Private coaching
Private Presence & Performance Coaching
Individual development for people ready to bring more of themselves to the moments that matter.
You don't need a new personality.
You may need more access to the one you've already got.
This is highly individualized work for people who want to understand how they're actually showing up, identify what is already working, deal with what isn't, and develop greater range when the stakes go up.
Executives. Professionals. Founders. Creatives. Performers. And people whose path doesn't fit neatly into a title.
Private coaching online. Australia, United States and worldwide.
So what actually happens when we work together?
We start with what is happening now.
At the beginning of a session, I often ask for the Good, Bad or Ugly.
Tell me about your week.
What's working?
What's gone sideways?
What's taking up more space in your head than it deserves?
That gives me a sense of where you are today rather than where a tidy coaching curriculum thinks you ought to be.
Because I prefer to work with the human being who actually showed up.
From there, we look at what you want to develop.
Sometimes you already know.
Sometimes somebody has given you feedback and you aren't entirely sure whether they're right.
Sometimes all you know is:
Something about the way I'm showing up isn't working, and I can't tell what it is.
Good.
We can start there.
I am watching more than the words.
One of the things I've spent nearly three decades learning to do is see through the presentation and find the person underneath it.
People are extraordinarily good at showing us who they think they should be.
The polished version.
The confident version.
The agreeable version.
The serious version.
The version who has apparently never had a nervous system.
I'm interested in what happens underneath all of that.
I take in the whole picture: voice, body, intention, connection, instinct, tension, effort, listening, habits under pressure and the moments when something genuine suddenly appears.
Then I start asking questions.
What's naturally working here?
Does this person know they're doing it?
What's getting in the way?
What belongs to them?
What have they learned to perform because they thought they were supposed to?
And what could we train so they have more choices?
I don't want to strip away what makes you distinctive.
I want you to know what's already powerful about the way you show up so you can access it deliberately rather than occasionally stumbling into it by accident.
I want you to know what's already powerful about the way you show up so you can access it deliberately rather than occasionally stumbling into it by accident.
The Five Elements of Authentic Performance
I use five elements as diagnostic lenses for the work.
They are not five boxes you have to tick.
They help us understand where something is working, where something is getting lost, and what we might want to practice next.
Voice
How you sound—and what happens to your voice when something matters.
Body
How you physically communicate, regulate and occupy space.
Message
How effectively other people can access your thinking and intention.
Connection
How you listen, respond, relate and affect the people around you.
Instinct
The individuality, spontaneity and self-trust we don't want development to train out of you.
Presence isn't Element Six. Presence is what emerges when the five elements align.
We practice.
Depending on what you're working toward, you may bring me a real presentation, an upcoming conversation, a pitch, an interview, a difficult piece of feedback, a meeting you're dreading or something you simply want to get better at.
We use the real material whenever we can.
You may speak.
Present.
Rehearse.
Try something.
Try it again.
And yes, occasionally I will stop you mid-sentence.
Not because I'm trying to turn you into a performing seal.
Because sometimes the thing we need to notice happened three seconds ago.
We identify what is helping and what is getting in your way.
We experiment with another choice.
Then we rehearse until that choice becomes more available to you.
Between sessions, I may give you exercises, observations or specific things to practice.
The amount of time between sessions depends on what you're working on and how much time you realistically need to do the work.
Because there is absolutely no point in giving you homework that lives beautifully in a notebook and nowhere else.
I don't want you walking around looking like you've been coached.
I want you to have more choices.
More access. More range. More choice. More of you.
Before we start nitpicking, we're going to find out what's good.
If you sit down opposite me and say:
"I know something about the way I'm showing up isn't working, but I can't tell what it is."
I'm not going to immediately produce a red pen.
First, we're going to talk.
I'll ask what feedback you've received.
I'll ask about patterns you've noticed over time.
I'll learn who you are.
I'll want to know what the people who genuinely love and respect you love about you.
Because people are often astonishingly bad at seeing themselves clearly.
Some people wildly underestimate themselves.
Some people wildly overestimate themselves.
Most of us manage to do both depending on the day.
I want to begin with the clearest possible picture.
No judgment.
No flattery.
No unnecessary demolition.
There is something here worth developing.
Let's find it.
Then we can deal with the thing where you're stepping on your own foot.
A few things I am not going to do.
I will not teach you how to manipulate people.
I am interested in genuine communication, not tricks for controlling how other people perceive you.
I will not hand you stock behaviors and tell you they equal presence.
There is no universal posture, vocal tone, hand gesture or personality setting called "successful person."
I will not remake you.
