Episode 56: Executive Coaching Secrets for Women

Executive Coaching Secrets for Women Episode Descriptor

Learn executive coaching secrets for women to overcome limiting beliefs, find your “true north,” and step into empowered leadership rooted in who you really are.

Executive Coaching Secrets for Women Episode Recap

Executive coach Varuschka Nagesar joined Kelly Callahan-Poe to share powerful executive coaching secrets to overcome limiting beliefs, embrace authenticity, and step into empowered leadership. After a 15-year career spanning law, banking, consulting, technology, and logistics, Varushka made a bold pivot into executive coaching—driven by her purpose to help others uncover their potential and lead from within.

From Corporate Leader to Executive Coach

Varuschka’s journey is a testament to the power of alignment. Despite success in high-profile corporate roles, she felt something was missing. Through career pivots across continents and industries, she realized her true calling: coaching women to recognize their worth, trust their intuition, and navigate transitions with confidence. Her story demonstrates that fulfillment often comes not from external achievements but from living in alignment with one’s core values and purpose.

External and Internal Barriers Women Face

Varuschka identified two major categories of challenges women face:

External Barriers: Gender bias, unequal pay, lack of childcare support, toxic environments, and phenomena like the “glass ceiling” and “glass cliff.”
Internal Barriers: Imposter syndrome, limiting beliefs, and the pressure to “do it all,” which often leads to misalignment and loss of authenticity.

By naming these challenges, she equips women to recognize that the obstacles are not always a reflection of their ability, but often of systemic barriers and ingrained cultural expectations.

Three Steps to Overcome Limiting Beliefs

Varuschka offered a practical three-step process to shift mindset and build resilience:

Be Honest with Yourself – Identify the negative self-talk holding you back.
Find Evidence to the Contrary – Gather proof from your achievements and feedback that counters those beliefs.
Flip the Script – Rewrite limiting thoughts into positive, fact-based affirmations to reframe your mindset.

Discovering Your “True North”

For Varuschka, “True North” is about living in alignment with purpose. She outlined four key elements:

Know Yourself: Clarify your core values and passions.
Trust Your Intuition: Pay attention to your inner voice and gut instincts.
Cultivate Self-Belief: Move beyond confidence built on outcomes to an inherent belief in your ability to succeed.
Live Your Purpose: Recognize that purpose isn’t one grand achievement but a series of meaningful choices and contributions.

Authentic Leadership in Action

Titles may grant authority, but Varuschka emphasized that true impact comes from leading with authenticity, empathy, and service. She contrasted leaders who lead from ego with those who uplift others, underscoring that authenticity not only fuels individual fulfillment but also creates healthier, more resilient organizations.

Final Takeaway

This episode was packed with insights for any woman navigating career transitions, battling imposter syndrome, or seeking to lead more authentically. Varuschka’s expertise shines in her ability to translate lived experience into actionable guidance that empowers women to reclaim their voice, align with their values, and chart a purposeful path forward.

Executive Coaching Secrets for Women Episode Transcript

Kelly Callahan

Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms Podcast. I’m Kelly Callahan Poe, and today’s episode is called Executive Coaching Secrets for women with special guest Varuschka Nagasar. After 15 years in the corporate world, Varuschka transformed her own career to follow her purpose today as an executive coach. She empowers women to step into authentic leadership, trust their voice and navigate change with resilience and self-belief. Thank you for joining me.

Varuschka Nagasar

Hi, Kelly, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited about today.

Kelly

I want to hear about your corporate career, because you had a successful 15-year corporate career as a lawyer and a commercial leader, and then you pivoted to being an executive life coach. What prompted you to make this pivot, and how did you know it was the right move?

