As recently covered, the prerequisite to building trust as a leader is to cultivate a deep sense of self-trust. The most important (work) relationship you have is with yourself.
Executive presence has nothing on embodied presence. When you trust yourself, you carry yourself differently. A real leader is embodied. Trusting yourself means you move with more clarity, consistency, and congruency between your values, words, actions, and outcomes.
When you internally source your power and authority, it reflects in the quality of your presence, the willingness to take decisions, the faith in your movements, and in your adaptability and resilience amidst challenges.
As Maven Miara writes, “So why do so many women leaders struggle with self-trust? Because we’ve been conditioned to seek permission instead of power. Not anymore. Self-trust fuels confident leadership.”
Here are eight ways to build your sense of self-trust, and tips on how to apply each:
1) Know Thyself
To trust yourself, you must remain true to yourself. That means a willingness to un-know yourself and re-know who you are now. This means staying connected and listening within.
Self-awareness means recognizing the beliefs, patterns, conditioning, identities, and expectations that shape how you perceive and how you show up—yet, they are not your limitations. They are protective layers.
Beneath the layers, your essential self is always there. And wherever you are living in a way that is disconnected from who you really are, the truths of your being will be seeking to reach you.
Developing self-trust means coming back to trusting your own senses, instincts, values, preferences, perspectives, and intuition. You are able to sense what feels right to and for you and to discern what is not for you. Validating your intuition and inner knowing helps you to build self-esteem. Inner congruence reflects in your vitality.
Apply: Create moments of solitude to check-in with yourself. Keep small intentional rituals such as a five minute morning meditation. Journal to insightful questions that guide you to strip away stories and reconnect with your inner voice. Practice asking yourself what your needs or preferences are.
2) Practice Compassion and Emotional Awareness
Self-trust is also built on being connected to and responsive to your emotions and creating inner safety. Speaking to relationships, Linda and Charlie Bloom write in Psychology Today that self-trust is “having the conviction that you will be kind and respectful to yourself regardless of the outcome of your efforts.”
Self-trust requires you can trust that you will not be self-punishing when making mistakes. If the inner critic is constantly blaming and berating you, you will not feel safe to experiment and learn. If you are caught at self-protection, you will be unable to examine your experience for new insights.
Yet integrating the wisdom learned through mistakes is part of building self-trust and growing. It’s hard to do that as a non-forgiving perfectionist.
When self-criticism is usurped by self-compassion—the ability to be as understanding, supportive and encouraging as you would to someone else you deeply care about—you are able to expand as a human and leader.
Apply: When feeling triggered, breathe and check in with yourself about what you need. Ignoring your needs corrodes self-trust. Practice allowing feelings to be felt and pass through you, while garnering insight they may offer.
Create a self-gratitude journal where you acknowledge what you appreciate about yourself, challenges you’ve taken on, decisions you’re proud of, wins and successes and ways you trust yourself.
3) Be In the Present
If you lack self-trust, you are caught in past ruptures of credibility or you are worrying about the future. Sometimes, you are simply looking at the entire mountain, instead of taking each step as it comes.
Either way, you are caught in stories and removing yourself from the potent present moment. And, you are displacing your personal power instead of stepping into it exactly where it is—in the here and now.
Regret, worry, or burning out to make it work can parade as certainty and be oddly comforting. We project a false guise of certainty backwards or forwards, even if it’s unwanted: I won’t follow through or I won’t succeed or if I don’t force, it won’t happen.
The familiar story may feel safer to a tightly wound nervous system than embracing uncertainty and trusting in the moment (and yourself) to guide you and give rise to the right decisions and right actions.
As the Blooms point out, the paradox is fear and worry do not exist in the present, so being in the present is the ultimate protection.
Apply: Serious question. Have you ever thought of building your tolerance levels for being in the present moment? Without distraction? What would it would mean for you?
4) Release External Validation
At some level, when you don’t trust yourself, you will feel like an imposter not just at work, but in life. So you will be caught in seeking external approval and validation.
Chronic reassurance-seeking outsources the emotional labor of fear and anxiety and is crippling to self-trust. According to Gravitas Founder, Lisa Sun, the self-sustaining confidence of knowing your worth is most common among women over 50 years old. Tempering the urge for external reassurance certainly plays into this.
The ability to intentionally examine various angles or perspectives of an issue is a gift. Chronic second-guessing is a nightmare. When you have self-compassion, you are more willing to embrace uncertainty and make decisions, because your worth is not on the line.
Apply: Before you turn to someone else for an opinion or advice, get quiet, and ask your own. You may wish to both write the question and answer yourself. You may be surprised how much wisdom you’re sitting on.
5) Honor Your Boundaries
As Paulo Coehlo wrote, “When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” Author Caroline Myss talks about how ‘boundaries’ emerged into our everyday social language as we began to recognize ourselves as not only physical but also energetic beings.
Boundaries matter because self-trust requires a ‘sense of self’ to trust, and a sense of self requires discernment. When you lack integrity, you can be pulled in any direction or towards any whim, regardless of whether it’s aligned or resonant to your own inner truth.
Boundaries are not to keep others out, but to keep you whole and integral. They reflect an inner valuing and authentic contract with self. Some people even create an inner boundary with their inner critic. Your boundaries discern between what resonates and nurtures your being and what does not.
Sure, you could commit to your boss, meet every deadline, and keep every promise you’ve made to your team. But let’s say you’re entirely misplaced in this area of work and burning yourself out to do it. Will you trust yourself? Well, you may trust yourself to betray yourself.
Keeping promises to others does not alone build self-trust, if the promises violate your inner knowing or are inauthentic to you. Real self-trust and organic boundaries come from being aware enough of what your inner truths and values are, and knowing that you will not betray them.
Apply: Identify where are you saying ‘yes’ when it’s truly a ‘no’ for you. What would ‘no’ feel like? Is there anywhere in life where you are violating your own boundaries?
6) Keep Your Word With Yourself
If you habitually break your word with yourself, how can you build self-trust? Lying to yourself, even in small ways, wreaks havoc within. When you don’t believe yourself, you don’t believe in yourself. But nothing builds self-trust faster than keeping your word with self.
Keeping promises with yourself means validating what matters to you and assigning this as much importance and priority as outside demands. When you meet the commitments you make with others, but always compromise the ones you made with yourself, you are sending your cells a message: you don’t matter.
If someone treats you like you’re not important to them, do you trust them? In order to rebuild self-trust, you need to treat your word with yourself at least as importantly as you do your word with others.
Identify what is really important to you, and be transparent with yourself about it. Show up consistently to yourself in small ways, and let it build, step by step, towards momentum, results, and more self-trust.
Apply: Listen in and clarify what is important to you. Where are you ignoring this? Where are you keeping your word with self and where are you bending it? Set reasonable and achievable commitments, treat them as real, and acknowledge when you fulfill them. Be realistic.
7) Take On Risk And Challenge
If you rarely take on new challenges, explore new expressions, or take yourself out of your comfort zone, you won’t have the experiences which build more self-trust.
One risk you can take to build self-trust is to speak up in a room where you’d normally hold back. Put your weight behind the value of your voice and your perspectives, rather than asking permission to.
Expanding into new skills is a way to build self-efficacy and increase a sense of personal competence. Through putting yourself into the valuable role of beginner in unfamiliar territory, you learn you are capable and adaptable to challenges and setbacks. You may discover gifts and capacities beyond the ones you knew.
Apply: Choose one thing you are already curious about and invest in growing in that area. Check the first challenge that comes to mind—is it truly out of your comfort zone? If you’re an adrenaline junkie, a marathon may not be the challenge. Yin yoga might be.
8) Practice Accountability
When you take accountability for your own perspectives, actions, behaviors, and outcomes, you build self-trust. Accountability is a sign that you trust yourself, because when you err, you do not collapse into shame or deflect responsibility. Rather, you see the moment as an opportunity to step even more into integrity.
Even more than to others, ownership demonstrates your credibility to yourself. Not only do you hold what happened differently, you feel and experience it differently, too.
You know you have grown when you can own your part in an undesirable outcome. Or when something that would have wilted you becomes an insight from which to learn. Equally, owning your part helps you to discern what is not yours to own or internalize.
Being accountable also means a willingness to see and honestly assess the reality in front of you. Because when you do this, you can move from a place of grounded empowerment. It means being honest even when it’s hard to, including with yourself.
