Coaching as a Strategy to Reduce Burnout in Women Leaders
According to the World Health Organization (American Psychological Association, 2023), burnout is an “occupation-related syndrome” resulting from chronic stress that the workplace has not sufficiently addressed. When individuals suffer from burnout, an organization’s productivity decreases (Auerbach, 2004). Stanford University recently estimated that burnout-induced turnover could cost the institution almost $8 million per year (Berg, 2017). For women, a substantial stressor leading toward burnout in the workplace is the lack of power, support, and isolation. Women have historically been isolated from male networks and positions of power (Moore & Sagaria, 1991). However, women thrive through collaborative networking (Belenky et al., 1986; Noddings, 1986; Tannen, 2001) and gender socialization built on relationships (Gilligan, 1982). Traditional gender socialization encourages women to seek out horizontal connections rather than vertical connections with those around them (Gilligan, 1982). This tends to lead to discomfort in the work setting for many women where hierarchical structures are the norm (Tannen, 2001).
Though mentoring has been purported to be a possible equalizer for women’s development in the workplace, it has advantages and disadvantages. First, mentoring has often been inaccessible to women in educational leadership in particular which has reduced women’s chances of rising to leadership ranks (Ortiz, 1982; Sherman, 2005). Second, informal mentoring as a method for tapping school leaders has tended to lead toward “reproductive technology” and as a “gatekeeping mechanism” that is biased and not designed for women and those historically marginalized (Blackmore et al., 2006; Sherman, 2002; 2005). Third, according to Tannen (2001), mentoring is traditionally enacted as a uni-directional and hierarchical approach to the “giving” or “telling” of information with little consideration to “receiving” and is thus conducted in a way that encourages male dominant gender-role socialization. Women are less successful with traditional didactic mentoring relationships because webbing and networking is more relationally natural (Tannen, 2001).
In turn, executive leadership coaching is built from a relational perspective (Ladegard & Gjerde, 2014) as a development strategy that encourages individuals to realize their own vision and purpose to promote flourishing rather than a strategy focused on hierarchically “fixing” them (O’Neil et al., 2015). Leadership coaching is enacted on the premise that self-awareness and self-reflection through a partnering relationship with a coach enhances strengths inherent to the client/coachee. Executive leadership coaching is a helping and caring relationship (Boyatzis, 2006; Kilburg, 1996) designed to support (Vinnicombe & Singh, 2003) and facilitate women’s participation in their own leadership development through the traditionally undervalued skill of collaboration (Ruderman & Ohlott, 2005).
While there are a multitude of definitions of executive leadership coaching (or leadership coaching), principles such as collaboration, accountability, self-awareness, action planning, responsibility, goal direction, and outcome-focused are common (Grant et al., 2009; Spence & Oades, 2011; Sue-Chan et al., 2010). Executive leadership coaching is responsive to the individual needs of leaders and their organizations and often includes personality and leadership assessments, challenge, and support toward development (Ely et al., 2010; Ladegard, & Gjerde, 2014). Burke and Linley (2007) found that leadership coaching has a positive effect after only one coaching session. Alexander et al. (2020) studied nineteen female junior faculty who received individual or group coaching over a six month period. After completion of coaching, all participants indicated reduced feelings of burnout and a renewed intent to remain in their jobs.
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