Varuschka

Sure, sure. So, to answer the first part of your question, I think a big pivot like that is years in the making, whether you actually know it or not, or you’re doing it very intentionally or not. And for me, connecting the dots looking backwards throughout my career, I’ve actually done several career pivots. So, I started off as a lawyer, practicing in a law firm in South Africa in the technology industry, and then I moved into corporate by starting with banking, and then I actually moved countries and continents to the UK, and I stepped into technology and consulting with a global company known as Accenture. And I then moved again to Google Cloud. And the last move I did was in a completely different industry, which was logistics, with DHL. Now why such a drastic moves and big career pivot? I always saw each of those as a learning experience. It was about the subject matter, it was about the people, and it was also about myself in that process, every experience, every move, was more like a stepping stone to the next thing, because I desired to get knowledge and skills so that I could serve my purpose, which, very broadly speaking, was to help other people. And as long as I was doing that, it was aligned with who I was and what I was trying to achieve. However, as you go along, you realize that sometimes things aren’t feeling as good as they look. And so, you know, I kept going on my journey through the career pivots, but I had come to realize that when I was looking for more fulfillment, which I felt that I needed externally from the job, I volunteered and I did some community work because I thought that was a better way of serving people and giving back. And I did enjoy it, but it was still not enough. And so, I also noticed that throughout the career pivots the experiences, the different cultures, companies, countries, that I had started to actually coach a lot of friends, family and colleagues, mainly around self-empowerment, because I could see their potential. It was just I saw that as something that was a gift. I could see their potential, and I could help them sort of bring that out in themselves. And the reason for mentioning that is I realized how much that gave me, sort of my own feeling of this is quite purposeful. And so to answer the question about why the big pivot and why eventually executive coaching and empowerment coaching is because the last environment that I was in within corporate The circumstances were such that it presented me with an environment that allowed me to do the very things that I teach today, which was to question, am I in the right environment? Is this aligned with who I am, meaning my core values, my purpose. Am I achieving what I set out to do every time I was in a particular role or a particular company or environment that I found myself in? And the answer, of course, was, was no. And so, the moment I made that decision, I actually felt quite peaceful and quite sort of calm about it. By no means is it an easy decision to make. It does require a lot of thought and courage, but at the end of the day, why I made that decision and how I knew it was right is that. That everything seemed to have aligned from the inside out, despite that. You know, it doesn’t look like that to everyone else, but I knew it was the right thing to do. And now that I coach people in the same arena that I was playing in, if you will, I understand the pain points. I can talk to it. And, you know, being a woman myself, it obviously makes it a lot easier for certain things to be better understood or to resonate with women in those particular positions.

Kelly

That resonates so well with me, and we can talk offline, because I’ve had very similar situations in the past and more recently. And I think it’s really important to dig into your true north, and I want to talk about that in a second, but, but first, I want to talk about there’s obvious challenges that women face in the workplace. We’ve talked in this podcast ad nauseam, about, gender bias and women not making as much money as men and not having adequate resources for childcare and hours that are make sense for working women as an executive life coach, what are you the biggest challenges that you’re hearing from your clients?

Varuschka

Yeah, so if I had to give you the very simple answer, I would distill it into two categories. I would look at it as the internal challenges and the external challenges. And if I touch on the external ones, which you sort of mentioned just now, you know, thinking about resources, earning enough, etc., that’s sort of the gender bias that you get, right? Yeah. And that’s so if I look at external if I just pick three of them, one is one of which is either the glass ceiling or the glass cliff. And that’s we could have a whole other conversation about that.

Kelly

I know what the glass ceiling is, but what’s the glass cliff?

Varuschka

So very briefly, it’s a more recent term that describes this phenomenon where women or other marginalized groups are promoted to like, high risk leadership roles during times of like crisis or organizational decline, and then it puts them in this very precarious position because there’s a higher chance of failure. Yes, that makes sense, and that’s really challenging, because one of the contrasting internal challenges when you’re placed in those types of positions is that imposter syndrome and all the limiting beliefs that go with it, that we already struggle with everyone, men and women, but we’ll talk about it probably more in detail about women in that you know, we’re Always trying twice as hard to get half the recognition that maybe a man would be getting. So, I mean, again, each of these categories and the points I mentioned, we could probably have lengthy conversations on them. So going back to the category of external I think it’s this glass ceiling, the glass cliff, the toxic work environments and not having the right support for the individuals, whether it’s the leader themselves or the employees, and just having this environment that doesn’t work for you. You know, it’s what I was speaking about earlier, not having the right fit. And then there’s the social norms and the cultural conditioning and the double standards, whether it’s coming from the country you live in, the culture or the religion you belong to, or just the environment that you work in. So as a South African working in Europe, this it’s a different culture. And so, it’s, it’s those types of things that maybe you don’t think about, or you think about, but it could work against you. It could be a challenge. And then from the internal side, like I mentioned, limiting beliefs, one of which is imposter syndrome, and the others that I’ve noticed, that shows itself in different ways, but I’ve broadened the category is an experience, a lack of self-empowerment. And what I mean by this, it could be just in a particular area of life, because often women put undue pressure on themselves to do it all, to be everything to everyone, but they lose themselves in the process. It’s hard to be 100% a new mom and 100% an amazing wife and home, executive and a professional at the same time, it’s just not possible. Men don’t do it. I don’t know why women feel like they have to do it, but it’s probably the conditioning. And so, we lose ourselves along the way. And that’s really, really unfortunate, because that causes misalignment, and it causes a lot of unhappiness and sometimes suffering, and then that’s what I the last point on that one is misalignment with oneself. And so, when you lose power in a certain area of life, or you can’t bring yourself fully into whatever that role is, you lose authenticity. And when you lose that true self, and you lose that authenticity, you’re not really able to bring what you truly have to offer your gifts in that particular environment, and that then starts to erode away against your own purpose and your own feeling of self-worth.