Apply: Notice how taking accountability, and owning your part, has helped to liberate you and for you to grow. Where in life would you like to see more clearly and take more accountability? How can you start?
BONUS: Trust in Life
Self-trust is not hyper-independence and it’s also not being a control freak.
It’s trusting yourself enough to cultivate dynamics of interdependence, because you are able to extend that trust to others who have also earned it. Connection, collaboration, and co-creation depend on this. How we trust others (or don’t trust) reflects our self-image and how much we trust ourselves. If you required others to always do exactly as you wished, you would never trust them.
If you require yourself to flawlessly do exactly as you wished, you will likely never trust yourself. From models of understanding such as Human Design, not everyone is meant to work or create or make decisions the same. What makes us effective and what fulfills us expresses differently. Being curious about how we work helps us to build trust.
But it goes even further, if you require life to always be exactly as you wish it to be, you will not trust in life. Paradoxically, self-trust requires a willingness to surrender. When you trust in something greater than yourself, call it life or universal forces or the divine, not everything comes down to you and what you alone can control.
When you value yourself, humility breeds self-trust. And the more you are able to release your grip on the wheel, and be receptive to be guided by life, the more willing you may be to trust when you know your hands belong there.
By: Aimee Hansen is a long time writer and heart coach with theglasshammer.com. Her recent work includes “This Book is a Retreat” co-written with Marianne Richmond.
If you would like to work with Aimee or any of our coaches including Nicki Gilmour our head coach and founder, please click HERE for a free, exploratory call with Nicki who can match you with the right coach for you (we have six coaches, all with different backgrounds who can help you depending on what you need).
Making the Most of Your Coaching Investment
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Coaching is not something that happens to you. It is a partnership that depends on how you show up, what you practice between sessions, and how intentionally you apply insights in real-world situations. This final section focuses on how to maximize the value of coaching once you decide to invest so that the time, energy, and resources you commit translate into meaningful, lasting impact.
Come to Sessions Prepared
Treat coaching sessions as some of the most important meetings on your calendar. They are one of the few spaces designed entirely around you and your growth.
Before each session, take time to reflect on what has happened since your last conversation. What situations tested you? Where did you feel effective, or stuck? What commitments did you make, and what progress did you notice?Clarifying one or two priorities you want to focus on allows the session to go deeper, faster.
Your coach can work with whatever you bring, but the leaders who gain the most from coaching arrive with intention, not just updates.
Be Genuinely Open and Honest
Executive coaching works because it creates a confidential space for conversations that rarely happen elsewhere. It is the place where uncertainty, doubt, frustration, and missteps can be examined without consequence.
If you find yourself showing up polished, guarded, or overly strategic, pause. The most meaningful breakthroughs often come from exploring the things you hesitate to say out loud, like patterns you see but have not named, decisions you are avoiding, or feedback you are struggling to integrate.
This is not about oversharing or self-criticism. It is about speaking truth to what matters to move towards meaningful growth. Coaching is most powerful when it reflects what is actually happening, not what you wish were true.
Implement Between Sessions
The real work of coaching happens between conversations. Sessions create clarity and direction; progress comes from what you practice afterward.
This might include testing new leadership behaviors in meetings, applying decision-making frameworks in real time, soliciting feedback from colleagues, or carving out space for reflection. Small experiments done consistently are what turn insight into sustained change.
Coaching is active, not passive. Leaders who treat sessions as stand-alone conversations miss much of the value. Those who apply, reflect, and adjust between sessions see momentum build quickly.
Give Yourself Time to Grow
Leadership development is not linear. New habits take practice and perspective shifts happen gradually. Confidence grows through repetition, not revelation.
Most executive coaching engagements run three to six months at a minimum for this reason. Expect progress, but not perfection. Some weeks will feel energizing and clear; others may surface tension or discomfort. That is not a sign something is not working—it is often a sign you are working at the right level.
Consistency matters more than intensity. Small, sustained changes compound over time.
Share Your Development Strategically
While coaching conversations remain confidential, being open about your commitment to development can be beneficial. Letting your manager or select colleagues know that you are engaged in coaching signals ownership of your growth and often creates positive accountability.
It is not necessary to share details, but even naming the capabilities you are working on, like strategic thinking, executive presence, or navigating complexity, can reinforce alignment and invite support.
When done thoughtfully, this transparency normalizes leadership development and reinforces that growth is not remedial, it is expected.
Invest in Yourself
Executive coaching requires an investment of time, focus, and financial resources. The question leaders rightly ask is whether it is worth it.
Research consistently suggests that it is, but the return is not purely financial. Many of the leaders we profiled here on theglasshammer.com pointed to lasting and meaningful impacts of executive coaching such as enhanced emotional intelligence, more effective communication, embracing a growth mindset, and an improved ability to flex one’s leadership style. Coaching can help leaders avoid years of frustration, misalignment, or stalled growth by accelerating learning that might otherwise come only through trial and error.
Organizations recognize this value as well. Companies that invest in leadership development through coaching often see higher engagement, stronger retention, and more resilient leadership pipelines.
Your Next Steps
If you are considering executive coaching, here is how to move forward thoughtfully.
Step 1: Clarify What You Want
Be specific about what would make coaching valuable for you. “Become a better leader” is too broad. “Strengthen my strategic voice in executive forums” or “prepare for a larger role within the next 12–18 months” gives focus and direction.
Your goals may relate to advancement, transition, leadership effectiveness, team performance, or sustainability. Clarity at the outset helps ensure the coaching engagement is designed to serve what matters most.
Step 2: Explore Support Options
Start by looking inside your organization. Many companies sponsor executive coaching for leaders, particularly at moments of increased scope, transition, or growth. If coaching is not already offered, raising the conversation with HR or your manager can be a productive first step, especially when framed around leadership effectiveness and business impact.
At Evolved People Coaching, we partner with both individuals and organizations, tailoring engagements to leadership goals, business realities, and development needs. We offer assessments, including qualitative 360 feedback reports, to ground the work in data, providing a clear picture of strengths, patterns, and opportunities that inform a focused coaching plan from the start.
Whether sponsored by your organization or self-funded, the goal is the same: a coaching relationship designed to support meaningful, sustained growth.
Step 3: Commit Fully
Once you decide coaching is right for you, commit to the process. Protect time for sessions and reflection, engage honestly with the work, and apply what you are learning consistently.
Leaders who approach coaching with curiosity and discipline see results faster and more reliably.
Step 4: Measure and Adjust
Effective coaching includes regular check-ins on progress. Are you moving toward your stated goals? What changes are you noticing? Where do you want to go deeper?
These conversations keep the work aligned and ensure the engagement continues to serve your evolving needs.
The Choice That Changes Everything
Talent and hard work matter, but they are rarely enough on their own. The leaders who grow most effectively are intentional about their development. They seek feedback. They invest in perspective. They build capabilities before they are urgently needed.
You can navigate leadership through trial and error, learning slowly and reacting as challenges arise. Or you can engage a strategic partner who helps you think more clearly, act more intentionally, and grow with purpose.
If you are ready to explore what executive coaching could look like for you or your organization, schedule a complimentary exploratory conversation with Nicki Gilmour, founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com and Evolved People Coaching here: BOOK SESSION
Powering the Future: Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel, StarkWare
PeopleZKPs enable verification without disclosure—complete, sound, and private. While often discussed in the context of blockchain scalability and transaction speed, their possible use extends far beyond cryptocurrencies. Healthcare records, voting systems, and government services all rely on forms of verification that routinely overshare personal data. Zero-knowledge technology offers a path to redesign those systems around privacy by default.
“StarkWare is deep, cutting-edge technology,” she says. “These are some of the smartest cryptographers and developers in the world.”
This potential drew Kirkpatrick Bos to StarkWare, a company building cryptographic systems at the frontier of zero-knowledge technology. The work is not only about present-day challenges. StarkWare has also developed quantum-resistant technology—an increasingly urgent priority as advances in quantum computing threaten existing cryptographic standards.
“Quantum computing could break a lot of what we rely on today,” she notes. “Quantum-resistant code makes that significantly harder.”
