The Support Managers Need Should Arrive Before the Crisis
Most organizations know how to invest in executives and how to onboard new hires. The managers in between, the people who translate strategy into daily work, often receive the least structured support while carrying the most competing pressure. They absorb the targets coming down and the human needs coming up with nowhere to set the weight down. When something breaks, the response arrives late: an urgent conversation, a coaching engagement booked after the resignation letter. The better question is what becomes possible when manager support is designed in advance and treated as part of how the business runs.
That question anchored our most recent LinkedIn Live, where C-Suite Coach founder and CEO Angelina Darrisaw sat down with Vanessa Espina, an ICF Master Certified Coach, accredited coach supervisor, and EQ-i 2.0 facilitator in the C-Suite Coach network. With more than 5,000 coaching hours behind her, Vanessa works with leaders and teams on a single tension: how to protect people while delivering results.
Coaching That Moves From the What to the Who
Vanessa began by demystifying the credentials, because the letters after a coach's name describe a real shift in practice. The ICF path runs from ACC to PCC to MCC, and early on, coaching centers on goals. "At the MCC level, we're talking more about “the who," she said. "Who is that person? Who do they want to become?" Her work as an accredited coach supervisor adds a restorative space where coaches process ethical dilemmas and difficult engagements, often through the Seven-Eyed Model from Hawkins and Shohet, which examines the coach, the client, and their systems. Managers need that same system lens, since they carry business outcomes and the people producing them at once.
One Workshop Is a Starting Point
Asked what manager development must include, Vanessa named customization first. A program built for a US-based team will not land the same way with a global one, and the facilitator's job is to make it accessible to everyone in the room. "A key ingredient is customizing it," she said. Her second answer was continuity, since too many organizations point to one workshop as evidence of investment. "I hear often, yeah, we gave them support, there's that one training that they went to," she said. "I'm like, well, that's the start. And also, what does ongoing support look like?" The professional support system needs to exist before a crisis arrives. Angelina added that results compound when coaching becomes a shared language across the whole management layer.
Well-Being as a Performance Strategy
Vanessa reframes well-being as the mechanism that makes sustained high performance possible, which cuts against the assumption that it means lowering the bar. In the EQ-i 2.0 model, five composites (self-awareness, self-regard, interpersonal effectiveness, decision making, and stress management) resolve into one overarching outcome, and that outcome is well-being. When those layers align, the questions a team asks itself change. "Are you happy? Are you waking up every day excited to do the work that you're doing?" she asked. The foundations she pointed to are practical: sleep, exercise, eating well, and actually taking the vacation.
Boundaries as an Act of Courage
Vanessa described her approach to the squeeze between capacity and deadline as dialectical, holding two true things at once. A team can push toward the outcome while its manager names what the workload is costing. "Part of boundaries as a manager is having the courage to ask and advocate," she said, "and even if you don't get a yes all the time, it's going to model for your team that you as an employee in this organization get to be heard." The act of asking does its own work regardless, because it establishes that raising a capacity concern is normal.
Trading the Fix for the Question
Managers default to solving because solving feels faster. Vanessa learned this about herself in her own coaching training, when she was called out for fixing when the moment asked for what she calls the dance of coaching. Moving away from it requires a specific kind of trust. "You're also trusting that they have full capacity in their life and they are the experts of their own life," she said. In practice that looks like clarity about expectations paired with open questions: how is that landing for you, here is the problem, what do you think. Some moments still call for telling and advising. The larger opportunity sits in the space between, where direct reports build critical thinking they will use again. Angelina described stepping in too quickly in her own leadership journey and limiting the genius already in the room.
Learning to Read Yellow
Burnout announces itself late. By the time performance dips and people leave, the situation is red. Vanessa encourages managers to watch the yellow indicators that arrive while a shift is still small enough to discuss. "Yellow can also be, even on those one-on-ones or team meetings, when you're noticing someone maybe not speaking up as much," she said. Decreased engagement belongs in the same category. Her recommendation is an honest conversation while the signal is faint: your energy was high at the start, what shifted? She also pushed back on the old advice to keep emotions out of the workplace, since the check-ins people remember are the ones that felt real. "It feels authentic, like it's a genuine check-in as a human to human," she said, and those moments are often why people stay.
What to Do With This
Manager support works when it is built in advance, customized to the people receiving it, and reinforced by the culture around it. If you lead managers, examine whether that support exists before the crisis. If you are a manager, choose the smallest available shift. Vanessa offered one that takes about two minutes: "Deep breath and then say, I'm doing my best today. And that's enough. I am enough."
Follow Vanessa Espina on LinkedIn, where she shares the kind of practical thinking we heard here. If this makes you wonder what a thinking partner in your corner would look like, reach out about one-to-one coaching, and Vanessa may be one of the first faces you meet. Skills evolve when you get intentional about the shift, so pick one idea from this conversation, just one, and act on it this week.
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