Come in
When was the last time someone helped you see yourself clearly, and you walked away lighter and freer for it? That moment is the whole of my work. So this isn't really a page about my credentials. It's an invitation to feel how I think, what I believe, and who I do this with.
I was the kid my school labeled "not enough." Too distracted, too slow, quietly sure I wasn't smart. It turned out to be one of the most useful things that ever happened to me, because it made me quick to notice the untrue stories people carry about themselves.
Years later, someone I love held up a mirror and told me I was living like a victim of my circumstances. It stung, because she was right. I decided that day I would never live that way again, and that I'd spend my life helping others make the same choice.
I spent two years as a missionary in Toronto, then ranked the most multicultural city in the world. I learned to lead, and I learned that people everywhere carry the same hopes and the same fears, just in different clothes.
I learned this craft by understudying the people who built the field, including my father, Robert Quinn, along with Kim Cameron, Jeff DeGraff, and the faculty of the University of Michigan Center for Positive Organizations. I went on to earn my own place among them, serving as a faculty director for Positive Leadership at Michigan Executive Education, and teaching this work in places the senior faculty wouldn't travel to. I've guided this work inside organizations like DENSO, Prudential, and O2.
What I believe
Most people are far more capable than their circumstances have let them feel.
Leadership development that stops at skills, or ignores culture and strategy, is incomplete.
The work is to anchor people to their best self, purpose, and values, even as I stretch them.
When we change a belief, it doesn't stay at the office. It reaches your team, and your kitchen table, not just your KPIs.
I try hard to live it first, and to admit it out loud when I recognize that I don't.
An executive once told me, "When I see you walking toward my office, I feel both excited and a little scared. I know you're going to ask me the question that helps, and I know it's going to stretch me." That's about right.
I do the personal work alongside you, and I hold myself to what I ask of you. Working with the global partners of a large professional services firm, a colleague and I noticed that in the name of "customer first," leaders would walk out of meetings with their own people. Customer first is right. Disrespecting each other is not. So we asked them to commit to being fully present for the entire journey, or to join a later one. A few bristled. "Do you know who I am?" But you can't ask people to change a culture you're unwilling to model. That's the work, and I don't get to opt out of it.
I don't do this alone
Lift is a small practice by design, with a wide and carefully chosen circle. When your work calls for more, I bring in people I trust completely, who share the same beliefs and standards:
You get the right people for your specific work, not whoever happens to be on one firm's bench.
The rest of me
Away from the work, my life is anchored by my faith and my family. My wife, Lisa, has been my most honest mirror since before any of this began. We have four children, a son-in-law, and one granddaughter, and we're based in Utah. The beliefs that steady my life are the same ones that shape how I lead this work: that people matter, that we're capable of far more than we realize, and that we're here to help one another become who we're capable of being.
Someone once held up a mirror for me, and it changed the direction of my life. Often, my whole job is to hold one up for you.
