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Unlock a scientific approach for character and leadership development

We offer an intuitive, personalized path to grow character, pursue success in life and leadership, and bring positive change in the world.

Our Offerings

How can we serve you?

Mentora offers a transformative approach toward self-discovery, inner growth, and outer impact.

Guiding Individuals

If you’re searching for a scientific and practical path to success that nurtures both the material and spiritual aspects of your life, where you can build fellowship with a growing community of like-minded truth-seekers and create a meaningful life, then we invite you to explore the following ways in which we serve individuals like you.

  • Mentora LIFE – a membership-based community
  • Onsite Workshops – your journey to Inner Mastery, Outer Impact
    • Mastering the Five Core Energies
    • Leading from Your Inner Core
    • Advancing Humanity from the Inside-Out
  • LiFT – digital tools to facilitate personal growth and performance breakthroughs. Click here to read more about LiFT.

Strengthening Organizations

We help create inspired organizations where people come together joyfully to do their life’s best work in service of a noble purpose. We design performance acceleration, leadership development, and organizational transformation programs based on our distinctive Mentora Method, and deliver these programs through a combination of keynotes, workshops, coaching, and LiFT, our digital platform.

Building Changemakers
(Mentora Foundation)

At Mentora Foundation, our Institute’s non-profit arm, we are developing a global fellowship of changemakers who are committed to building a principled world by strengthening character and elevating the human spirit in their communities, professions, and nations, starting with their own self.

Building on the success of our Youth Changemaker pilot and our Mentora LIFE pilot in 2023, we are now creating Mentora Youth Changemaker chapters on college campuses around the world.

More coming soon!

Mentora offers a scientific pathway for character and leadership development rooted in a simple yet profound idea — that within each of us lies a space of highest potential, our inner core, and it is when we activate this core in ourselves and others that we create our greatest impact and bring positive, lasting change in the world.

What is your inner core?

The inner core is not an abstract idea; it is a deeply felt state that we enter by regulating our thoughts, feelings, mindsets, and intentions.

Nor is it a new idea; mystics across the ages have engaged in contemplative practices to connect with what they have intuited as their spirit or soul and express its qualities in their outer pursuits.

Fifteen years ago, our founder’s research identified five energies we all possess at our core. Today, findings across many scientific disciplines are validating the transformative possibilities in life and leadership of tapping into these five energies — Purpose, Wisdom, Growth, Love and Self-realization.

At Mentora, we are dedicated to helping people build fulfilling lives and become exemplary leaders by cultivating their five core energies to harmonize their inner and outer worlds, so they can operate with authenticity while maximizing their impact in a complicated, ever-changing world.

About Us

We help people build fulfilling lives and become exemplary leaders

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Our Method

At the heart of Mentora’s work lies a fresh, uplifting idea on what’s at the core of exemplary character, leadership, and changemaking. An idea that comes from the world’s ancient wisdom traditions and is being validated by today’s science.

What is Character?

Character in modern times has been approached as a set of virtues that we should seek to cultivate, one noble quality at a time. Humility, honesty, courage, compassion, perseverance, prudence…the list can be long and intimidating!

There’s another, more intuitive and personal way to understand and cultivate character — to see it as just one thing: the discipline of connecting with your inner core and letting it shine through in all you do.

Your inner core is the space of highest potential within you, from where your best self arises. When you are at your core, you are beyond ego, attachments and insecurities, and you transcend even your habits and personality. You are deeply committed, calm, curious, connected, and centered.

This is the Mentora way — of approaching character not as a set of traits to be acquired, but as a state to be activated.

What is Leadership?

In our founder Dr. Wadhwa’s book, “Inner Mastery, Outer Impact”, he describes leadership as an inner choice, rather than an outer dispensation. We define leadership as the discipline of bringing out the best in yourself and the best in others in all situations, in the service of a noble cause. This form of leadership is relevant to all roles, all moments — and across all levels of an organization.

This is where leadership connects with character. Because we are at our “best” when we go beyond ego, attachments, and insecurities to activate our inner core, that space from where our true nature arises.

