Our toughest challenges demand our greatest talent. It's time to widen the lens.
I've spent a decade trying to understand what they need instead.
Motivation isn't the answer.
It's consonance.
Consonance (n): that feeling of alignment and flow, when everything you are matches everything you do.
Twenty years of hiring people on instinct, and I'm now doing a doctorate on whether that instinct is actually any good.
Since selling my search firm in 2016, my research has revolved around four questions: why work stops feeling like it matters, why success breeds doubt, how leaders spot and stoke the potential others miss, and why even the most successful people leave. The pattern beneath all four is consistent: growth rarely stalls for lack of ambition; it stalls when we assume that everyone is inspired by the same version of success.
This assumption destroys our ability to drive individual growth, develop strong teams, and achieve extraordinary results. But there is a better way: a practical playbook with a shared language to lead in a world where the map keeps changing. Because when belonging, alignment, and purpose come back, people feel consonance, and high performance follows.
Keynotes
What I Speak About
Every talk I give comes out of one of the four questions. Which one depends on what your room is actually dealing with.
Sometimes it's a team that hit the number and can't figure out why nobody's celebrating. Sometimes it's a leadership bench that looks strong on paper and keeps promoting the wrong people. Sometimes it's the person who got everything they asked for and now can't say out loud that they want something else. (That one gets the most people in the lobby afterward.)
What doesn't change is where it comes from. Not a framework I built backward from a keynote. Twenty years of asking people why they were leaving, and a decade of research into what they said.
“We had the great fortune of having Laura keynote for 1200 members at our annual conference. I knew as soon as she left the stage that the ROI on our investment in Laura would be returned a thousandfold and I can say now that,
ROY SEXTON
Director of Marketing, Clark Hill
She’s a dynamic speaker who invests in their audience and goes beyond a "rinse and repeat" presentation. She is a class act."
Liz Reuth
Executive Director of Digital Marketing for Le-Vel Brands
She challenged our thinking on employee engagement and gave us tools to increase morale, productivity, and build more cohesive teams. Laura was awesome to work with behind-the-scenes and she tied our organization's mission into her talk like a pro.”
Meredith Rollins
Chief Community Officer, PCMA
“Laura was relevant, inspiring, and thought-provoking,
and attendees walked away with wisdom to help them become stronger, more successful leaders. She will energize your audience, help them make the most of their potential, and inspire them to embrace their next challenge.”
Jody Blencowe,
Sr. Director, Courtyard Global Brand Management, Marriott International
Hey, I'm LGO.
I'm a researcher, a former executive recruiter, and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. My work names the patterns that predict potential, in ourselves, in our teams, and in the people who matter to us most.
For thirty years I've advised leaders from the corner office to the Oval Office. For fifteen of them I ran a retained executive search firm, which meant I was paid to read what past performance was hiding and to see it before anyone else did. I was good at it. I could never explain how. That question is what I study now. (Currently working on my doctorate, finding out whether the instinct I spent two decades trusting holds up under actual scrutiny.)
You may also know me from Good Morning America, Access Hollywood, and NBC News, from Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and HR Magazine, or from my talk on why success doesn't feel the way it should, which has more than three million views on TED.com.
Laura is a Trusted Expert for Leading News Outlets Like:
“Wonderhell packs Laura’s beautiful writing, passionate stories, and seasoned wisdom into the ultimate guide to finding balance in our success.”
DR. MARSHALL GOLDSMITH
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author and the World's Most Influential Leadership Thinker
Laura’s bestselling books have been translated into 5 languages and enjoyed by thousands of readers across the world.
Whether you need to renegotiate your definition of success or the chaotic emotions that come with achieving it, Laura has a book for you.
What’s Holding You Back From Becoming
Each of us has the capacity to be limitless, but only when the “what you do” is aligned with the “who you are” in four key areas.
Discover which of these four essential elements allows you to engage more fully in the career that you're built. Receive a free guide on how to get unstuck and start your journey toward becoming Limitless.
And we can all enjoy the hell out of the ride.
LET’S MAKE IT HAPPEN TOGETHER.
