Senior Executive, Transport, Melbourne, Australia
How a senior executive became more recognised as a peer and decision-maker within the senior executive team.
I came into coaching resistant. I didn’t want it. My manager had told me I needed to work on my brand and I didn’t agree. Since I had no choice, I decided to make the most of it. By the end, my confidence had gone from a 5 to a 9 out of 10 and I had an equal seat at the table alongside my peers.
This client is a senior leader managing a substantial division with multiple direct reports and complex stakeholder relationships across the organisation.
She was assigned coaching by management, a fact she was upfront about not welcoming. She didn’t see the need and wasn’t interested in a formal, prescriptive process. What she did have was a persistent frustration: despite her experience and strong performance in her role, she wasn’t being treated as an equal by her peers. Decisions about her division were being routed through her line manager rather than coming to her directly. She was present at the table but not quite of it.
The original brief was to improve her professional brand, but she didn’t see it that way. What she actually needed was for peers to start treating her like the decision-maker she already was.
Individual executive coaching focused on clarifying the real issue beneath the original brief, helping her separate structural dynamics from self-doubt, and build confidence in how she was already leading.
By the time the engagement wrapped up, the change was tangible. Her peers, including other senior executives, were approaching her directly for decisions. Her line manager had shifted from being a gatekeeper to an active reinforcer of her authority, redirecting queries to her rather than handling them himself.
Her confidence, which she rated at around 5 out of 10 at the start, had moved to 8 or 9. She attributed this to having her existing instincts and strategies validated — and to getting clear on what the real issue had been.
She had come in resisting the coaching format. She left recommending it to others.
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