The Challenge:

 

A Medical Affairs professional came to coaching wanting greater confidence. Her key areas where in handling challenging questions, reducing assumptions and navigating interactions with senior colleagues. Despite being experienced, capable, and holding a Ph.D., she often felt overlooked for progression and hesitant to speak up. She wanted to strengthen her conflict management skills and understand what was holding her back from fully owning her voice. At the same time, she was eager to shape a clear leadership path—even though she wasn’t yet in a formal people management role. A key part of her goal was also to build a stronger working relationship with a new manager who didn’t yet fully understand or recognise her strengths.

 

 

The Approach:

The coaching process combined guided self-study with personalised 1:1 sessions. She worked through leadership-focused workbooks to reflect on key concepts at her own pace. In our sessions, we explored these topics in depth, connecting them to her real-world experiences. As a result, this allowed her to gain insight into her limiting beliefs. We focused on building practical strategies. How she could apply new approaches directly to the challenges she faced in her role.

• Completing Gallup Strengths and leadership assessments to clarify her strengths and leadership style.
• Facilitating a development conversation with her manager to raise visibility of her capabilities.
• Explored limiting beliefs and recurring patterns from her academic and professional journey.
• Building self-awareness around how her decision-making style differed from others.
• Identifying opportunities to lead through projects and team support.

 

The Outcome:

Through the coaching program, she gained greater confidence, clarity, and capability in key leadership areas including communication, conflict resolution, influencing, and critical thinking. The blend of self-paced learning and personalised coaching enabled her to apply insights directly to her role, including strengthening her relationship with her manager.

She emerged from the program feeling more empowered, equipped with practical tools, and ready to step into leadership with purpose and self-assurance. As she described it, she often felt she had “a little Charmaine on her shoulder,” guiding her thinking and helping her approach challenges with greater composure and confidence.

Feedback:

“Charmaine’s ability to ask insightful questions and steer me towards finding my own answers made the learning experience profoundly impactful.”