Choosing the Right Room
Prior to joining StarkWare, Kirkpatrick Bos was in listed derivatives on digital assets. She was the Chief Legal Officer of Cboe Digital, a U.S. regulated exchange and clearinghouse for spot crypto and crypto derivatives markets; and General Counsel of Maple Finance, a capital efficient corporate debt marketplace which facilitates crypto institutional borrowing via liquidity pools funded by Decentralized Financial (DeFi) ecosystems. Kirkpatrick Bos was also a partner in the Special Matters and Government Investigations practice at King & Spalding.
Kirkpatrick Bos is candid about career inflection points. She has experienced the frustration of executing a plan within a business that wasn’t growing as expected—and realizing she wasn’t in the room where the real decisions were being made.
“That’s a difficult place to be,” she says. “Especially if you believe you could be doing more.”
The response, in her view, is rarely comfort. It is movement.
“It’s much easier to stay where you are than to start over,” she notes. “But if you want growth, you have to take that risk.”
She is especially direct about this advice for women, who are often encouraged—explicitly or implicitly—to value stability over advancement.
“I’ve always approached my career strategically. You have to understand what’s next.”
Mentorship, Integrity, and Judgment
Kirkpatrick Bos credits much of her professional grounding to early mentors, including a senior partner she worked with for over a decade at King & Spalding.
“He could be prickly,” she recalls, “but he inspired loyalty through integrity.”
That lesson—never compromise ethical standards—has stayed with her. So has the importance of seeing what is possible. Senior women who pushed boundaries in their careers made abstract ambition tangible.
“If you see it, you can be it,” she emphasizes. “If others are doing it, it’s not impossible.”
The guidance she now imparts is unsentimental and practical: protect your principles, make hard decisions when required, put your family first, and outsource what you can.
Leadership in an Age of AI
As artificial intelligence reshapes professional services, Kirkpatrick Bos remains skeptical of claims that judgment can be automated.
“AI is a powerful tool,” she acknowledges. “But it can’t replace instinct.”
Over her career, she has seen lawyers develop competence through experience—and others who never do.
“Judgment is hard to teach. Problem-solving, instinct, knowing when something doesn’t feel right—that still matters.”
As General Counsel, much of her role is translation: helping regulators understand technology, and helping technologists understand the law.
“You have to listen carefully,” she says. “Then explain things in a way the other side can actually understand.”
Why It Endures
There are always difficult days. Seniority does not eliminate friction; it reframes it.
What sustains Kirkpatrick Bos is the belief that the work itself matters—that she is helping shape the legal and regulatory framework for technologies that will define the next generation.
She imagines a future where people look back in disbelief at how much personal information was once routinely shared to prove a single fact.
Innovative technology, she believes, does more than improve systems. It keeps people engaged, even when the work is hard.
And in that sense, zero knowledge is not just a cryptographic concept—it is a blueprint for more thoughtful leadership.
By Jessica Darmoni
How Executive Coaching Works
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Understanding how coaching actually works is the next step. The process itself is often discussed in abstract terms, which can make it difficult to know what to expect or how to evaluate whether coaching is right for you. This article takes a practical look at what happens inside a coaching engagement, how coaching conversations unfold, and what to consider when choosing a coach.
The Coaching Process
Most executive coaching engagements follow a structured rhythm rather than an open-ended or ad hoc approach. Coaching typically begins with an initial contracting and discovery phase, during which you and your coach clarify what your “north star” will be – the overarching goals you want to work on throughout the engagement. Even if you do not exactly know this as a defined sentence or paragraph, your coach will skillfully help you ascertain “what good looks like” by the end of the engagement.
In many engagements, this early phase includes the use of assessments or 360-degree qualitative feedback reports. These may involve leadership style inventories, personality or strengths assessments, or confidential feedback gathered from managers, peers, direct reports, and key stakeholders. At Evolved People Coaching, we offer assessments such as DiSC, Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, and the Hogan Leadership suite as well as comprehensive qualitative 360 stakeholder interviews and thematic feedback reports. The purpose of these tools is not evaluation or performance management, but insight. They help surface patterns, blind spots, and discrepancies between how leaders see themselves and how others experience them.
When used well, assessments and 360 feedback provide a shared data set that informs the coaching plan. They help focus the work on what will have the greatest impact, grounding coaching goals in both self-perception and external feedback.
From there, coaching sessions typically take place every two to four weeks and last between 60 and 90 minutes. Each session builds on the last, creating continuity and momentum over time. Sessions often include reflection on recent experiences, exploration of current challenges, examination of patterns or assumptions, and agreement on actions to test before the next meeting.
However, it is the action and work between sessions that really creates the forward momentum. Leaders apply new approaches, experiment with behaviors, seek feedback, and reflect on outcomes. This between-session application is where coaching moves from insight to meaningful change.
Most engagements last between three and twelve months, depending on the scope of goals and the complexity of the leader’s context. Some leaders engage a coach for a specific transition or challenge, while others work with a coach across multiple stages of their career.
What Actually Happens in Coaching Sessions
Coaching conversations differ from consulting or mentoring conversations in one important way: the focus is not on advice-giving. Rather than telling you what to do, a coach uses questions, reflection, and observation to help you think more clearly and see situations from new angles.
You might be asked questions such as: What feels most important here? What outcome are you aiming for? What assumptions are shaping your response? What are you saying “no” to if you say “yes” to this? What would it look like to experiment or bring curiosity to those challenging moments?
Over time, this style of inquiry helps leaders strengthen their own capacity for reflection and decision-making. Many leaders find that they begin asking themselves these questions outside of coaching sessions, applying the thinking process independently.
In addition to asking questions, a coach acts as a mirror. They may reflect patterns they notice, for example how you talk about success, where you hesitate, how you frame challenges, or where energy rises or drops. These observations help close the gap between intention and impact, allowing leaders to make more deliberate choices about how they show up.
The Coach–Client Relationship
At the core of effective coaching is a relationship built on trust, confidentiality, and partnership. Coaching conversations are confidential, even when the coaching is sponsored by an organization. This confidentiality creates psychological safety, the ability to speak openly about uncertainty, doubt, and complexity without fear of evaluation or consequence.
The relationship is also collaborative. You set the agenda for each session, decide what to work on, and choose which actions to take. The coach’s role is not to direct your career, but to support your thinking, challenge your assumptions, and help you stay aligned with your goals.
This partnership is what makes coaching distinct from mentoring, consulting, or performance management. The value lies not in expertise about your job, but in the quality of thinking the relationship enables.
Choosing the Right Executive Coach
The effectiveness of coaching depends heavily on the quality of the fit between coach and client. While there is no single “right” coach for everyone, several factors matter consistently.
Professional credentials provide a useful baseline. Certifications from organizations such as the International Coaching Federation (ICF) indicate that a coach has completed formal training, adheres to ethical standards, and has been assessed on coaching competency. While credentials alone do not guarantee quality, they signal a serious commitment to the profession.
Relevant experience is also worth considering. Some coaches specialize in particular industries, leadership levels, or types of transitions. Depending on your situation, experience in a similar context may help a coach understand your challenges more quickly. That said, strong coaching skill often matters more than industry expertise, as effective coaching centers on facilitating your thinking rather than providing content knowledge. Nicki Gilmour, our founder and head coach believes there is value in working with coaches who also have a background in social-organizational psychology, social work or clinical psychological or adult learning in addition to being a certified coach. Nicki states,
“Executives are part of a wider eco-system of other humans and their behaviors. This along with cultural norms around how work gets done, and other factors such as management practices, policies, systems and processes, means the work is powerful when seen through context of the team, manager and company itself. Empowering people to map the ‘systemic enablers and disablers’ when navigating their success in addition to looking at optimizing how they show up, creates impactful results.”
Chemistry and trust are critical. Coaching requires openness, reflection, and a willingness to be challenged. At Evolved People Coaching we offer a complimentary initial consultation or chemistry session. Use this time to notice whether you feel heard, whether the questions prompt new thinking, and whether the interaction feels both supportive and stretching. We have a range of coaches who have different styles (DiSC/Insights) and personalities and even backgrounds to ensure you get the right person to be able to be honest and vulnerable in the private sessions. We have an associate pool of ten coaches who we trust.
Finally, consider logistics and structure. Coaching is most effective when it fits realistically into your life. Discuss session frequency, format, and expectations upfront. Most coaching today occurs virtually, offering flexibility in both scheduling and access, but structure and consistency still matter. Face to face still matters and can be done, but virtual also works as well.
