Leadership Revolution

What does it really mean to lead in a world of constant change? According to Lori Mazan, co-founder and president of Sounding Board Inc., leadership in the twenty-first century is not about memorizing a checklist of traits or mastering a static model. It's about embracing *dynamic development*—the ability to grow, adapt, and evolve within unpredictable contexts. In her book Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders, she argues that both individuals and organizations must abandon outdated management paradigms and instead cultivate *capacity*, not just *skills*—the mental, emotional, and strategic agility to thrive amid uncertainty.

For decades, leadership books promised easy-to-follow formulas: Five traits of success. Ten habits of great managers. But Mazan found that these prescriptive methods rarely work. Through her career coaching executives—from Fortune 100 leaders to start-up founders—she discovered that rigid frameworks often push people into roles that conflict with their authentic selves. The result? Burnout, disconnection, and stagnation. Her model, inspired by decades of executive coaching and her practice of Tai Chi Chuan, reframes leadership as a *living practice*—one built on awareness, balance, and contextual understanding.

From Checklists to Capacity

Mazan calls this shift a move from *horizontal* to *vertical* development. Horizontal growth means adding more tools and skills—more things you can “do.” Vertical growth, on the other hand, means expanding your capacity—how you *think,* *decide,* and *respond* to complex situations. (In similar fashion, Harvard researcher Robert Kegan also described “transformational” learning as expanding one’s meaning-making capacity rather than just adding knowledge.) Leadership, Mazan insists, is no longer about what you know—it’s about how you use what you know when the rules change mid-game.

The book unfolds like a coaching engagement—each chapter representing a “session” that moves you further along the journey. You don’t just *learn about* leadership—you *experience* the psychology of change. Part I (“Clarity”) dismantles the myths of leadership and helps you identify your *Big Leap*—the bold transformation you need to make. Part II (“Challenge”) explores the uncomfortable middle: letting go of old thinking, breaking through fear, and learning through failure. And Part III (“Impact”) ties it all together, showing how to create lasting change and build cultures that promote continuous growth, alignment, and self-reliance.

The Coaching Mindset Revolution

At the heart of Mazan’s revolution is the belief that everyone—not just the C-suite—deserves the benefits of executive coaching. She and her co-founder Christine Tao built Sounding Board around this premise: democratizing leadership development through virtual, scalable technology while preserving the human partnership between coach and coachee. Coaching, in this view, is not about giving answers but about becoming a *thinking partner*—someone who helps you challenge assumptions, reframe problems, and get clarity on what truly matters. “Everyone needs a sounding board,” Tao writes in the foreword, capturing the ethos that leadership development must be accessible, contextual, and individualized.

Mindset, Movement, and Modernization

Mazan frequently compares leadership growth to Tai Chi, highlighting concepts such as “the unity of opposites”—balancing authenticity with adaptability, confidence with humility, doing with being. For her, leading is an embodied practice: it requires awareness, presence, and willingness to enter the unknown. Like a martial artist adjusting to each unique sparring partner, a modern leader must read the context and select from a repertoire of strategies—not rely on a single winning move.

This metaphor underpins the book’s structure. Each coaching “session” begins with a snippet of dialogue and ends with reflective questions you can apply immediately. The message is always actionable: transformation doesn’t happen during meetings but in between them—in the choices you make, the habits you unlearn, the risks you take. Mazan’s approach bridges the personal and the organizational, showing how your inner growth directly shapes your team’s resilience and innovation.

Why This Revolution Matters

Why does this matter now? Because the workplace has changed forever. The pandemic accelerated remote work and shattered traditional hierarchies. Generational diversity, digital transformation, and rising expectations for inclusivity have made old leadership models obsolete. Leaders now face complexity previously reserved for CEOs—ethical dilemmas, hybrid teams, constant disruption. Mazan calls this the “democratization of complexity”: everyone must think and act like a leader. The Leadership Revolution, then, isn’t a single person’s transformation—it’s an organizational evolution. It’s about designing ecosystems of coaching, alignment, and capacity-building that make leadership a collective, continuous practice. In short, Mazan argues, the future belongs to leaders who can think dynamically, act courageously, and learn endlessly—leaders who are ready to take the Big Leap.