Kelly

You know it takes bravery to admit that you are not a fit for a specific workplace or a specific culture, and I think a lot of it also has to do with age. The younger you are, the more likely you are to make yourself fit that environment. When you’re older, you’ve been in enough work environments to say, hey, this isn’t right for me, and I want to try something new. So, I think acknowledging that is really important, and part of that authenticity that you talk about and really understanding who you are and what you represent. With regards to imposter syndrome and fear of judgment and limiting beliefs and those things that hold women back and people back in general. What are your top three steps to overcome them?

Varuschka

Yeah, I think just to touch on that point you mentioned about, you know, age and authenticity, I think it’s really important that we don’t teach emotional intelligence and how to handle one’s own self-belief and self-worth at a young age. I think if we did teach it, then we wouldn’t have to learn it the hard way and get to a certain stage in life and go, oh, I’ve had enough experience. I can say for sure that that’s okay and not to take anything away from anyone, but I feel like that’s also part of the solution is that you do need life experience in order to even understand the principles you get taught. But a lot of this stuff becomes self-taught through experience, whether you see it as an easy learning or a difficult learning, it’s something we need to work on, particularly for women, I think, which is why I’m doing the work that I do, any in any case, to answer your question, I think, just to briefly recap on the definition of imposter syndrome for people who are listening, is that it and it often it happens to everyone, but it often happens to experience like high achievers, because they have this fear of being found out as a fraud or they’re not good enough, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. And instead of crediting their achievements to their own skills and their hard work, they attribute it to something external, like luck, and that makes it really difficult to feel a sense of accomplishment. And what happens is people then overwork to compensate for that, but it doesn’t make that feeling of inadequacy go away. And so, looking at limiting beliefs and the steps that one needs to take to overcome it, is first thing is you have to be honest with yourself, you really have to understand, what is this internal negative dialog that I’m having? What am I telling myself that’s not working, and it could have come from, you know, when you were growing up, or it just could come from the environment where people constantly say, Oh, well, you’re a woman. Why do you think you can be the CEO. You know, it sounds like it’s harmless, but actually, people look at you and judge you and make these comments. And then one day, when you’re not feeling so resilient or strong, you question it yourself, and then you start to tell yourself that so knowing what you’re telling yourself helps you to understand what you’re trying to fight against or counteract. So, step one, be honest, write down the things that you’re telling yourself that’s holding you back. Yeah. Step two is to find evidence to the contrary. If you say, for example, oh, I’m not really a good doctor, let’s just say I’m a GP, and I’m working in hospital. I’m a consultant, etc., yet the feedback that we’re getting from the patients, yet, all of the data is showing me otherwise, and people are telling me, oh, thank you so much. And so and so has recovered, or, you know, the stats even show it. So, there’s the evidence to the contrary. Whilst I think I’m not good enough because I don’t have an additional qualification, the evidence is right there that it is good enough if I want to do more great. So, find the evidence to the contrary of what you are telling yourself in terms of those negative beliefs or that negative dialog, part of that process of finding the evidence to the contrary is stopping to think about what you’ve achieved already. We often tend to forget that, and one of the ways of doing that is ask yourself or complete the sentence I am remarkable. People, because it’s really hard for people to do if they haven’t thought about it in a long time, or they struggle to recognize it, but they’ll, they’ll definitely be something, if not many things, if you’ve got years of experience that you are remarkable for one reason or the other, whether you’ve moved continents, whether you’ve had a big family, whether you’ve moved house, whether you’ve changed career, you are remarkable because you did it, and those achievements will help you to use that as evidence for the contrary negative belief. And then the last thing would be, if you made a list of those negative beliefs in a column next to that list of negative beliefs. Now go and write the opposite positive statement, and if you are struggling with that, use the evidence of the achievements you’ve made and base it on fact, because that way it’s you’re not making it up. You’re not bragging. It’s not something that is not proven already, you’ve done it. You just want to do better, and you want to work on it. And that way, you start to shift your mindset. You start to look at things differently and more positively. In any case, when you think about the negative things that people tell you or you tell yourself, and you observe how it’s worked so well, imagine if you told yourself something positive. If the negative can work so well, and it’s not true, how well would the positive work? And you know, it’s based on fact. You’ve got a foundation for your capabilities, so it doesn’t even hurt to try. That’s why positive affirmations work so well. If people start doing them, it’s just because you’re changing the dialog, you’re just flipping the script.

