• Admired Leaders excel at both driving performance AND creating strong followership - a rare combination found in only a small percentage of leaders
• The Admired Leadership approach focuses on universal behaviors that: - Can be explained in under 5 minutes - Are immediately actionable - Work across all demographics and industries
• On Praise and Recognition: - Admired Leaders tend to be "praise stingy" but highly effective with positive feedback - They distinguish between general praise and specific positive feedback - When they do give praise, they make it count by being specific and meaningful
• Key Insight: The difference between praise and positive feedback is utility - positive feedback tells people exactly what they did well and what to continue doing
• Practical Application: - Leaders struggling with giving recognition can focus on specific positive feedback rather than general praise - Consider tracking system to ensure giving at least one piece of positive feedback daily - Recognition can extend beyond work to family and personal relationships

• "Leadership is what you do at the end of the day. It's how you approach a room and the behaviors and routines that you bring into that room."
• "We're not in the business of changing who people are - we're focused on behaviors that make leaders more effective."
• "When Admired Leaders praise, they praise the right people in the right way for the right things."

• Suzanne Peterson Ph.D. is an Admired Leadership Coach and Partner. She provides counsel and coaching to senior leaders primarily on Wall Street and other financial services companies.

• Leadership Behaviors: - Universal and immediately actionable - Can be explained in under 5 minutes - Work across personal and professional contexts
• Third-Party Compliments: - Sharing positive feedback about someone to another person - Acts like a "time-release vitamin" - impact happens when it naturally comes back to the person - More powerful than direct praise because there's no "but" attached - Works in both professional and personal contexts
• Implementation Tips: - Start in low-risk situations - Practice across all areas of life (work, family, community) - Share genuine, authentic observations - Focus on both who people are and what they do
• Common Pitfalls to Avoid: - The "crap sandwich" feedback technique (praise-criticism-praise) - Using behaviors as techniques rather than developing them as authentic routines - Trying new behaviors first in high-risk situations - Over-using or forcing the behavior insincerely

• "Leadership is what you do. It's how you approach a room and the behaviors and routines that you bring into that room."
• "Who we are for our kids the research suggests at times is more important than what we do for them."
• "Try it on... especially if you're a skeptic, see what happens."

John Cook is an Admired Leadership Coach and Partner. He primarily works with senior executives across organizations from small companies to the largest financial services firms in the world.

• Framework for Managing Uncertainty: - What will definitely happen - What will probably happen - What we don't know yet - What probably won't happen - What definitely won't happen
• Communication Principles: - You cannot "not communicate" - everything sends a message - Information vacuums get filled with assumptions, usually negative ones - Higher uncertainty requires more frequent communication - Even "no updates" updates are valuable during uncertain times
• Best Practices: - Align leadership team on messaging before communicating - Be transparent about what is known and unknown - Commit to specific timeframes for updates - Treat people like "fully formed adults" - Avoid hiding or staying silent out of fear of misspeaking
• Key Leadership Insight: - Clarity doesn't mean having all the answers - It means being clear about what you know and don't know - Consider using this framework: "We don't know everything yet, we reserve the right to get smarter and change course, but we won't compromise on [core value]"

• "You cannot not communicate - everything you do sends a message."
• "The higher the degree of uncertainty, the more frequent your communication needs to be."
• "Don't hide in your office - treat people like fully formed adults."

Carolynne Thomas is an Admired Leadership Coach and Partner at CRA | Admired Leadership. She specializes in leadership and communication, particularly during times of organizational change and uncertainty.

• Meetings vs. Conversations: - Meetings are typically transactional, agenda-driven, and task-focused - Conversations are more exploratory, relationship-focused, and dynamic - Both serve different purposes and are valuable in different contexts
• Characteristics of Effective Conversations: - Usually involve fewer people than meetings - More question-based than agenda-driven - Follow the energy of discussion rather than rigid structure - Focus on creating shared understanding - Often lead to unexpected insights and connections
• Implementation Strategies: - Assess existing organizational norms before making changes - Take incremental steps rather than dramatic shifts - Be explicit about expectations and intentions - Consider breaking larger groups into smaller conversation clusters - Use conversations as pre-work for larger meetings
• Managing Conversation Dynamics: - Carefully select participants based on contribution potential - Stay open to valuable tangents while managing disruptions - Balance loud voices by amplifying quieter ones - Create space for multiple perspectives

• "Leadership is what you do - the actions, behaviors, habits, and routines that you bring into a space."
• "You can actually get as much if not more done through really good curated conversations than you can in meetings."
• "Don't ask yourself if you need a meeting or conversation accidentally or subconsciously - think deliberately and strategically about it."