Imagine being told that to be a great leader you must be *charismatic*—even though you’re naturally quiet and analytical. That pressure to fit a cookie-cutter ideal, Lori Mazan argues, has derailed countless aspiring leaders. Her concept of the Big Leap challenges this myth by redefining leadership authenticity. The Big Leap is your unique transformation beyond conventional paradigms, the bold challenge that aligns who you are with how you lead.

Authenticity Meets Adaptability

Mazan distinguishes between rigid “authenticity” and flexible self-expression. Being yourself doesn’t mean broadcasting your unfiltered personality—it means integrating authenticity with strategy. Using the Tai Chi notion of the “unity of opposites,” she says, great leaders blend truthfulness with role requirements, expressing their authenticity in a way that fits the context. Her father’s “green suit” metaphor illustrates this balance: he wore the uniform when needed but added a distinct green suit to express individuality. Leaders today, in Mazan’s view, must find their own “green suit”—a style of authenticity that harmonizes self-expression with their professional role.

The Platinum Rule of Leadership

Old leadership thinking was modeled after parenting—treat everyone the same, be consistent, and assume loyalty. That worked in the post-war era of long corporate tenures. But today’s diverse workplace, with multiple generations, cultures, and perspectives, demands nuance. Mazan replaces the Golden Rule (“Treat others as you’d want to be treated”) with the Platinum Rule: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” True leadership, she argues, lies in understanding and adapting to individual needs, not replicating your preferences. Consistency now means consistent empathy, not uniform treatment.

Coaching’s Secret Weapon: Individualization

When Mazan began coaching in the 1990s, coaching was viewed as a “secret weapon” for struggling executives—a discreet remedial service used behind closed doors. She helped redefine it as a developmental tool for growth, relevant at every level. The shift mirrors her leadership philosophy: success is not about fitting into an external mold, but about amplifying your inherent strengths. One of her clients, for example, stopped pretending to be outgoing and built influence instead by mastering clear, deliberate communication—staying true to his analytical nature. The Big Leap for each leader is personal: it’s the journey from comfort to authenticity, from imitation to impact.

“If it’s not a gasp, it’s not a leap.” Mazan trains coaches to look for that visceral reaction—the moment when a question hits so deeply it takes your breath away.

In practice, this means asking catalytic questions and identifying transformations that feel both exhilarating and terrifying. A real Big Leap demands courage, commitment, and often discomfort. As Mazan reminds both coaches and leaders, growth starts where comfort ends.

To leap forward, you must first release the past. In Chapter 2, Mazan argues that the greatest barrier to progress isn’t lack of will—it’s attachment to outdated beliefs and systems. Most leaders, she observes, were raised in organizations that prized compliance, hierarchy, and predictability. But those models no longer fit. True development requires the willingness to let go—not only of old practices, but also of the identity built around them.

From Compliance to Curiosity

After OSHA’s formation in 1971, corporate training became synonymous with compliance: tick the box, follow the rules, meet requirements. Decades later, most performance systems still carry this legacy. Mazan calls this the “compliance mentality”—an obsession with last year’s behavior instead of tomorrow’s potential. By measuring skill completion instead of capability growth, organizations discourage experimentation. Quoting Tai Chi philosophy, she writes: “You’ll never be a good martial artist if you only have one push.” The same applies to leadership—overusing what worked before stifles learning.

Escaping the Boxes

Tools like the Myers-Briggs test once helped managers understand personalities, but Mazan warns against using them as identity cages. Her critique of the “Popeye mentality”—“I am what I am, and that’s all that I am”—shows how self-labeling can block growth. She prefers behavioral frameworks like “Social Styles,” which focus on observable actions rather than fixed types. Leadership, she insists, is about adapting behavior strategically, not defending your inherent traits.

Delegation as Detachment

Mazan likens learning to delegate to learning a new martial art movement. Many new managers cling to tasks—“I can do it faster”—until they realize delegation *is* their job. Like her Tai Chi teacher who told her to stop using her favorite move, Mazan reminds leaders that overattachment to any personal strength becomes a weakness. Real progress, whether in a dojo or a boardroom, comes when you stop clinging to what worked yesterday.

Ultimately, letting go is less about loss than liberation. It’s about creating mental space for new ways of thinking. As she writes, “The reality is that letting go of old ideas is the true path to unlocking potential.”