Kelly

I have some homework to do, clearly.

So, one of the key things that you focus on as an executive life coach is helping women find their true north. How do women find their true north? And obviously, we know what our basic values are and our principles that we live by and our passions, but what is the process by which you enable women to find more clarity in finding their true north?

Varuschka

Yeah, absolutely. True North is an analogy I use for finding your purpose. So it’s like an inner compass or a GPS, if you will, and that’s the driving force that helps you know whether you’re going in the right direction on a daily basis, and even if you aren’t, then it’ll help you course correct in order to make sure that you are aligned with your purpose and who you are. So, there’s four elements that I look at when it comes to finding your true north or being able to live towards it. And the first one is knowing yourself. And the questions that one needs to ask themselves is, what are my core values? And whilst you may have done that before, if people are familiar with it, it’s you would have either you would have done it before, or if you want to do. It is going forward. It’s really about the things like you mentioned, that’s your passion that lights you up, that makes you feel like, oh, this brings me a lot of joy, and I haven’t noticed how the time has gone by, because it just feels so right. It’s working for me, and that’s because it’s driven by the things that comes from within, and that helps you understand that you are on the right path. It’s only one part of it, but yes, it’s part of the whole purpose of finding your truth, true north. So, when you’re trying to understand your core values, you also have to understand what your limiting beliefs are, which we touched on earlier, because you need to know what that self-talk is so that you can overcome that self-talk. But core values are great because it helps you then filter all your daily decisions to figure out, does this feel right for me? Because if you’re telling yourself something negative, then it obviously doesn’t feel right, and then there’s that sense of misalignment. So, core values are important to start with, so that I know that today, whatever I’ve done, wherever I’ve gone, whomever I’ve spoken to, it feels right because I filtered it through those core values. When something doesn’t sit right, doesn’t feel right. I’m like, why do I feel that way because honesty is important to me, and I actually wasn’t very honest with my friend today. And so, you decide how to course correct, because those little disappointments or those little betrayals, they build on themselves, and that’s when we start to feel uncomfortable or unhappy, or worst-case scenario, we tend to feel like we’re suffering. So, core values are key and knowing yourself by asking yourself these questions and going through that process. So that’s step one, or element one, element two is your intuition and your inner voice. And this is very important, because a lot of people don’t feel in touch with it, whether they believe it or not, it is driving you all the time. That’s how you know even if you didn’t understand your core value, in my case, like my core value is honesty, even if I didn’t understand honesty, I understood when I lied to my friend, that the gut feeling was definitely something that was negative. That was my intuition, telling me you just betrayed yourself, right? And that’s important, because we were talking about knowing whether you’re in the right environment or not. Being able to leave that environment takes a lot, and being able to stay in it takes even more, because then you’re like, I’m choosing to betray myself. I’m choosing to ignore myself in order to stay for other reasons. So, intuition, the inner voice, the gut feeling and being able to trust it. And I think that’s really key. And if you’re following it already. If you’re not, then getting in touch with it would be really important.

