Irene Salter, PhD

We often encounter situations in life and leadership where we have absolutely no control over an outcome that matters to us. Perhaps you’ve had the interview and are now waiting to see if you got the job. Or the grant application’s been submitted and you’re waiting to see if you get the money. In my case, In my case, my revised book proposal is now in my agent’s hands, and it’s up to her to match me with a publisher. Despite teaching this stuff, I did the exact wrong thing to manage my...

Your team comes back from the offsite fired up with new learnings and connections. Three weeks later, nothing has changed. That's not a motivation problem, and it's not on them. New behaviors learned somewhere else stay tied to that somewhere else, which is precisely why they don't survive contact with the office. I studied habits for my PhD and I still lost an entire year of hard-won change within nine months of coming home from my big year of travel. Here's the science of why, and what...

Have you ever had a moment where your mouth said one thing and your gut screamed another? A few months ago, I was wrapping up a beautiful sample session with a potential new client. Everything was flowing. And then, when it came time to share my rates, out came the old ones. The ones I'd promised myself I'd retired. What followed was a spiral — shame, justification, bargaining, and a lot of internal name-calling. And underneath all of it, one quiet question I didn't want to look at: What am I...