Proud to be interviewed among a handful of the UK’s top coaches for this Real Business article on the rise of female led coaching.

Men and women alike are being called to do life differently – in a more sustainable, loving, collaborative and considered way. I think women are leading the way in this as these qualities are inherently feminine and the feminine thrives when she is supported. Hence the rise in female focussed personal coaching.

I started my female focussed coaching practice in 2010 and back then self-love was received with very mixed reactions! It has been wonderful to witness this term become more mainstream, to the degree that I was recently booked to speak to two law firms with a mixed male/female audience specifically about self love. I was also booked by Google to speak at their London TED-X on the the theme: Self Love = Happiness. Again, to a male/female mixed audience and the talk was received incredibly well by all.

I think women are waking up to the fact that having equality doesn’t mean you have to do life in the same way that a man would. In the strive to achieve equality women fell into the role of taking on masculine traits and it has been to their detriment and exhaustion – particularly in business. Sure, we have a position at the boardroom table now and yet many have lost themselves in the process and there is a movement and an inner calling for women to show up equally in their own right. To own their feminine qualities which are incredibly powerful (and I would dare to say more powerful than the push, compete, achieve no-matter-the-cost approach of the patriarchy).

There is an understanding that to be the woman you came here to be you must do the inner work to clear out anything that is blocking you to calling in your goals. Those blocks could be mindset pieces, sabotaging behavioural habits, limiting belief systems and ways of relating to the world that are not serving them. There is a hunger to show up authentically – not as a puppet to conditioning and programming whether that be generational or societal.

The female leaders/influencers who grab my attention have personal mastery. Consider the likes of Oprah, Marianne Williamson (who is running for President!), Adriana Huffington, Gillian Anderson, Michelle Obama, Brene Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert … I could go on … they are all committed to their personal growth – to mental and emotional mastery, to a strong spiritual connection, to self-care and self-loving practises. That is their power. Leading from that space means you are leading with love, not fear. It’s the feminine way of doing business and it’s incredibly powerful. It calls for collaboration, sustainability, vision, story-telling, authentic communication and honesty.

In my private coaching I work with women from a myriad of industries including property development, catering, television, communications, law, design, coaching, finance and beyond. They all have huge professional goals and equally impressive personal goals. They know that their relationship with themselves is what will create the success they desire and they are conscious that their success must feel in alignment with who they are and what they value. So, they invest in and prioritise their personal mastery. They are astute enough to know that we get better results in a shorter period of time with expert help.

Women are making a profoundly positive mark on the world and their influence is growing. The trend to ‘be more you’ as a roadmap to success is growing too. And so the demand for expert support to enable a woman to show up in the world as her fully expressed authentic self is growing.

Katie

(Founder – The School of Self Love)