Coaching Case Study By Ashley Robertson
(Executive Coach, UNITED STATES)
Case Study
A client I was working with came to me after having challenges with her ability to get promoted. She felt that she was routinely being passed up for opportunity despite being qualified. Through a manifesting process, she was able to change her mindset from one of negativity and lack of enthusiasm to one of promise and positivity.
Tina had worked in her position for over 20 years when she sought out coaching to better understand why she wasn’t getting promoted. She had a grumpy and disengaged temperament with upper leadership, though line employees loved her. Our session began by her talking through that she is passed up for promotions because she isn’t popular or pretty like her colleagues and doesn’t understand what she has to do. She felt that for some reason, nobody liked her or thought she did a good job, despite being a twenty-year employee of the company. Using the TRUE self-model, we began by doing some basic exercises to mentally prepare the space for our coaching session. Next, we moved into the process of reflecting on her session goal, which was to better understand why she wasn’t getting promoted. We talked through critical questions:
Through our session, it came out that Tina is very insecure working for women because she didn’t have very good histories with female leaders and they just didn’t like her. After asking critical questions, we progressed to the stage of uncovering these limiting beliefs. Tina started to make the shift and realized that she had contributed some of these thoughts that she had been living for the past several years as she had been overlooked for a role. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had given her negative feedback. Also, she admitted she hasn’t updated her resume in over ten years and just assumed she was next in line for a role and would therefore receive it. Her ability to shift her mentality from what the world had done to her to a state of understanding what she had been doing to contribute to her own lack of success was a turning point for her. Finally, moving on to envisioning her future, she began with setting goals that were critical to her success in her manifested future role and we acted out a scenario in which someone with her desired future role would behave a certain way. This person would have a printed, up to date and clean resume to be shared professionally at any needed opportunity. This person would dress professionally, be punctual, have an organized office, and be a subject matter expert in their field. They would be well respected, be available to their team, be a steward of good company culture and engagement, and be a true leader in the company. Tina spent the remainder of her time in the session visualizing what her future in this ideal state would look like and committed to spending ten minutes per day envisioning what her future role would be. After several months of coaching on various topics, it became very clear that she was making a shift from a negative mindset to one of positivity, empowerment, encouragement, and progressive thinking. She began focusing in many different ways on how she was a participant in many other things in her life rather than how others were constantly affecting her well being and this gave her the perspective of being the driver in her life as opposed to a helpless backseat position that she had been living in. Within five months of coaching sessions, she was recognized in a one on one with her direct leader for her growth and development and was interviewed for a promotion within three weeks. She ended up getting the role and has continued her efforts through coaching sessions in taking the lead position as the driver of her life and creator of her own goals and visions through manifesting.