WE DON’T NEED BETTER LEADERS, WE NEED MORE HONEST ONES.
Leadership coaching and facilitation for leaders, founders and teams to lead with clarity, navigate difficult conversations, and build real alignment.
Maria van der Schoot
Leadership Coach & Facilitator
You're good at what you do. You've proven that.
Whether you've been leading for twenty years or two, the pattern is usually the same.
Maybe it's the decisions you keep circling. The conversations you keep postponing. The version of yourself you perform at work. Competent, in control, always fine.
You already know what needs to change.
You just haven't had the space to own it yet.
We begin there, we end with the truth.
The Work in short
Where we explore your beliefs. The ones that hold you back and the ones that move you forward. Slowly stripping away your attachment to your identity so you can be the best leader possible.
Hold Space - 1:1 coaching
Facilitate Space - Teams and Organisational Work
For teams who are ready to do more than just talk about change. Teams who are ready to experience a real shift, a transformation. Teams who are ready to see things that cannot be unseen once acknowledged.
For organisations who need a key-note speaker or MC for their events. Not only to inspire your people, but also to make them feel something different.
Take Space - Speaking and events
What is SPACE?
SPACE isn't empty. It's where things shift.
It's where you slow down enough to finally see what's been running in the background. Where you stop forcing answers and start allowing them. Where things stop happening to you and start happening for you.
When you create SPACE, something becomes possible that wasn't before.
S| Self-knowledge
Not the comfortable kind. The kind that shows you which parts of yourself have been leading without your permission. The patterns, the protections, the identity you built that once served you and might now be holding you back.
P| Perspective
You can't see the frame when you're inside it. Space is what lets you step outside it. To see your situation, your relationships and your leadership from somewhere new.
A| Accountability
To yourself first. Not the performative kind that looks good in a review. The more subtle, daily kind that asks: am I leading from what I actually believe?
C| Connection
To yourself, to your people, to what actually matters. Real connection (the kind that creates safety) is what makes everything else possible. It's where courage comes from. The courage to act alone and together.
E| Essence
What remains when you strip away the performance. When you stop leading the way you think you should, and start leading the way only you can.
This is what SPACE creates. Can you be with that?
Where the shift happens
People don't come here for insight.
They come because insight alone stopped being enough.
After this work, something changes that's harder to name than "clarity" or "confidence."
They stop making decisions from fear and start making them from what they actually believe, trusting themselves.
They stop managing everyone around them and start trusting them.
They say the ‘thing’ in the room that everyone else was too scared to say.
They lead in a way that gets the real potential out of their people. Not by pushing harder, but by finally letting go of the need to control.
And underneath all of that sits a kind of freedom. Not the absence of difficulty, but the ability to move through it without betraying themselves.
That's what this space is for.
You don't need to have it all figured out.
You just need somewhere to start.
Client Testimonials
"I really enjoyed and valued my time with Maria. Maria brought a thoughtful and grounded approach to her coaching and created a safe space for me to explore the issues and opportunities that mattered most to me. I’ve come away from my sessions with a renewed sense of direction."
— Kog Ravindran Chief of Staff to the CEO & Executive Director Communications at The Royal Children’s Hospital
Maria's coaching sessions were a true catalyst for my personal/leadership development. Her direct but warm approach has been very helpful and still is.
— Vincent Vinkoert Commercial Lead at Vi
I’m Maria van der Schoot, here to help you regain alignment, increase awareness and cultivate courage to say the thing the room has been avoiding.
You don't need a perfectly worded message or a clear plan.
You don't even need to know what you're looking for yet.
Just start somewhere. Tell me what's going on, what you're sitting with, or simply that you want to explore what this work could look like for you.
"I don't know where to begin" is always a valid place to start.
I work with leaders, founders and teams across Victoria in Melbourne, Geelong and the Surf Coast and nationally.
