Leadership Development News

Deborah Naish brings over 40 years of leadership experience—25 of them as an executive coach—guiding leaders to embrace growth, navigate change, and inspire those around them to thrive. She partners with executives in Fortune 500 companies, fast-growing start-ups, and dynamic nonprofits—helping them elevate their influence, renew their energy, and lead with greater clarity and courage. Deborah is the founder of Naish Partners, and the author of Level Up Your Leadership: Becoming More Conscious, Courageous & Resilient which launched September 17th. Recognized with multiple Stevie® Awards for Mentor or Coach of the Year and for Company of the Year, she is known as a trusted thought partner and “CEO Whisperer,” dedicated to helping leaders unlock what’s next. She will talk about: Mastering the Essentials.Asking Core Questions.Adapting Foundational Practices.

Drew Norton, known as The Everyday Sales Leader, is a dynamic self-development coach, sales consultant, and co-host of The Everyday Leader Podcast. With a background spanning sales, hiring, recruiting, leadership, and training across diverse industries, he's a seasoned expert in cultivating individual and organizational success. His career journey encompasses a proven track record in sales, and he's passionate about translating his wealth of knowledge into actionable insights, empowering others to achieve their career aspirations in sales and leadership. Drew is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a mission in the Utah Ogden Mission. Originally from southeastern Arizona, Drew cherishes the values of small-town life. He and his wife have been married for nearly 13 years and are blessed with four children. A sports enthusiast, he cheers on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Utah Jazz, and Denver Broncos. His love for the outdoors extends to hunting and side-by-side riding. A private pilot, Drew also enjoys the freedom of flight.

Is it that they have a brilliant leader or that every team member is a top performer? The truth is that those help, but neither of them differentiates the best teams. Exceptional teams stand apart from others by building an emotionally intelligent ecosystem (not just the EI of leaders or employees). Unlike most, emotionally intelligent teams develop social norms and routines that motivate teamwork by building a genuine sense of belonging among team members. These norms prioritize team member feedback and development, and encourage constructive debate that produces effective decisions and novel ideas Vanessa Druskat is an associate professor at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. As an internationally recognized leadership and team performance expert, Vanessa Druskat advises leaders and teams at over a dozen Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 companies. Her best-selling Harvard Business Review article (with S. Wolff) on emotionally intelligent teams has been chosen six times for inclusion in collections of HBR’s most valued articles. She is the recipient of multiple research and teaching awards. For more information, please visit https://www.vanessadruskat.com/ or vanessa.druskat@unh.edu

Lynn Blades is the author of “THE QUIET BURN: The Ambitious Woman’s Guide To Recognizing And Preventing Burnout.” All genders will benefit from THE QUIET BURN. The book contains advice on living a fulfilling life, self-respect, effectively communicating needs, and recognizing the peril of ignoring personal well-being. Lynn is the founder of Legacy Leadership, an executive leadership consultancy, and a dedicated DEI advocate. She has strived to cultivate a 21st century leadership workforce that truly reflects the diversity of our society. Blades is a distinguished Marshall Goldsmith elite executive coach with two decades of experience guiding a diverse range of clients. She has coached C-suite executives, directors, and their teams across various industries. Her clients include Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies such as Nike, KPMG, EY, Barclays, and PayPal. Blades is a founding member of AllBright, an organization committed to the empowerment of women. Here, she helped create “Elevate,” a year-long executive leadership course designed to foster leadership skills among women. She also co-created and currently leads the Leading Diverse Teams program for organizational leaders in both the public and private sectors, with clients such as the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, Aon, and Tate. Blades also serves on various boards focused on fostering the leadership skills of young, diverse talent, including the Creative Access advisory board, Working Title Films’ London Screen Academy, and Frontier Learning Trust in partnership with Imperial College. Blades exceptional communication skills and distinctive can-do attitude were honed during her celebrated career as an award-winning journalist. She worked with leading international networks such as CBS, CNN, CNBC, BBC, ITV, and Showtime, where she developed, wrote, presented, and produced both hard news and entertainment programs.

