359: Traditional Leadership Is Failing and How High-Performing X Teams Innovate and Excel

🔥 What used to work in leadership doesn’t anymore. Learn what kind of leadership communication actually yields innovative results and growth.

As a high-performing leader, you’re constantly juggling responsibilities while navigating rapid change. But what if the key to staying ahead isn’t perfection—but embracing your unique leadership style and leveraging others' strengths? 

This episode dives into groundbreaking strategies to help you lead with confidence, innovate effectively, and build a team that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

By the end of Laura’s amazing conversation with Deborah Ancona, founder of the  MIT Leadership Center, you’ll know:

🌟 Learn how a certain leadership style empowers your entire organization to innovate and adapt faster

🚀 Uncover your unique leadership signature and use it to inspire confidence

🔑 Discover the hidden assets in your “family ghosts” and how to leverage them for greater executive presence

🎧 Don’t wait—tune in now to transform the way you lead and secure your place as a forward-thinking, impactful leader!

If you're tired of being seen as a workhorse instead of a leader and feel misunderstood or invisible to senior executives, it’s not your hard work holding you back—it’s how you're presenting yourself. This is the year to finally show up with massive executive presence.

My 90-Day Executive Presence Mastery System will uncover your blind spots, equip you with the tools to communicate with confidence, and help you master the four key pillars of leadership that senior executives respect and recognize. Imagine being listened to, valued, and finally getting the promotion you deserve.

If you want personalized help to massively elevate your executive communication, our Executive Presence Mastery System, a 90-day intensive coaching program may be your ticket. Click here to set up a short meetup for us to chat about it.

About our guest:

Deborah is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management. She is best known for her pioneering research on high-performing teams, distributed nimble leadership and leadership signatures.

Deborah is also the founder of the MIT Leadership Center, which is revolutionizing traditional leadership to solve the toughest problems in the world of management.    

Her book X-Teams gives deep insights on how to create innovative, successful teams with examples from Microsoft, Takeda, and the Museum of Modern Art. She also co-founded xLEAD, which develops research-based tools to encourage creative leadership across management levels. Her work bridges theory and practice bringing novel ideas into leadership practice. 

Deborah has been with MIT for over 20 years and in 2018, was awarded the Jamieson Prize, MIT Sloan’s highest teaching honor. Her widely acclaimed research on how family upbringing affects workplace behavior was published in the Harvard Business Review, titled “Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite”, as was her article on the 4-CAPS+ model, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader”.  

In Speak Up communication and executive presence coaching, high performing leaders learn to enhance their influence and confidence, refining their communication style to increase visibility and effectiveness in promotion opportunities. 

By honing communication skills and fostering a trusted advisor mindset, aspiring executives cultivate mastery in public speaking and beat imposter syndrome. Your leadership becomes more strategic and inspiring.