FCLP 40 | So THIS Is What It Feels Like to Be Coached by Someone Who Actually Knows What They're Doing

In this candid leadership episode of the Female Church Leaders Podcast, Kadi Cole shares a personal story about finally getting help from someone who actually knew what they were doing, and how it completely reshaped the way she thinks about coaching female church leaders.

You'll gain four specific qualities to look for when choosing a coach, what Kadi means by "sticky floors," and the Exodus 18 picture of letting someone further down the road help you see what you can't see on your own.

Last week to enroll in CLG before doors close on Thursday, October 1st! Click here for more info and to enroll; https://www.kadicole.com/closingtheleadershipgap

This week I'm teaching The Competency Gap Live Training live - register here: https://www.kadicole.com/clglivewebinar

TIMESTAMPS

02:27 - Why she started coaching female church leaders 

03:35 - Why women need different leadership development 

06:00 - What to look for in a coach 

06:05 - #1 Real church leadership experience 

07:52 - #2 Understands leadership challenges unique to women 

09:25 - #3 The right person, not just the right resume

Resources mentioned:

Make Your Stewardship Case; https://www.kadicole.com/stewardship

Next Steps and Resources:

• Take the Quiz: Identify your growth gap with our Sticky Floor Quiz at www.femalechurchleaders.com.
• Join a Cohort: Be part of our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort for guided coaching and monthly Q&A with Kadi. Visit www.closingtheleadershipgap.com to learn more.
• Stay Connected: Follow us on Instagram @femalechurchleaders for daily encouragement and leadership tools.
• Spread the Word: If you found this episode helpful, please follow, rate, and share the podcast to help us reach more female church leaders.

