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ELE advances leadership development in the flow of work through ongoing community-powered reflection and exploration. People leaders listen, question assumptions, and simplify complex talent challenges while exploring opportunities to create business value. Across years—and sometimes decades—these conversations build trust, belonging, judgment, and mutual support. Everyone can contribute, including by listening.

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This is where people leaders get sharper — and their teams get smarter.ELE is a community of people leaders who work through real talent challenges together. For more than 20 years, leaders building high-performing teams have learned with—and from—one another here.

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The community's votes decide what gets on the calendar.

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Bring a real talent challenge. Name what's at stake, what you've tried, and why it matters now.

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Signal what matters most. Your vote shapes what your peers tackle next.

For more than 20 years, people leaders across these organizations have shared experiences, tackled talent challenges, and built lasting relationships through ELE. Some remain active today. Others are part of our history. Many connections continue long after people change organizations. Looking to connect with someone? We can often help make an introduction.

Organizations Connected Through ELE — Past and Present

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Find the peer conversation that moves your work forward.The right exchange builds better leaders, closes capability gaps, and cuts through what internal meetings can't.

Figure out if ELE is for you. Straight answers on what ELE is, who it’s built for, and how contributors work together. Still have a question? Contact us.

Get answers about how Executive Learning Exchange (ELE) works — peer-powered leadership development that fixes real work issues, reverses burnout, and accelerates business value. No programs. No vendors. In the flow of work.

What issues and talent challenges are your leaders working through right now?Bring a real work issue into conversation with the community. Fresh perspectives help you reframe the challenge, simplify complexity, and find a practical way forward.Continue the conversation between meetups and working exchanges. Read and reflect, or contribute when you’re ready.

Keep the Conversation Going. Move the Work Forward.

Real conversations from people leaders tackling today's toughest talent challenges -- captured live, ready to apply with your teams when it fits your schedule, and connected to what's happening right now.

Insights on Talent Challenges | Captured Peer Conversations | ELE

Connect with people leaders, explore real talent challenges, and help shape what the community works on next.

Welcome

ELE began in 2002 with an internal Learning Leaders Conference at Baxter. Since then, it has grown into an international community where people leaders share experiences, work through real talent challenges, and build relationships that last. From remote work to AI reshaping the workplace, the challenges keep changing. The value of learning from one another hasn't.

Work through real challenges with trusted peers. Build judgment and relationships through ongoing reflection, exploration, and contribution.

Leadership Development in the Flow of Work.

Gather people leaders around a talent challenge that matters to your work. ELE handles the logistics. What you explore together helps shape the community’s calendar.

Hear from the ELE community—real stories of peer collaboration, learning, and growth from leaders across the community.

Human Synergistics

<div style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Candara', 'Segoe UI', 'Optima', Arial, sans-serif; color: #333; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: auto; font-size: 1.1rem;">
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 20px 0; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #f8f9fa; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Good leadership is asking questions and getting input from other people — not directing and having all the answers." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/cathleen-cooke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cathleen Cooke</a>, Human Synergistics</blockquote>
People leaders came to this live in-person exchange with a real problem: how do you keep distributed, hybrid, and co-located teams cohesive when disruption doesn't slow down? Communication silos are real. Misalignment is real. And psychological safety — still too often treated as a cultural nice-to-have — turns out to be a hard execution variable when stakes are high and answers aren't obvious.
Facilitators Cathleen Cooke and Michael Kern of Human Synergistics put that to the test. Not through slides. Through a survival simulation.
Leaders in the conversation
Cathleen Cooke and Michael Kern, Human Synergistics — facilitators and debrief leads. Human Synergistics has been developing team diagnostics and culture tools since 1972.
Angie — live observer tracking psychological safety behaviors and communication patterns in real time.
Plus six people leaders who ran the simulation as an intact team, bringing their own expertise, assumptions, and communication habits into a pressure-tested decision environment.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">What the simulation put on the table</h3>
Scenario: a tsunami is 18 minutes out. Your group has a list of items — car keys, walking shoes, a flashlight, life jackets, rope, sea kayaks, an extension ladder, mattresses. Rank them. Survive.
Rules:

<ul style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 5px;">Each person ranked independently first</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 5px;">Then the group reached consensus — no voting, no role-playing, no phones</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 5px;">A live observer tracked the behavioral dynamics throughout</li>
</ul>
Simple rules. Complicated dynamics.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Constructive vs. Defensive Responses</h3>
The group got the most critical item — car keys — right. But they had nearly talked themselves out of it. One participant identified evacuation early, then self-corrected when the group drifted. The debrief cut straight to it:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"We were kind, but not strategic." — Participant voice</blockquote>
The group showed real interpersonal care — checking in, making space, avoiding steamrolling. But they never collectively named the core question: evacuate or shelter? Without that shared frame, good intentions produced drift.
Cathleen mapped this to Human Synergistics' behavioral model:

