Deborah Johnston explores the “glass bubble,” invisible systems shaping women’s leadership, confidence and success, and how transformational coaching can create change. Deborah Johnston’s “glass bubble” concept explores the invisible psychological and relational expectations that shape women’s leadership, confidence, visibility and success. Her transformational coaching helps women recognise these patterns, develop greater agency and expand the ways they can lead and respond.
For decades, conversations about women in leadership have focused on visible barriers such as the glass ceiling. Deborah Johnston, a psychologist, leadership consultant, facilitator and coach with more than 35 years of experience across government, corporate and operational environments, argues that another barrier deserves closer attention: the invisible psychological and relational expectations people internalise over time. She calls this the “glass bubble.”
Unlike a glass ceiling, the glass bubble is difficult to recognise because it can feel like normal behaviour. It can influence how women approach authority, responsibility, visibility, confidence and even their own needs. Johnston’s transformational coaching work focuses on helping women recognise these patterns, understand where they came from and develop greater agency over how they respond to the systems around them.
What Is Deborah Johnston’s “Glass Bubble”?
Johnston developed the concept of the glass bubble through years of observing highly capable women operating within complex professional and organisational environments. She found that many women were not struggling because they lacked intelligence, experience or leadership capability. Instead, they had developed highly adaptive behaviours that helped them succeed within the systems around them. These could include over-preparing, perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional labour, conflict avoidance and carrying responsibility for others.
The difficulty arises when these strategies become so deeply embedded that they begin to feel like identity. A woman who has learned to constantly anticipate other people’s needs may eventually find it difficult to distinguish between being responsible and being over-responsible. Johnston’s approach asks an important question: Is this behaviour still fit for purpose, or is it limiting visibility, influence, vitality and fulfilment?
Deborah Johnston Looks Beyond the Traditional “Glass Ceiling”
The glass ceiling describes external barriers that prevent women from progressing into senior positions. Johnston does not dismiss those barriers, but believes the leadership conversation needs to go further. Some women may have already achieved seniority while continuing to operate within invisible expectations about how they should behave, communicate and take responsibility.
Her work examines what happens after women become capable and successful within those environments. They may continue to monitor how others perceive them, hesitate before expressing an idea, minimise their needs or feel responsible for maintaining relationships and morale. Johnston argues that these behaviours can be intelligent adaptations to the environments people have learned to navigate rather than evidence of individual deficiency.
How Survival Strategies Can Become Leadership Patterns
Many behaviours that become limiting later in life may have originally served a useful purpose. Over-preparing can create competence. Avoiding conflict can protect relationships. Taking responsibility can build trust. Performing at a high level can create professional credibility. The problem emerges when these responses become automatic and leave little room for alternative ways of behaving.
Johnston’s transformational coaching approach focuses on helping women identify these patterns rather than judging them. The objective is not to reject everything that helped them succeed, but to expand the number of responses available to them. This can mean becoming a more visible contributor, a strategic influencer, a self-assured communicator or someone who can promote their achievements without guilt.
Deborah Johnston Connects Leadership With Psychological Wellbeing
Johnston’s approach places psychological wellbeing within a broader organisational context. Her experience extends from emerging professionals to senior executives, Boards and CEOs, giving her a perspective across different levels of organisational life. She argues that people cannot always change deeply embedded patterns simply through willpower; reflection, guidance and support can be necessary to recognise the systems influencing behaviour.
For organisations, this has implications beyond individual coaching. Healthier leadership relationships can contribute to stronger cultures, greater psychological safety, improved wellbeing and more diverse leadership pipelines. Johnston points to trust, collaboration, compassion and psychological safety as qualities organisations frequently want to create, while noting that these qualities require genuine engagement and reflection rather than simply appearing in organisational statements.
Why Deborah Johnston Says Women Should Not Have to “Fix” Themselves
A central theme in Johnston’s work is moving beyond the idea that women need to be fixed in order to succeed. If a woman has learned to over-function, remain constantly available or avoid challenging situations, those behaviours may have developed because they helped her operate successfully within a particular environment.
Transformational coaching therefore focuses on awareness and choice. Johnston’s objective is to validate people’s experiences while helping them consider whether their existing responses remain useful. Instead of automatically repeating old patterns, individuals can develop the ability to respond differently as circumstances change.
The Leadership Challenge Goes Beyond Women
Although Johnston’s work focuses strongly on women’s leadership development, her analysis of invisible systems extends beyond women. She notes that patriarchal systems can also shape men’s expectations around dominance, achievement, emotional restraint, competition and identity. Men can develop their own invisible “glass bubbles” around what success and leadership are supposed to look like.
This makes the conversation broader than gender alone. Johnston is ultimately questioning inherited definitions of success and leadership. A healthier future, in her view, requires people and organisations to reconsider whether traditional models based on status, constant competition and climbing the corporate ladder are still sufficient for modern workplaces.
Deborah Johnston’s Transformational Coaching Creates More Choices
Transformational coaching, as Johnston describes it, goes deeper than conventional performance improvement. It explores identity, beliefs, emotional patterns, adaptive roles, visibility, power and agency. The process gives women space to examine behaviours that may otherwise remain automatic and ask whether those behaviours continue to serve their goals.
The emphasis is on expanding possibilities rather than prescribing one correct way to lead. Johnston describes the process as developmental, experimental and creative, allowing women to become both capable and imperfect without believing that imperfection undermines their legitimacy. Her approach also draws on experiential and role-based developmental traditions, recognising that people learn roles through families, workplaces, cultures and wider social systems.
Deborah Johnston’s Focus for Women’s Leadership in 2026–27
Looking ahead, Johnston’s work in 2026–27 is centred on three connected areas. One is supporting high-performing women who appear successful externally but may be carrying unsustainable levels of responsibility and self-expectation. Another is working with women earlier in their careers, before unconscious patterns become more deeply established and begin influencing promotion, confidence and visibility.
Her work also includes an intergenerational dimension. Johnston is interested in how early narratives shape the expectations girls develop about themselves and their futures. Through creating empowering stories with her granddaughter, she is exploring ways to challenge cultural messages from an early age. The larger objective is to help future generations shape the systems around them rather than simply adapt to them.
Deborah Johnston’s Bigger Message on Leadership and Success
The central idea behind Deborah Johnston’s work is that awareness can create choice. People do not necessarily need to reject everything they have learned in order to grow; they need to recognise which behaviours remain useful and which have become restrictive. Once those invisible patterns become visible, individuals have more freedom to choose how they want to lead, communicate, work and live.
For Johnston, the future of leadership depends partly on our willingness to examine the systems shaping us rather than placing the entire responsibility for change on individuals. Her “glass bubble” concept offers a different way of thinking about women’s leadership: not simply how to break through another visible barrier, but how to recognise the invisible expectations that can remain long after that barrier has been crossed.
“We all have our glass bubbles. It is very difficult to crack them without reflection, guidance and genuine support from others” – Deborah Johnston
Read the complete feature here:https://theempiremagazine.com/magazine/deborah-johnston-the-most-impactful-women-life-coaches-transforming-mental-wellness-across-australia-in-2026/
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