297chapter THIRTEEN
Executive Coaching to Support
Doctoral Role Transitions and
Promote Leadership Consciousness
Beth Weinstock and Mary Ellen Smith Glasgow
This chapter addresses the many challenges inherent in professional work transitions. It
speaks to the need for heightened leadership consciousness during times of change, and
describes how executive coaching can support new leaders in making effective transi-
tions that develop their best gifts, talents, and strengths.
As a doctorally prepared nurse, the Doctor of Nurse Practice (DNP) graduate is in
a position of leadership. As the nursing profession itself becomes more and more central
to our health care system, the DNP will increase its importance and scope of influence.
This role expansion involves transitions and challenges for the individual DNP grad-
uate and also for the discipline itself. Understanding the challenges and preparing to
meet them will help the DNP graduate realize her or his full leadership potential.
Transitions in the work place can be personally and professionally satisfying and
yet be difficult to manage. Switching roles and increasing responsibilities entails not
only adjustments to new task assignments, but also to a new relationship with our-
selves, and with those around us. As in a kaleidoscope, when we turn just one small
part of the design, the entire structure transforms. When we move into new roles, it
feels as if the world has gone on tilt until we find ourselves fully settled in the new
design. Transitions need time and attention for all parts to integrate and realign with
one another. This chapter sheds light on the often hidden aspects of work transitions for
the DNP graduate, with the intent to help those individuals evolve as leaders in prac-
tice, education, administration, and/or clinical research.
The DNP graduate’s new leadership role will require expanded ways of thinking
and being, best summed up in the concept of leadership consciousness. Leadership con-
sciousness is a constant and pervasive awareness that one’s actions have impact that
matters. This consciousness holds awareness that all behavior influences its environ-
ment, and that the influence needs to be carefully tracked. As a frame of mind and atti-
tude, it colors all the thought and behavior. Its wisdom reminds those in leadership that
success is never solely about oneself, but about a contribution reflected in the people
and systems that are being led. Leadership, at the simplest level, is about the execution