Tune in and get ready to lead with clarity, strength, and joy. Your calling matters, and we're here to support you every step of the way!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Female Church Leaders Podcast, a weekly resource for women who love God, love the church, and are called to lead. I'm your host, Katie Cole, church leader, author, and executive coach. After more than 30 years in full-time ministry, often as the only woman at the table, I understand how meaningful yet challenging your calling can be. That's why I created this podcast, to remind you that you're not leading alone. Each week, I'll share practical tools, biblical insights, and honest encouragement for the real challenges female leaders face in ministry. So you can grow your skills, strengthen your faith, and lead with more confidence and joy without burning out or striving to prove yourself. We drop a new episode every Monday because Sunday is coming and you are gonna be ready for it. A couple of years ago, I injured myself working out, and I did what a lot of us do. I tried to figure it out myself. I had worked with some trainers before, I'd taken classes, done online programs, used plenty of resources, and honestly, most of it ended up with such mediocre results that it left me wondering whether paying for their programs or more individualized help would even be worth it. But this injury was complicated enough that I wasn't making any progress on my own with free resources. In fact, other parts of my body were actually starting to hurt and go backwards too, because I was compensating for my injury. So I finally found a personal trainer who specialized in injury recovery. Now he was half my age, had twice my muscle mass, and was gracious enough to take on an injured middle-aged mom. But wow, I remember thinking after just one week, so this is what it feels like to be coached by someone who actually knows what they're doing. He showed up with his own plan, told me what to do, and it worked. I could bring him almost any question, and within two minutes, I had clear next steps. If I couldn't do something right the first time, he would try a different approach until I got it. And most importantly, I started making progress, which feels awesome. That experience completely changed the way I thought about paying for expertise. And strangely enough, it also changed the way I thought about coaching female church leaders myself. I had been hesitant to coach women, specifically because I had 25 years of well-meaning women try to coach and mentor me over the years. And some of those experiences honestly were not that helpful. But working with this trainer made me think, what if I could give female church leaders what he was giving me? Not more generic encouragement, not someone telling me just to keep going, but someone with enough experience with my particular situation to hear what was happening, understand the problem, and help me figure out what to do next and move forward to make progress. Because if you're a female church leader looking for that kind of help, you may have already discovered something frustrating. There just aren't that many experienced female church leaders available to coach you at the level you're leading at. And there's pretty understandable reasons for that. Basically, we're really the first generation of women beginning to lead in significant numbers at some of the levels we're leading in churches today. Now, there have always been gifted women leading and serving the church, but many of the formal leadership roles women hold today simply weren't available to most women a generation or two ago. So I don't think this shortage will last forever. There are incredibly gifted female leaders coming up behind us. And over time, we're going to have a much deeper bench of experienced women who can turn around and coach the next generation up. But right now, there is a pretty big gap. I know because for the last 10 years, I've been trying to solve this problem from the other direction. I've spent years encouraging senior pastors and executive leaders to make sure the women on their teams have access to leadership development pathways, including experienced female coaches. Most of these men genuinely support women in leadership. They want them to succeed, but they don't under always understand why a female leader might need something different from the mentoring and leadership development she's already receiving in their local church. Part of the reason is that most men already have access to it and don't even know it. Men in ministry tend to develop informal networks with other men through staff meetings, conferences, denominations, ministry friendships, and conversations with leaders who are further ahead of them. A lot of that development happens so organically they might not even recognize they're getting it. Women usually do not have access to those same informal networks of fellow female leaders. And that matters because while most leadership development is not gender specific, I estimate there is probably 10 to 15% of a female leader's journey that is uniquely female. And this becomes more important the higher you rise in the organizational chart. Navigating a male-dominated work environment, leading through different seasons of life, carrying responsibilities at home while also carrying significant leadership responsibilities at church, figuring out some of those relational dynamics that come with being the only woman or one of very few women in the leadership room. Men have their own versions of that 10 to 15%. They're just much more likely to have other men around them who have already navigated it, and it's a natural part of their regular leadership development conversations. Eventually, I realized I could keep trying to convince those male leaders to provide this kind of development for the women on their teams, or I could start making it available directly to the women who already know they need it. And I think the same principle applies to your own development. If you know you need help growing in an area of your leadership, take responsibility for getting it. You don't have to wait for your church to suggest it, your supervisor to recognize it, or everyone around you to understand why it matters. Use the resources available to you. Ask for support when you need it. And if the right development isn't being offered to you, then go find it. I am a huge fan of books, podcasts, conferences, mentors, and all the free leadership development you can get your hands on. Use all of it. But there does come a point in your leadership when more information isn't necessarily what you need. You need someone who can look at your leadership, your situation, and your blind spots and help you figure out what you can't figure out by yourself. That's what changed for me when I hired a trainer. I wasn't paying him for more information about exercise. I was paying for his experience and his expertise that applied