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've been running your business for a while now, and it's working.
You're ready to step back from the doing and into the leading.
That means it's time for your team to start leading too. Their accountability, their ownership, how they communicate, delegate, and make decisions.
Nobody expected you to build that in each of them by yourself. You need space to run the business, set the vision, design the strategy. You don't have the hours to invest in every team member individually.
That's where I come in.
Together we build a plan that gives your people what they need to lead, so you get back the time for what you love doing most.
The Work in short
Where we dive deeper with each of your team members on why they behave the way they do. Becoming aware of their patterns, their triggers and blindspots. Together we find a specific and tailored approach for their next leadership and professional development challenge.
Hold Space - 1:1 coaching
Facilitate Space - Teams and Organisational Work
We bring the team together. They put in practice their learning from the 1:1 coaching on how to communicate, take ownership, give feedback, make decisions or delegate for example. They explore ways on how to work better as a team, contributing each with their unique skills and personalities. This is for teams who are ready to experience a real shift, to see things that cannot be unseen once acknowledged.
There has been a shift in your organisation, or you know that something on a high level needs to change. I help organisations formulate that message and deliver that message so that your people feel engaged. These talks increase their sense of belonging in your organisation, make them feel connected to your organisations values and to each other. My talks are interactive, engaging and invite for conversation.
Take Space - Speaking and events
My SPACE framework
To grow our self-awareness, to see things from a different angle, we need space.
We need to step back and bring back our curiosity, instead of holding onto our judgements. That's what opens up new angles, new solutions, new approaches.
When we slow down and create space, we start to notice what's been running in the background. We stop forcing answers and start allowing them. Things stop happening to us and start happening for us.
When we 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
Teams don't just get insight into themselves. They actually integrate their learning during our engagements, the peer group work and training sessions.
You can expect your team to:
Start making decisions from what they actually believe, trusting themselves and stop making decisions from fear
Start trusting the people around them, rather than managing everyone
Say the ‘thing’ in the room that everyone else was too scared to say. Opening up the conversation for true dialogue and connection.
Lead in a way that speaks to the potential of their people.
Your team will start to feel more freedom to bring all their thinking to work, not just the part that they know is safe.
That's the kind of spaces I create. The space for teams to step up, grow and perform, so you, the leader, can do what you love to do most.
Reach out if you are ready to work with your team and bring them to the next level.
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 your team to increase awareness and cultivate courage to step up their performance game.
You don't need a perfectly worded message or a clear plan for your team.
You don't even need to know what you're looking for yet exactly.
Just start somewhere. Tell me what's going on, your biggest team challenges, 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.
