Leadership Coaching for Mothers: What If Your Coach Doesn’t Understand Matrescence?

Through my work coaching mothers and female leaders, I've become increasingly interested in two words: understanding and empathy.

I've noticed how much it matters for women to feel that the person supporting their leadership also understands the transition they are experiencing through motherhood. Some women I work with already know about matrescence. They've read about it, thought about it and perhaps started to understand their own experience through that lens. Others have never heard the word before.

But you may recognise the experience immediately.

Something has shifted. You may still be ambitious. You may still love your work. You may be returning to the same organisation, the same team or even the same senior leadership role after maternity leave. On paper, so much of your professional life might look familiar.

And yet, you don't quite feel like the same person returning to it.

You might be looking for leadership coaching because you want to work on your confidence, career progression, boundaries, executive presence or how you lead your team. These are all perfectly valid leadership coaching topics.

But what if the person coaching you doesn't understand the identity transition happening alongside those questions?

An important part of your experience can easily be missed. Not because your coach isn't skilled or empathetic, but because leadership after becoming a mother doesn't happen separately from matrescence.

For me, that's where matrescence-informed leadership coaching becomes different. It brings together two conversations that are too often held separately: the woman you are becoming through motherhood, and the leader you are becoming at work.

Returning to work is not simply returning to your job

We often talk about returning to work after maternity leave as though it is primarily a logistical transition. Childcare arrangements, keeping-in-touch days, flexible working, breastfeeding, nursery drop-offs, calendars, who is doing pick-up when someone inevitably develops a temperature at 11am on a Tuesday.

And yes, all of those things matter. They can be exhausting to navigate.

But underneath the logistics, something much bigger may be happening.

Matrescence describes the physical, psychological, emotional and social transition of becoming a mother. And crucially, it doesn't necessarily finish when maternity leave does.

You can return to the same company, walk into the same office and sit in the same leadership meetings while experiencing all of it as a subtly different person. Your values may have shifted. Your relationship with ambition may be changing. Your energy is different. Your tolerance for certain ways of working may suddenly be much lower.

Things you accepted without question before having children might now make you wonder, Why on earth are we doing this?

You may care enormously about your career while simultaneously wondering whether you want to continue doing it in quite the same way.

And this is an important distinction: that isn't necessarily a confidence problem that needs fixing.

It may be an identity transition that needs understanding.

When a confidence problem isn't really a confidence problem

“Confidence after maternity leave” is something we talk about a lot, and for good reason. Returning to work can shake even very experienced women.

You've spent months away from an environment in which you previously felt competent. Your colleagues have continued without you. Teams have changed. Projects have moved on. Your brain may currently contain an impressive amount of information about nap schedules and nursery waiting lists alongside whatever it used to know about corporate strategy.

Of course confidence can wobble.

But I think we need to be careful about immediately assuming that the answer is to rebuild your confidence until you feel exactly as you did before.

Because what if some of the uncertainty you're experiencing isn't actually about whether you're capable?

What if you're questioning things you didn't question before?

What if motherhood has changed your relationship with achievement, success, time, authority or ambition?

What if you're no longer willing to sacrifice quite so much of yourself to prove that you're good at your job?

Those aren't necessarily weaknesses to coach away. They're useful information.

And that requires something beyond reassurance. It requires curiosity, understanding and empathy for the transition you're actually experiencing.

Why leadership coaching after maternity leave can sometimes miss the mark

Traditional leadership coaching can be incredibly powerful. I've experienced that personally, and I have enormous respect for the profession.

But if matrescence isn't understood, there is a risk that we begin with the wrong question.

We might ask:

How do we get you performing confidently again?

When perhaps the more interesting question is:

Who are you becoming as a leader now?

Those questions might eventually take us to some of the same practical territory — boundaries, influence, confidence, career decisions, relationships — but they begin from very different assumptions.

One assumes there is a previous version of you that we need to restore.

The other makes space for the possibility that you are evolving.