to my specific problem. And let me tell you, it was worth every penny. Leadership coaching can work the same way, but only if you find the right coach. So if you're ready for that kind of help, what should you actually be looking for? Here are the four things I believe every female church leader should have in a coach. Number one, look for someone who has actually led in a local church at your level or higher. Now, this is probably my biggest one. There are a lot of people who know leadership theory. There are also a lot of people who have built successful speaking, writing, consulting, or online businesses, and those can all require tremendous leadership skills. But they aren't the same as leading in a local church. Church leadership has its own realities. So ask, has this person managed a ministry budget or planned events according to a ministry calendar? Have they actually personally led volunteers? Do they know how to build and develop a team of paid and unpaid people? Have they been responsible for a department or a major initiative? Has she ever had to make difficult staffing decisions, including the experience of firing someone? And in particular, knowing how to, quote, fire a volunteer well, yet keep the relationship intact. Does she know what it's like to carry the spiritual weight of the people you are called to lead, in addition to the leadership pressure of the role? Now, I don't think your coach has to come from your exact ministry area. If you're a children's pastor, you don't necessarily need someone who has spent 20 years in children's ministry. In fact, sometimes having someone outside your particular specialty can be helpful. But what matters more to me is that the level and breadth of the leadership she has actually carried herself. Not because she was on a team that made those kinds of decisions or that she was married to someone who had to lead at this level, but that she personally has made and implemented the consequences of tough ministry decision making and knows how to think through the real pros and cons in a church context. That's the kind of expertise you want to be able to access so that you can get help making better ministry decisions for your unique situation. Number two, look for someone who understands the parts of leadership that are different for women. This is where that 10 to 15% really matters. A good female coach isn't going to make everything about being a woman. In fact, I would be cautious about someone who does. This is not the time to always play the gender card. Sometimes the issue is that you're a woman in leadership, but sometimes the issue is just that you need to be better at leadership. And you want someone wise enough to know the difference. But there are moments when having another woman who has been there and done that is incredibly valuable. Maybe you're trying to figure out how to travel appropriately with male teammates. It took me forever to figure out how to pack for that kind of trip. Maybe you're navigating relationships with the wives of the men on your team. Maybe you're carrying significant leadership responsibility at church while also carrying most of the mental load at home. Maybe you're trying to figure out how to show up on a platform, relate well across a mostly male leadership team, or navigate a season of motherhood and ministry that seems to require more hours than exists in a week. These aren't always huge problems by themselves, but they do add up when you start to stack them up together. In my book, Developing Female Leaders, I talk about the collective pressure women are constantly managing and the value of having an experienced female coach who has been there and done that. And this is also where I think a female coach can be particularly helpful in recognizing and calling out your sticky floors. Remember, sticky floors are those internal beliefs and conversations that we have with ourselves that keep us from stepping fully into the leadership God has given us. Now, most of the time, men have not had to struggle with sticky floors in the same way, so they can't always see them in your own leadership. But another qualified woman can help you see them for what they are, and most importantly, help you break through those limiting beliefs. She recognizes the second guessing. She knows what it feels like to wonder whether you should speak up, whether you came across too strongly, whether you're being appropriately ambitious, or whether you're taking up more room than people are comfortable giving you. She doesn't have to guess what that feels like because she's further along and she can help you determine which part of what you're experiencing is a legitimate leadership dynamic you need to navigate and which part is something you simply need to grow through. That is incredibly valuable. Number three, look for someone who is far enough ahead to see what you cannot see yet. For years, when I went to church leadership conferences, there might be one or two other women in the room leading at a similar level. And finding each other was incredibly refreshing. We could compare notes, talk about what we were experiencing, and realize, oh good, it's not just me. Some of those women became wonderful friends, and there was real value in finally having female peers who understood the world I was leading in. But there was a problem. A lot of us had the same exact questions, and we were getting stuck in the exact same places. Now we could support each other, we could encourage each other, we could even help each other think through what we were facing. But if none of us had navigated that leadership challenge before, none of us necessarily knew how to get to the other side of it successfully. And that's where a coach serves a different purpose. You want someone far enough ahead of you that she can see what you can't see yet. Someone who has already navigated some of the leadership challenges you're facing and can help you recognize the patterns, ask better questions, and figure out what to do next. I remember walking into my first construction meeting after becoming an executive director overseeing all of our multi-site campuses. I was sitting with the architects, engineers, construction foreman, the city planners, and a bunch of people who understood things I did not fully comprehend yet. But my founding pastor came and sat alongside me and started helping me learn the business behind the meeting. He had been in rooms I hadn't been in yet. I didn't need him to tell me I was capable of being there or that I should feel like I belong. I needed him to teach me what I didn't know. That's what you want from a coach. Encouragement is wonderful, but at some point you need someone who can help you become more competent. Number four, look for the right person, not just the right resume. Experience matters. Training can matter. Coaching certifications can be helpful, but none of those automatically mean someone is the right coach for