The Powerful Role of Executive Coaching

As an aspiring superintendent, Mykia Cadet learned about the value of professional coaching from her recently finished doctoral dissertation.

After three years researching the superintendency in my doctoral program and completing AASA’s Urban Superintendents Academy, I conducted a research study examining the experiences contributing to African-American female superintendents’ longevity in urban districts.

The research findings revealed that participants were exceptionally competent, politically savvy and financially astute. They understood the need to cultivate multifaceted perspectives to lead change in their respective school communities.

Similarly, the study’s participants recognized that change doesn’t happen overnight or in silos. Like top athletes who learn from expert coaches, they encourage women in the superintendency to seek mentors or executive coaches who have experienced breaking glass ceilings in executive leadership. Seeking a mentor, they said, must be intentional because education leadership operates differently than, say, a medical school residency where attending doctors help newcomers craft and perfect a specialty during the early years of their career

While many superintendents today seek outside support to guide their work, for African-American women in school leadership there remain societal barriers that cause inequity and limited context support. Participants sought out executive leadership networks. Through those connections, they were able to form mentoring relationships that helped in navigating around barriers.

A Strong Fit

When seeking coaches to lend anchored professional support, participants noted that it was difficult to find mentors who possessed professional and lived experiences that could relate to them as African-American females in executive leadership. Although mentor candidates were well-meaning, participants shared that white and male counterparts were limited in their levels of support because they lacked awareness of the struggles grounded in gender and racial inequalities.

One participant, an executive leader with decades of experience pursuing, achieving and supporting the superintendency, stated, “Women tend to get in the superintendency later in life, after their 40s or 50s, because when they begin, there isn’t a strong support system … readily available to groom them for the superintendency.”

Another participant, a superintendent who has served more than a decade, noted she had no wellness coach or executive consultant who could understand her struggle to balance work and home. As a woman, she was expected to be present and to understand her family’s needs without complaint. As an executive leader, she was expected to be focused, linear and error-free.

A third participant expounded on this notion: “When you go to conferences … it is not unusual to find yourself as the only female and African American in the room. … You don’t have an ‘old-girl’ network [yet males] have an ‘old-boys’ network, and they use it. As an African-American superintendent in an urban district, you are given a Herculean task. And usually, you are not given the level of support that you need to do it.”

Each participant in my research addressed the impossibility of navigating the superintendency without a coach or mentor who understands the duality of being African American and female, a notion referred to as the concrete ceiling.

Startling Advice

Inspired by study participants, I became a school administrator to begin my path to the superintendency. I have met amazing women and men who offered invaluable advice and support. Unfortunately, I’ve also encountered individuals who attempt to define my existence in stereotypical limitations based on my race and gender.

Similar to the experiences of my study’s participants, I am focused and strategic in navigating my leadership experiences. Even more, I am intentional about gaining mentors who know the reality of being as qualified as my counterparts, but having to work harder, smarter and longer as we await equal opportunity and access on the road to becoming a superintendent.