ISHOO RAJAMOHAN COACHING

I know from coaching women working in majority male industries that they often display patterns of hyper-responsibility, which probably comes from the pressure that they face to look the part. Naturally this carries into all areas of their lives, which compounds their hyper-responsibility, but it is hardly a healthy or sustainable way to work and live, and an even less helpful way to lead a team through its challenges. In this video I ask you to reflect on this question over

As you slow down for the summer, I want to leave you with a story and a thought to reflect on: how do you normally work: do you go with or against the flow? Your answer to this seemingly simple question will highlight to you how well you manage your energy. Do you take on things that you don't need to, is hyper-responsibility a pattern you identify with, what is the better way forward? If you have ever approached or experienced burnout, then you have to watch out for these ki

Ever wondered how some women make it into senior leadership, even in majority male industries that are known for a gender gap at that level? More importantly, do you want to know how you can follow in their footsteps, while also creating a path that is sustainable for you and your personal circumstances or lifestyle choices? Perhaps you might have put yourself forward for a promotion in the past without success, or a clear roadmap of what knowledge or experience you will need

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending the graduation ceremony for the MSc. in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Lund University School of Economics and Management. This was my first year as a mentor to one of the students and a privilege to support her journey into entrepreneurship over the past 10 months.

"I don't want to be stuck in workhorse mode!" A client who is preparing for promotion recently shared that admission with me in dismay. She had come to realise that being seen as the workhorse was the very thing that would get in the way of her landing the senior leadership role that she coveted. It might sound counterintuitive, but you cannot work your way out of the mid-career rut. The step up required of you here is to transform from being a ‘doer’ into a ‘leader’. The doi

In this series of three videos I share the three things that you need to develop in order to exit the stagnation that sets in for mid-career women working in majority male industries. Of critical importance is your leadership presence because how you lead at a more senior level is going to be somewhat different to how you lead projects and smaller teams now, even though the lines might appear blurred. This is why so many women I work with find themselves doing all the right t

There are many names given to the stagnation that women experience in mid-career: ‘mid-career crisis’, ‘mid-career plateau’, ‘the broken rung’, or ‘the frozen middle'. Firstly, what kind of stagnation am I talking about? This is where women’s careers stop progressing after a certain point and they struggle to scale the career ladder no matter how hard they try. The very qualities that they are known for - being reliable, getting things and ticking all the right boxes - no lon

I recently ran a completion session for a client who was celebrating 10 years at her company. And after a decade of service she had one big reflection from that session which I want to share with you: that she gave, gave, gave, but asked for very little in return. In the above video I talk about what having an unhealthy relationship with giving looks like, why this is a common pattern especially in women working in majority male industries, and what it ultimately costs you. M

Most of us would react the same way to hearing a NO in response to a request for a promotion or a pay rise. You immediately shrink down into yourself feeling small and diminished, afraid that others will notice it too. And that NO gets tacked onto the disillusionment from the thousand other NOs you have received in your life previously. So every request you make thereafter will sound less confident because to a certain degree, rejection has somewhat calcified in your mind al

There are two ways to prepare for your performance review or utvecklingssamtal (as they call it in Swedish). One is a less empowered way, almost as a parent-child dynamic: to see that meeting as solely a judgement or analysis of your performance over the past year or six months. Many women I speak to hold that view, and you might too. Then everything becomes about proving yourself and your worth. But if you are preparing for your performance review with this mindset, it has

The best time to prepare for your performance appraisal is not the night before, but the day after your previous one. In this video I share how I am helping my new client to achieve her goal of becoming a Director years before she even gets offered the opportunity. Through a thoughtful, considered, step-by-step process, I am building her up for that next level in her career. I encourage you to also think of your own preparation the same way. This is what I mean by Appraisal S

Your appraisal or performance review is more than just an opportunity for you and your team leader to review and reflect on your performance, as well as the bigger picture of your career and life ambitions, and how they align with those of your organisation. This is a high stakes conversation that can determine your happiness at work, your professional development, and not just your fortunes over the coming year, but it can also shape the rest of your career trajectory. Ofte

This week I had the opportunity to contribute to the Royal Institute of British Architects Professional Feature series on how women architects can improve their confidence in the workplace. Naturally, the article addresses the lived experiences of women architects, but the content is general enough that I hope all of you in my community from other backgrounds will also find your voices resonated here. This feature is in response to some of the findings by the Fawcett Society:

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of delivering another session for The King's Trust Gender Network, this time on the theme of presence in leadership, which was well received.

When I first started working with this particular client, she was in a very difficult position because she didn’t have job security. Naturally, with circumstances outside of her control, she was feeling very powerless in spite of having a great track record at her company. She took every opportunity to receive coaching available to her, showing up weekly, focussed and dedicated to her development. Nothing might have changed in her outer circumstances, but she is transforming

Having coached young women working in majority male industries, I know that a large number of their challenges with confidence emerge as they are still finding their place within those environments. So they predominantly struggle with issues around: - attaining their first leadership role - uncertainty in stepping into new roles, new projects, new responsibilities - navigating difficult relationships with colleagues Although this is a stage when they should focus on learning

One of my clients is currently in the process of carrying out performance reviews for her own team. She is really proud of their achievements over the past year, especially the colleagues she was personally involved with hiring, because they had integrated well with the team. Even though she really values each and every one of them, she is needing to hold difficult conversations with them about their prospects of career progression this year. She recognises that the dynamic h

Just after the pandemic, a client who is at the top of her profession shared her invitation to participate in a campaign for Barbie. She ignored it because we both sensed something very strange about the request. In 2022, my goodie bag at a Hospitality conference for women contained spaghetti wrapped in pink packing, emblazoned with a chef Barbie. When I tagged the organisers on Instagram asking if Barbie wanted female chefs to go back into the (domestic) kitchen, a male past

In the 1960s an American plastic surgeon named Dr. Maxwell Maltz made some unusual discoveries in his work. During his studies in Germany he found some students proudly wearing scars from competitive fencing in their college societies. By contrast, when he opened his practice, he noted that one patient who approached him for treatment had completely lost his confidence, tormented by a scar caused in a car accident. There were others he treated who continued to see themselves

They say that a lack of confidence usually results from fear of the unknown. Your fear tends to be greatest in situations where you have no way of predicting the possible outcomes: what demand your new job might make of you (and how others perceive your ability to handle them), what questions you might get asked by the audience during a pitch or presentation, how likely you are to finally secure the promotion you so badly want. Underneath that lack of confidence lies a sense