My job is not to replace your personality with one I find more convenient. I am here to help your actual self become more skilled, more aware and more available.
I will not do the work for you.
I used to say that I will work as hard as my clients, but I will not work harder than them. That still stands. I'm teaching you how to fish. I'm not following you around for the rest of your life carrying a bucket of fish.
I will not lie to you.
I am not here to tear you down. I am also not here to blow smoke up your ass. My years of working with people have taught me how to have difficult conversations, address uncomfortable things and move through them without turning the entire experience into an exercise in shame.
I will not therapize you.
If what you're dealing with needs therapy, trauma work, clinical support or something deeper than performance coaching, I am not going to poke around in your psyche and hope something useful falls out. I am not a therapist, and I am not going to pretend to be one because it makes the coaching sound more profound. We are working in the real world: how you communicate, how you respond under pressure, what habits are helping you, what habits are getting in your way and what choices you can practice. If it becomes clear that what you need sits outside that scope, I will say so. And if you want help finding the right kind of professional support, I will absolutely help you look for it. I fully support deeper work when deeper work is what's needed. I just won't cosplay as the person qualified to provide it.
Different minds welcome.
This work isn't based on a standardized idea of how a confident or successful person should communicate.
We work with how you think, process, communicate and express yourself.
That may mean developing additional range.
It does not mean sanding away difference because somebody once decided there was one correct way for a competent adult to behave in a meeting.
You do not need to disclose a diagnosis to work with me.
And I am not here to diagnose you.
The question is much simpler:
What does effective presence look like on you?
I am not going to promise you an instant transformation.
People learn at different speeds.
Different things take different amounts of practice.
And any coach who can tell you exactly how many sessions it will take for another human being to fundamentally change something complicated about the way they communicate is considerably more psychic than I am.
What I can do is help you build the foundation properly.
I want you to understand yourself better.
Know what is already working.
Recognize your patterns sooner.
Develop more range.
Practice additional choices.
And become increasingly capable of coaching yourself.
The goal is not dependency.
Quite the opposite.
I want to teach you to be the best version of yourself that is available right now, send you back into your life to use it, and have you come back when you reach the next level and discover:
Well.
Apparently there's another bloody level.
Good.
We'll work on that one too.
Private Presence & Performance Coaching
This is individualized work rather than a fixed curriculum.
The engagement is designed to give us enough time to observe patterns, experiment, rehearse and integrate what you're learning into real situations.
Opening Deep Dive
A longer initial session to understand where you are, what you're working toward and what we're seeing across the Five Elements.
Your Individual Development Focus
We identify what's already strong, what needs development and what we're actually going to work on.
Private Coaching Sessions
Approximately six individual sessions across the engagement, scheduled according to the work rather than an arbitrary weekly rhythm.
Real-World Material
Presentations, conversations, interviews, pitches, meetings, performance situations or whatever is actually relevant to your life.
Between-Session Practice
Individual exercises, observations and homework designed around what we're developing.
Ongoing Adjustment
We keep responding to what happens in the real world rather than forcing your development into a predetermined sequence.
Private coaching investment and availability are discussed during the Initial Consultation.
Questions people reasonably ask.
Is this therapy?
No. This is performance and communication coaching.
We may talk about patterns, pressure, confidence, behavior and what happens when you're being watched or evaluated, but I do not provide therapy or trauma treatment.
If something comes up that needs clinical or therapeutic support, I will tell you and encourage you to work with an appropriately qualified professional.
Is this only for executives?
No.
I work with executives, professionals, founders, creatives, performers and people whose work or life doesn't fit neatly into one of those categories.
The common denominator isn't your job title. It's that something about the way you show up matters enough to you that you're willing to work on it.
Is coaching online?
Yes.
Private coaching is designed to work online and is available in Australia, the United States and internationally.
Do I need to know exactly what I want to work on?
No.
"I know something isn't working, but I don't know what it is" is perfectly usable information.
We can start there.
Will you make me more polished?
Possibly. But that is not the goal.
The goal is more awareness, more skill, more range and more access to yourself when something matters.
If greater polish serves that, lovely. If polish starts covering up the interesting part of you, I'm considerably less enthusiastic.
Do I need a diagnosis if I'm neurodivergent?
No.
I am not diagnosing or treating neurodivergence.
We work with the person in front of me and how that person actually thinks, processes and communicates.
More of You
What are you ready to practice?
Tell me what's happening, what you're working toward and where you think you're getting in your own way.
I'll ask some questions, and we'll work out whether I'm the right person to help.
Online private coaching | Australia • United States • Worldwide