Bio

Chris has worked with small start-ups, mid-cap rapidly growing, and Fortune 50 firms since 1986, on a wide range of organizational challenges from individual and team development, to enterprise-wide culture change, organizational design, and strategy implementation. He has subject-matter expertise in Executive Assessment and Coaching, Team Effectiveness, and Alignment of Culture with business Strategy. Since the Pandemic, his focus has narrowed to helping clients maximize the powerful benefits of ‘cultural tail-winds’ through individual and team coaching.

Chris is a senior trusted advisor with a PhD in Clinical Psychology, an MBA and 35 years experience in the C-Suite. Several of the firm’s clients have engaged Chris over multiple leadership generations. Clients would say he is direct with those in power, while fully supporting their leadership authority. Clients would also speak of his ‘super-power’ in reading people’s true underlying motives, and then translating these insights into high-impact organizational outcomes. He has always done this in ways which protect individual and organizational privacy. There are no surprises with Chris who is a model of transparency. Very few have the humility and awareness to look honestly at how their leadership is experienced by others. Providing critical feedback to executives in a way that is also energizing and motivating is a unique talent that few possess. Chris knows how to provide difficult feedback in constructive ways while never watering down the truth and urgency of the message. Everyone is different in this regard; some need a sledgehammer, others a tap on the shoulder. The most accurate feedback delivered poorly is ineffective.

A lifelong student of culture, his book Leading Culture Change: What Every CEO Needs to Know (Stanford University Press, 2010) Amazon.com: Leading Culture Change: What Every CEO Needs to Know eBook is a practical handbook for any leader faced with the challenge of culture change. Chris has helped many individuals and teams come to terms with the ways in which their actual (not aspired or spoken) behavior is a powerful but double-edged tool to shape the manifest culture of the organization. Double-edged because unconscious executive behavior can just as easily degrade as bolster organizational culture. Many of the firm’s engagements have sought to optimize the Top Team’s handling of a shift in business strategy requiring parallel modification of the culture and individual behavior. Executive leadership’s ability to model the new culture is the single most powerful variable in any culture change. Chris’ 35 years experience quickly brings clarity to underlying root causes, critical priorities and necessary action steps.