A Foundation for Making the Most of Coaching
Understanding how executive coaching works helps you engage more intentionally — whether you are considering coaching for the first time or refining an existing engagement. Coaching is not a passive experience. Its impact depends on clarity of goals, quality of the relationship, and the leader’s willingness to reflect, experiment, and apply insights in real time.
In Part 3 of this series, we will turn to how leaders can make the most of their investment in coaching. We will explore how to approach coaching with intention and practical next steps for beginning a coaching relationship that genuinely supports your growth.
If you are ready to start, please book in with Nicki Gilmour to have a complimentary call to explore your goals and challenges and be matched with the right coach here: BOOK SESSION
By Jessica Robaire, writer for theglasshammer, executive coach at Evolved People Coaching
Your Leadership Development Partner in 2026: How Executive Coaching Transforms Your Career Journey
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Against this backdrop, choosing to engage an executive coach gives leaders the opportunity to think more deliberately about how they lead and how they grow. Research suggests that executive coaching supports improvements in leadership effectiveness, self-awareness, goal clarity, and resilience. Behaviorial flexing to learning, thinking styles and task styles are capabilities and can be learned as skills and have become increasingly important as roles expand and complexity increases.
To offer a comprehensive view of executive coaching, this three-part series explores not only its potential benefits, but also what executive coaching is, how it works, and how leaders can make the most of the investment. Whether you are an executive paying for your own development or an HR professional looking for leadership development coaches and team coaching in an offsite format, we want to hear from you.
Part 1 focuses on why executive coaching matters. It reviews the evolving demands on leaders, and the concrete outcomes associated with a high-quality coaching engagement.
Part 2 looks behind the curtain at how executive coaching actually works — what happens inside a coaching relationship, how the process unfolds, and how to evaluate and select the right coach for your goals, style, and context.
Part 3 turns to how to make the most of your investment, exploring how to actively engage in coaching to accelerate growth and practical next steps to move forward.
Why Executive Coaching Matters
Corporate training budgets today remain heavily weighted toward technical skills, systems training, and compliance requirements. Leadership development, when it exists, is often episodic rather than sustained. Traditional mentorship programs have largely disappeared in remote and hybrid environments. The informal learning that once happened through hallway conversations and after-work gatherings has changed in quantity and also was never a completely consistent practice by or for all.
Meanwhile, leadership complexity has intensified. Leaders are managing teams across time zones, navigating constant technological change, making decisions with incomplete information, and doing it all while maintaining work-life integration that often feels elusive.
Engaging with an executive coach helps leaders chart a path through the complexity. It provides personalized development when organizations cannot, strategic guidance when you are facing novel challenges, and accountability when it is easy to deprioritize your own growth.
This personalized approach matters because leadership is not one-size-fits-all. The skills that make you effective are deeply connected to who you are: your values, your strengths, your communication style, your life circumstances. Coaching helps you develop leadership that is both effective and authentic.
What Executive Coaching Actually Delivers
Let’s move beyond abstractions to concrete outcomes you can expect from a quality coaching engagement:
1. Clarity That Drives Action
Given the many demands on leaders today, it is no wonder that many feel like they are operating in perpetual reaction mode: responding to emails, attending meetings, and putting out fires. Coaching creates space for leaders to step back and ask fundamental questions: What am I actually trying to achieve? What matters most? Where should I focus my limited time and energy? What does success look like for me personally, not just professionally?
This clarity becomes a decision-making filter so that when opportunities arise, you can evaluate them against your actual priorities rather than defaulting to yes or getting swept along by others’ agendas. Research shows that working with an executive coach increases goal clarity and goal attainment, helping leaders move from urgency-driven behavior to intentional, strategic action.
2. Self-Awareness That Transforms Effectiveness
You cannot see yourself the way others see you. You can’t observe your own patterns, blind spots, or the gap between your intentions and your impact. This is where coaching becomes invaluable.
Through powerful questions, reflection exercises, and sometimes formal assessments, coaching builds the self-awareness that distinguishes good leaders from great ones. You discover how your communication style lands with different people, which strengths you’re overusing or undervaluing, what triggers cause you to react rather than respond, and where your assumptions limit your possibilities. Of note, leadership research consistently links emotional intelligence, of which self-awareness is a key component, to leadership effectiveness, team cohesion, and motivation, which executive coaching helps leaders develop over time.
3. Strategies for Your Specific Challenges
Leadership challenges are often maddeningly context-specific. How do you give difficult feedback to a high performer who has behaviors that negatively effect team culture? How do you influence senior stakeholders when you lack formal authority? How do you manage your energy when your role demands constant availability? How do you make the case for promotion without seeming entitled?
Books and training programs offer general principles. Your coach helps you develop strategies tailored to your specific situation, taking into account your organizational culture, your relationships, your constraints, and your goals. Generic advice rarely moves the needle; specific strategies do.
4. Accountability That Drives Change
Knowing what to do and actually doing it are entirely different challenges. We’ve all set goals only to abandon them when the daily grind takes over. Coaching provides structure and accountability that transforms intentions into actions.
Your coach holds you accountable not through judgment but through partnership. Between sessions, you implement agreed-upon actions, experiment with new approaches, gather feedback, and track progress. They then return to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what to adjust next. This cycle of action and reflection is where lasting change occurs.
5. Resilience to Navigate Setbacks
Every career includes setbacks: projects that fail, promotions you don’t get, relationships that sour, or reorganizations that derail your plans. How you respond to these moments often matters more than the setbacks themselves.
Coaching builds resilience by helping you process challenges productively, maintain perspective, develop coping strategies for high-stress situations, learn from failure without internalizing it as identity, and sustain motivation over time. Leadership coaching has been shown to increase leaders’ confidence in navigating their roles and improve trust in their direct reports, both critical factors in bouncing back from challenges.
6. Skills That Compound Over Time
Some professional development delivers immediate returns but little lasting value. Coaching is different. The skills you develop, like emotional intelligence or communication effectiveness, compound throughout your career.
A feedback framework learned today remains useful for decades. Increased self-awareness carries across roles and organizations. Communication shifts ripple through every future relationship. This compounding effect explains why coaching continues to deliver value long after the formal engagement ends.
7. Permission to Lead Authentically
Many professionals feel pressure to conform to leadership stereotypes that do not fit who they are. The charismatic extrovert. The tough boss. The relentless competitor.
Coaching offers a third option: developing a leadership style that is both effective and authentically you. This means honoring your values while building influence, leading in ways that energize rather than drain you, using your natural strengths rather than trying to eliminate weaknesses, and building teams that complement your style rather than compensate for it. Coaching helps you lead from a place of integrity and self-knowledge rather than imitation.
8. A Thinking Partner for Complex Decisions
Senior leadership can be isolating. The higher you rise, the fewer people you can speak with candidly. Your direct reports need confidence. Your boss evaluates judgment. Your peers may compete.
An executive coach becomes a confidential thinking partner, someone without agenda or judgment, providing a confidential space to think out loud, test ideas, and consider implications before acting. Having this thinking partner is not a sign of weakness; it is a strategic advantage that many effective leaders leverage intentionally.
A Deliberate Investment in How You Lead
Executive coaching is about supporting leaders at moments when complexity increases, stakes rise, and familiar strategies no longer suffice. In a workplace defined by constant change, coaching offers something increasingly rare: time, perspective, and partnership focused entirely on how you lead and how you grow. If you are ready to be matched with one of our coaches, please book a free exploratory conversation with our Founder and Head Coach, Nicki Gilmour here: BOOK SESSION
By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO, theglasshammer and Evolved People Coaching
Radical Self-Trust: Eight Ways to Build Embodied Leadership (Pt. 2)
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Executive presence has nothing on embodied presence. When you trust yourself, you carry yourself differently. A real leader is embodied. Trusting yourself means you move with more clarity, consistency, and congruency between your values, words, actions, and outcomes.
When you internally source your power and authority, it reflects in the quality of your presence, the willingness to take decisions, the faith in your movements, and in your adaptability and resilience amidst challenges.
As Maven Miara writes, “So why do so many women leaders struggle with self-trust? Because we’ve been conditioned to seek permission instead of power. Not anymore. Self-trust fuels confident leadership.”
