An expert supporting experts.
Lilian Abrams, Ph.D., MBA, MCC, has 25+ years of experience as an executive coach and leadership and organizational development consultant, and 2+ years as a trained coach supervisor. As an executive coach, she has assisted hundreds of leaders and organizations to successfully achieve their most important development goals and work objectives. She conducts insightful assessments and provides an effective, safe, warm, atmosphere as well as strategic questions that lead clients to their own insights, practical growth, and ability to successfully reach their next levels.
Lilian’s style is engaging, supportive, direct, and warm. Her approachable manner puts those who work with her quickly at ease. She rapidly establishes and maintains a compassionate, safe space in which supervisees can be open, honest, and vulnerable. She employs her warm heart and analytical mind to support supervisees’ reflection, insight, growth, skill acquisition, practical solutions, and restoration. Her questions are thought-provoking, and her coaching experience and psychological and organizational knowledge base are extensive — all of which help spur supervisees’ comfort, analysis, deep insight and improved practice.
As a coach supervisor, Lilian focuses on supporting executive coaches in their practice. Lilian works effectively with all demographics. Her specialties include executive coaches who work with senior, multi-cultural, “hi-po,” technical, and/or women leaders. Her own clients range from Fortune 50 companies with 100k+ global employees to successful internet start-ups, which helps her quickly grasp the client settings in which her supervisees’ work. Her industry experience includes technology, banking and financial services, health care, pharmaceuticals, retail/CPGs, consulting, and non-profits, among others.
Global Coaching Supervision: A Study of Perceptions and Practices Around the World
In this research study, Dr. Lilian Abrams and colleagues report on global perceptions and practices on coaching supervision. The objective of this research study was to do an initial global study on a broad range coaching supervision issues, including current practices and perceptions of coaches who work with a Coach Supervisor.
Their report describes results based on data from over 1,280 coaches and coach supervisors, which is the largest data set on coaching supervision to date. It includes descriptive and comparative information about participants’ own individual and group supervision experiences as well as perspectives on other related topics. Research methods, summary remarks, and information about the independent research team are also included. The full study, along with additional articles and analyses, can be found at www.coachingsupervisionresearch.org.
Case Studies
- An Executive Client told their Coach “I Don’t See What Value You Are Adding”: Jean was a Ph.D organizational psychologist and trained, accredited (PCC) coach. A difficult senior healthcare executive directly and repeatedly challenged Jean’s efficacy and competency as a coach. Jean used her supervision time with Lilian to recover from the sting of the experience, explore and gain insight into her own underlying fears and concerns about her own competency, and devise strategies to enhance her resiliency while working with difficult coaching clients.
- Changing Self-Limiting Beliefs Expanded One Coach’s Potential Client Base: Maria was both a referral source for coaches and an executive coach. As a Latina with a great deal of experience but not a post-high-school degree, she hesitated to offer her services to those with “higher status” characteristics (e.g., older, better-educated, Caucasian and/or men.) After a transformative supervision session, Maria realized that she had much to offer these populations, and resolved to start adding these kinds of people to her possible client list.
- Another Coach Successfully Changed Self-Limiting Beliefs: John was an internal coach at a global technology company. As a trained, yet early-career coach, John used his supervision time to gain technical coaching skills tailored to his clients, such as how to put boundaries on confidentiality and time, as well as to create coaching contracts that respected the goal-oriented expectations for his coaching in the workplace setting he shared with clients.
