Leslie V. Coaching

tralia, Europe, Asia and the US. I now dedicate my work life to using a no-nonsense approach to empower my clients to navigate major life changes and find direction and fulfilment. When you work with me, you will be expected to put in the work we agree on to make your goals your reality 😉 I believe in the power of positive thinking, but I reject ‘toxic positivity’ or ‘spiritual bypassing‘. Yes, working to manifest what you want in life is important, but it is counter-productive to fall into the ‘positive vibes only’ trap which often leads to empty, unsustainable illusions of fulfilment. What matters is the strength of the foundation upon which you build the life you want! A FAMILY LEGACY OF HELPING

Helping professions are the armature around which my life has been formed. My mother worked for 30 years as a counsellor in a children’s hospital. She now assists older adults with developmental disabilities in an in-patient facility. My sister has been a social worker for many years and is currently undertaking a Masters degree in psychotherapy. My father worked as a mentor throughout his engineering career and now owns a consultancy business. He has also been very active in community building and politics and has developed a number of programs to support at-risk youth. My brother has developed a number of programs through which he has led groups of young people from North America on educational expeditions through the Amazon rainforest. To draw upon this foundation of helping is not just a skill I have developed over the years; it is a part of me. It is who I am and it is why I connect with my clients so effectively. It’s also worth noting that my husband is a professional teacher of Philoshopy and Applied Positive Psychology. Discussing the deeper meanings of human behaviour is a daily conversation in my home. In fact, we are so committed to examining reality from various perspectives that we named our daughter after the philosophical concept of Qualia- the raw sensory perceptions that individuals hold which cannot be measured from one person to another. Think ‘is your red like my red’. A STAUNCH ADVOCATE FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

I am a proud human rights activist. When it comes to the commonly touted coaching adages of ‘stepping into your power’ and ‘making your voice heard’, I do more than ‘push’ these messages onto clients; I walk the talk. I stick my neck out repeatedly, navigating the risk of ostracism, personal attacks, online vitriol, and everything that comes with living one’s values unapologetically. I fight for what I believe in. That said, I work with clients across the political spectrum. I don’t bring politics into my one-on-one sessions, but given the intimacy of the coaching relationship, it is important to me to be fully transparent about my context before we decide whether we will work together. A TRUE WOMAN OF THE WORLD

I am a world traveller, a serial expat and a triple citizen: USA by birth, Peru by maternal descent and Australia by naturalisation. My early childhood was spent traveling back and forth with my family between Peru and whichever US state my American father was working in at any given time. After settling in Pennsylvania, my life in Peru became a 3-months-per-year ritual of running around with my wonderful cousins, becoming educated in Andean lore and traditions and living in a reality very far removed from the country in which I undertook my formal schooling. Bear in mind also, this was Peru in the 1980s and 1990s–a very different Peru from the one of today. Beautiful and wonderful all the same, but it was certainly more fraught in terms of the socio-political climate. Terrorist attacks were a regular occurrence and, due to my family’s political status, my sister and I were particularly at risk. Consequently, I had to learn to be resilient from a very young age. Having been raised a traveler, it was not long before my need to see more of the world took me on solo trips throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia for the purposes of travel, exploration, study, and work. Eventually, after two years working in Vietnam, I found my way to Australia where I had planned to live and work for a year before moving to another country. That was over 10 years ago! Here I still am, now married to a remarkable man I met during our time as Parkour instructors, and raising an even more remarkable toddler. She is an amazing little travel buddy and we can’t wait to show her even more of this big, beautiful world. A CAREER OF EDUCATING, FACILITATING, AND LEADING

Before I started my private coaching practice my major focus was in training and developing innovative methods for using technology in language teaching. I spent several years teaching in the U.S, Europe and Asia before moving into the Australian university sector, during which I also delivered a number of professional development sessions domestically and abroad. I also served as staff representative on the Academic Board in my most recent university position. Among other factors, it was a growing desire to work one-on-one with my students that led me to pursue coaching as my primary career. I realised, after several years of coaching my students toward academic success, that what I was truly passionate about was helping them achieve deeper engagement with their internal motivations and assessment of their own study/life skills. I owe so much of my unique coaching abilities to the lessons I learned through working and studying around the world in various cultural contexts. I am very well-versed in rapidly adjusting to the differing communication styles and support needs of my clients, having done so on a daily basis with classes of students comprising up to 15 different nationalities at a time. I actively draw upon these skills in every coaching session and workshop I conduct. My educational qualifications include a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics, which focuses heavily on how language is used to communicate across cultures, verbally and non-verbally. The expressions people use to describe themselves and the world around them reveals so much about their self-belief and their values and provide valuable material with which to explore their stories. Having a solid foundation in how people communicate allows me to help my clients connect the dots between their words and behaviours in a manner that leads to deeper insights, clarity of communication, and more efficient goal achievement. My Life Coaching training, delivered through The Life Coaching Institute of Australia, a sister school of the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors, comprised modules focused on a variety of therapeutic practices, psychological principles and coaching techniques. My ongoing training involves regular communication and practise sessions with coaches, counsellors and students from the LCIA and AIPC programs. A FORMER SERIAL CLIENT

There are situations in life when it is just not appropriate to rely solely upon the expertise of ones family and friends in order to crawl out of a hole. Sometimes, outside sources of support are essential. This has certainly been my experience as well. Social workers, psychiatrists, mental health nurses, counsellors…these are just some of the support sources I have drawn upon in the past to tackle issues related to depression and anxiety partially caused by a very high risk pregnancy and PMDD. I had suffered four heartbreaking miscarriages before becoming pregnant with my daughter. Those 39.7 weeks carrying her were fraught with crippling fear of another loss, remedied only by a dedicated mindfulness meditation practice. This fear had been exacerbated by the numerous warnings (during the countless hospital visits) that I was on the verge of miscarrying my 5th pregnancy due to heavy blood loss. My relationship with the universe and everyone in it had been under threat for so long during my pregnancy journey that it was a struggle to find my place in the world again after giving birth to my daughter. It was around this time that I had to seriously revise my list of mental health professionals with whom I was comfortable speaking, as the effectiveness of each relationship varied widely. Through this revision process, I developed a much deeper understanding of the purpose, limitations, strengths and weaknesses of each relationship in terms of my needs at the time. This process also led to an epiphany–that the support I was receiving could help me feel more stable, but could only get me so far towards achieving vitality and thriving in life. I realised that what I needed was not only an action plan for fulfilment, I needed to be on the other side of the conversation. This, along with a deeper understanding of my changing career needs was the catalyst for my launch into coaching as an explicit career focus. It is within the coaching space that I am most authentically in my element. Witnessing my clients’ breakthrough moments and helping them reach their goals is a truly rewarding experience. I come out of each session feeling uplifted, inspired and grateful for the encounter. Now, how can we work together to help you design your customised personal transformation curriculum? Book a free online consultation with me to find out! I hold online sessions via Zoom and face-to-face sessions in my private office at 91 Commercial Rd.