That’s what exemplary leaders do — they activate a state of deep connection with their core and also help others get to their own core. In history’s transformative moments, certain leaders have rapidly lifted their people to high performance by igniting their core. During India’s nonviolent struggle for independence, Gandhi ignited a remarkable level of calmness in his followers; Churchill during WWII ignited courage in his people; Mother Teresa, compassion; Mandela, conciliation, and Steve Jobs, creativity. These are qualities people latently possess at their core.

What is Changemaking?

People who wish to drive change typically take an outward focus — to change people’s behavior by reforming the policies and procedures, the laws and leaders.

We’ve discovered that exemplary leaders across history, in contrast, affect change at a much deeper level. To reset people’s conduct, they work to reforming their character — to take people closer to their core, the better angels of their nature. Because when people are at their core, they will become open to change, and start to naturally do what’s just and wise and purposeful. Instead of telling people, “You’re bad! Change your behavior now!”, they say, in effect, “Look within — you have this beautiful core to you. You’re virtuous, you’re brave, you’re free. That’s the real you. Let’s go there.”

Whether you’re a parent seeking to teach a child, a movement maker seeking to change social behavior, a hospital administrator seeking to change the culture of your institution, or a business executive seeking to transform your team, the laws of how to inspire change in people are the same. We’ve identified 5 principles that lie at the heart of creating deep, long-lasting, virtuous change. Watch this short clip where our founder Dr. Wadhwa talks about changemaking at a keynote address in Philadelphia given to executives at Comcast, a leading media company.


The Mentora Method

Mentora’s approach to developing character and leadership involves the following steps:

  1. INNER CORE: Invite participants to frame the growth they are seeking into one simple quest — to activate the inner core, the space of highest potential within each individual, in themselves and in those they work with and serve. This is the foundation for success in life and leadership.
  2. 5 CORE ENERGIES: Guide participants on how they can get to their inner core by cultivating the 5 energies — Purpose, Wisdom, Growth, Love, and Self-realization. Show them how they can tackle their leadership challenges by activating these 5 core energies in themselves and others.
  3. 25+ CORE ACTIONS: Teach participants a set of simple, intuitive actions they can execute — typically in 5-7 seconds! — to activate the 5 core energies. Mentora’s research has revealed 3-7 actions for each of the 5 core energies that are most commonly used by exemplary leaders to achieve breakthrough performance — so we typically teach these 25. We also have 25 advanced actions to help participants continue to lift their game. By mixing and matching these actions, you can create countless behaviors that help you respond in the most effective manner to the ever-new challenges you face at work and in life.
  4. PLAN-PREP-PERFORM: Using Mentora’s digital platform LiFT, support participants in planning and preparing for any key event by selecting the intention they will set, energies they will activate, and actions they will execute at the event. By doing this kind of plan-and-prep before the event, our research at Columbia Business School and Mentora is showing, participants can double their performance (likelihood of goal-attainment) in a short period of a few weeks.

The Science behind the Mentora Method

Mentora is blazing a new scientific trail in developing an intuitive and personal approach to character and leadership development, by:

  1. Integrating the latest science of human nature, across psychotherapy, psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, behavioral economics, and medicine.
  2. Maintaining a library of 1,000 moments of exemplary leadership, from among everyday and epic heroes — speeches, presentations, decision-making meetings, difficult conversations, conflicts, and more.
  3. Running experiments with students and executives in the flow of life and work.

Our work draws on universal principles found in the world’s great spiritual traditions. Through our scientific model, we are validating and contemporizing these principles and translating them into simple actions. We also offer digital tools to implement these actions designed using the following design principles offered by new science of learning:

  • Break complex skills into small actions, to facilitate atomic habit formation.
  • Learn and practice in the flow of life and work.
  • Pause before major events to get calm and centered, creating space between stimulus and response.
  • Walk into situations with the right intention, thoughts, and feelings.
  • Be planful about the scenarios that may unfold and the actions you will take.
  • Focus on achieving incremental improvements, one event at a time, instead of an overnight transformation.

Contact us if you’d like to learn more about the science behind Mentora’s leadership-in-flow model, the inner core, 5 core energies, Mentora actions, Mentora’s changemaking principles, the pursuit of excellence, and more.

What Drives Us

We wake up at Mentora every day to strive to do our life’s most beautiful work, because we see a critical need, at this critical hour. Here is what fuels us.

There is a big gap between who we are — and who we aspire to be.