And so, the third element, which I very heavily advocate for, especially in the last couple of years, is this whole cultivating a practice of self-belief. And what I mean by this is going beyond confidence, because confidence is usually something you build on a specific event or experience through learning and practice. So, I want to learn how to knit. Knit to Jersey. I don’t know how to do that, so I’ll go get a lesson, I will practice, and then I will create one. And there’s the tangible result. Self-belief is a little different, because it’s more about an inherent belief in your own capabilities to do something. Yeah, I’ve done it yet, and it’s regardless of the outcome, but I know I can do it, so I’m going to go do it anyway. And that’s really it’s more foundational, and it comes from the inside rather than from the outside in, and why that’s so important is because when you’re presented with all the external factors, the people questioning you, or the circumstances questioning you, you need to have a strong foundation to make that decision, to move forward and to believe that you can do it, regardless of whether anyone else believes you or not, because if you seek external validation, you may or may not find it, and then your success becomes dependent on something external. And so, it’s important to ask yourself, Do I believe in myself? And if the answer is yes, great use every. Everything you know and feel and support yourself to keep going. And if the answer is no, then figure out why and find evidence to the contrary, because you can do it. You just need to believe that you can. And it does take work. None of these things are an overnight answer or an instant sort of magic potion or like it’ll stick, it’s work, but the internal work is worth it, because once you have the power and you’ve done the work, no one can take that away from you. So, no external validation or anything is needed, because you have all of the tools and all of the power within yourself. And so once you’ve done those three things, which is the knowing yourself and trusting your intuition, and cultivating that self-belief, then living your purpose becomes so much easier, whilst it’s not an easy thing to do, because most people need to stop and have the awareness of, Oh, what is it that I want to do? Maybe I just want to help people. I don’t know what that looks like. Here’s the key. It’s not an easy thing, and it’s not one big thing. It could be a series of little things or just a few things that seem big every once in a while in your life. But when you know who you are and you trust yourself, you’ll know that that that particular event or that particular place that you were in, as big or small, your contribution was, you’ll know that that was something you needed to do, and you’ve contributed to someone else’s life in some way, or improved your own, for that matter. And that’s what living your purpose is about, at least. That’s how I see it. And I strongly feel like if there’s misalignment, that uneasiness and that and coming back to that betraying yourself, that’s probably the thing that you want to constantly work on and look at, because that’s the thing that that makes people feel like, oh, I want to be happy, yet their life looks amazing on paper, but they don’t feel happy. And it’s the smallest things that can actually make you feel that sense of happiness and that sense of gratitude, because it has nothing to do with what anyone else thinks. It has everything to do with how you feel and what you believe.

Kelly

For me, self-belief is over time. After having a career of many years, I know that if I’m going to make a pivot in my life or a change or a transition or a transformation, I’m going to take that jump, and I’m not going to know where I’m going to land, when I’m going to land, but I know that I’m going to land on both feet, and I think that’s the place where you want to get to in life, so that you’re willing to take those risks, and you’re willing to take those next steps, because you will land.

Varuschka

Yeah, yeah, and that I can hear the experience talking.

Kelly

Absolutely.

We’ve talked a lot about authenticity today and how important that is. But we haven’t really talked about, how do you marry authenticity with leadership? Can you talk a little bit about how that’s done and why it matters?

Varuschka

Sure. Well, briefly, a title, for example, will give you authority, but it’s the authenticity and the empathy and the intention of what you give that creates impact. And so, in my experience, I’ve observed leaders with impressive titles that have operated from a place of self-interest and ego, which was at the expense of their own teams. And then I’ve seen people without any formal or high-ranking title who led from a place of service and empathy and courage and that had a long, lasting effect and a positive impact on everyone around them. And so by contrast, if people are coming from a place that is aligned with who they are, and like we just spoke about, from a place of where you have a strong self-belief, there’s no need for the ego to get in the way and disempower others, to feel more empowered, or to take away from others, to make yourself feel better. You’re coming from a strong foundation. Conversation that says I can be who I am, and I can bring people up with me. And so, you are operating from a better space, and you have a better impact on the people around you. And so that’s what I mean by authentic leadership, and why it matters is because in order for you to be your best self, you have to be your authentic self. But because we have such a big impact on the people around us, whether it’s a corporate environment, whether it’s a mom or a dad on their kids, whether it’s you know, whatever position or leadership you have, you have impact on other people. And so, we may or may not realize the extent of our influence on these people, but it could be huge. Yeah, I’ve read, you know, a number of different articles or even just posts on LinkedIn where people say, you know they’ve been so unhappy on a daily basis because they’ve been micromanaged or not appreciated, and so maybe that manager doesn’t realize the impact that they have on this person’s life, and you can’t ask them to divorce their personal life from their work life. People are working from home. They’re trying to fit in their entire life, in and around a role. So, you can’t assume or ask people to think that the leaders, or they themselves, will not have an impact on that system that they work in. So Authentic Leadership is not only important for the individual themselves who’s in that leadership position so that they can bring other people up. But it’s also to impact those people, and not just to survive, but to truly thrive in those environments. Because if everybody’s successful, then we’re all, you know, having a better outcome in that way.

Kelly

You’ve given me a lot of homework to do to learn more about ourselves and make sure that we’re living our authentic selves and living our true north. If you want to learn more about Varushka, please check out TwoMarketingMoms.com for her contact information. Thank you so much for joining and chatting with us today.

Varuschka

Thank you. This was brilliant.

Varuschka Nagasar Contact Information

https://www.linkedin.com/in/varuschka-nagesar https://varuschkanagesar.com