Ben Stringfellow is an Admired Leadership Coach and Partner at CRA. His operational leadership experience with large organizations brings practical, action-oriented approach to leadership development.

• Five Levels of Trust: - Initial rapport and first impressions - Consistency and reliability - Competence and expertise - Emotional safety and vulnerability - Deep mutual reciprocity and shared goals
• Building Trust: - Trust is not all-or-nothing - Different relationships require different types of trust - Trust must be built intentionally and strategically - Trust becomes more resilient with depth and breadth
• Best Practices: - Show genuine curiosity about others - Track and follow up on important details - Focus on understanding others' motivations and goals - Create opportunities for reciprocity
• Common Challenges: - Avoiding "manufactured" or inauthentic relationship building - Building trust when it doesn't come naturally - Recovering from broken trust - Balancing professional and personal connections

• "Trust is not all-or-nothing - there are different levels and types of trust for different relationships."
• "The head is a terrible place to keep things - being disciplined about relationships shows you care."
• "Think about feeding relationships like a balanced diet - you need variety and depth to build resilience."

Diana Hong is an Admired Leadership Coach and Partner at CRA | Admired Leadership.  She primarily focuses on helping leaders build authentic relationships and develop effective leadership styles.

• Leadership Policies and Culture: - Policies act as powerful symbols of organizational values - Example: Including cultural behaviors in performance evaluations - Hybrid work policies reflect cultural priorities around collaboration - Every policy decision communicates organizational values
• Effective Leadership Communication: - Leaders must be goal-oriented in communications - Everything communicates something - even silence or inaction - Style should match the situation and relationship - Balance between powerful and attractive communication styles
• Cultural Pillars vs Company Values: - Values are foundational beliefs - Cultural pillars are the behavioral expressions of those values - Pillars show how values should be lived day-to-day - Culture is only as strong as leadership's tolerance for misalignment
• Building Strong Culture: - Culture is built through daily choices and behaviors - Not about perks but about consistent leadership actions - Requires intentional, ongoing practice - Must clearly connect policies to business needs and values

• "There's no way to not communicate, and there's no way to not have a culture. Everything you say or do, or don't do, is communicating something."
• "Culture can only be as strong as the degree to which leadership tolerates any misalignment to it."
• "It's not about the fancy ping pong tables - it really comes down to the day-to-day choices of leadership and team members."

Lisa Colella is an Admired Leadership Coach at CRA | Admired Leadership. She has extensive experience helping organizations align their policies, communications and culture.

• Change Management Framework: - Traditional change curve comes from grief literature - Change is better viewed as a wave rather than a curve - Focus on building adaptable skillsets that transfer across different changes - Success comes from co-creation rather than top-down implementation
• Effective Communication During Change: - Balance between over and under-communication - Use "best case/worst case/reality" framework - Maintain consistent communication cadence - Be transparent about what is known and unknown
• Action Steps for Leaders: - Categorize what can be directly controlled vs influenced - Identify what are problems (solvable) vs dilemmas (must be managed) - Create opportunities for team members to co-create solutions - Build transferable change management skills
• Common Pitfalls to Avoid: - Over-communicating without sufficient details - Under-communicating and allowing rumor mills to develop - Making unrealistic promises about control over outcomes - Treating change as a one-time event rather than ongoing process

• "Change is a wave, not a curve - there's always another change coming."
• "The change people most adopt is the one they're co-creating."
• "If you end up getting bored with a message, it's probably the right amount of times you're repeating it."

Diana Hong is an Admired Leadership Coach and Partner at CRA | Admired Leadership. She specializes in helping leaders navigate organizational change and development.

• Strategic Relationship Assessment: - Consider both relevance and influence when evaluating relationships - Align relationship investments with personal and professional goals - Be intentional about tracking and managing key relationships - Anticipate future relationship needs before they become critical
• Building Strong Relationships: - Focus on reciprocity in relationships - Increase frequency of meaningful interactions - Add value to create natural reciprocity - Change conversation quality and depth to deepen connections
• Best Practices from Admired Leaders: - View world through both problem-solving and relationship lenses - Track and measure relationship progress - Set specific relationship goals - Be curious and create conversation continuity
• Managing Relationship Portfolio: - Regularly assess relationship priorities - Consider deprioritizing relationships that don't align with goals - Make thoughtful transitions rather than abrupt changes - Balance time investment across key relationships

• "Everything happens because of or within a conversation."
• "Time is the great equalizer - we all have the same amount, and how we spend it counts."
• "The best leaders anticipate relationships they might need in the future and start cultivating them before they're needed."

Katie Angstadt is an Admired Leadership Coach and Partner at CRA | Admired Leadership. She has extensive experience helping leaders develop strategic approaches to relationship building and management.