Once you release outdated ideas, the next challenge is clarity: What do you actually want? Borrowing from Lewis Carroll’s famous quote, Mazan warns that without direction, “any road will do.” Many leaders chase what others have told them to want—status, titles, or the next big role—without understanding their deeper motivations. Coaching helps them uncover these “eye-of-the-storm wants,” the core desires that remain steady amid chaos.

Beyond the Corporate Parent

Mazan traces the roots of workplace dependency to the corporate paternalism of the 1950s. Companies acted “in loco parentis”—offering security in exchange for loyalty. Modern workers, however, want autonomy and purpose, not parenting. Her mantra at Sounding Board, “We hire adults,” captures this philosophy. Instead of monitoring employees’ every move, she advocates trust: fewer controls, more results. The question ceases to be “Are you busy?” and becomes “Are you producing?”

Mommy Benefits vs. Meaningful Work

Mazan critiques Silicon Valley’s “mommy benefits”—free meals, laundry service, haircuts—as corporate attempts to simulate belonging. While they satisfy short-term desires, they distract from what employees actually crave: meaningful work, growth, and contribution. Studies she cites (from MetLife and Qualtrics) show that people stay where they feel valued—not pampered. Leaders must therefore focus on offering *significance*, not perks.

Thinking Partnerships and Courageous Wants

The coaching role here shifts from director to mirror. You don’t tell someone what they should want; you reflect their contradictions back to them. Mazan recalls confronting a volatile insurance executive who believed yelling was “leadership.” By role-reversing and showing him his own behavior, she cracked his mindset—he realized he didn’t want obedience; he wanted respect. Similarly, companies must clarify what they *really* want from their cultures—innovation or uniformity, empowerment or control. Only then can meaningful change begin.

The path to clarity, Mazan stresses, is iterative. Your wants evolve as your awareness grows. As a good coach might ask: What would you want if you weren’t afraid? That’s where your Big Leap begins.

By Chapter 4, Mazan issues a challenge: Stop planning and start leaping. Change can’t happen from the comfort of theory. The metaphor of “jumping off the cliff” captures the terrifying but necessary shift from reflection to action—a moment that separates talkers from doers.

Bringing Ideas into Motion

Most leaders, Mazan observes, love to think about change. They create vision decks, strategic documents, or personal plans—but hesitate to act. Real growth begins with small, concrete actions. She outlines three ways to start: 1) take the easiest step, 2) take the most impactful step, or 3) take the most enticing step. Even a minor move breaks paralysis. Her advice echoes psychologist Mel Robbins’s “5 Second Rule”—motion dissolves fear faster than thought.

Breaking Through Excuses

Coaching at this stage means confronting rationalizations head-on. Clients say, “I’ll do it later” or “I’m not ready.” Mazan pushes for deadlines: “What would get your commitment to 90%?” Once energy builds, momentum takes over. One sales executive she coached learned to “collect nos”—turning rejection into success by making it a metric. Action, she says, is like physics: an entity in motion stays in motion.

Failure as a Sparring Partner

In martial arts, resistance builds resilience. Mazan translates this lesson into leadership: “You have to go through the breakdown before you get the breakthrough.” Her own leaps—leaving academia, starting her coaching practice, joining a start-up—all began with uncertainty. But as she told clients hesitating to risk comfort, “You can re-make your bed anytime.” The leap never feels safe; that’s what makes it transformative.

The chapter closes with a crucial truth: courage grows through companionship. “Sometimes you need someone to say, ‘I’ll jump with you.’” That, Mazan notes, is a coach’s ultimate role.

Failure, Mazan insists, isn’t a setback—it’s the practice field of growth. Drawing from Tai Chi’s concept of persistence over time, she reframes failure as “investing in loss.” Like sparring partners, failures teach you what strength alone cannot: balance, humility, and wisdom.

Feeling Failure Fully

Coachees often rationalize mistakes—blaming others, suppressing emotions. Mazan’s method is to name the feeling. “So you’re shocked?” “You feel betrayed?” Naming emotions, she explains, lets them recede like ebbing waves. Leaders trained to suppress emotion don’t realize that what’s unacknowledged festers. Emotional fluency, not emotional repression, builds resilience.

