Professional women need to invest in coaching

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 pasta executive explained on stage his intention for Barbie to inspire young girls to become chefs.

By 2023, the craze around the movie had completed Barbie’s infiltration of the professional world; the one arena where our faces and our figures shouldn’t matter, where a representation of negative body image standards shouldn't have taken hold.

But professional women in droves posted selfies from film screenings or barbified images of themselves on LinkedIn.

Having seen this campaign unfold behind the scenes, I was shocked at how easy it was to get women to invest in our own manipulation in order to fit in.

My point is, keep your eyes open when making an investment.

Men who lead pasta or toy companies or the ones you work for are not investing in the sharpest of suits or in fixing their faces and bodies to fit in. (Of course, the markets do profit from male insecurity too).

Most of them, do however, get sponsored or invest in coaching in order to get ahead professionally.

Note the crucial difference here: women investing to fit in vs. men investing to get ahead professionally.

The thing with coaching is that it works at two levels.

On one hand, it solves the problems that are top of your mind: a gamechanger whether you are a CEO or just starting your career.

An unexpected byproduct from coaching (you have to experience it to believe it) is that by shaping your thinking in how you solve those problems, you anchor your sense of power in the world.

So men who don’t need to fight for their power continue to invest in coaching and other forms of personal development that secure their power.

Are your investments securing their power, or your own?



Invest in your power from the outset of you career: Join the Leadership Lab Cohort 2, a group coaching programme for young women working in majority male industries under the age of 33 years.

Please book a call with me to apply (enrolment deadline has been extended to May 7th).