Lead the Way
The courage to lead your own way
You already know how to lead. What you have never been handed is a version of it that actually feels like yours.
Six years. Over 200 conversations with women in hospitality, travel and real estate. Not one of them got there by copying someone else.
It is more comfortable to follow. It takes courage to lead.
Get in Touch with Naureen
You choose how you want to start your journey with Naureen
There is more than one way to lead. You are allowed to find yours
Somewhere early on, most of us are handed a picture of what a leader looks like. The one who speaks first. The one who works the room. The one who always seems certain.
Then we spend years measuring ourselves against it and coming up short - not because we can't lead, but because we are trying to lead as someone else.
Over 200 women across hospitality, travel and real estate have told me their version of this. Founders, directors, heads of department, women who left and women who stayed. Different industries, different stages, different styles - loud and quiet, careful and bold.
What they have in common is not a style. It is that each of them stopped borrowing one.
That is what leading the way actually means. Not being first. Being yours.
The podcast
Start with the evidence
Inspiring Women in Hospitality. Six years, over 200 conversations, and counting.
If you want proof there is no single way to do this, it is all here - free, and it always will be. Start anywhere. Most women find the episode they needed within two or three.
The Substack
Read it as I write it
I am writing this book in public. Every fortnight: what I am finding in the transcripts, the stories that continue to inspire me and the parts of the process that are harder than expected.
Paying subscribers get the chapter frameworks and the Lead the Way Moments - reflection questions and practical tools - before they reach the book.
Free to read. Upgrade only if you want the tools early.
The waitlist
Or just wait for the book
No publisher yet. No date yet. Both are coming - and when they land, this list hears first.
Lead the Way Coaching
Become a woman who leads her own way
Reading gets you so far. You can listen to every episode, read the book when it lands, journal, reflect and know exactly what you should be doing - and the next stay still arrives and you still do not send the message, do not ask for the thing, do not put your name forward.
At some point you need someone whose entire attention is on you.
And that is where I come in.
What is Lead the Way Coaching
16 weeks. 8 private 1:1 sessions, two a month. Me on WhatsApp in between - a voice note before the hard conversation, a "did you send it yet?" when you have gone quiet.
There are four stages within the programme, and we move through them at your own pace. This is not about becoming someone different - it is about discovering who you already are, owning your strengths and becoming the leader who has always been inside you:
Know who you are
Redefining leadership until you can see yourself in it. Naming the specific thing in your way - not imposter syndrome in the abstract, your pattern. And discovering that the qualities you were told were weaknesses are your leadership.
Own your bold
Asking for what you want. Saying your achievements out loud. Being visible, taking up space - treated as the job itself, alongside the practical half nobody teaches: networking, LinkedIn, profile, follow-up.
Lead differently
Heart and strategy were never opposites. How you lead in a boardroom is not how you lead one to one - knowing the difference is a skill, not a personality.
Make your impact
Success on your terms, not inherited ones. Becoming the proof someone coming up behind you needs to see.
My story
When I first worked with an executive coach, I arrived with the wrong question. I wanted to know what kind of leader I was - one of the leadership models I had read about. I was hunting for the box that fit, so I could finally get on with being it properly.
The box was the problem.
There is not one way of being a leader. There is your way - built from what you are actually good at, what you actually value, what you will not compromise on. Mine turned out to be empathy, listening, giving my team my time, building real relationships instead of performing authority. None of it looked like the leadership I thought I was supposed to have.
Later, building this podcast, I had to learn the opposite half of it - being visible with no company logo behind me, building a name from nothing. I built all of it myself, and I will be honest: it can be lonely.
Who is this for?
Women in hospitality, travel and real estate ready to leave their comfort zone, who want someone alongside them while they do it.
Going for the promotion. Changing direction entirely. Building something of your own. Or simply tired of leading in a way that does not feel like you.
Your title does not matter. What matters is whether you are standing at an edge you have not stepped off yet. With me along your side for a softer landing.
Who this is not for
This is not a done-for-you fix, and it is not for everyone.
Not if you want a script handed to you - the answers come from you and that is the only way they will still be there once our time together is over. Not if you are not ready to be uncomfortable, on purpose, repeatedly. It is for you if you are finally ready to stop waiting for permission.
How to start?
The first step is a thirty-minute conversation, no obligation either way, to work out if I'm the right coach for you.
You do not need a plan. Bringing the thing you have not said out loud yet is enough.
I am opening a small founding cohort of Lead the Way coaching.
Who is Naureen?
Who will be there with you on this journey?
I am Naureen. Certified executive coach, host of Inspiring Women in Hospitality and writing Lead the Way in public.
More than 20 years in this industry, six of them spent asking women how they got where they are - and what it cost them.
I am not the heroine of your story. I am the conduit. I hold the belief until you can hold it yourself, and I keep asking until you take the step.
Testimonials
By answering Naureen's questions, I realised that I do have the answer. - Bianca
She challenged me to make things change, and to create my own solutions. - Lucie
The right questions. And sometimes the uncomfortable ones. - Nicole
Special podcast epsiode with Ambika and Naureen on their coaching journey together
"If not you, who else? That has stayed with me. I think about it practically every day."
Ambika Gandhi - Founder, Real Estate Advisors, Canada
🎙 Three years as a coaching client, and a founding member of the Inspire Community. In that time, she has differentiated her consultancy from the largest firms in her market, grown her client base and built a reputation across Canada.
We recorded a conversation about what those three years actually looked like - including the parts that were not easy.