Here are eight ways to build your sense of self-trust, and tips on how to apply each:
1) Know Thyself
To trust yourself, you must remain true to yourself. That means a willingness to un-know yourself and re-know who you are now. This means staying connected and listening within.
Self-awareness means recognizing the beliefs, patterns, conditioning, identities, and expectations that shape how you perceive and how you show up—yet, they are not your limitations. They are protective layers.
Beneath the layers, your essential self is always there. And wherever you are living in a way that is disconnected from who you really are, the truths of your being will be seeking to reach you.
Developing self-trust means coming back to trusting your own senses, instincts, values, preferences, perspectives, and intuition. You are able to sense what feels right to and for you and to discern what is not for you. Validating your intuition and inner knowing helps you to build self-esteem. Inner congruence reflects in your vitality.
Apply: Create moments of solitude to check-in with yourself. Keep small intentional rituals such as a five minute morning meditation. Journal to insightful questions that guide you to strip away stories and reconnect with your inner voice. Practice asking yourself what your needs or preferences are.
2) Practice Compassion and Emotional Awareness
Self-trust is also built on being connected to and responsive to your emotions and creating inner safety. Speaking to relationships, Linda and Charlie Bloom write in Psychology Today that self-trust is “having the conviction that you will be kind and respectful to yourself regardless of the outcome of your efforts.”
Self-trust requires you can trust that you will not be self-punishing when making mistakes. If the inner critic is constantly blaming and berating you, you will not feel safe to experiment and learn. If you are caught at self-protection, you will be unable to examine your experience for new insights.
Yet integrating the wisdom learned through mistakes is part of building self-trust and growing. It’s hard to do that as a non-forgiving perfectionist.
When self-criticism is usurped by self-compassion—the ability to be as understanding, supportive and encouraging as you would to someone else you deeply care about—you are able to expand as a human and leader.
Apply: When feeling triggered, breathe and check in with yourself about what you need. Ignoring your needs corrodes self-trust. Practice allowing feelings to be felt and pass through you, while garnering insight they may offer.
Create a self-gratitude journal where you acknowledge what you appreciate about yourself, challenges you’ve taken on, decisions you’re proud of, wins and successes and ways you trust yourself.
3) Be In the Present
If you lack self-trust, you are caught in past ruptures of credibility or you are worrying about the future. Sometimes, you are simply looking at the entire mountain, instead of taking each step as it comes.
Either way, you are caught in stories and removing yourself from the potent present moment. And, you are displacing your personal power instead of stepping into it exactly where it is—in the here and now.
Regret, worry, or burning out to make it work can parade as certainty and be oddly comforting. We project a false guise of certainty backwards or forwards, even if it’s unwanted: I won’t follow through or I won’t succeed or if I don’t force, it won’t happen.
The familiar story may feel safer to a tightly wound nervous system than embracing uncertainty and trusting in the moment (and yourself) to guide you and give rise to the right decisions and right actions.
As the Blooms point out, the paradox is fear and worry do not exist in the present, so being in the present is the ultimate protection.
Apply: Serious question. Have you ever thought of building your tolerance levels for being in the present moment? Without distraction? What would it would mean for you?
4) Release External Validation
At some level, when you don’t trust yourself, you will feel like an imposter not just at work, but in life. So you will be caught in seeking external approval and validation.
Chronic reassurance-seeking outsources the emotional labor of fear and anxiety and is crippling to self-trust. According to Gravitas Founder, Lisa Sun, the self-sustaining confidence of knowing your worth is most common among women over 50 years old. Tempering the urge for external reassurance certainly plays into this.
The ability to intentionally examine various angles or perspectives of an issue is a gift. Chronic second-guessing is a nightmare. When you have self-compassion, you are more willing to embrace uncertainty and make decisions, because your worth is not on the line.
Apply: Before you turn to someone else for an opinion or advice, get quiet, and ask your own. You may wish to both write the question and answer yourself. You may be surprised how much wisdom you’re sitting on.
5) Honor Your Boundaries
As Paulo Coehlo wrote, “When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” Author Caroline Myss talks about how ‘boundaries’ emerged into our everyday social language as we began to recognize ourselves as not only physical but also energetic beings.
Boundaries matter because self-trust requires a ‘sense of self’ to trust, and a sense of self requires discernment. When you lack integrity, you can be pulled in any direction or towards any whim, regardless of whether it’s aligned or resonant to your own inner truth.
Boundaries are not to keep others out, but to keep you whole and integral. They reflect an inner valuing and authentic contract with self. Some people even create an inner boundary with their inner critic. Your boundaries discern between what resonates and nurtures your being and what does not.
Sure, you could commit to your boss, meet every deadline, and keep every promise you’ve made to your team. But let’s say you’re entirely misplaced in this area of work and burning yourself out to do it. Will you trust yourself? Well, you may trust yourself to betray yourself.
Keeping promises to others does not alone build self-trust, if the promises violate your inner knowing or are inauthentic to you. Real self-trust and organic boundaries come from being aware enough of what your inner truths and values are, and knowing that you will not betray them.
Apply: Identify where are you saying ‘yes’ when it’s truly a ‘no’ for you. What would ‘no’ feel like? Is there anywhere in life where you are violating your own boundaries?
6) Keep Your Word With Yourself
If you habitually break your word with yourself, how can you build self-trust? Lying to yourself, even in small ways, wreaks havoc within. When you don’t believe yourself, you don’t believe in yourself. But nothing builds self-trust faster than keeping your word with self.
Keeping promises with yourself means validating what matters to you and assigning this as much importance and priority as outside demands. When you meet the commitments you make with others, but always compromise the ones you made with yourself, you are sending your cells a message: you don’t matter.
If someone treats you like you’re not important to them, do you trust them? In order to rebuild self-trust, you need to treat your word with yourself at least as importantly as you do your word with others.
Identify what is really important to you, and be transparent with yourself about it. Show up consistently to yourself in small ways, and let it build, step by step, towards momentum, results, and more self-trust.
Apply: Listen in and clarify what is important to you. Where are you ignoring this? Where are you keeping your word with self and where are you bending it? Set reasonable and achievable commitments, treat them as real, and acknowledge when you fulfill them. Be realistic.
7) Take On Risk And Challenge
If you rarely take on new challenges, explore new expressions, or take yourself out of your comfort zone, you won’t have the experiences which build more self-trust.
One risk you can take to build self-trust is to speak up in a room where you’d normally hold back. Put your weight behind the value of your voice and your perspectives, rather than asking permission to.
Expanding into new skills is a way to build self-efficacy and increase a sense of personal competence. Through putting yourself into the valuable role of beginner in unfamiliar territory, you learn you are capable and adaptable to challenges and setbacks. You may discover gifts and capacities beyond the ones you knew.
Apply: Choose one thing you are already curious about and invest in growing in that area. Check the first challenge that comes to mind—is it truly out of your comfort zone? If you’re an adrenaline junkie, a marathon may not be the challenge. Yin yoga might be.
8) Practice Accountability
When you take accountability for your own perspectives, actions, behaviors, and outcomes, you build self-trust. Accountability is a sign that you trust yourself, because when you err, you do not collapse into shame or deflect responsibility. Rather, you see the moment as an opportunity to step even more into integrity.
Even more than to others, ownership demonstrates your credibility to yourself. Not only do you hold what happened differently, you feel and experience it differently, too.
You know you have grown when you can own your part in an undesirable outcome. Or when something that would have wilted you becomes an insight from which to learn. Equally, owning your part helps you to discern what is not yours to own or internalize.
Being accountable also means a willingness to see and honestly assess the reality in front of you. Because when you do this, you can move from a place of grounded empowerment. It means being honest even when it’s hard to, including with yourself.
Apply: Notice how taking accountability, and owning your part, has helped to liberate you and for you to grow. Where in life would you like to see more clearly and take more accountability? How can you start?
BONUS: Trust in Life
Self-trust is not hyper-independence and it’s also not being a control freak.
It’s trusting yourself enough to cultivate dynamics of interdependence, because you are able to extend that trust to others who have also earned it. Connection, collaboration, and co-creation depend on this. How we trust others (or don’t trust) reflects our self-image and how much we trust ourselves. If you required others to always do exactly as you wished, you would never trust them.
