LEADERSHIP
Our definition of
Courageously using your talents
to make a way for others
to courageously use theirs
What's at Stake
Too many capable leaders are being pushed into survival mode.
How a leader leads doesn't stay contained to the workplace. A team that's engaged and trusted tends to innovate more, and it also tends to go home lighter, showing up better for their families and communities, not worn down by another day of reactive leadership. That's the ripple effect at stake here, and it's exactly what our definition of leadership is about: using your talents to make a way for others to use theirs.
Right now, that ripple is harder to protect than it used to be. The AI race, geopolitical volatility, polarization, and constant productivity paranoia are pushing more leaders into what we call survival-mode leadership: reflexive, reactive, running on instinct instead of intention. It is not a personal failing. It is what pressure does. But left unaddressed, it costs leaders their clarity, costs teams their trust, and costs organizations and communities the ripple effect capable leadership was supposed to create.
Getting out of survival-mode leadership, out of what we call Swirl, rarely happens by staring harder at the problem from the same angle. It takes a different vantage point, an external mirror, to see what's actually driving it and find real traction again.
My Approach
Most leaders don't need more skills. They need a different vantage point, and the traction that follows.
I don't fix leaders. I help them see.
I work like a leadership radiologist: I help you surface the patterns that are holding you back, so you can act on what's actually there instead of guessing at it.
That happens through a simple arc:
-
Diagnostic — a mirror into your leadership or team patterns under pressure; we'll use one or more of the following.
-
External Mirror: How you look through others' eyes, especially under pressure. Utilizes the Leadership Growth Profile 360, grounded in vertical development theory.
-
Structural Mirror: What's shaping your decisions and behavior beneath the surface. Utilizes our Leadership Pattern Scan diagnostic.
-
Embodied Mirror: What your hands know that your words haven't found yet. Explored through LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®.
-
Relational Mirror: What the system reveals in the connections between people, not in any one person alone. Utilizes Dr. Peter Hawkins's Systemic Team Coaching.
-
-
Insight — understanding what's actually driving your leadership patterns and the connections between them
-
Conversation — determining the best place to focus your change efforts and how to capitalize on your steady areas
-
Experiment — trying something specific, in real conditions, and learning from what happens
The tools generate the shared language and self-awareness. The coaching is what turns that into traction and gets you out of survival-mode leadership.
Our Path
This isn't a straight line. You might be steady in how you lead under pressure and still in swirl when it comes to delegating, or steady on strategy but in swirl on capacity. Development moves like a spiral, not a staircase, uneven across different parts of your leadership.
Stretch moments like a promotion, a reorg, or a bigger scope can send even a steady leader back into swirl. That's not a step backward, it's often a sign the stakes just changed shape. The practice we build together is what shortens the way back to steady each time.
Your Partner
Teri Schmidt is an ICF-certified executive and leadership coach and the founder of Strong Leaders Serve. She brings more than 20 years of experience across corporate, nonprofit, and educational settings, including her time at JetBlue Airways and KPMG, where she led performance consulting and learning initiatives from root cause analysis through design and evaluation. That work shaped how she coaches today: sustained results do not come solely from adding more effort. They come from understanding what is actually driving behavior and performance. Teri most often partners with mid to senior level leaders navigating high-stakes transitions, the moments when what used to work no longer does, as well as teams whose friction lives in the connections between people or in the system itself, not in any one individual. Her coaching is grounded, direct, and focused on helping leaders and teams see clearly. Rather than offering surface-level advice, she slows down fast-moving problems, examines the assumptions behind decisions, and connects patterns across situations that often go unnoticed. This helps leaders understand how their own thinking, reactions, and habits are shaping team dynamics and outcomes, so they can lead with more consistency under pressure, strengthen trust, and improve results in ways that actually hold over time. As a certified Leadership Growth Profile coach, Teri uses tools like the LGP 360 and CliftonStrengths to give leaders specific, research-backed insight into the patterns most impacting their team's performance, engagement, and learning, insight they uncover together, not advice handed down. With teams, she draws on Systemic Team Coaching to work with the connections between people rather than individuals alone, and often incorporates LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® to help teams explore complex issues in ways traditional discussion cannot reach. Teri also hosts the Strong Leaders Serve podcast, where she helps leaders build compassionate, high-performing workplaces without burning out. An Ironman triathlete who finds renewal in nature, Teri enjoys backpacking, camping, and the occasional rock climb. She lives outside of Dallas with her family.