MCC coach Ben Dooley facilitates the bi-weekly “COACHING SKILLS FORUM” telecalls, as well as creator of multiple coach growing experiences--like the “Fast Pass to MasterFull Coaching”—exploring “the Science, Artistry and Performance of our coaching,” and “the Core of our Core Competencies”, all of which (and more) have been helping coaches discover their powerful coaching confidence, power and success, to help you BE the MasterFull coach you are truly here to BE, and that the world needs. And your journey continues to deepen right now.

Bill Canady is the Chairman of OTC Industrial Technologies and CEO of Arrowhead Engineered Products (AEP). As a leadership expert with more than 30 years of experience as a global business executive, he specializes in driving organizational growth, controlling costs, and increasing profitability. During his time with OTC, revenue has grown by more than 43% and earnings over 80%. OTC now has $1 billion in sales and 1,900+ employees. At AEP, Canady leads more than 3600 employees and has $1.5 billion in sales. Throughout his career, Canady has led several organizations through their most disruptive challenges and opportunities, often in complicated regulatory, investor, and media environments. Taking the tools and techniques that he developed growing multibillion dollar companies, he created the Profitable Growth Operating System (PGOS) and set out to help owners and operators around the world profitably grow their companies. Bill graduated summa cum laude from Elmhurst University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and received his MBA from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. He is a veteran of the United States Navy. For more information, please visit https://billcanady.com/

Will Linssen is a globally recognized leadership coach and #1 Amazon international bestselling author. He has been named the World’s #1 Leadership Coach by Global Gurus and #1 Coach Trainer by Thinkers50, recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Executive Coaching, and serves as an Advisor to Harvard Business Review—where he continues to shape the global conversation on leadership development, coaching, and performance growth. He is also a Master Certified Coach (ICF) and CEO of Global Coach Group. Global Experience Will has trained and certified over 4,000 executive coaches and coached leaders from hypergrowth startups to Fortune 500 companies, including global organizations like LinkedIn, Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, Saudi Aramco, and Samsung—across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Triple Win with 95% Success Rate The Triple Win Leadership Coaching approach—developed by Will—is one of the most results-driven frameworks in the industry, delivering a 95% success rate confirmed by coworkers, in improving leadership effectiveness, team engagement, and business performance. Backed by data from over 100,000 leaders, it provides a structured, measurable, and scalable method for creating lasting leadership change and performance impact in organizations worldwide.

Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, working with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries. He has a thirty-year track record helping executives tackle challenges of strategy, organization and leadership. He has worked with start-ups to Fortune 10’s companies. He has helped organizations articulate strategies that lead to accelerated growth, and design organizations that can execute those strategies. He has worked in more than 25 countries on 4 continents. He is the author of 9 books, including the recent Amazon #1 Rising to Power and the forthcoming To Be Honest, Lead with the Power of Truth, Justice & Purpose. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes, and a two-time TEDx speaker. His work’s been featured in Fortune, CEO Magazine, Inc., MSNBC, Business Week, Inc., and Fast Company.

Kevin Crawford is an advisor to executives and boards in a wide variety of leadership challenges and industries in the United States. For over 30 years, he has helped organizations prepare for crisis, disruption and disaster. He combines a diverse background as the Fire Chief and City Manager of Carlsbad California, CEO of United Way of San Diego and Executive Advisor for CEO’s. He has been an incident commander for some of the country’s most historic disasters with his passion for teaching empathic, principal-centered leadership skills to leaders. Kevin’s approach is practical and personal. He helps leaders make decisive, confident choices under pressure, always with an eye toward resilience and strategic clarity. Across private equity, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, real estate, media, insurance, utilities, construction, and public administration., Never losing sight that It’s about building trust and creating a space where openness drives progress. Whether it’s helping a leader prepare for a board transition or steer through a crisis, his goal is simple: turn adversity into opportunity and help leaders achieve real, sustainable success.