  1. Over the last few centuries, humankind has taken big strides to build a prosperous world. Improved literacy, more freedom, greater life expectancy, lower poverty. While more advancements are still needed along these metrics…
  2. Our outer prosperity is concealing our inner poverty. Limiting beliefs, thoughts, values, emotions, habits, and lifestyles that are causing people today to operate far below their full potential in terms of high-performance, happiness, health and harmony in relationships.
  3. The string of failures and fault-lines buffeting our world today are linked to our inner poverty. The environmental crisis, social schisms, geopolitical tensions, rising income inequality, homelessness, and more are stemming from failures in the character of leadership and citizenship.
  4. Conversely, we are also seeing a surge of interest across all generations for self-discovery, for spiritual growth, for a shared humanity, for the pursuit of excellence, for living a meaningful life, for change and reform — for taking stewardship over one’s life and building a better world.
  5. A big gap has thus emerged between who we are today vs. who we aspire to be — the inner struggles we’re facing vs. what we’re seeking from life. This is not a material gap — it is a character gap.

The growing complexity of today’s world is further expanding this gap.

  1. The pace of change today is seering as the world becomes more complicated and uncertain. Every new disruption, like AI, requires us to significantly re-orient our relationship with life and work.
  2. Our modern-day lifestyle is making us ceaselessly active from the moment we wake up to the moment we part with our phone to put our weary self to sleep. We are awash in information, and disinformation, and engaged in a battery of rapid-fire digital interactions.
  3. All of this is adding to the stress, anxiety, and confusion we feel, and our sense of being unmoored. It is keeping us from deep engagement with life, with people and with our own higher self.
  4. And yet, this is just the time when we need to draw on our highest faculties to make complex moral decisions on how we coral, contain, and capitalize on technologies that hold both great promise and great peril for humanity — AI, drones, CRISPR and beyond.
  5. Thus, this gap between who we are and who we aspire to be comes at just the time in human history where we most need strength of character to take on the new challenges.

We need a whole new approach to living, learning, and leading that draws on our deepest and noblest human capacities.

There are vast untapped faculties in each of us, and it is when we learn to tap these that we will start to close this gap and ascend to our highest aspirations. We need to take a fresh look at how we approach our pursuit of success in life. We see five principles as paramount.

  • Our pursuit of learning can no longer be limited to discrete chapters in our life — a 2-4 year degree, a 5-day retreat, a 3-day workshop, or an online course.
  • Instead, life itself needs to be our classroom, and every experience, our teacher. We need to be able to learn as we perform, in the flow of life and work.
  • This way, all parts of our life — all roles, all moments — will unite into one common quest: to discover and activate the best in us, and the best in others, in the pursuit of a noble purpose.
  • We need to go beyond focusing on what we say and do, to also focus on our underlying thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
  • Leaders should seek to not only manage people’s behavior, but also to mold their character by silently guiding their feelings, thoughts, and intentions.
  • Teachers should aim to not only engage their audience’s mind, but to win their heart, stir their spirit, and help them embody the principles they are learning through practice.
  • Dr. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, described the central reason for his grandfather’s success — every time he faced a challenge, he would “return to his soul” to find an answer. We, too, can benefit from this practice.
  • Besides the knowledge and experience we pick up from the outside through our senses and intellect, there’s another faculty that we should tap in navigating life’s choices — our intuition.
  • Intuition isn’t an entitlement. Emotional surges, attachments, and limiting beliefs can blind us to our pure inklings within. But beyond the grip of these distractions and distortions lies our one true friend — our inner voice. It speaks to us when we get to operate with noble intention and calm perception.
  • Some people pursue only material success. Others divide their lives into two parallel tracks — the material and the spiritual. We need to build one integrated track where our material pursuits serve to elevate our spirit — and are guided by our spirit. 
  • Accomplishing this requires us to challenge the instinct to rush into action, to challenge the notion that it is through action and reaction that value is created. We need to create the space in our life for reflection, rejuvenation, and reconnection.
  • Over time, this infusion of the spiritual into our material life will get us in flow — where, once we’ve done our methodical planning and agenda-setting, we can put these aside to adapt, moment by moment, to what is unfolding in and around us.
  • We are trained to excel, to strive to be number one. In doing so, we may miss out on supporting and celebrating others’ success, and in forging collective success. We have been told the more power we have, the better. We need to learn the value of voluntarily sharing power, of surrendering power, and of helping others acquire power.
  • We take on either-or viewpoints. Situations are either good or bad. People are either heroes or villains, friends or enemies. This restricts us from seeing all facets of truth in a more integrative light. To build the diamond of truth, we need to extract what’s true even in opposing ideas. 
  • We hunger for immediate understanding, validation, and rewards. This makes us do the big, visible, instantly gratifying things, like the plucking of already ripe fruits. We need to also value the silent, small, selfless acts of sowing seeds and watering plants that will reap fruits in future seasons.