If you require yourself to flawlessly do exactly as you wished, you will likely never trust yourself. From models of understanding such as Human Design, not everyone is meant to work or create or make decisions the same. What makes us effective and what fulfills us expresses differently. Being curious about how we work helps us to build trust.
But it goes even further, if you require life to always be exactly as you wish it to be, you will not trust in life. Paradoxically, self-trust requires a willingness to surrender. When you trust in something greater than yourself, call it life or universal forces or the divine, not everything comes down to you and what you alone can control.
When you value yourself, humility breeds self-trust. And the more you are able to release your grip on the wheel, and be receptive to be guided by life, the more willing you may be to trust when you know your hands belong there.
By: Aimee Hansen is a long time writer and heart coach with theglasshammer.com. Her recent work includes “This Book is a Retreat” co-written with Marianne Richmond.
If you would like to work with Aimee or any of our coaches including Nicki Gilmour our head coach and founder, please click HERE for a free, exploratory call with Nicki who can match you with the right coach for you (we have six coaches, all with different backgrounds who can help you depending on what you need).
Alexandra Barth: Co-Head of Leveraged Finance, Wells Fargo
People, Voices of ExperienceAfter more than two decades at Deutsche Bank, rising from analyst to group head and becoming a trusted voice in leveraged finance, Barth was ready to trade comfort for possibility. Wells Fargo offered not just a new role but a new environment, one defined by ambition, energy, and a leadership team committed to building something world-class. For Barth, it was the right moment to make a change.
Today, as co-Head of Leveraged Finance, Barth’s work centers on building a market-leading leveraged finance franchise inside a platform that is already well-known, well-capitalized, and hungry to grow. “The firm has assembled some of the best people in the market into an established franchise that’s looking to become a true market leader,” she says. “It’s as entrepreneurial as you can be inside an investment bank, and that combination is exciting.”
Barth is drawn in not only by the business potential at Wells Fargo, but the culture, one where senior leaders regularly roll up their sleeves, model curiosity, and make themselves accessible.
“The senior management here is committed to making this not just a world-class, top-tier investment bank, but also interactive…It’s an inspirational culture. It’s not just senior leaders dictating from above or only connecting with you when something is needed” After 26 years in the industry, Barth describes the culture simply: “It’s been reinvigorating to be here.”
Barth’s path into finance had unconventional beginnings: she majored in government with an art history minor at Dartmouth. Originally considering a legal career, early law internships changed her mind, and after taking her brother up on a suggestion to try a 2-year analyst position at an investment bank, gain great experience, and reassess after that, she ended up finding that banking was where she wanted to be. As an analyst, she discovered how much she loved the pace, the problem-solving, and the client work that became foundational to her career.
Words of Wisdom: Focus on the Client and Use Your Voice
Barth credits an early mentor for helping shape her leadership philosophy, setting two expectations that she still carries: always focus on the client, and always use your voice. “The priority was to really listen to the client—what they’re saying, what they need—and not just present what you think will sound good or what’s best for the bank,” she recalls.
Equally important was the expectation that even the most junior person should contribute. “If you’re in a meeting or on a call, even as a junior person, you should be using your voice and bringing something to the table that is thoughtful and adds value.”
It is a lesson Barth incorporates into building her team’s culture. She wants her team thinking critically, independently, and confidently, not just processing.
“Banking can be very process-oriented for junior people,” she notes. “We want a culture at Wells Fargo where you take time to think about what you’re working on, ask questions, understand why you’re doing it. If you’re on a client call or a senior-level committee call, you should be contributing.”
To strengthen that culture of inquiry, Barth brings in external speakers, including investors, economists, and credit strategists, to give the Leveraged Finance team space to stretch intellectually. “We want people thinking critically,” she explains. “If something about a company or a credit doesn’t make sense, or you have a question, be proactive and ask.”
Even the physical layout of the office reinforces this ethos.
“It’s intentionally non-hierarchical. Analysts and associates sit around me. I have a managing director and a second-year analyst next to each other. People walk up and talk to whoever they need to. It’s very interactive, and I think that makes a difference.”
Honesty, Transparency, and Directness Fosters Client Trust
Barth’s track record with clients, often spanning decades and tens of billions in capital raised, rests on a simple principle: honesty.
“Being honest with clients about what you think is the best answer or solution for them—even when it isn’t necessarily most advantageous for you or your firm—has been core to my career.”
Barth’s approach is both candid and relentless. “You have to ask to lead things and be direct. Most importantly, you have to show why you deserve to win,” she explains. That means being deeply knowledgeable about the market, offering creative structures, and making clear that she and her team will be tireless advocates for clients.
Barth knows the business is complicated, and mistakes happen. What matters, she says, is how you handle them.
“The first thing you do after a mistake is what matters most. How you manage it, how you communicate, and how you teach your team to navigate it.”
Clients respond to her consistency and her clarity. Barth earns trust at the CEO and CFO level not because she tells them what they want to hear, but because she tells them what she believes is achievable and then delivers the results.
“I think the ability to back up what I say with the outcome has been one of the biggest drivers of my success,” she says. “That relationship of trust is what matters most.”
Building a Market-Leading Franchise and a Lasting Legacy
Barth sees extraordinary potential at Wells Fargo. “I think in almost every product in investment banking, Wells can be a market leader,” she says. Her goal is straightforward: to help build a platform that is viewed as a top five investment bank, across products and across markets.
As much of a priority is the experience of the people on her team. Whether they stay in leveraged finance long-term or go on to other roles, Barth wants their time on her team and at Wells Fargo to be meaningful. “At my prior firm, I’m still in touch with many of the former junior people, and they tell me their experience was a pillar of their success,” she says. “That’s what I want to create here.”
A Working Mother Who Still Makes Room for Art
Balancing a demanding role with family is no small undertaking, but Barth credits her career with teaching her how to prioritize.
“In banking, you always have ten things happening at once that you can’t possibly do at the same time. You learn to prioritize what’s most important and give it your full attention.”
Outside work, she reconnects with the passion she discovered years ago as an art history student, visiting museums whenever she can in New York and beyond while bringing her eight- and eleven-year-old children with her. “I try to teach them as much as I can about art and art history,” she says, a reminder that even amid a full career, there’s always room to nurture curiosity and creativity.
Barth aims to create that same sense of value and possibility for her team.
“I grew up in a group where every voice mattered, even junior analysts’. Now, after 26 years, that’s exactly the culture I want to create, where the smartest person on the team, no matter their title, feels empowered to speak up and knows their perspective is valued.”
By Jessica Robaire
Words of Wisdom from Women in Leadership 2025 (Part 2)
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!These insights paint a picture of leadership that is grounded, human, and deeply personal. And as we share their perspectives, we also look ahead to how coaching can support leaders in living these principles more fully and navigating their careers with clarity and confidence.
On Being Yourself – Truly:
“I wasn’t out in the first decade of my career at the NFL…Everyone always says, ‘Be yourself,’ but that’s easy when you look and act like the default person at an organization,” she reflects. “It’s a lot more challenging when you are a member of the gay community, or the Black community, or the Latinx community…when I felt confident enough to make the change to come out and be myself unapologetically, I started to thrive.”
Sam Rappaport, CEO Blue80
On Being Bold and Owning What Makes You Unique:
“There’s a big real estate conference I go to every year,” she says. “You queue to board the flight, and it’s just a sea of men in navy suits. I make a point of wearing something bright and own the fact that I’m not the guy in the navy suit. I’m the woman in the bright red dress. It’s an opportunity to be seen.”
She emphasizes, “Being different can make you more memorable. It’s not just about gender. You might be younger, newer, or from a different background. Whatever it is, don’t be afraid to be visible. Have confidence and own it.”
Nicola Free: Managing Director, Head of CRE, EMEA, Wells Fargo
On Fostering Growth Over Competition:
“My Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach always says he never hides the best parts of his game because if someone can master it in two weeks and beat him, they deserve to win.” The same philosophy, she says, applies in leadership. “Helping my associate grow, bringing her along and giving her what I can to help her succeed doesn’t threaten me; it strengthens the team, and if I ever move on, she’s ready to step in.”
Marie Bober: Chief Compliance Officer and Senior Counsel, Moelis Asset Management
On Redefining Success:
“Your career is not a ladder, it’s a landscape. Don’t be afraid to move sideways, take a leap, or build something of your own and test a hypothesis. Solving a big problem is where the real growth lies. If you opt to build a hobby business that’s fine too. Just define what success means to you.”
