In the third year of a multi-year partnership, BREAKTHRU and the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) collaborated to spotlight and support the next generation of Emerging Leaders—coaches navigating the dynamic experiences of sports leadership. Through personalized insight, guided reflection, and shared language, this experience not only empowered individual coaches, but offered the WBCA meaningful understanding into the voices and values of its rising leaders.
Coaches are often the first leaders many people ever encounter—but what they carry and contend with behind the scenes is rarely understood.
Across a reflective arc of interviews and sessions, BREAKTHRU heard what many of these coaches didn’t always say aloud, but deeply felt:
The pressure to deliver results while holding space for their athletes’ emotional, academic, and social well-being.
The weight of responsibility without a playbook—especially when stepping into new leadership roles like becoming a head coach.
The internal tension between standards and presence, or knowing how to be authoritative without losing humanity.
As one participant put it, “I can perform the role—but I want to lead as myself.”
This experience was designed specifically for coaches at this crossroads: evolving in their role, recalibrating how they lead, and hungry for language, clarity, and confidence to lead more authentically.
The 2025 program, focused on Emerging Leaders, included:
Personalized Leadership Type Assessments: Each coach explored their unique Leadership Type, Core Motivation, and growth edges.
1-on-1 Discovery Sessions: Coaches unpacked their experiences and aspirations with a certified BREAKTHRU strategist, translating insight into action.
Group Integration Session: A closing, collective experience that revealed patterns across participants and surfaced shared goals, values, and strengths.
Strategic Insights Reports: Coaches received individualized reports that helped them see and name their leadership more clearly. In parallel, a Group Insights Report equipped WBCA with strategic understanding of its members’ shared strengths, needs, and aspirations.
While participants came from different institutions, this shared experience elevated them as leaders within the broader WBCA community—and offered the association richer insight into how to speak to, support, and represent its members more powerfully.
While the partnership offered WBCA strategic insight into its membership, the most immediate and personal impact was felt by the coaches themselves. Each participant walked away not with a generic framework, but with a clarified sense of who they are—and permission to lead more fully from that truth.
Through their individualized reports and coaching conversations, participants discovered language for leadership traits they had often downplayed or overlooked. They began to see how their natural instincts—like relational intuition, grounded presence, or moral conviction—were not just helpful, but foundational.
“BREAKTHRU verbalized things I do in my daily life in ways that legitimized them… Until this experience, I was not able to view them this way.”
The experience affirmed that leadership isn’t a performance to perfect—it’s a strength to live into. Coaches named a renewed sense of confidence, not in becoming someone different, but in trusting who they already are.
“It brought me confidence and something I can refer back to—to keep myself accountable to who I am.”
With new insight came actionable strategies. Coaches left the experience with:
A stronger sense of how to position themselves within their institutions
Greater comfort expressing their authentic leadership style
A framework for navigating tough moments with clarity and conviction
“The final group session gave us tips not just for now—but for how to lead in the future as well.”
What started as professional development became something deeper: a reframing of how coaches see themselves, how they define success, and how they want to show up—not just on the court, but in their careers and lives.
“I now feel like I belong in leadership—not just because of my title, but because of who I am.”
The coaches surfaced four equally powerful Core Motivations: Knowledge, Altruism, Redemption, and Relationships. Together, these reveal a leadership mindset that is:
Deeply thoughtful and reflective
Purpose-driven and service-oriented
Emotionally grounded and relational
Within BREAKTHRU’s proprietary Spectrum of Leadership Empowerment™ (SLE™), the most dominant leadership quadrant was Unite—a clear signal that these coaches lead through trust, care, and community-building. Yet, there was also a missing piece: the Awaken quadrant, which represents energizing presence and spontaneous activation, was absent. This gap became a key growth edge: how might these leaders feel more confident owning their voice, energizing others, and stepping into visibility?
Coaches repeatedly named a desire to:
Be more strategic and less reactive
Lead with confidence and clarity
Cultivate influence beyond traditional measures of success
Set healthy boundaries while remaining connected
Post-program, 100% of participants reported greater confidence in expressing themselves authentically, positioning themselves as leaders, and stepping into higher-impact roles within their organizations.
“This program gave me confidence moving forward. I now see how to better position myself as a leader in my organization.”
Deeper reflections from coaches reveal a universal truth: leadership rarely feels like leadership in the moment. It feels like showing up when no one’s watching. It feels like questioning whether you’re doing it right. And it feels like holding space for others while figuring yourself out.
These insights reflect the quiet power of coaching:
Leadership as a stretch between knowing and not knowing.
Success as a moving target, constantly being redefined.
Presence as power—more than strategy or performance.
BREAKTHRU helped these coaches name what they were already living, often for the first time. That naming, in turn, became a reclamation of identity and power.
Beyond individual transformation, this work created long-term value for WBCA:
Deeper Member Insight: The Group Insights Report revealed the motivations, strengths, and aspirations of an emerging leadership demographic—critical for recruitment, retention, and program design.
Stronger Representation: By elevating real language from coaches themselves, WBCA can authentically speak to and for its members.
Visible Leadership Development: Investing in the personal growth of members signals WBCA’s commitment to leadership excellence—not just in title, but in identity.
This third-year chapter of the BREAKTHRU x WBCA partnership revealed what’s often hidden: the inner architecture of emerging coach-leaders. Their quiet doubts, bold convictions, and growing edge between who they are and who they’re becoming.
This is what leadership looks like—not as performance, but as presence.
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A certified Women’s Business Enterprise by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).
A certified LGBT Business Enterprise® by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC).
