Lori Tompos is Founder of Avail Consulting and a Herizon Award winner. Drawing on experience from West Point and Desert Storm, she challenges leaders to stop managing people and start leading them — transforming communication and team performance at every level.
Lori Tompos is on a mission to transform how leaders show up, communicate, and bring out the best in their teams. As founder of Executive Presence Group, Lori works with executives and high-potential leaders to develop the communication skills, presence, and emotional intelligence that separate good managers from truly inspiring leaders.
In this episode, Russ and Lori dig into what executive presence actually means beyond just looking confident, why communication is the most underrated leadership skill in most organizations, how Lori's coaching methodology helps leaders unlock capabilities they did not know they had, and why the shift from managing to leading is harder than most people expect.
They also get into how AI is changing leadership development, why the soft skills that make great leaders are becoming more important as AI takes over more technical work, how Lori thinks about measuring the impact of coaching and communication training, and what the most common leadership communication failures look like and how to fix them.
Topics Covered:
- Welcome and intro; Lori Tompos and Executive Presence Group
- What executive presence actually means beyond just looking confident
- Why communication is the most underrated leadership skill
- How coaching helps leaders unlock capabilities they did not know they had
- The shift from managing to leading and why it is harder than expected
- How AI is changing leadership development
- Why soft skills matter more as AI handles more technical work
- Measuring the impact of coaching and communication training
- The most common leadership communication failures and how to fix them