The more we advance along these five principles, the more we will find that we haven’t changed at all — we’ve only activated our own true nature. 

At this pivotal hour in history, Mentora is putting these five principles in action in the scientific approach we’ve developed to help people grow their character, become exemplary leaders, and bring positive change in the world.

OUR TEAM

Founder’s Story

From the time he was ten, Mentora’s founder, Hitendra Wadhwa, felt a keen hunger to investigate some of the hardest and yet most exhilarating questions in life. Where did I come from? Where will I go, upon death? Is there justice, order, wisdom in the universe? What is my highest potential? How can I forge a connection to not simply my family, community, or nation, or humanity — but to all of life? He gained much clarity by studying the world’s mystic traditions, tapping scriptural wisdom from his father’s bookshelf and having conversations with a community of monks. At seventeen, he seriously considered dropping out of school to become a monk and dedicate himself to deeper truth-seeking. But life had other adventures in store for him. Little did he know then that ideas of soul-force, universal love and cosmic intelligence that lie at the heart of mysticism would be the perfect foundation on which to build, decades later, a fresh, innovative approach to character and leadership development.

Hitendra majored in mathematics at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he was recognized as the top mathematics student in Delhi University. Later, he received an MBA and Ph.D. from MIT Sloan, specializing in building mathematical models for solving business problems. He then chose to leave mathematics to pursue management consulting, but mathematics never left him. Our models and methods at Mentora for developing character and leadership are actively informed by the ethos of mathematics — forming precise definitions, reducing ideas to their core essentials, discovering and resolving paradoxes, finding connections across seemingly unrelated domains, and building complex structures from simple elements.

In 2004, after stints in consulting and entrepreneurship, Hitendra arrived to teach at Columbia Business School. On weekdays, he would teach classes on Marketing, and on Strategy Consulting Skills. In the evenings, and on weekends and holidays, he went around the country connecting and collaborating with leading psychologists like Dr. Carol Dweck and psychotherapists like Dr. David Burns and Dr. Dan Siegel. His goal was to translate the frontiers of science into a practical pathway to success that merged life with leadership, insight with inspiration, principles with practice, science with spirituality, profit with purpose, inner with outer, and East with West. He launched this as a class called Personal Leadership & Success (PLS) in 2008. Within a few years, PLS became wildly oversubscribed, winning him the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence at Columbia, and gaining critical acclaim in leading media.

From this work, in 2011, Mentora Institute was born.

Mentora’s principles and tools have continued to advance in the years since our founding, culminating in Hitendra’s critically acclaimed book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact, and the imminent launch of Mentora LiFT, a platform for sparking performance breakthroughs in the flow of life and work. With each passing year, the path we have designed to developing character and leadership and advancing humanity has become more complete, more intuitive, and more personalized. And by now, over 10,000 executives, students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and formerly incarcerated citizens from over 50 countries have taken the Inner Mastery, Outer Impact journey with us.

“Professor Wadhwa is not only a phenomenal educator and storyteller, but he is also a great human being. His delivery was absolutely great. From his responsiveness to our questions and follow-ups to the content in his book and putting together an outstanding group of speakers, everything contributed to my personal growth and introspection, making me want to become the best self I can be.”

“This program has been transformational and transcendental. I went in with an understanding of the concept, but Professor Wadhwa created space to practice and dive deeper into the soul, mind, and body to explore our being and us as people and leaders. Remarkable.”

“Professor Wadhwa is an absolute light in this world. His wisdom and perspective can open your eyes, heart, and mind and shift your perspective. Within the span of a few days, I experienced a transformation unlike anything I have ever experienced before — and I know that this never would have happened had the class not been led by the wonderful Hitendra.”