you, because not every coach is right for every person. And having the right fit really makes a difference. So first, look for someone who has at least five years of significant leadership experience in a church. Not five years speaking or writing about leadership, five years actually leading people, carrying real ministry responsibility, making decisions and dealing with the consequences of those decisions. Second, look for someone who still regularly attends and is actively involved in a local church. I am heartbroken to say that I know a lot of women who have served God and his church faithfully for years, but for a variety of reasons have stepped away from being meaningfully connected to a local church community right now. And honestly, I get it. Church can be hard, ministry can be hard, and things have changed a lot in the last few years. But if you are looking for someone to coach you in church leadership, find someone who is still figuring out how to do church in today's context. The realities of leading in a post-COVID, politically divided culture are complicated. Churches are navigating changing attendance patterns, strained relationships, generational differences, cultural tensions, and people who have very different expectations of their church and its leaders. I want a coach for you who isn't simply remembering what church leadership was like 10 or 15 years ago. I want someone who is still sitting in church weekly, serving alongside people, participating in community, trying to disciple people, and navigating all those realities herself. Now, that doesn't mean she has to currently be working on a church staff, but she should still be meaningfully engaged in the life of a local church. Then start looking at the person herself. Do you respect her? Do you trust her judgment? Do you actually want to learn from her? Can you be honest with her? Does she listen well enough to understand your situation before telling you what to do? And does the kind of leader she is align with the kind of leader you're trying to become? This is part of why finding a great female leadership coach in the church space can feel a little like looking for a needle in a haystack. You're looking for someone with enough church leadership experience to understand your world, who is still connected enough to understand the context you're leading in now, and who has enough relational fit that you actually want to let her into the places where you're struggling. So don't be afraid to explore several options. Have conversations, ask questions, pay attention to fit. Because coaching works best when you respect and trust the person enough to let her challenge you. And ultimately, that's what all of this comes back to. You are responsible for developing the leadership God has entrusted to you. But that doesn't mean you have to develop it alone. I love the picture we get in Exodus 18. Moses is already leading at an incredibly high level. He's carrying enormous responsibility, working hard and doing the best he knows how to do. Then Jethro comes along, watches him lead, and sees something Moses can't see from where he's sitting. He tells Moses essentially, look, this is not working good. You're going to wear yourself out and everyone else at the same time. And then he helps Moses see how to lead in a different way. Moses didn't need someone just reaffirming that he was called. He didn't need more generic encouragement to just keep on going. He needed someone with enough experience and perspective to see what he couldn't see and then help him figure out what to do differently. That's one of the gifts of having the right person further down the road from you. There are leadership challenges you can absolutely figure out on your own. And then there are moments when the wisest thing you can do is recognize I've gone as far as I can do it on my own. I need someone who can help me see what I can't see yet and figure out what's next. So here's your action step for this week. If coaching is something you've been considering, I want you to write down three things you need most from a coach right now. Not who, not which program, don't figure out about the cost just yet. Start with what you actually need. Do you need someone with executive level experience? Someone who understands the realities of leading as a woman in ministry, someone who can help you develop a specific competency that you know you're bumping up against, someone who will challenge a sticky floor you've been struggling to get past. Get clear on the help you are looking for. That will make it much easier to recognize the right coach when you find her. Now, if today's episode has you realizing, I think Katie Cole might be exactly the kind of coaching I've been looking for, I want to personally invite you to join my upcoming Closing the Leadership Gap coaching cohort. One of the reasons I created CLG is because I know how hard it is to find an experienced church leader who's available to coach other women, especially at an affordable price point. I want to change that. Our next cohort begins October the 1st and it's coming up quick. But in the cohort, you get a customized growth plan and you'll have live monthly coaching calls with me alongside other female church leaders who understand the world you are leading in. And you get to try the entire program risk-free for 30 days. You can get more details and hear the results of some of our current members at closingtheadershipgap.com or simply click the link in the show notes. Whatever you decide, though, I hope this episode gives you permission to take your own development seriously. You don't have to wait for someone else to notice what you need before you pursue it. Get clear about where you need help, find someone with the experience and wisdom to help you grow, and then be willing to invest in the leader God is developing you to become. That's how you begin to have exponential impact. And remember, we are here to cheer you on every step of the way. I'm so glad we got to spend this time together on the Female Church Leaders Podcast. I hope you're walking away encouraged, equipped, and reminded that your calling truly matters. To keep growing, join us for our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort at ClosingThe Leadership Gap.com. It's a guided coaching experience, including live QA with me, designed to accelerate your leadership journey. If this podcast has been helpful to you, would you please take a moment to follow, rate, and share it? Your engagement helps the algorithms suggest our resources to female church leaders we haven't had a chance to meet yet. And don't forget to follow at female church leaders on Instagram for encouragement and leadership tools designed just for you. You can also follow my personal feed at Katie Cole spelled K A D I C O L E. Keep leading faithfully, keep growing your leadership gifts, and I'll see you next Monday because Sunday is coming and you are going to be ready for it.