Perhaps motherhood has strengthened your empathy. Perhaps you're better at seeing what actually matters and cutting through noise. Perhaps you're less interested in performative busyness. Perhaps you've developed an extraordinary ability to hold multiple perspectives, tolerate uncertainty, prioritise quickly or advocate fiercely for something important.

Perhaps some things have become harder too.

Both can be true.

Matrescence-informed leadership coaching isn't about turning motherhood into another list of competencies to add to LinkedIn. It's about being curious about what's changed and allowing those changes into the leadership conversation.

The particular pressure on female leaders returning to work

For senior women returning to work after maternity leave, there can be another layer to all of this.

You've already built a professional identity. People know you as capable, ambitious, reliable and experienced. Perhaps you know yourself that way too.

Then you return and suddenly find yourself second-guessing things that previously felt straightforward. You might feel less articulate in a meeting, worry that you've fallen behind, or find that situations you once tolerated now irritate you enormously.

That can be deeply unsettling.

And one very understandable response is to prove that nothing has changed.

So you work harder. You make yourself endlessly available. You say yes when you want to say no. You minimise what is happening at home. You demonstrate that motherhood hasn't affected your commitment.

The irony, of course, is that motherhood probably has changed you.

The more useful question might be whether all of those changes are actually a problem.

Some may be asking you to lead differently.

Returning to work after your second baby can be a completely different transition

There is also a strange assumption that returning to work after your second maternity leave should somehow be easier.

You've done it before, haven't you?

Except matrescence isn't a one-off transformation with a handy completion certificate at the end.

Each child changes the family system again. Your practical reality changes. Your relationships change. Your available time and energy change. And you change.

A second-time mum returning to work with two children may therefore be asking very different questions from the ones she asked after her first maternity leave.

You might know that you can return to work. You've already proved that.

The question now might be whether you want to return in the same way.

Can I still do this job as I did before? Do I want to? What am I prepared to compromise? What am I no longer willing to compromise? What does ambition look like now? What does success mean for our family?

There aren't generic answers to these questions, and I don't believe a coach should give you answers anyway.

But there is enormous value in having a space where you don't need to justify why you're asking them.

What empathy looks like in matrescence-informed leadership coaching

For me, understanding matrescence doesn't mean every coaching conversation needs to become a conversation about motherhood.

Far from it.

You might want to talk about a promotion, a difficult stakeholder, executive presence, a career decision, your relationship with your manager, boundaries, confidence or the fact that you've suddenly started wondering whether you want your boss's job after all.

These are leadership questions.

The difference is that motherhood doesn't need to be edited out of the room in order for us to talk about them.

You don't need to explain why you can simultaneously love your children and desperately need the intellectual stimulation of work. Or why you can love your career and suddenly question parts of it. Or why returning to work can feel exciting, relieving, frightening, energising and sad — sometimes all before you've finished your first coffee.

Empathy isn't about assuming I know exactly how you feel because I'm a mother too. Your experience isn't mine.

It's about creating enough space and curiosity to understand what your version of this transition looks like.

And I think that's an important distinction.

Being understood doesn't mean somebody already knows your answers. It means you don't have to spend half the conversation proving that your questions are legitimate.

You don't need to become the leader you were before

There is so much language around motherhood that suggests a return.

Back to work. Back to yourself. Back in shape. Back to normal.

Even “returning to work after maternity leave” implies that we're travelling backwards towards something we temporarily left behind.

But perhaps that's not quite what's happening.

You are returning to your workplace, yes. But you are moving forward as a person.

Through Just Matrescence®, my approach to leadership coaching for mothers, I help women explore what has changed, recognise the strengths emerging through matrescence and decide intentionally how they want to lead now.

For you, that might mean rebuilding confidence after maternity leave. It might mean redefining ambition, establishing stronger boundaries, making a significant career decision or finding a way to lead that feels sustainable alongside motherhood.

Or it might begin with something much simpler.

Feeling understood.

Because you don't necessarily need someone to help you get your old self back.

You might need someone who understands that there is a new version of you emerging — and who is curious to meet the leader she is becoming.

If you're returning to work after maternity leave and looking for a leadership coach that understands matrescence, get in touch with me for a chat.