<ul style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 5px;">Constructive styles — achievement-oriented, affiliative, self-actualizing</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 5px;">Aggressive-defensive — shutting down alternatives, "I've got this"</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 5px;">Passive-defensive — warm, agreeable, and quietly misaligned</li>
</ul>
Both defensive patterns kill team performance. One is just louder about it.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">The Distributed Trust Gap</h3>
A participant asked the sharpest question of the debrief: Does this work the same way on my actual team — where I have expertise, strong opinions, and a senior manager in the room?
Cathleen's answer was direct. The simulation puts everyone on equal footing precisely because real teams rarely are. When hierarchy enters, leaders stop asking and start directing. People with the most relevant expertise go quiet.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Leaders sometimes don't have all the answers — and you don't want them to." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/cathleen-cooke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cathleen Cooke</a></blockquote>
Michael Kern added the measurement layer: Human Synergistics' Group Styles Inventory lets teams score their process — not just their decision — and track improvement over time. One participant's knowledge about sea kayak dimensions shifted a key ranking. That expertise only surfaced because someone asked.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Simulating to Build the Edge</h3>
A Harvard-trained CEO ran this simulation in his MBA program, called Human Synergistics years later, and said:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"I did not realize how aggressive I was. I was constantly shooting down people's ideas." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/cathleen-cooke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cathleen Cooke</a>, recounting a client.</blockquote>
His team had died in the simulation. The debrief changed how he led.
The AI adoption parallel is direct:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"The use of AI evolves from the individual to small teams, to cross-functional teams, to the entire organization." — Cathleen Cooke, citing Krishna at IBM</blockquote>
Teams without constructive decision-making habits stall at the small-team stage. The simulation is the preparation.


<hr style="border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #eee; margin: 40px 0;" />

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-bottom: 15px;">What to try next</h3>
<ol style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Run a low-stakes decision exercise before a high-stakes one. Give your team an ambiguous problem, a time constraint, and a scoring mechanism. Debrief the process, not the answer — look for whose ideas got dropped and whether the group outperformed its best individual.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Embed an observer in your next consequential meeting. Ask them to track who spoke, who was redirected, and what assumptions traveled as facts.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Ask "who here knows something specific about this?" before moving to consensus. The habit of asking before deciding is the cheapest leadership upgrade available.</li>
</ol>
<div style="background-color: #f1f4f9; padding: 20px; border-radius: 8px; margin-top: 40px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
If this connects to real work you are trying to move forward, bring it into the ELE community. Share the challenge, compare signals with trusted peers, and leave with practical next moves you can use.
Submit My Challenge Now <a style="color: #0056b3; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges">https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges</a>

</div>
</div>

Simulation: The Ground is Shifting--How Great Teams Navigate What's Next!

Engagement &amp; Culture

experiential learning

Leadership

psychological safety

team performance

michael.kern

cathleen.cooke

change-ready teams

human synergistics

survival simulation

wise2026

People Leaders

insights-wise-2026

collective judgment

hybrid team alignment

distributed trust

constructive vs defensive behaviors

team decision-making

group styles inventory

leading through change

AI adoption readiness

This live discussion provided a compelling, data-driven look at how talent leaders can use assessments and behavioral analytics can drive agile
mindsets and support enterprise transformation.

<blockquote data-start="429" data-end="539">
“We weren’t just changing behaviors—we were holding people accountable to them. If you weren’t going to model the new culture, you might not stay.” -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/angie-zeigler" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Angie Zeigler</a>
</blockquote>
That one quote captured the clarity—and courage—required to shift culture from aspiration to reality. But it was also reinforced by the bigger picture:

<blockquote data-start="429" data-end="539">
“Engagement is just one of the many outcomes of culture—alongside productivity, quality, and intention to stay.” -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/cathleen-cooke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cathleen Cooke</a>, Human Synergistics
</blockquote>
Her point is a critical reminder: engagement surveys alone don’t give you the full picture. To build a truly high-performing culture, talent leaders must look deeper—at the underlying norms, expectations, and systems shaping behavior. That’s where tools like the Organizational Cultural Inventory® (Human Synergistics’ OCI) come in, helping leaders measure and diagnose where to focus their efforts to make the biggest positive impact on your culture.


<hr data-start="1218" data-end="1221" />
🔑 Key Takeaways for Talent Development Leaders

<ol data-start="1277" data-end="1943">
 	<li data-start="1277" data-end="1384">
Culture is measurable. Tools like Human Synergistics’ Organizational Cultural Inventory (OCI)
make the invisible visible, enabling targeted interventions.
</li>
 	<li data-start="1385" data-end="1505">
Start at the top. Culture won’t shift unless your senior leaders model and are held accountable for the change.
</li>
 	<li data-start="1506" data-end="1650">
Values ≠ behaviors (unless you operationalize them). Define behaviors clearly and embed them into hiring, development, and performance.
</li>
 	<li data-start="1651" data-end="1784">
Don't stop at engagement. Culture influences everything from turnover to profitability—so build your case with broader data.
</li>
 	<li data-start="1785" data-end="1943">
Sustained change needs many levers. One program won't fix culture. Think systemically: programs, processes, and accountability structures all matter.
</li>
</ol>

<hr data-start="1945" data-end="1948" />
🎯 Practical Actions You Can Take

<ul data-start="1990" data-end="2407">
 	<li data-start="1990" data-end="2077">
Conduct an OCI or similar assessment to compare your ideal vs. current culture.
</li>
 	<li data-start="2078" data-end="2167">
Launch leadership development programs tied directly to the cultural gaps identified.
</li>
 	<li data-start="2168" data-end="2253">
Review your performance management process—does it reward the behaviors you want?
</li>
 	<li data-start="2254" data-end="2330">
Audit hiring and onboarding practices to align with your target culture.
</li>
 	<li data-start="2331" data-end="2407">
Track progress and share stories of change to build momentum and belief.
</li>
</ul>
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📈 Companies with thriving cultures grew 682% in revenue over 11 years. Not because of a one-time initiative—but because they measured, aligned, and sustained their culture work. For talent leaders, this is the opportunity—and the challenge: to become the architects of environments where people thrive and performance follows. Culture change isn’t a project. It’s a leadership discipline.

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Simulation: The Ground is Shifting--How Great Teams Navigate What's Next!

Culture Change by Design: Using Data to Build Change-Ready Teams