Creating a Floor Beneath Fear

Mazan tells clients to define their “floor”—the worst-case safety net—before taking risks. For her, as a single parent starting her coaching practice, that meant knowing she could stay with her sister if things fell apart. Once you establish that floor, fear loses control. You can act from courage, not panic.

Failure as Compassion’s Teacher

Her story of a high-achieving executive devastated by his first failure highlights how success without hardship breeds fragility. After months of coaching, he rebuilt confidence and empathy. Leaders who’ve fallen and recovered, she writes, “play to win, not play to not lose.” Failing deepens leadership capacity—it teaches self-regulation, perspective, and humility.

As in art and Tai Chi, Mazan advises leaders to leave their failures behind, like sculptors choosing not to carry broken statues on their carts. Mistakes weigh you down; lessons free you to create something better. “Don’t haul your failures into your future,” she reminds. “Learn, then leave.”

In Mazan’s framework, the true breakthrough comes with understanding *vertical development*—the shift from accumulating skills to cultivating capacity. Horizontal growth is learning what to do; vertical growth is learning how to think. It develops leaders who can handle complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity—the new constants of the modern workplace.

From Skill to Capacity

Horizontal learning is linear and predictable. You take a public speaking course, improve, and check it off your list. Vertical development transforms your worldview: it increases self-awareness, empathy, and contextual judgment. Using the metaphor of Tai Chi sparring, Mazan shows how vertical learners adapt fluidly to new opponents—they don’t just perform pre-learned moves; they read the moment and respond in kind. This balance of confidence and flexibility embodies what psychologists call “cognitive complexity.”

The Art of Interweaving

Mazan’s collaboration with Carlo Bos at the Co-Active Training Institute led to a core insight: horizontal (outside-in) and vertical (inside-out) growth must interweave. As you acquire new skills, your inner capacity evolves; in turn, that inner growth changes how you use those skills. The two are reflexive. The best development systems, Mazan argues, deliberately cultivate both.

Capacity in Action

Vertical capacity manifests through three dimensions: flexibility (adapting styles), pattern recognition (seeing relationships), and self-regulation (managing emotion under stress). These capacities allow leaders to handle ambiguity with composure. They also form the foundation of her later “Leader Success Model,” which quantifies growth through measurable capacities rather than task completion.

In short: skills get you hired; capacity gets you promoted. Leadership mastery lies not in knowing everything, but in knowing how to think, decide, and move through whatever comes.

Many leaders think in binaries: right or wrong, stay or go, win or lose. Mazan calls this a relic of industrial-era management. The modern leader’s superpower, she says, is *nonbinary thinking*—the ability to generate multiple “right” answers. Borrowing a phrase from creativity expert Roger von Oech, she urges leaders to seek “the third right answer.”

Beyond Either/Or

In coaching sessions, Mazan trains clients to spot their own binaries. One CEO rated each day as “good or bad” until she showed him how such simplifications cripple complex judgment. By habitually asking, “What’s C? What’s D?,” she expands their mental range. This mirrors Edward de Bono’s “lateral thinking” approach—problem-solving through reframing rather than choosing sides.

Tai Chi and the Speed of Thought

In Tai Chi, Mazan notes, “the T in thinking is too slow.” You must respond fluidly, not freeze in deliberation. Likewise, effective leaders must act dynamically, adjusting in real time rather than rigidly defending a plan. This mental nimbleness doesn’t mean chaos—it’s trained intuition grounded in experience.

Delight through Discovery

Mazan calls the third right answer “delightful” because it exceeds expectation—it surprises both you and others. When Sounding Board reimagined performance reviews, instead of choosing between traditional ratings (Option A) or scrapping them entirely (Option B), they created alignment meetings (Option C)—conversations focused on mutual understanding. This solution not only worked but delighted employees, proving that innovation comes from transcending false choices.

Developing good judgment, she concludes, is about nurturing this creative capacity—to balance intuition, analysis, context, and courage. “Recognizing a range of options,” she writes, “is just the first step. Choosing wisely among them—that’s leadership.”

After exploring mindset and individual transformation, Mazan turns toward culture. The workplace, she argues, often misuses the language of family. Companies promise “belonging” they can’t sustain, then break trust when layoffs occur. Instead of family, she advocates community—a connected network based on shared purpose and reciprocity.