Steven Gaffney is a leading expert on increasing business profit through change management, honest communication, and high performing teams. An author, speaker, and trusted advisor, Steven works directly with top leaders from Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, Marriott, Allstate Insurance, and even the U.S. government and military. Steven has authored four ground-breaking books: Just Be Honest: Authentic Communication Strategies that Get Results and Last a Lifetime, Honesty Works! Real-World Solutions to Common Problems at Work and Home, Be A Change Champion, and co-author of Honesty Sells: How to Make More Money and Increase Business Profits. He is currently working on two books: Reboot: How to Create and Sustain High Performing Teams and The 9 Pillars of Sustainable Profitable Business Growth. His latest release, Unconditional Power, is available everywhere. Steven helps leaders across many industries. Some of his clients include: Amazon, Marriott, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, SAIC, Allstate Insurance, BP, World Bank, Congressional Budget Office, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Navy, Citigroup, Texas Instruments, NASA, American Cancer Society, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers, Best Buy, and Johns Hopkins University.

Chris Shipley has documented, influenced, and predicted the impact of technology on business and society for more than 30 years. As a journalist, she covered the tech industry for leading publishing companies. As an analyst, she identified innovative startups and gave them a stage to launch their market-making products. As a catalyst, she has advised hundreds of early-stage companies on positioning, business modeling, and innovation practices. Chris began her career at Ziff-Davis, where she worked as a writer and editor for 12 years before joining International Data Group (IDG) to lead DEMO. Chris has co-founded three companies, including the startup media and consulting firm Guidewire Labs. She spent the 2013-14 academic year as a Fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri in where she explored and developed best practices for journalist conducting real-time journalism. The following year, she joined MIT to launch Solve, an initiative to bring together the best thinking to address some of the world’s most intractable problems. Currently, she consults and collaborates with emerging companies and their leadership teams to build high-performance teams that innovate at startup speed. Her work has won numerous citations, including the prestigious SVForum Visionary Award in 2010. She sits on the governing and advisory boards of a number of high-impact early stage companies. Chris holds BA degrees in Literature and Communication Arts from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Today, Chris focuses her work on the human and organizational challenges in the face of technology-and economically-driven disruption. https://www.cshipley.com/

Studies have found that 40-60% of high-performing employees fail or underperform when appointed as managers within their first two years on the job. Such situations are costly for both the managers who fear demotions or lose out on salary increases and promotions, as well as the organizations that lose talent and productivity. The cause of this high rate of failure is due to the vast majority of new managers never receiving the leadership training they desperately need to succeed in their role. Ramona Shaw runs The Leadership Accelerator, a 12-week program that coaches first-time managers to become confident and competent leaders who deliver results and who people love to work with. Through the program, she has helped hundreds of new managers at startups and leading companies — including Google, Twitch, Asana, Lionsgate, and Dropbox — successfully transition into leadership roles. Before becoming a leadership coach, Ramona worked at Partners Group, a global private markets firm with $127B in assets under management and over 1,500 professionals across 20 offices worldwide. At the firm, Ramona moved from a Junior Financial Analyst to Vice President in under six years.

Lida Citroën, author of THE NEW RULES OF INFLUENCE: How To Authentically Build Trust, Drive Change, And Make An Impact, is an award-winning branding and reputation management expert who designs and enhances the identities of executives, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders globally. As CEO and founder of LIDA360, LLC, Citroën is sought-after for her knowledge of personal brand development, reputation management, leadership communication, and online positioning. As a professional keynote speaker and presenter, Citroën’s popular TEDx talk and multiple courses on LinkedIn Learning showcase her empowering delivery style and message. She regularly presents business workshops on reputation management, personal branding, executive presence, leadership communication, and using social media to self-promote, helping employees and leaders build a personal brand that supports the business.

In today's show, Drs. Relly Nadler and Cathy Greenberg will share some of the cutting-edge tools they have been using with their coaching and training clients during these turbulent times. They have helped thousands of leaders to perform in the top 10% over the last 3 decades, utilizing emotional intelligence, positive psychology, neuroscience, and peak performance technologies.

