Coaching as Leadership: A Student’s Journey from Advising to Coaching
For Paula Sneed, coaching isn’t about offering answers—it’s about asking the right questions.
After a decades-long career as a senior corporate executive, Paula transitioned into work that aligned with her passion: helping others grow. Today, she advises and coaches nonprofit leaders and social entrepreneurs, many of whom are learning how to manage and develop others for the first time.
While she had long served as a trusted advisor, Paula was ready to take her coaching practice to the next level. That led her to Northwestern University’s Executive Learning and Organizational Coaching (ELOC) program. Along with the Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certificate (OLCC), ELOC is one of two distinct pathways at Northwestern designed to help experienced professionals develop the skills and mindset needed to coach others with purpose and impact.
Shifting from Advising to Coaching
Like many seasoned professionals, Paula initially approached coaching by drawing on her wealth of experience. “I realized that my approach to coaching was, in fact, advising,” she says. “I was offering my thoughts and opinions, trying to give clients answers.”
But ELOC offered something more—a mindset shift. The program helped her move from being the expert with solutions to a coach who helps others uncover their own. “ELOC transformed how I work with my clients. Now, instead of leading with advice, I use coaching tools to help clients discover solutions and build skills for the long term.”
With a curriculum rooted in evidence-based research, hands-on practice, and reflective learning, ELOC helped Paula integrate new approaches that now shape her coaching practice every day.
Coaching as a Core Leadership Skill
Paula believes that coaching is no longer a “nice to have” skill for leaders—it’s essential.
“Strong leaders develop people,” she says. “Mentoring is one way. But using coaching competencies to develop team members leads to more robust, more effective, longer-lasting outcomes.”
For many of the social entrepreneurs she works with, leadership is new terrain. Paula helps them build critical skills in managing, developing, and empowering their teams using the frameworks and tools she refined through ELOC.
“Coaching reduces the hierarchical friction that can exist between leaders and their teams,” she explains. “It creates a more collaborative, team-member-centered approach to development.”
Ccoaching for Real Impact
Paula’s journey is a powerful example of what’s possible when professionals invest in deepening their coaching skills. Whether you're advising executives, leading a team, or developing the next generation of leaders, Northwestern’s coaching programs offer the tools, frameworks, and community to help you grow—while helping others do the same.
Northwestern offers two flexible pathways for developing coaching expertise:
- The Executive Learning and Organizational Coaching (ELOC) course series that can be completed within 6 months, or
- The Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certificate (OLCC), a 12-month, four-course graduate program
Both options are designed to meet professionals where they are—and take them where they want to go.
Explore our coaching programs today.
Executive Learning and Organizational Coaching (ELOC)