Stanley Ward, ACC, PhD - Expert

I am a leadership coach near Dallas, TX, and I'm convinced that we all win when leaders create BOTH healthy results and healthy relationships.

During my Ph.D. studies in leadership, I did more than learn about "leadership." I discovered a host of LIFE CHANGING skills and concepts. I gained self-awareness about mindsets and behaviors that were holding me back, and I had to overcome some significant personal challenges along the way. Here's a shortlist of some of the things I discovered:

• By routinely "avoiding" or "accommodating" conflict, I'm not helping myself.
• There is a difference between servant leadership and martyr leadership.
• Success deserves to be celebrated rather than merely expected.
• Small experiments in pursuit of a goal can produce significant and lasting changes.
• Life goes better when we use our strengths, correct our liabilities, and make peace with our weaknesses.
• Harmful stress is a real thing, and managing it is not a sign of weakness.
• We discover what our actual core values are when they cost us something - and paying that price makes us richer, not poorer.
• Change is part of life. How we respond to those changes determines whether the change is positive or negative.
• Making change "stick" requires self-awareness, desire, knowledge, skills, and reinforcements.
• Leadership is about so much more than personal excellence.
• Leadership includes seeing opportunities for positive change that others miss and helping people do the hard work needed to make that vision a reality.
• Being powerfully present with people requires deep listening - and it can help them take hard steps for progress.

Those same discoveries are what I want for my readers, coaching clients, and students (I'm also a professor). Moreover, I want them to benefit from applying these discoveries in their daily lives to experience success both at work and at home. That's why I founded Influence Coaching, LLC in 2014 and have provided leadership coaching services for both men and women in various for-profit and nonprofit settings. Most of my clients fall into one of two groups. Some are "nice guys" or "servant leaders" struggling to impact their organization significantly. Others are highly competitive leaders who've realized there is more in life than their personal success. Many of them are ready for personal change because they are beginning to experience burnout's personal and professional costs.

When I'm not pondering and applying these lessons, I enjoy mountain biking, reading comic books, practicing Tai Chi, and writing with a fountain pen. The BIG NEWS is that my wife and I are recent empty-nesters with two beautiful daughters making their way in the big, wide world. Once COVID is behind us all, we hope to take a river cruise in Europe.