Supporting Women Returners
Coaching can help women balance competing demands from their work and personal lives, and work out how to maximise their productivity and contribution. It can help retain, motivate, and re-energise women returning to work.
Common challenges which coaching can help Returners tackle, are:
- feeling confident about their abilities and their value to the organisation
- adjusting to working within restricted hours
- not being able to control their children in the same way as they felt able to control their work!
- managing colleagues’ perceptions about their commitment to their job, organisation, or long-term career
- carving out enough time for essential networking and building professional relationships
- working out how to get maximum satisfaction from their work
Developing Women
Many women focus their energies on their jobs and assume that this will get them promoted. It’s quite common for women to under rate themselves and attribute success to luck rather than ability, or to be embarrassed about ‘blowing their own trumpets’. Coaching can help women develop the profile they need in order to maximise their chances of securing their ideal role. When women are confident they are more resilient in handling the “barriers” facing women - in fact, they go further by seemingly programming themselves not to see barriers.
Research has found that Women’s networks can help create a culture of high aspiration because women tend to be much more optimistic about their own prospects where they see others succeeding. Women’s networks can also help develop inspiring leaders who favour a transformational approach: inspiring and motivating others, building strong teams, being open to new ideas and having a strong sense of personal integrity.
I’m working with a large organisation’s Women’s Association. My role is to facilitate the development of a strong network of women who will coach, challenge, and support one another. I’m helping design a number of conferences which will:
- provide an opportunity for women to access mutual support and exchange tips and strategies for success
- build confidence and prompt positive thinking – developing personal power, emotional resilience, and courage
- build on the organisation’s, and each individual’s, strengths and ‘what works well’
- identify benefits of Flexible Working for the organisation, and how to work with men to achieve the Association’s goals
- promote ‘engagement’ with the organisation
- emphasise Self Leadership (managing yourself, your Manager, and your Colleagues)
- highlight role models, and
- encourage mentoring
- help individuals break down barriers - identify options which are within delegates’ control.
- prompt delegates to commit to making small changes, back at work, the very next day
“Amanda has the rare ability to help individuals make positive life / work changes in a sensitive but focussed way. She cleverly combines the right mix of questioning, telling, & empathy to achieve a result which is often creative, yet sustainable. More than anything, Amanda is able to quickly pinpoint the TRUE issues that require resolving, whilst melting away the ‘red herrings’ that so often cloud someone’s mind & prevent them from moving forward. She is also engaging and humorous – a real pleasure to work with !”
Debbie Phillips (formerly Business Relationship Manager, Penna), 2006