ISHOO RAJAMOHAN COACHING

In a few days or weeks many of you might be stepping into your annual performance review. What do you intend to say in that meeting? More importantly, how will you say it? In recent newsletters I shared how your self-concept, which is what you communicate externally, speaks louder than any words you convey. No amount of practising a script can override the unspoken words that seep out of you energetically , unfortunately. They can really betray your lack of confidence and wea

Everyday my morning walk takes me through a disc golf course - not the typical golf, but the kind played with frisbees. Almost always I see groups of men of all ages enjoying a friendly competition. Although I have never come across them, I expect that many talented women also play this sport competitively or for leisure. Personally, I am not remotely drawn to spending my mornings honing my skill of hitting a target. Which is why you will find me dodging the flying frisbees t

Many of you might be anticipating your performance appraisal for the past year to be held over the next few months between April - July. Whether or not you are looking forward to a promotion or a pay rise, this meeting also gives you opportunity to take stock and review where you are given the bigger picture of your career and life ambitions. Doing this work before hand allows you to be clearer in your thinking and more confident in your communication when you sit down with

In my previous post on this topic, I addressed how your focus determines your future. (Read it here ). The reality is that it also impacts your fortune, even without you recognising how the status quo has a hand to play in this dynamic. As you might know, I coach women at the three major career stages: young aspiring leaders, mid-career women looking to enter senior leadership and senior leaders who want to make a bigger impact in their organisations. What I consistently see

A recent client hired me from a place of genuine insecurity: she worked for an engineering company in a role that is under risk from becoming obsolete thanks to AI. She was leading on AI adoption and implementation within her team, and her words of despair in our first conversation were, “I feel like I’m cutting off the very branch that I sit on.” Her managers could provide little reassurance or certainty on what the future would hold, and she struggled with calming her own t

Give power to your potential, not your shortcomings. There are whole industries and business models built around the latter: profiting from highlighting women’s shortcomings to themselves and to each other. But there is no benefit or lucre in us playing that game. Moreover, when your focus is on what you lack, you cannot recognise or tap into what you can and do bring to the table. For women working in majority male industries it is all the more important to maintain the righ

Since 2023 I have been teaching The Confidence Dynamic™ framework to women working in majority male industries across the globe. The one piece of feedback that I consistently receive when I teach it is that it makes participants feel less alone. They feel seen and heard, and relieved that there is nothing wrong with them for feeling less than confident because it is a normal part of how we evolve as professionals. This is why I am passionate about spreading this knowledge far

When I speak to women who are beyond ready to move up the career ladder and it hasn't happened yet, they often believe that they are lacking something. Their shortcomings appear magnified in their eyes, constructive criticism from their team leaders can feel hurtful and most crucially from my viewpoint, they begin to forget how much potential they actually hold within themselves. However, the missing ingredient might actually be a lot less complicated than they think. If you

Today’s message is crucial for anyone who has ever faced rejection when applying for a promotion.   I know how crushing that disappointment can be, not least because you had probably been working super hard, strongly feeling that you deserved to move up the ladder.   I emphasise this because I have spoken to numerous women over the years who expected a promotion because they expected their work to speak for itself.   In the video below I share why this is not how it works.  

Last week I had the honour of teaching a webinar for  The King's Trust . The charity is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding in May, which made it a real privilege for me to be delivering the session at this time. Organised by their gender network, male allies were also invited and encouraged to attend. When I created The Confidence Dynamic™ framework, I was very intentional about creating a safe space where women’s lived experiences could take centre stage, becau

In most specialised professions, career progression was historically handled by guilds. In simple terms, they ensured that the craft was passed down properly to new entrants to the profession - which ensured that best practice and the highest standards were maintained by everyone practising it. However, they differ slightly to the contemporary version of such programmes (apprenticeships, etc.) in that the guilds of old not only focussed on transmitting skills and knowledge,

One of the biggest frustrations I hear women express is of giving everything to their work, but hitting a wall when it comes to career progression. Some of these women have also simultaneously balanced caregiving responsibilities, making huge sacrifices that put their own self care on the line. But they can seldom give voice to the disappointment because your only option really is to put on a brave face and keep doing what you always do. Expecting your past work or a past ac

Image credit: Hinda Ibrahim, MSD UK This has to be the paradox of our time: our collective feeling of "we should be further along or better placed by now" that is permeating almost every aspect of our lives, and often in our careers. Even though we live in a time of unprecedented opportunity, a fraction of which was not available even a generation ago. We are waking up to systems and structures that are day by day failing to meet our needs. And this feels like a turning poin

(Image credit: Spyros Kaprinis, London South Bank University School of Architecture and Planning) Have you attended one of my talks in the past and wanted to share those insights with the women you work with, particularly those  colleagues who might have also struggled at some point with their confidence or imposter syndrome? If yes, I would love to speak at your organisation during Women's History Month. These are the main trainings I deliver: - Building your Confidence: In

Power rarely says no to women directly. It delays, redirects and exhausts them instead.” - Arundhati Roy Today I want to throw out an idea about collective ways in which we people-please. If you’re in my community, you might relate to being ‘the good girl’ - something that shows up in a lot of my clients and is a pattern that I myself identify with. The good girl, as I see it, is how many of our generation of women learned to find our value in our families and communities. M

Those of us who identify as recovering people pleasers (they say that using the word ‘recovering’ is more empowering) are hardly free people. We are constantly leaking energy, which gets trapped in the places and situations where we give our power away. The people and systems that we frequently say ‘yes’ to get used to our easy co-operation, keeping us further locked in to those patterns. Which makes it harder, but not impossible to extricate ourselves from those traps - and

Many of us identify with people pleasing, which is a habit of putting the needs of other people before our own, to our eventual detriment. It might have been a mechanism we learned to adopt right from childhood, or something we picked up later in our journey from an environment that didn't make us feel safe, seen, secure, connected, or acknowledged. So here we are, trying to quickly soothe the emotions that come up whenever we find ourselves in a similar situation or environm

Today I want to share a quick hack for anyone who identifies as a people pleaser. None of us who do ever chose to be that way in the first place.  It is a survival mechanism that we perhaps had to adopt early in our lives or careers in systems and structures that didn't give us our full place or power. And sometimes being pleasing, agreeable, conflict-averse, and the person that always says yes gets us through the day or out of situations that would very quickly prove to us o

I want to start the year with a poignant share dedicated to the clients I worked with in 2025. All of last year I gently pushed them to step out of their comfort zones so that their light could shine brighter than ever. And they all took on their respective challenges bravely, so it naturally falls on me to be transparent about how I live the principles I teach. As a child, I experienced a lot of bodyshaming from the people around me, including family and friends. Thanks in n

Last week I had the privilege of attending the International Citizen Hub Lund’s celebrations of a decade of creating impact in the city, and I can definitely count myself as one of the internationals who have benefitted from their support. What I most appreciated was hearing the experience a female partner who had accompanied her spouse to share her story on one of the panels. Cynthia Sradaputta talked about her journey of returning to focus on her career after the rest of he