The Belonging Trap

When her client company held layoffs during an all-hands meeting named “Fam,” employees felt betrayed; the family metaphor created unrealistic expectations. Family implies unconditional love; work relationships are conditional. Companies can promise fairness and respect, not familial belonging. Mixing the two sets leaders up for emotional whiplash.

Cooperative Competition

Drawing from her Tai Chi community, Mazan introduces the concept of “cooperative competition.” Practitioners spar to improve each other, not to dominate. Translating this to business means fostering environments where debate sharpens ideas without personal attacks. Conflict, when animated by shared purpose, becomes creative tension—not division.

Balancing the Equation

Her “balanced equation” metaphor reminds both employees and companies that relationships must be reciprocal. When a leader wanted half his workload but not half his salary, he misunderstood that equality at work is about contribution, not comfort. A healthy community balances care with accountability.

Ultimately, community is about shared creation, not shared dependency. As Mazan puts it, “Work is something you do. It’s not who you are.” Healthy organizations, like strong Tai Chi collectives, thrive when connection, respect, and purpose balance competition, performance, and truth.

How do you know if growth is working? Mazan’s answer is alignment. Traditional performance reviews measure compliance—did you complete activities?—but fail to capture progress or impact. Her model reframes evaluation as a two-way conversation between leader and employee, emphasizing mutual understanding and shared responsibility.

From Activity to Outcome

Most organizations fixate on what’s countable—trainings attended, boxes checked. But activity, Mazan says, is not achievement. True development is measured by improved judgment, behavior, and capacity to act in context. Her experiments at Sounding Board with “alignment meetings” transformed one-sided appraisals into collaborative discussions about performance, impact, and growth. Employees emerged motivated and clear about next steps.

The Power of the Gap

By comparing what employees think they need to succeed with what their managers perceive, Mazan uncovers valuable insight: the *gap.* Bridging this gap through dialogue fosters accountability and engagement. For one female biotech executive who felt unnoticed, exploring these differences revealed that her “busywork” didn’t match company strategy. Aligning her goals with organizational impact earned her the promotion she sought. Alignment, Mazan shows, creates both clarity and advancement.

Working with Heart

Tai Chi again provides a metaphor: practice with heart, not habit. You can perform movements mechanically and go nowhere, or you can engage consciously and master your art. Likewise, leadership progress isn’t about attendance—it’s about attention. When employees and managers share focus, energy amplifies. Alignment replaces evaluation with collaboration—and that’s where organizations begin to thrive.

The final chapter brings the journey full circle. After cycles of clarity, challenge, and impact, the ultimate goal of leadership development—and of a good coaching relationship—is self-reliance. Mazan likens the end of coaching to removing training wheels: the leader must now pedal on their own, guided by an internal compass built through growth.

The Leader Success Model

Mazan and her team at Sounding Board distilled years of coaching into a framework for measurable capacity: flexibility (balancing self and others), velocity (courage with focus), pattern recognition (seeing systems clearly), and self-regulation (composure under stress). At the center is the internal compass—what Tai Chi calls “central equilibrium.” These elements together define leadership not as mastery of technique but mastery of presence. This mirrors psychologist Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence—success arises less from intellect and more from self-awareness, empathy, and resilience.

Measuring from the Inside and Outside

Traditional metrics can’t capture these subtleties. Mazan therefore designs assessments that blend inner reflection with external feedback. Her discovery that clients viewed her as “analytical”—a descriptor she hadn’t claimed—taught her the value of outside perspective. Development becomes visible not through hours logged but through impact perceived by others.

From Coaching Dependence to Continual Growth

By the end of a successful coaching engagement, leaders are ready to continue their development independently. Mazan encourages both individuals and companies to evolve toward *self-reliant ecosystems*—cultures where people choose to stay, grow, and innovate because they’re trusted. Her bamboo metaphor captures it perfectly: strong roots, flexible movement, enduring growth. As she writes, “You can remake your bed—or build an entirely new one.”

The “Big Beyond” is the space beyond dependency, beyond formulaic leadership, where you trust your own capacity to navigate complexity. Leadership, Mazan concludes, isn’t a destination. It’s a continual act of becoming.