Academic Coaching: Empowering Women and Allies

Learn how to empower yourself and others to challenge biased cultural "norms" and utilize tools in coaching with which engineers are familiar. By asking questions, a coach can help the coachee to  see for themselves any negative assumptions they might be making about themselves that are actually a result of cultural/societal norms or bias at work. With that understanding the coachee can then progress with the coach through questions to come up with goals and action plans to persist in spite of bias.Inherent in the structure of academic coaching is the engineering design process, which engineering coaches will be comfortable and familiar with: identify the underlying problem, explore solutions, create timeline/action items, along with accountability and sharing of results (and revisiting the coaching process, if needed).  Using this process in coaching with students or mentees in a corporate setting can be a valuable tool.