Our team has strong track records in C-suite roles, building successful businesses, psychology, executive education, coaching, consulting, technology, research, and analytics.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR TEAM
Rob Miller's head shot image
Rob Miller
President

Rob Miller

President

Rob is a seasoned entrepreneur with four startups and three co-founded ventures under his belt. His track record includes four exits, one at a “unicorn” valuation, primarily in regulated industries and tech. He’s an active angel investor helping startups realize their growth potential through Lean Startup principles.     An educator at Miami University and mentor through various non-profits, Rob also brings military experience as a former U.S. Army cavalry officer. He holds MBAs from Columbia University and UC Berkeley.  Rob completed Professor Wadhwa’s Personal Leadership Course over a decade ago, sparking a transformation in the way he led his companies.  Based in Chicago, Rob is married with three children. He’s an instrument rated private pilot, primarily flying rugged tailwheel airplanes in the backcountry. Rob holds an amateur radio license, and enjoys travel and fitness.
Petra Nemeth Senior Executive Coach at Mentora
Petra Nemeth
Executive Director

Petra Nemeth

Executive Director

Petra has been with Mentora since its inception, having helped architect Mentora’s innovative digital learning programs and directed many of the company’s marketing, strategy and content-driven initiatives. She leads Mentora’s Coaching Practice. Clients she has recently served include Harlem Children’s Zone, H-E-B, and The Holdsworth Center. Petra brings to these roles a rich set of C-Suite experiences. A former media and entertainment executive, she has worked extensively with brands, has managed growth initiatives across multiple media platforms, and has affected organizational change from the inside out. She held the roles of President of Time Inc’s This Old House Ventures, Executive Vice President at Bertelsmann Inc., and Head of Bertelsmann Content Network. She was also Vice President, Television, in the early days of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group, and an investigative TV reporter in Germany. Petra holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In her spare time, she is passionately involved in her three kids’ school district and actively practices karate and meditation.
Paul Ingram Senior Faculty at Mentora Institute and Kravis Professor of Business at Columbia Business School
Paul Ingram
Senior Faculty, Mentora Institute

Paul Ingram

Senior Faculty, Mentora Institute

Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School. His PhD is from Cornell University, and he was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University before coming to Columbia. He has held visiting professorships at Tel Aviv University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Toronto. The courses he teaches on management and strategy benefit from his research on organizations in the United States, Canada, Israel, Scotland, China, Korea and Australia. His research has been published in more than seventy articles, book chapters and books. His publications have received numerous distinctions, including the Gould Prize from the American Journal of Sociology, and best paper awards in the areas of Organization and Management Theory, and Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Ingram's current research examines the intersection between culture and social networks. Recent papers investigate questions such as the role of value similarity to foster business networks, determinants and outcomes of individuals’ fit in organizational cultures, and influences on ethical decision making. He has served as President of the College of Organization Science of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). He has served as an Associate Editor for Academy of Management Discoveries, a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology, a senior editor for Organization Science, an Associate Editor for Management Science and on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly and Strategic Organization. Paul’s undergraduate degree is from Brock University where received the Governor General’s Award as the top graduating student. In 2004 he received the Distinguished Graduate Award from Brock’s Faculty of Business. At the Columbia Business School, Paul has received the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, won the Commitment to Excellence Award, voted by graduating EMBA students seven times, and thrice been chosen by graduating EMBA students to deliver the keynote speech at their commencement ceremony. He has consulted on issues of leadership, organizational design and strategy to leading companies in the finance, health care, insurance, energy, arts, legal, education, and consumer products industries.
Dr. Heidi Grant Senior Advisor at Mentora, and social cognitive psychologist
Heidi Grant
Senior Advisor