Sally J. Clarke: Entrepreneur and Author
On Leading Collaboratively:
“I used to wait until every idea was perfect. Now, I bring it to the table early. It invites feedback and makes the work better.”
Heather Plumski: President, Stearns Bank
On Leaning on Your Values to Navigate Challenges:
“In facing challenges or change, I always go back to the questions: Am I in the right place? Am I surrounded by the right people? Am I learning? Am I growing? When you can identify core tenets to return to and hold yourself to them, they become a guide for navigating almost anything.”
Johanna Diaz: Global Head of Alternatives Product Strategy, Goldman Sachs
On the Importance of Building Community:
“I’ve moved and started over several times. Managing those transitions successfully is only possible when you make community, when you connect with people, when you find affinity and appreciate differences. The differences are where you learn.”
Angela Cruz: Sales Effectiveness Leader, Sales Excellence, Accenture
On Effective Communication in All Directions:
“With my team that means ensuring they understand the vision, are aligned around the priorities and the mission, and are inspired to do their best work to deliver for our clients. To do that, I spend a lot of time with the team individually and in groups.”
In communicating up and out to executives, regulators, and the board, Young explains, “It’s about taking the complex and making it simple, understanding your audience, and tailoring your message with the right level of detail.”
Nicole Young: Head of CRE Portfolio Management, Wells Fargo
On Building Teams Through Talent:
“High-performing teams are not built by accident; they come from spotting potential others might overlook and giving people the chance to prove themselves. One of my best hires did not meet the checklist on paper, but I knew she had what it would take. She went on to become a star. As Steve Jobs once said, it does not make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. My role is to create the conditions for their talent to shine.”
Deborah Overdeput: Chief Operating Officer, Innovative Systems (FinScan, Enlighten, PostLocate)
Moving Into 2026 With Intention
The experiences shared in this collection show how leadership grows when you are willing to know yourself, trust your values, and stay open to learning. Whether you are choosing to be seen, strengthening communication, empowering talent, or building community, these moments of growth rarely happen by accident. They come from intention and support.
Executive coaching provides a dedicated space to strengthen these muscles. Research shows that coaching enhances emotional intelligence, builds communication agility, and helps leaders make more grounded, aligned decisions. A coach helps you explore what matters most, see patterns you may overlook, and translate your aspirations into meaningful action.
As the year comes to a close and you prepare to enter 2026, this is an ideal moment to pause and consider where you want to focus your energy next. If these stories sparked recognition or inspired a shift in how you see your own leadership, take that as encouragement to invest in yourself. An executive coach can help you clarify your direction, accelerate your development, and step into the new year with confidence and purpose.
Book your free exploratory coaching session today and begin 2026 with intention and momentum.
Q&A with Monica Marquez: Co-Founder of FlipWork, Workforce Reinvention Strategist, and widely known as the MacGyver for Agentic-Human Reinvention
Intrepid Women Series, PeopleA “MacGyver for Agentic-Human Reinvention,” Marquez does not shy away from disruption – she wholeheartedly embraces it. Previously profiled in 2021, she spoke with theglasshammer.com on the next chapter in her journey of pioneering change, as she dives into the evolving intersection of human potential and artificial intelligence.
Q: Tell us more about what you’re working on now and how your new venture, Flip Work, is helping organizations navigate this era of rapid change.
At its core, Flip Work helps organizations achieve measurable ROI from AI by focusing on human adoption. According to a 2025 MIT report, 95% of AI pilots have failed, not because of the technology itself, but because people aren’t adopting it, reinventing workflows, or using it to augment their work.
Many companies implement AI without a real plan for how people will use it. The question becomes, how do you help people shift their identities to see themselves differently in the way that they work, and in the way that they must reinvent themselves in the AI era? Because the reality is, AI is changing work faster than people can adapt.
This widening gap is what we define at FlipWork as the Exponential Divide, the moment when technology evolves faster than people can change how they work.
That has been our focus, and we’ve built a human and agentic system that helps people reinvent the way that they work, from a three-pronged approach. First, we help people reinvent themselves from a behavioral and a mindset perspective with the support of FlippyAI, which acts as a daily AI coach and change agent. Second, we reinvent workflows through Flip Lab, our 90-day reinvention sprint. Third, we reinvent workforce tools through Flip Factory, where agentic automations bring redesigned workflows to life. With AI, disruption is constant. The goal is to help people become agile and comfortable with that reality, to leverage it rather than resist it. This is how individuals become People², exponentially capable professionals who evolve at the pace of technology. That’s what Flip Work is all about.
Q: The work you’re describing sounds very much rooted in organizational development, guiding people through behavioral and mindset change. Would you say that’s part of your approach?
Yes, definitely, it’s change management, but traditional change management is no longer enough. When companies are thinking about AI adoption, they think that if they buy all the tools and give them to employees, that will be enough, but no one is really helping the people change and leverage the tools.
Recently I was at a conference talking to senior leaders at Microsoft and they told me that despite rolling out Copilot across their entire professional population, adoption is only 47%. That means that more than half of people aren’t using the tools, often because they’re waiting for permission or guidance from leadership. The impact of that is that people are going to get left behind.
Everybody is fearing that AI is going to replace jobs. The reality is that yes, it will, but we always reinvent ourselves. If we look at the past, think the dot-com era, digital cash registers, or similar technological shifts, people often said, “This is going to displace jobs.” And yes, some roles change, but people reskill and find new ways to contribute. At the end of the day, human discernment, creativity, empathy, and expertise remain essential. Our lived experience still matters in ensuring that outputs are accurate, meaningful, and impactful.
It’s about helping people reinvent themselves, recognizing what your zone of genius is, and how you augment or amplify your zone of genius with AI, and delegate the things that you don’t like to do, so that you can focus on your genius zone. This is the identity-first reinvention that FlipWork is built around.
Q: This is obviously a very exciting moment and project. What brought you here?
As a leader, I’ve always been curious and an early adopter, a pioneer. An example of that is when I was at Goldman Sachs, back in 2008, I spearheaded the Returnship Program. Later, I co-founded Beyond Barriers to accelerate career advancement for women and underrepresented talent. My mindset is always you have to disrupt yourself before you get disrupted. I’ve always operated like a MacGyver, finding resourceful ways to reinvent how work gets done. AI fits in with that because I’m very comfortable with disruption.
When I had colleagues, some of whom are now CHROs at major companies, coming to me and saying, “Our company is adopting all this AI, but I don’t even know how to leverage it. How do we roll out AI adoption for our people?” I started to see a real gap in the marketplace. It’s not just about using the tools; it’s about shifting mindsets. Many people think AI is only for coders or tech experts, and they feel it’s not for them. The truth is, you don’t have to understand how AI works; you just need to know how to use it to do your work better.
Q: What would you tell a digital native, then, entering the space in this exciting world of AI?
Digital natives may have an easier time embracing new tools, but I would be careful that it doesn’t cause creativity and diversity of thought to become lazy. Even though you’re a digital native and you may be an early adopter, you must continuously make sure that what you’re practicing doesn’t lead to intellectual atrophy, making the technology smarter and the humans less smart.
For example, you shouldn’t just be taking the output that ChatGPT or another AI tool gives you and putting it out there without utilizing your own expertise, judgement, and discernment.
One way to think about AI is as your “Artificial Intern.” You wouldn’t give an intern a task and then pass their work along to the higher-ups without checking it first. The same applies to AI. You have to coach it, refine it, review its work, and ensure what it produces reflects your expertise. You wouldn’t pass along unedited intern work to an executive, and the same rules apply with AI.
Q: You’ve long been an advocate for Latina representation in leadership and tech. As a board member for Latinas in Tech and the Association for Latino Professionals in America, how are you helping the next generation of Latino leaders prepare for this new era of work?
Supporting Latinos, Latinas, and other marginalized groups has always been a huge passion of mine, helping them accelerate their careers and expand beyond the limits of their cultural upbringing and conditioned beliefs.
What we’re finding now, though, is that some of the fear around the digital divide is widening. I was at the ALPFA conference over the summer, where we soft-launched Flip the Script, a program designed to help people start thinking about how to adopt AI. The feedback I heard was interesting in that many participants told me, “I’ve always been taught I have to work twice as hard to get half as far. If AI helps me do something in 30 minutes that used to take three days, what does that say about my worth?”
