Lioness - by Mel Milton-Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

Lioness helps women build confidence from the inside out - starting with their core values and using these to foster effective communication and leadership presence.

Drawing on her work as an award-winning academic and executive coach, Dr Mel Milton-Smith shares candid insights from workshops and coaching sessions, along with practical tools to address imposter syndrome, people-pleasing, and the gendered expectations that can affect women's careers.

Book Synopsis

Lioness is a comprehensive leadership guide for women who are ready to lead with confidence and reclaim their power at work.

As an executive coach and training facilitator, Dr Mel Milton-Smith has worked with hundreds of women across industries and career stages. Time and again, she's found the same pattern: capable women who have every reason to be confident, yet walk into rooms with quiet voices, minimized selves, and a tendency to play small.

This book is for those women. With candor and compassion, Dr Milton-Smith combines real-world insights, extensive research, and practical tools to help readers build confidence at work. She introduces the LEVIA Framework: Lead, Elevate, Value, Intuit, and Assert.

• LEAD explores shifts from traditional, transactional leadership styles toward contemporary approaches centered on strong values, empathy, and agility.
• ELEVATE discusses how to build high-trust relationships, cultivate influential networks, and create psychologically safe and inclusive team cultures.
• VALUE helps women recognize their worth, set boundaries, celebrate their wins, and ask for what they need and want--especially regarding pay, promotions, and opportunities.
• INTUIT connects readers with their inner compass, teaching them to look inward, trust their intuition, and make leadership decisions that honor their purpose and values.
• ASSERT provides practical tools to help women communicate clearly and confidently, negotiate positive outcomes, set boundaries, say "no," and manage challenging conversations.

Drawing on global research, she shows how systemic inequality and social conditioning can undermine women's confidence--and what practical steps women and their allies can take to shift the balance.

Readers will find exercises on building trust and influence, challenging unhelpful feedback, and breaking cycles of people-pleasing. They'll also see themselves in the stories of women who chose to leave employers that didn't value them--and built successful careers on their own terms.

Lioness closes by encouraging women to claim their power at work and in life, and to connect with a wider community through Dr Mel Milton-Smith's online platform and training programs.

From the Back Cover

Stop second-guessing yourself. Learn how to negotiate with confidence, set boundaries without guilt, lead difficult conversations and build genuine influence ... without sacrificing empathy or authenticity.

In Lioness, executive coach and leadership expert Dr Mel Milton-Smith gives women a practical framework to overcome imposter syndrome, communicate assertively and lead with confidence, courage and intuition.

Rejecting outdated transactional leadership built on hierarchy, fear and control, Dr Mel champions a transformational, values-led approach centred on trust, emotional intelligence, psychological safety, human connection, and elevating ourselves and others--the leadership skills modern workplaces increasingly demand.

Combining real-world case studies, negotiation tools and actionable strategies, Lioness empowers women executives, entrepreneurs and emerging leaders to stop shrinking themselves and start leading.