Heidi Grant

Senior Advisor

Dr. Heidi Grant is a social cognitive psychologist specializing in the study of leadership, motivation and performance.  She is the author of five internationally bestselling books, including 9 Things Successful People Do Differently, and has been on Thinkers50's global list of management thought leaders to know since 2017. As Senior Advisor at Mentora, Heidi guides our go-to-market strategy and the design of our service offerings. As Senior Faculty, she delivers leadership workshops and inspirational keynotes to client audiences.  In her roles as Chief Science Officer at Neuroleadership Institute and Director of Learning Research & Development for EY Americas, Heidi has designed award-winning, high impact behavior change programs to address feedback, inclusion, unconscious bias, growth mindset, speaking up, purpose, influence, teaming and leading through uncertainty.  Her former clients include Microsoft, IBM, Intel, CVS, Kaiser Permanente, JP Morgan Chase, Adobe, Merck, Oracle, Cigna and Spotify. Heidi also serves as Associate Director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. She received her PhD from Columbia University, working with Carol Dweck (the Stanford Professor who coined the term “growth mindset.”) She is an in-demand speaker on the topics of mindset, motivation and influence, and has contributed frequently to the Harvard Business Review,CBS Mornings, Forbes, Fast Company and The Atlantic.  Her 2019 TED talk on motivating others to help you has been viewed over 3 million times.

OUR IMPACT

We’re committed to advancing the science and practice of breakthrough performance

This can be seen in the critical acclaim our work has received and the tangible results we are driving with our tools and training. Most importantly, it can be felt through the stirring stories and testimonials of transformation, both at work and in life, shared by our participants over the years.

Performance Boosts

How can I accelerate trust-building? Resolve a conflict in my team? Motivate a demoralized workforce? Gain buy-in from the executive team? Offer constructive feedback? Align different stakeholders?

LiFT, our platform for accelerating performance breakthroughs, delivers an immediate (average) boost of 20% in performance along goals like these. The average performance boost grows over time to 135% after ten uses.

  • Executives using LiFT for 6+ minutes see a 200% improvement in performance vs. those who use it for 1 minute or less.
  • Setting a positive intention in LiFT raises performance by 40%.
  • Doing Mentora’s 2-min meditations to self-soothe and visualize people dynamics before entering the meeting boosts performance by 70%.

Behavioral Shifts (Pre, Post)

Mentora’s training on the 5 core energies and 25+ actions boosts people’s commitment to engage in the right behaviors. Here are examples of behavior shifts our work has inspired across organizations like Ericsson, Accenture, Kraft Heinz, and Deloitte.

% of participants committed to using this action

Action Name Pre-assessment Post-Assessment
Push, Pull, Pause, or Pivot 38% 100%
Embark on a Hero’s Journey 37% 75%
Shift the Mindset 33% 100%
Disarm 47% 100%
Fuse Opposites 31% 85%

Managerial Performance

SAP managers who took our Inner Mastery, Outer Impact training achieved a 2x performance improvement vs. a control group of similar managers. Read Fast Company’s coverage on this program:

“Mentora’s training has been very inspiring. Simple but powerful concepts to help us become the best version of ourselves as leaders.”
Manager, SAP

Breakthrough Stories

Emma, a Senior Marketing Manager at a consumer product company, had a big presentation to make at her organization’s monthly sales townhall, with almost a hundred people in attendance. “This event triggered immediate dread for me,” she reflected, “I have a fear of public speaking, and had never spoken in front of such a large audience.” She decided to prepare for the event using LiFT. “This practice,” she later shared, “gave me the opportunity to internalize the actions I needed to leverage that day. I was also able to turn the negative emotions I was experiencing — stress, anxiety, fear — into positive ones.” As she began her presentation, an unexpected issue forced her to speak off-the-cuff without notes or slides. But because of her preparation, this did not phase her. She moved forward with her presentation, flowing with her thoughts and finishing strong. Several attendees later praised her performance, and the sales leadership team invited her to do her presentation again for the entire organization.

The Director of R&D at Matt’s firm suddenly resigned after some employees raised their voices against his management style. Matt had only been with the company 7 months, but he felt confident he was a good alternative for marketing leadership at the company. He arranged a meeting with the CEO. In setting his intention for the meeting, Matt concluded he did not want to come across as pushy, nor as though he was trying to take advantage of the situation. Instead, he used Forge Common Purpose to remind the CEO of their overall marketing goal, and Solicit Advice to get the CEO’s guidance on how they as a company could resolve the issues and move forward on their goal. He then used Anticipate Assess and Adjust to highlight key risks, and Practice Humble Confidence to offer his ideas and suggestions and to reassure the CEO that he was comfortable with all the marketing projects underway. As the meeting was ending, the CEO asked that Matt prepare to assume leadership over marketing as he wasn’t confident the other Director could be counted on for leadership. “It was my most successful meeting in my seven months at the company,” Matt later reflected.

