Michelle Pollack
Executive Leadership Coach.
Speaker. Facilitator. Thought Partner.
We spend so much time thinking about what we need to do to succeed that we never stop to ask ourselves who we actually want to be.
Signature Speaking Topics
Michelle customizes every speech to ensure maximum impact for your audience.
KEYNOTE 1:
The Ladder Alone Won’t Get You There
What to do when you're exactly where you always imagined… and something still feels off
You were handed a ladder and a formula for success: work hard. Get to the next rung. Hit the milestones. Do it right, and you'll be successful.
So you climbed. But…you stayed quiet in the meeting when you had something worth saying. You laughed at your boss’s joke that wasn't funny. You found yourself giving feedback you didn't believe in – because those things were what the next rung on that ladder asked of you. One rung at a time, waiting to finally feel the way you always imagined success would feel. So why are you exactly where you always imagined and still asking yourself, “Is this all there is?”
Because somewhere between the first rung and the tenth, you learned exactly what to DO to get ahead. Nobody ever asked you who you wanted to BE while you were doing it.
In this candid, high-energy session, executive leadership coach and former Broadway and Hollywood television executive Michelle Pollack makes the case for stepping off the ladder and onto the path – the inside-out work that turns technically strong performers into leaders people actually want to follow.
Organizations have gotten very good at developing what leaders do: the strategy, the execution, the technical mastery. What almost nobody develops is who those leaders are being while they do it. That gap is now the single biggest predictor of whether a strong performer becomes a leader people actually want to follow.
You already know the pattern. Your best performers keep getting promoted. And then their teams start struggling. Not because the promotion was wrong. Because the ladder that got them there only ever tested what they could do. It never asked who they'd need to be once people were depending on them.
The result is leaders who can execute but can't always read a room, give or receive feedback, or hold a hard conversation. And that gap is contagious. A leader who can't hold a hard conversation trains their whole team to avoid conflict. A leader who can't give feedback isn’t setting up their people to succeed. It doesn't stay with that one person — it becomes how the whole team operates.
This isn't about blowing up your career or changing your job. It’s about changing how you show up and how that can change everything else. You'll leave with a new perspective on why your current approach feels hollow even when it's working, a practical model for making decisions from your own authority instead of inherited approval, and the beginning of an answer to a question most leaders never stop long enough to ask: who do I want to be while I lead?
You’ll walk away with:
How to know when you're leading from approval instead of alignment,
Why imposter syndrome gets loudest right when you're about to level up, and the one move that lets you act anyway instead of shrinking back
The one thing that changes your confidence in making decisions
What needs to happen in order to start feeling what you’ve been craving from the success you already have - and it has NOTHING to do with quitting your job, leaving your industry, or blowing up everything you’ve built.
KEYNOTE 2:
The Missing Half of Leadership Development
Why your best performerS don’t always become your best leaders
That's how you end up with retention problems, conflict that gets whispered about but never resolved, and teams that are not better as a unit than they are as individuals.
Most leadership development treats this as a skills problem. Another framework, another training day. That doesn't work because it's fixing the wrong problem: it's working from the outside-in.
In this keynote, executive leadership coach Michelle Pollack shows leaders and organizations exactly what they need to close the gap.
Takeaways:
A new lens on why your best performers keep struggling once they're in charge — and why more training isn’t the answer
A clear, practical model for developing leaders from the inside out
Immediate, actionable steps to turn leaders who can execute into leaders people want to follow
“Considering I came into the workshop late and 15 minutes later I had a life changing realization, I’d say Michelle knows what she’s doing.”
- Jenn Prokopp, workshop participant
Michelle provides customized live or virtual workshops and training programs to help organizations and team leaders create an environment based on self-leadership, collaboration and trust.
Her dynamic sessions inspire and equip participants to embrace their authentic leadership potential, driving personal and systemic change for a more inclusive, innovative, and psychologically safe workplace. Some of her most requested topics include:
Communication and the Necessity of Healthy Conflict
Why avoiding conflict is training your whole team to avoid it too, and how to build a culture that can disagree without it going underground.
Learning to Work WITH Your Inner Critic
A practical framework for recognizing self-sabotage in real time, so it stops making decisions for you.
Visionary Values for Intentional and Authentic Leadership
How to use your values (not inherited ones) to make faster, clearer decisions under pressure.
The Art of Compassionate Command
When leaders default to command, decisions move fast but the room goes quiet — nobody tells them the truth anymore. When they default to compassion, everyone feels heard, but the hard call rarely gets made. A practical model for leading with both.
WORKSHOPS
Michelle Pollack spent over a decade working in the world of Broadway on shows like Avenue Q and Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme, and as a creative executive in network television, on shows like The New Adventures of Old Christine, Without a Trace, and Grease Live! Somewhere along the way, she realized she had abandoned herself climbing a ladder that told her exactly what to do, and never once asked who she wanted to be while she did it.
Now an executive leadership coach and keynote speaker, Michelle helps leaders and organizations rethink inherited models of success, leadership, and performance. She’s worked with leaders and teams at companies like Netflix, Tag Heuer, Columbia University, and Bank of America.
Through her signature framework, The Art of Compassionate Command™, she shows leaders how to stop adapting to broken systems and start leading from the inside out.
After years of city living in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, Michelle now lives 35 minutes outside of Manhattan in the great state of New Jersey with her husband and two teenage daughters. (It took her 2 years to admit she called NJ home.)
One day, she'll have a full talk about the second date she had in Myanmar in her mid-20s. In the meantime, it's all about leadership that leaves us feeling fulfilled.
“Michelle’s fearless approach transformed our partnership, deepening our connection and driving our business to quintuple its revenue during a pandemic. Michelle is the real deal — she strips away the habits you’ve relied upon and she will not allow you to cut corners or sell yourself short. She energized our company and made us stronger, more effective leaders.”
WORK WITH MICHELLE
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“I'm so much clearer about what I want. I've gone from questioning my leadership role to feeling a strong sense of contribution to our larger mission. We've transitioned from chaos to clear goals, and I understand my part in achieving them.”
- B.R., Chief of STAFF, VP RESEARCH, Public University