Dr. Cornelia C. Walther is a humanitarian leader with 20+ years at the UN driving social change. Now a Wharton/University of Pennsylvania Fellow, she pioneers research on hybrid intelligence and prosocial AI through the global POZE alliance to build Agency amid AI for All. Her focus Is on harnessing AI to bring out the best in and for people and planet.

Have you ever thought your digital marketing and online presence might actually be hurting your business and your life? Maybe you are not “breaking through the noise”, you are just adding to it? Perhaps you are not “one funnel away”. Maybe that funnel is stopping the big fish you want. Our guest today has a refreshingly new view of how authentic conversations can lead to a better life and business. Tom Schwab asks you to consider that you are just One Conversation Away. That’s his observation based on the experience and that data from working with over 1,000 leading brands as the Chief Evangelist Officer at Interview Valet, the premier podcast interview marketing agency.. If you want a rich life and a profitable business, Tom believes you are just One Conversation Away.

Pankaj Singh—"Sing"—is a visionary leader who’s spent over 20 years revolutionizing businesses and building high-performance teams. As a former C-suite executive, he's driven double-digit growth, streamlined operations, and transformed organizations worldwide. But his real power comes from something unexpected: Mindfulness. Raised in an affluent family in India, Singh mastered classical music by age 13 but was restless. At 14, he was sent to train under a lama, where he first discovered the profound impact of mindfulness. Fast forward to 2020, His passion for mindful leadership was ignited during a high-pressure ransomware crisis early in his career. Faced with the overwhelming stress of guiding his team through uncharted territory, he turned to mindfulness to anchor himself. That pivotal experience revealed the transformative power of presence, empathy, and emotional intelligence in leadership—and it inspired his life’s mission to share these tools with others. Today, Singh is an advocate for redefining leadership in a fast-paced world. His signature frameworks, The Ascendancy Action™ System and Mindful Leadership Mastery Compass, equip leaders to transcend stress, foster resilience, and cultivate authenticity. Whether inspiring audiences through keynote speeches, mentoring teams, or crafting leadership roadmaps, Sing’s vision is clear: to empower leaders to transform challenges into opportunities and lead with clarity, compassion, and purpose.

Dr. Bob Rosen is a psychologist, New York Times best-selling author, researcher, and preeminent business advisor. He is the Founder and CEO of Healthy Companies, advising over 500 CEOs in sixty countries. His books include Detach, the New York Times Bestseller Grounded®, and the Washington Post best-seller Conscious, among others. He earned a PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and has been a longtime faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University’s School of Medicine.

Andy McDowell is an engineer by trade and a creative by nature. He is the founder of the entrepreneurial and small business coaching and consulting firm, Generate Your Value, and is the co-host of The Generate Your Value Podcast. Andy spent 22 years with the Boeing Company, where he always felt more like a life coach than a boss. In 2002, he began his entrepreneurship journey when he was asked to develop an Airspace Design Consulting business that would serve the global government market. Andy has a Bachelor’s Degree from Georgia Tech in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems from Georgia State. His aviation work took him around the world and enabled him to work on high-profile projects - such as preparing the Beijing and Sochi Airports for their respective Olympic Games. Andy can help you Generate Your Value in your personal and professional life in today’s conversation. www.generateyourvalue.com

Joe Marabito is a senior executive, strategist, and advisor with extensive experience in healthcare. He has held multiple senior executive roles at large established companies, including Accenture, Express Scripts, and Elevance Health, as well as at smaller rapidly growing privately held innovators, including NaviNet, Advantasure, ingenious Med, and HighRoads. As a health care strategy partner at Accenture, he advised senior leaders in many of the largest health care organizations in the United States. In CEO, COO, and general manager roles, he successfully scaled and accelerated the growth of multiple businesses. He currently works with a diverse range of clients to identify and assess emerging technologies and business opportunities, and to start up, manage, scale, turn around, and grow enterprises.