Hasina Ranaivo: The Voice That Rewrites Silence into Strength

Coaching isn’t about fixing people. It’s about seeing them—beneath the performance, the armor, the well-rehearsed roles. It’s the quiet art of asking questions that rearrange what someone thought was possible. True coaching doesn’t happen in polished boardrooms or bullet-point frameworks; it happens in the pauses, the tremors, the moment someone dares to say aloud what they’ve never admitted even to themselves. It’s not about adding more—it’s about peeling back until what’s essential can finally breathe.

Hasina Ranaivo understands this with the depth of someone who has lived it, practiced it, and reshaped lives through it for over two decades. 

From Foundations to Frontlines of Leadership

Hasina has been in the field of coaching for over 20 years. Early in her career, she worked closely with individuals across a wide range of roles—performers, administrative staff, commercial agents, housekeepers, and mechanics. Her coaching at the time focused on helping people bridge the gap between who they were and who they aspired to become. She supported them in building self-confidence and self-acceptance as a foundation for personal growth and goal achievement.

A turning point came in 2016, when Hasina received the “New Leaders for Tomorrow” award from the Crans Montana Forum in Morocco. Presented to her by Reverend Jesse Jackson, the recognition came with powerful lessons on real leadership—its mindset, posture, and responsibility. That moment reshaped her understanding of impact. She realized that for meaningful, lasting change to occur, coaching must also reach top leadership. From that point on, she became more focused on working with senior executives and C-suite leaders, believing that true transformation begins at the top, where vision and mission must be made tangible and aligned with purposeful action.

Coaching for Inner Clarity

The core principle that guides Hasina’s approach to executive coaching is simple yet profound: clarity unlocks power. In a world saturated with noise, pressure, and complexity, she believes leaders don’t necessarily need more answers—they need better questions. Her role as a coach isn’t to provide solutions, but to help leaders gain sharper clarity about themselves, their environment, and their impact.

From that clarity emerges grounded decision-making, aligned actions, and authentic leadership. While Hasina integrates well-regarded frameworks such as Adaptive Leadership and Systemic Intelligence into her practice, she always returns to this foundation: when a leader sees clearly, they are able to lead with purpose, influence, and resilience—regardless of the context.

Hasina’s Guiding Principle in Coaching

Hasina’s approach to executive coaching is grounded in a singular principle: clarity unlocks power. In an increasingly noisy and complex world, she believes leaders don’t need more answers—they need better questions. Her role is not to solve problems on behalf of leaders but to guide them toward seeing themselves, their environments, and their impact with sharper clarity.

This clarity, she asserts, becomes the foundation for aligned action, grounded decision-making, and authentic leadership. While she incorporates frameworks like Adaptive Leadership and Systemic Intelligence, these are simply tools in service of her larger mission: to help leaders lead with purpose, influence, and resilience—regardless of the context.

Leadership in Disequilibrium

To Hasina, adaptive leadership is more than a framework—it’s a survival skill for today’s world. She defines it as the ability to respond effectively to complex, rapidly changing environments by mobilizing people to face tough challenges, unlearn outdated thinking, and evolve both their mindset and behavior.

In her view, the 21st century has exposed a world of persistent disequilibrium. Crises—be they ecological, social, or organizational—cannot be solved by technical expertise alone. Instead, they demand deep shifts in values and habits. Adaptive leadership, as she sees it, is not reactive but responsive. It creates the space for collective learning, new rituals, and transformative habits.

She emphasizes that authority is no longer confined to titles; informal authority now drives real change. “We do not need the title or the function to take risks,” she explains. “Everyone who is aware of their inner power holds a stake.”

Most importantly, Hasina believes adaptive leadership is urgent because of a deeper loss: the erosion of our shared humanity. “We are more human beings than beings human,” she reflects. “We’ve lost ourselves, our values, and that’s why the stakes are existential, not just organizational.”

HOPE Rising: The Most Transformative Coaching Journey

Among all her coaching experiences, Hasina describes the HOPE Coaching Program as the most transformative. She co-founded the initiative HOPE with Stéphane Rasoavatsara, CEO of Henka Suru Madagascar. Operated under the umbrella of Henka Suru Madagascar, HOPE offers free coaching to girls and women in highly disadvantaged environments—many of whom have never had the opportunity to dream, speak openly, or believe in their own potential.

