Kate Wilson
Kate Wilson
Executive coaching
Space to think.
Confidence to act.
Coaching support for women navigating the expert-to-leader transition.
Working with organisations
Your organisation is promoting talented women from technical and specialist roles into leadership. But the expert-to-leader transition is rarely supported with anything more than the promotion itself.
Many newly promoted leaders experience a difficult and often invisible adjustment. The habits that made them exceptional experts (thoroughness, precision, consensus-building) become liabilities in leadership, where they are expected to make decisions with incomplete information, set direction, and influence at scale.
What this looks like in practice: apologetic or overly cautious communication in senior rooms. Reluctance to initiate difficult conversations with peers and stakeholders. Over-preparation driven by a persistent feeling of not yet having earned their place. These patterns are common, rarely surfaced, and without support they lead to diluted authority, exhaustion, and attrition.
Protecting your investment in female leaders
The challenge
I provide structured one-to-one coaching for women navigating the expert-to-leader transition. The work focuses on the shift from technical credibility to strategic authority: trusting their judgement, communicating with authority, and leading without apology.
Each engagement begins with the Leadership Scan Wheel, a proprietary diagnostic I've developed. It maps eight leadership domains across inner-facing and outward-facing dimensions, including communication and influence, strategic clarity, stakeholder relationships, and personal resilience. It surfaces where pressure or imbalance is showing up, gives the work immediate focus, and provides a measurable baseline.
Structured coaching for the transition
What I offer
Leaders who feel they belong in the role, not leaders quietly burning out trying to prove they do.
Reduced attrition risk
Outcome 04
With peers, stakeholders, and teams, rather than being avoided.
Difficult conversations
Outcome 03
Less overthinking, less second-guessing, less defaulting to consensus.
Faster, more confident decision-making
Outcome 02
Leaders who communicate decisions and direction, not just data and detail.
Stronger leadership presence
Outcome 01
What organisations see
Outcomes
For women moving from technical expertise into leadership, the risk sits at both points: specialist knowledge and leadership contribution. Losing that person means losing judgement, context, relationships and momentum at a critical transition.
And there is a quieter cost too: the leader who stays, but becomes cautious, overloaded or under-utilised.
The cost also ripples. When a senior leader leaves, the people around her notice. They reconsider their own positions, question their own prospects, and ask quietly whether the path is still open. For organisations trying to build a female leadership pipeline, every departure is read by the women coming up behind.
Coaching that supports the expert-to-leader transition is a fraction of the cost of losing, replacing or under-using talented women leaders.
Gallup's estimate of the cost to replace a leader, accounting for recruitment, lost productivity, and the time it takes a new leader to reach full effectiveness.
~200%
The cost of getting this wrong
Why this matters
Shorter intensive engagements and ongoing quarterly sessions are also possible. Cohort-based pricing is available for organisations sponsoring multiple coachees.
A closing three-way session to take stock of what's changed and discuss what comes next.
Final Review
4
Six sessions of 60 to 90 minutes, working with what the diagnostic surfaced.
Coaching
3
A Leadership Scan Wheel session with the leader to surface pressure points and establish a measurable baseline.
Diagnostic
2
Three-way meeting
An initial conversation between the sponsoring organisation, the leader, and me, to agree goals, what success looks like, and confidentiality boundaries.
1
A typical engagement spans six months and includes:
How engagements work
What to expect
Everything discussed in coaching remains strictly confidential between me and the coachee. I do not share session content, themes, or progress with the sponsoring organisation. I work to the Global Code of Ethics for Coaches, Mentors and Supervisors.
What organisations see is the outcome of the work, not its content: leaders who communicate with more clarity, decide faster, and lead with more authority.
Confidentiality
Ethics
I work with organisations investing in their female leadership pipeline. If your organisation is promoting women into leadership and wants to support that transition with structured coaching, I'd welcome a conversation.
Pricing depends on engagement length and cohort size.
Investment
Pricing