Get to know Dr. Elicia Robinson-Tomek – Coach

What inspired you to focus your career on leadership development and coaching?

My passion for enabling leadership grew from a fascination with language, change, and how we buy into new ideas. This curiosity drove me to pursue education that would help design the mindset and skillset to enable lasting growth. I became particularly drawn to how we talk to ourselves and others, how leaders make sense of their world and specifically, how the storylines of our perceptions (be they latent or laid out) curate the meaning of our experience and the climate we create for others.

This realm of developmental reflection charted my course to becoming a chartered social psychologist with a Cambridge PhD on the psychology of change, and executive coach trained through Henley’s renowned coaching programme. This foundation revealed a core truth: the capacity to be inclusive of the diversity of value systems at any given table, sits at the crux of what renders leadership effective. Helping leaders develop this relational intelligence is what drives my work.

How has your work with the UN as a leadership specialist shaped your perspective on inclusive leadership and its impact on organisational culture?

I’ll never forget the first time I walked into the canteen at UN Headquarters in Vienna. With my tray in both hands, I stood there in awe at being surrounded by hundreds of people from a hundred different countries. The beauty of this demographic diversity was only surpassed by recognising the breadth and depth of cognitive diversity in one extraordinary place.

This unique environment has brought into sharp focus the scale of variance in how we perceive, interpret, and engage with those around us. This has reinforced my mission to help leaders develop the relational skills that make inclusive leadership the norm, not the exception. This includes balancing the promotion of technical capabilities alongside relational ones. Because at its core, true leadership is about (and exists within) relationship.

How do you approach coaching women navigating major career transitions, such as returning from parental leave or stepping into senior roles?

I start and end with values. My coaching approach emerges from recognising awareness as the central mechanism for change. I have witnessed how increasing precision around one’s personal values serves as the most reliable rudder we have to navigate the murky waters of transitions. Even amidst stormy weather or poor visibility of a plan, you can still move forward with calm and confident direction by having a firm grasp of what is most important to you at this point in time, not at some moment in the past.

With value clarity at the helm, you can look back on yourself and feel content with the wake you’ve created because of its alignment with your system of evaluation, that is, your value system.

What’s one piece of advice you find yourself giving to almost every client?

Although coaching is not about giving advice, but about being an attentive and strategic thinking partner, I often encourage clients to ‘slow down in order to speed up’. We easily become preoccupied with what we need to do, so I create conditions for my clients to think about how they think about what they do. This realm of reflection often results in new options for how to be and subsequently what to do.

The most influential, and also most consistent, constraint I’ve observed in my clients has been self-imposed. By slowing down, you create space to notice stories you’ve been telling yourself about what you should do or how you should be. Liberating yourself from a long-held idea that may have once enabled your success, but you now recognise no longer serves you or your achievement of what matters most, is a profound joy to witness.

What excites you most about being part of Shape Talent and the work we do to advance gender equity?

The calibre of expertise at Shape Talent is exceptional. My collaborations with the team over the years have been sustained by an unrivalled commitment to advance gender equity in the workplace to better shape our collective future.

I’m particularly energised by how we wield coaching as the sharpest tool for developing inclusive leaders, creating the critical mass needed to break through structural and cultural barriers and drive better outcomes for all.