Fi Deehan - ENFJ, SDG 1 & 5

💻 Connect:
💌 Email: fionadeehan@deehanleadershipcollaborative.co.nz
📱 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fionadeehan/
📍Location: Cork, Ireland

Personality Type: ENFJ

Favourite SDGs: #1 No Poverty | #5 Gender Equality

🌱 ROOTS, RESPONSIBILITY & THE MOMENT EVERYTHING SHIFTED

Ask Fi where her career really began and she won’t name a job title.
She’ll tell you the truth.

Becoming a mother changed everything.

It cracked her open… reshaped her values… and made her look hard at how she was showing up in the world. She always said she valued family, integrity, care, equity. But when she looked deeper, she realised she wasn’t always modelling that to the tiny human watching her every move.

Motherhood made her understand what kind of world she wanted her daughter to inherit.

And not just her daughter – everyone’s daughters. Everyone’s children.

That clarity became her compass.

🧭 SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH SYSTEMS, NOT SYMPTOMS

Fi chose SDG #1 and #5 for a reason. Poverty and gender inequality might look like separate issues, but she sees the connection.

These aren’t individual failings.
They’re system failures.

She works every day with people who are tired, stretched, under pressure, or overwhelmed. Not because they’re “not resilient enough”, but because the environments around them are broken. Workplaces calling themselves “a family” but not acting like one. Teams struggling with communication. Leaders trying to care but stuck inside outdated structures.

Fi doesn’t shame or blame people.
She sees the root causes… and then helps people navigate them with kindness, clarity and skill.

💛 WHĀNAU: HER WAY OF SEEING PEOPLE

If there’s one word Fi lights up around, it’s whānau (family).

Not the narrow definition.
The real one.

The people who matter deeply.
The humans you care for.
The connections that make life make sense.

Fi has seen workplaces try to use the “we’re a family!” slogan and fail miserably.
For her, family isn’t branding. It’s behaviour.

It’s the way you treat someone.
The way you listen and the way you genuinely open your door for others.

This is the heart of her coaching:
People deserve to feel seen, valued and safe to be themselves.

🎓 A LOVE OF LEARNING THAT STARTED BEFORE SHE HAD WORDS FOR IT

Long before coaching became a profession, Fi was the one people came to.
The kid who asked good questions.
The teenager who could feel what others needed.
The colleague who spotted tension before anyone else did.

She didn’t call it coaching back then – she didn’t even know the field existed. To her, it was simply:

“Helping people thrive. Helping people be themselves.”

Learning has always been her core value. Not academic learning… but human learning.
How we grow.
How we communicate.
How we repair.
How we lead.

When she discovered strengths and coaching, it finally gave language to what she’d always intuitively done.

✨ THE ENFJ WAY OF WORKING

Fi is the definition of an ENFJ:

• Deep empathy
• Big-picture intuition
• Natural leadership
• A feel for people’s emotions and potential
• The ability to read a room in seconds
• A desire to lift others up

She is strategic by nature – connecting dots others don’t even notice. She loves understanding people’s strengths and helping them use them well. And she’s honest about the parts she’s still working on too… like boundaries, people-pleasing, and learning to honour her own energy.

That honesty is part of her magic.

🏛️ HER WORK: HELPING HUMANS THRIVE INSIDE BROKEN SYSTEMS

Most of Fi’s work sits at the intersection of human behaviour and organisational reality.

She sees:

• teams wanting connection but stuck in busyness
• leaders managing pressure they never trained for
• people trying to be everything to everyone
• workplaces calling for “open communication” but not creating safety for it

Her job isn’t to “fix” people.
Her job is to help them navigate their context with clarity, agency and compassion.

Sometimes that means helping someone articulate their strengths.
Sometimes it’s supporting a team to communicate without blame.
Other times it’s helping a parent-leader understand their own patterns so they don’t repeat them with their staff.

She equips people with tools that make work feel human again.

🔥 THE COURAGE TO MODEL WHAT MATTERS

Fi says one of the biggest lessons she’s learned recently is this:

Children follow what you do, not what you say.
So do your team. So do your colleagues. So does everyone.

That realisation changed the way she leads.

She’s no longer trying to be perfect.
She’s trying to be aligned.

Present.
Values-led.
Real.

And she helps others do the same.

✨ THE HEART OF IT ALL

Fi’s story is powerful in the way only lived experience can be.

Motherhood shaped her.
Culture shaped her.
Broken systems shaped her.
And now she shapes people who shape organisations.

At the core is one belief she returns to again and again:

“Everyone deserves to feel seen, valued and supported. Everyone deserves the chance to thrive.”

Fi works every day toward a world with less poverty, more equity, more care and more dignity.

One conversation at a time.
One team at a time.
One human at a time.