SUNlite Peer Coaching program helps ASU faculty, staff reach full career potential
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Janna Goebel worked hard to get her dream job at Arizona State University, and she enjoyed doing good work. But a few years after she became an assistant professor in the School of Sustainability, in 2021, she started having second thoughts.
“I would glow and be in my flow doing these very cool projects,” said Goebel, who worked on socially embedded initiatives such as building a solar canoe with Indigenous communities in the Amazon and creating a K–12 sustainability curriculum.
But then she began to feel a disconnect between her research and the communities she was helping.
“I started to become disillusioned with my tenure process,” she said.
“That’s when I saw SUNlite Peer Coaching. It popped up right as I was navigating this very confusing moment where I had a dream job and didn't understand why it wasn't fitting me anymore. But I was still doing great work here.”
SUNlite Peer Coaching is a free service available to any ASU staff or faculty member year-round, designed to help individuals build self-awareness and reach career goals. Over six sessions, coaches and coachees work on issues such as navigating team dynamics, conflict management and work-life balance. Sessions are virtual or in person.
Goebel met with an ASU professor who had trained as a SUNlite coach and led her through the process of interrogating her feelings and goals. She is one of more than 100 employees across 40 ASU units who participated in SUNlite since the pilot in 2023.
“And by our sixth session, I said, ‘I don't want to be a tenured professor,’” Goebel said.
The reflection process gave her the confidence to ask for what she wanted.
“I had the guts to propose a new position to my director and I approached him and said, ‘I'm not happy on the tenure track, but I don't want to leave,’” she said.
She prepared a six-page proposal and in January, she started in a newly created position as a clinical assistant professor and faculty lead for community engagement. She teaches students how to work on sustainability goals with community partners.
“To me, this is a success story of what the program was meant to do: help you find success at ASU. I was very near to leaving but was able to navigate a way to stay and use my greatest strengths to better contribute to the internal community, our students and our school.”
May Busch, senior adviser for leadership in the Office of the President, is a co-founder of SUNlite Peer Coaching, which she emphasizes is not counseling.
“This is really about their professional experience or careers at ASU because we're trying to develop our people and hopefully retain them and help them grow. So it's not about their personal life issues — not about marriage, divorce,” she said.
The coaching is not prescriptive but rather is led by the coachees, Busch said.
“There’s a typical manager instinct, especially when you're an early-stage manager, to give the answers because that sounds like you're helping the person.
“In a coaching approach, you're coming in with this idea that your team member probably has a lot of resourcefulness and may well know exactly what to do. And so instead of telling them, you ask questions. It comes from a place of inquiry and building their muscles to solve problems themselves,” she said.
Coachees get a tool kit to help brainstorm their goals before they meet with their coach, according to Shanesha Brooks, program manager.
“They get agendas that they can use and they take notes on their progress that they can just use for themselves or share with their coach,” said Brooks, who matches coaches and coachees based on questionnaires.
There are now nearly 70 SUNlite coaches. Training for new coaches is offered in the fall and spring semesters.
Julie Binter, the lead master coach for SUNlite, said listening is the main skill to develop.
“They listen to what the person's saying and then reflect it back so they can hear their words. That’s why I think coaching is so wonderful — we typically don't have someone who is focused on us for 60 minutes, truly listening,” Binter said.
“What we’ve found is that the more experienced a coach gets, the less they speak.
“It’s very powerful because really good coaches can ask one question and that will help the coachee really put the pieces together.”
Questions might include: What’s within your control? What do you care about? Where do you want to go and how do you want to get there?
When Goebel worked with her coach, they would map out what a new role might look like.
“There were a lot of thought exercises between the sessions. And those felt comforting and productive in a moment where I was really anxious and overwhelmed and sad,” she said.
Supporting the coaches
Dwayne Bosman, manager of executive technical support in the ASU California Center, was coached last year and enjoyed the experience so much, he later trained as a coach himself.
“I came here in a leadership capacity, but it wasn’t management,” he said.
“So as a coachee, I was wondering, ‘Should I ask for the manager position?’ And the wonderful coaching was a bunch of questions that got me to answer that for myself. So I gave a little pitch to my manager and everything went great.”
Then he was asked if he was interested in training to become a coach.
“It was such a great experience, I would love to be on the other side. So being a coach came organically from turning around to give that same type of help to someone else,” he said.
Bosman said the training is helpful for all personal relationships, not just at work.
“Sometimes you feel like you have to fix something for someone, but this program teaches you how to be there for them and watch them go through the experience of fixing it for themselves — realizing that they don't need it fixed, they just need to be heard,” he said.
Supporting the coaches is key, according to Binter. They have check-ins, one-on-one sessions with a master coach, a resource tool kit and a community of practice.
“We’re trying to build that retention component because when somebody has committed to 30 hours of training to become a coach, we want to make sure we're doing everything we can,” she said.
Christine Whitney Sanchez, SUNlite co-founder and a psychotherapist, said the training asks the coaches to do their own inner work.
“It’s not so easy to sit and listen if you're distracted. How do you get yourself ready for the session so that you can be fully present with your person?
“We’re helping them to get in touch with all the information that's available through their body, through their emotions, their sensations. What are those signals telling them?”
Goebel said that grappling with career issues can be draining.
“Once I chose to stay, it opened up all this new energy,” she said.
“I do really support this because we get used to taking care of our mental health and our physical health, but we don't have that many resources to navigate workplaces,” she said.
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