Discovery:

Organizational Strategy & Advisement

We begin every partnership by getting to know each other–listening, observing, and reflecting–to build an understanding of your organization.

Through a series of one-on-one and group meetings with your leaders, we learn about your goals, experiences, needs, and challenges. We share about Leverage to Lead’s approach and philosophy, and about who we are and how we work. Through these meetings, we build relationships and trust.

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Strategy and Advisement Session

This work leads to our Strategy and Advisement session, which can include any members of your leadership or core team. In the session, we reflect on what we’ve learned and what we’ve observed, offering a summary of your team’s individual and shared pain points, dynamics, values, strengths, and growth areas.

With this information, we make recommendations for a way forward as we co-create an equitable and inclusive workplace where diversity can thrive. We build a comprehensive strategy for our continued partnership that includes priorities, approaches, topics, and timelines.

What We Do

Jennifer McClanahan, CEO, and MJ Mathis, Managing Director of Learning & Development, talk about how we work with clients to build human-centered structures that support people and their best work.

Read about How We Transform Organizational Cultures

Systems for Belonging

When we talk about equity, the conversation often centers around emotions—belonging, inclusion, and the sense of being seen and valued. And while these are crucial elements, equity work is also deeply practical. It’s about the systems we build that allow everyone to...

What’s at Stake when Educators Burn Out

by Nick Obando As a teacher, I was no stranger to burnout. I recognized the physical signs–feeling drained and beyond capacity, the frustration, exhaustion, pressure, and resignation. I believed burnout was a normal part of being an educator, and so I waited for the...

Reframing Goals: How Experiential Goals Create Belonging

Welcome to our series on reframing goals. In these articles, we share how our own process of setting and sharing goals has evolved, what we like about it so far, what stories we carry about meeting or missing goals, and why experiential goals are just as important as...

Evolving the Way We Change

Welcome to our series on Reframing Change. In these articles, we’ll reflect on our relationship with change, how we’ve been socialized to resist or embrace change, how change depends on self-trust, and how we can evolve the way we change. We also share how we made...

Getting to the Root of Burnout

Conversations about employee burnout are numerous, but as we’re collectively seeking to relieve the symptoms–exhaustion, depersonalization, lack of enthusiasm–we’re not actually addressing the root causes. Burnout, we want to believe, can be fixed with a shorter work...

Reframing Our Beliefs about Money

We rarely talk about why and how we compensate employees. Organizations don’t explain their pay structure or how decisions about compensation get made. Nor do they tie compensation to their values or what employees need. This is, in part, an extension of our...

Our Team Onboarding Evolution

Welcome to our series on team onboarding, a practice at Leverage to Lead where we go beyond traditional onboarding and decide to evolve as a team, together, when a new colleague joins us.  A common challenge we see when helping organizations operationalize their...

Belonging Doesn’t Solve for Discomfort

Sometimes work, including DEI work, is difficult. It’s always human and messy, but let’s be honest: there are times when work is unpleasant, draining, and frustrating. Even work we love. Because people aren’t perfect. There’s no solution to this part of being human.

We Choose to Belong

This is the second post in our blog series about belonging. In these articles, we’ll explore what it means to add “Belonging” to DEI work, how we define belonging, how we know when we belong, and what happens when belonging is absent. The myth about belonging is that...

Belonging: What is DEIB?

Welcome to the first post in our blog series about belonging. In these three articles, we’ll explore what it means to add “Belonging” to DEI work, how we define belonging, how we know when we belong, and what happens when belonging is absent.   According to a...