As part of the due diligence on an M&A deal, Penelope had to bring together multiple lawyers across several time zones and countries to review financial statements prepared by an external auditor. One action she prepared herself on was Push Pull Pause Pivot. A question raised by a participant about the accuracy of a minor number threatened to derail the meeting right at the start. Penelope tried to figure out the answer while everyone was waiting in silence, but was unsuccessful. Without getting flustered, Penelope pulled back to acknowledge the issue and committed to work with the auditor on it. She suggested they walk through the other numbers in more detail and then pivoted them to focus on the disclosures and footnotes. “In the past,” Penelope concluded, “I would have gotten defensive if someone pointed out an issue with the numbers. Instead, I was calm, thoughtful and adaptable, and was able to make the participants feel their concerns had been heard, switch to an area of their expertise, and keep the meeting on topic. Real progress was made.”

Adam was assigned to work with a new client. He had heard stories from colleagues about them being a difficult client, and this was confirmed in a few tense early interactions he had with them. “This began to worry me since I would need to deliver multiple deliverables to them under a tight timeline,” he shared. And now, he was bracing himself for an important meeting with them. In his preparation for the meeting, he picked the goal of dealing with a difficult client, and prepared to use the actions of Disarm, Express Thoughtfully, and Create the Right Frame. “The meeting started off a bit rocky,” Adam reflected, “The client had negative feedback on something else that threatened to derail the conversation.” Adam respectfully expressed that he had heard their concern, that this was a topic his team too was keenly looking into, and assured them he would address it. He then stated he wanted to make sure they could all focus on the intent of this meeting and put their full attention on it. This wouldn’t ordinarily be an easy thing to do, but the prep had helped: “My preparation allowed me to validate their concerns while expressing myself clearly and thoughtfully to get back on track.” By doing this, he was able to improve the trust between him and the client, leading to a great outcome for the meeting and a new positive dynamic with the client. 

Testimonials

“I was surprised to see how someone who is considered a difficult employee opened up when I practiced the action of Affiliation…that conversation was completely unexpected, and I think I have strengthened my relationship with him.”


Senior Manager, Capital One

“The post-meeting review helped me acknowledge the power of the prep and to stay honest with myself about how I showed up – I found myself less inclined to post-hoc self-judgment (moments of “failure” became opportunities for growth and I found pride in moments where I honored my intention and values). I cannot express the immense benefit I see and feel by just acknowledging intention (and tying it to a value).”

Vice President, Business Development, Wilton Re

“What I have learned in this program will improve the performance of our team. These are tools, actions, and tactics that I will apply in my day-to-day work and life.”


Senior Manager at Accenture

“This program has exceeded my expectations. Not only did I learn a great deal about myself and how my thoughts, behaviors, and actions have been formed over time, but I am also walking away with clear actions that I can take to become a better leader and a better person overall.”


Strategy & Innovation Leader at Cisco

“After this program, I feel like a fog has lifted from in front of my eyes. I have a clearer vision of ‘who’ I want to be — as a leader, a partner, and above all, as a human being.”


Columbia Business School Executive MBA student

“Mentora delivers the profound insight that inner mastery is both a powerful multiplier of an individual’s core strengths, intellect, and talent as well as a jumping off point for personal growth and organizational impact. It is a game changer! The program design and body of work uniquely combines the foundational leadership principles with the latest developments in neuroscience. The depth and breadth of the material and instruction provides a deeper understanding of each individual’s capacity to reach our highest potential.”


Business Manager, Global Marketing and Strategy Group at Xerox Corporation

“Inner Mastery, Outer Impact has helped me ‘come up higher’ in my way of thinking in so many areas of my life, besides my career. I would recommend it to anyone wishing to advance their skills, not only as a leader, but as a better human being in this world.”


Program Manager at Lululemon

“My own style of working on projects has changed. I can see the bigger picture. Everything goes through certain filters now and I work in a more structured way. Delegation has improved. Maybe, I am more of a businessman than a professional manager now.”


Senior Solution Architect at Ericsson

Insights

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