What makes HOPE extraordinary is its impact on both the participants and Hasina herself. It’s not just about personal development—it’s about restoring dignity and unlocking the inner strength of those often forgotten. “Coaching doesn’t only transform others,” she says, “it heals the coach too.”

In guiding these women, Hasina has witnessed profound courage and resilience. They’ve reminded her that true power often lies not in resources or status, but in the ability to choose, even in the toughest circumstances. “Sometimes, power is simply in the decision to rise,” she says. “Like the sun, it always rises somewhere in the world.”

Adapting Coaching Across Generations

Hasina’s coaching style transcends age or title. Whether working with high-level executives or emerging youth leaders, she adapts not by altering her core philosophy but by shifting how she holds space for each individual.

She begins with the self, setting aside titles, pressures, and performance metrics to uncover the human being underneath. Her mantra, “Glow from within,” captures this essence. From there, she moves into relational dynamics: how individuals lead, build trust, and navigate conflict. Leadership, she believes, is deeply relational, regardless of setting.

The final phase centers on action and integration. Here, the person’s function re-enters the conversation, now supported by self-awareness and alignment. While her tone or pace may vary depending on the coachee’s background, Hasina’s foundation remains unchanged: honor the person first, and the leader will emerge naturally.

Helping African Women Leaders Reclaim Their Inner Power

In her roles as Vice-President of Femmes Entrepreneures Analamanga and Vice Chair of the COMESA Federation for Women Entrepreneurs, Hasina has come to recognize that the most formidable challenges African women leaders face today are not always external. Instead, they are often battling an internal struggle—the voice in their heads that questions their worth.

Even the most brilliant and visionary women she works with often grapple with deep-seated doubts around self-worth, self-acceptance, and self-trust. Too frequently, their confidence depends on external validation, and their value is assessed against societal expectations. This internal dialogue—“Am I enough?” “Do I deserve this role?”—can become a silent prison.

Hasina also observes a common pattern of “over-adulting”—where women carry the burden of resilience and responsibility so heavily that they forget how to access their creativity, playfulness, and emotional truth. In her coaching, she gently helps them return to themselves, not just as professionals, but as whole women. Her work involves rebuilding self-esteem from within and helping women detach their identity from job titles or performance metrics.

As she puts it, “When a woman owns her story and stops outsourcing her confidence, real leadership begins—not in power over others, but in peace within herself.”

Where Stories Spark Transformation

Hasina views storytelling as a powerful catalyst for empowerment and change. She believes that the way women leaders tell their stories shapes the way they live them. Much of her coaching work involves guiding women back to their rightful role as the authors of their lives, many of whom have internalized narratives written by society, trauma, or culture.

She invites them to explore both their “dreaming scenario”—the vision they hold for themselves—and their “nightmare scenario”—the limiting beliefs and fears that keep them playing small. It’s within this contrast that transformation takes root. Storytelling, for Hasina, is not just a coaching tool; it’s a mirror that reflects who someone has been, and a map that reveals who they might yet become.

Helping women see that their past does not define their future is a key part of her work. When they shift from being victims of circumstance to architects of their own becoming, their impact ripples outward, reaching families, teams, and entire communities.

“Storytelling,” she says, “isn’t about fiction—it’s about reclaiming truth. When you take back your narrative, you take back your power.”

Crisis Coaching with Compassion and Clarity

As a specialist in crisis coaching and strategic repositioning, Hasina focuses first on a leader’s inner dialogue. In her experience, the true crisis often begins within, not outside. She helps leaders identify whether their internal voice is rooted in fear or grounded in clarity and responsibility.

Hasina guides her clients through what she calls the “crisis curve”—from shock and denial to resistance, adaptation, and finally renewal. Recognizing where one is on this curve allows leaders to act with intention rather than impulse.

She also helps break down the chaos of crisis into manageable parts. Her approach emphasizes facing reality head-on, one decision at a time, which reduces emotional overload and restores a sense of control. But for Hasina, resilience is not enough. True crisis leadership also requires responsibility: knowing what to protect, what can be risked, and what truly matters—not just to the leader, but to the collective.

She underscores the importance of protecting common goods like trust, culture, and community during times of upheaval. “Leadership in crisis isn’t about surviving at all costs,” she explains. “It’s about standing firm for something bigger than yourself.”

Above all, she reminds every leader that seeking support is a strength, not a weakness. “The most resilient are not those who go it alone,” she says, “but those who know how to unite, delegate, and protect what binds us all.”