That mindset runs deep, the belief that effort and hard work equal success. But in this new era, we help people rewrite the script to say that impact equals success. AI amplifies your value; it does not diminish it. If you can use AI to achieve more in less time, you’re amplifying your impact, not diminishing your value.
For many, especially those from cultures where perseverance and grit are tied to identity, this shift is difficult. I’ve coached young Latino professionals who feel like using AI is “cheating.” They’re hesitant to embrace it because it challenges their definition of what it means to earn success.
So part of my work now is helping people rewire those conditioned beliefs—whether they’re cultural, societal, or organizational—and help people recognize that their true value lies in their expertise, discernment, empathy, and creativity, the exact human strengths that AI amplifies inside the People² model.
Interviewed by Nicki Gilmour, founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com
Radical Self-Trust: The Work Relationship No One Talks About (Pt. 1)
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!It’s an axiom for a reason. The most important relationship is the one you build with yourself, and the relationship you wish to build with others begins with you.
Trust is Relational and Earned
Let’s talk relationship dynamics. Within the organism of any organization, trust is the precursor and basis of a functioning team. When trust is absent, the team cannot effectively resolve conflict, foster commitment, create accountability, or develop and deliver to its capacity.
Well, the same is true with yourself. Without a basis of self-trust, how can you confront decisions where you feel internally divided, authentically commit, be accountable, develop, or reach your goals?
Trust is also at the crux of any close, enduring relationship. Trust is not owed to another—it is earned. Trust is relational, and self-trust is a fundamental reflection of the quality of relationship you have with yourself.
If there are real gaps, and you are a self-aware person, you will know and feel it—even if you avoid knowing that you know. These gaps create leaks in self-trust. They dilute your sense of self and integrity.
Self-trust comes from living in alignment with your truths and values, and being able to admit, and even amend, where you fall out of alignment.
The Self-Trust and Confidence Loop
According to Stephen M. R. Covey, self-trust is finding yourself credible. The four cores of credibility are comprised of:
Character (who you are):
Competence (what you do):
As you build self-trust, it gives rise to a feeling of self-assurance and authentic confidence, based on a grounded experience of yourself that is greater than dips in motivation and emotional fluctuations. On a shaky day, you know you’re strong at the roots.
When your act with intent, leverage your capabilities, and follow through, you accumulate self-trust and generate confidence.
The loop then reinforces itself. The behaviors that build self-trust contribute to a feeling of confidence which gives you the courage to take more actions (such as trying new things, taking on challenges and making commitments) that lead to greater self-trust.
Six Types of Relational Trust—With Yourself?
In healthy relationships, there are six different kinds of trust that can be nurtured. One category is about self-trust. But what if you treated each as important to your relationship with self? Let’s adapt them and see.
1) Emotional trust – to allow vulnerability, show up to feelings with empathy rather than judgement, and to foster deeper connection.
2) Instrumental trust – to consistently show up, follow through on commitments, and keep promises.
3) Informational trust – to be able to be truthful, transparent, clear, and honest with yourself
4) Self-trust – to honor your worth, trust your judgement and intuition, and to show up to challenges
5) Situational trust – to be able to trust and rely on self in particular contexts, based on strengths and knowledge in that space
6) Physical trust – to feel safe in your own presence, knowing you will respect and protect your own health and safety
It’s the one relationship you’ve been in since the moment you became aware of yourself, so it’s a good question to ask: do I have a relationship of trust with myself, and how can I improve that relationship?
And if you are willing, you may find the same is true as in any relationship. Growth requires a willingness to have the real, and sometimes challenging, conversations with yourself.
But if you do, integrity becomes its own reward.
By: Aimee Hansen is a long time writer and heart coach with theglasshammer.com. Her recent work includes “This Book is a Retreat” co-written with Marianne Richmond.
If you would like to work with Aimee or any of our coaches including Nicki Gilmour our head coach and founder, please click HERE for a free, exploratory call with Nicki who can match you with the right coach for you (we have six coaches, all with different backgrounds who can help you depending on what you need).
The Capacity Equation: How High-Performing Women Sustain Energy and Clarity
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Female leaders are disproportionately at risk for burnout due to both visible and invisible labor (balancing intense workloads with emotional awareness, organizational care, familial responsibilities, and relationships). According to Deloitte’s survey Women @ Work: A Global Outlook, more than half of women in leadership roles report feeling burned out and for many, their stress levels are increasingly growing. The message is glaringly obvious that time management is no longer enough. Sustainable performance and success requires a new approach: energy intelligence.
Rethinking the Capacity Equation
Capacity can be thought of as the dynamic relationship between what fuels and what depletes. While time is finite and we cannot create more of it, capacity is expandable, but only with intention. When leaders continuously expend more than they replenish, they move into cognitive fatigue, emotional depletion, and eventually, diminished impact.
Neuroscience has long shown that chronic stress impairs access to the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for focus, empathy, and decision-making. When leaders operate in constant overdrive, they are quite literally functioning with less of their brain available. In a chronically stressed-out state of being, loss of resilience and cognitive rigidity are symptoms that may arise in response to the mental overload. The cost isn’t just personal, it ripples into the culture of teams and organizations because it derails your capacity to show up as your best self.
The Myth of Infinite Output
In our societal constructs, the path to success has been built on proving worth and value through unrelenting output. Yet this model is not sustainable and no longer necessary. The most effective leaders today aren’t those who give endlessly, but those who replenish strategically.
High-performing women who learn to manage their capacity shift from running on adrenaline and overcommitting to leading from alignment. They understand that clarity, creativity, and calm are not luxuries; they’re the foundation for performance that lasts let alone their own fulfillment.
Three Shifts to Expand Capacity
1. Move from time management to energy stewardship.
Traditional productivity frameworks focus on optimizing hours and hacks. But energy is made up of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being, and it’s what determines the quality of those hours. As Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy argue in Harvard Business Review’s “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time”, sustained performance comes from rhythmic renewal, not relentless effort. Intentionality is critical when it comes to designing each day around energetic pulls (demands on your energy) and extends (where you choose to give your energy).
Energy stewardship starts with awareness. We can regularly ask: Which activities energize me? Which consistently drain me? The answers reveal where to realign work, connections, and personal times toward what fuels vitality and effectiveness. Over time, prioritizing high-energy activities, such as creative endeavors, mentoring, and strategic thinking, creates greater output with less depletion.
2. Replace routines with intentional rituals.
Routines are autopilot behaviors done to check a box; rituals are conscious choices done to refuel. When leaders infuse intention into daily transitions like beginning the day, entering meetings, or closing the laptop, they create micro-moments of renewal.
Small rituals, like three deep breaths before a presentation, brewing coffee or tea in the present moment without a phone in hand, or a five-minute gratitude practice at the end of the day, reset the nervous system and sharpen focus. Rather than look at intentional pauses as inefficiencies where we could be doing something else, we need to see them as self-leadership strategies and energetic hygiene. They enable leaders to meet the next challenge with more presence and grounding instead of reactivity.
3. Shift from proving to preserving.
The instinct to prove competence, reliability, or capability is deeply ingrained, especially among women who’ve navigated demanding environments. Cultivating influence is about preservation through protecting the clarity, energy, and perspective that empowers leaders to operate at their highest level.
Preserving energy is not a retreat from ambition; it’s how ambition endures through inner alignment. Leaders who set boundaries, delegate strategically, and integrate rest model sustainable success for their teams. They demonstrate that resilience isn’t built in exhaustion, rather it’s built in recovery.
The New Leadership Power
Sustainable leadership is not about doing less, slowing down, or being less ambitious. Instead it’s about leading differently, and redefining power as the ability to remain centered, clear, and effective under pressure. When women leaders learn to manage their capacity, they not only elevate their own performance but also set a new cultural standard that well-being and excellence are not competing values.
The next era of leadership will not be defined by who can push the hardest, but by who can sustain the longest. Energy stewardship is not a personal wellness tactic, it’s a professional strategy and alignment is the future of leadership.
By: Erin Coupe is the author of I Can Fit That In and host of the podcast with the same name.
(Guest Contribution: The opinions and views of guest contributions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com)