skills and increased
professional success.
The most common outcome for
women leaders facing derailment
was improved self-development
and satisfaction that transcended
their professional lives into personal
domains. A major component of
this outcome was increased selfawareness. The clients gained greater
awareness of their own
value and talents, leading to enhanced
confidence, presence and ability
to advocate for themselves. As a
result, many of these women leaders
set stronger boundaries with their
professional duties, allowing them
achieve a more satisfying balance
between their work and personal lives.
Enhanced resiliency for the
women leaders took the form of
stronger support networks in both
the personal and professional
domains. This included extending
or broadening their networks and
deepening existing relationships. In
some cases, the women leaders
being coached had lost a number
of their professional connections
when they lost their jobs. This led
many of them to reach out in their
personal lives to form new supportive
relationships. Many of the women
also drew upon the support offered
by their spouses or significant others.
Finally, despite experiencing career
derailment, a number of women
landed new, better compensated
leadership roles in their current
organizations or new, more
satisfying job opportunities in
other organizations. Furthermore,
some earned promotions and
achieved significant performance
improvements that benefited their
organizations’ bottom lines.
Women leaders who face derailment
present unique challenges to
coaches as a result of the highly
charged emotional intensity of the
engagement and expectations of key
organizational stakeholders. However,
our research indicates that coaches
can be instrumental in helping
clients overcome these setbacks.
Coaches who develop awareness
of resilience-building strategies and
skills with key coaching competencies
can coach their clients to achieve
transformational outcomes beyond
mere survival. That is what the
coaching profession is all about.
Lynn and Kevin are currently
sourcing women leaders and
organizations to contribute case
studies to a book on resiliency.
If you are interested in participating,
please contact Lynn
at [email protected].
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The actions that the coach and
client co-created were critical
to developing the ability to
develop the resiliency that
could lead to transformation.
Because of the visibility of the
coaching engagement with key
stakeholders, demonstrating
progress and maintaining
accountability was essential for
both the client and the coach.
Many of the women leaders who
received coaching enhanced or
augmented their leadership skills,
demonstrating increased delegation
to and accountability for direct
reports, clearer identity as a leader,
improved professional appearance,
and increased assertiveness at work.
Coaching World
Designing Actions
Managing Progress
and Accountability