After more than four decades advising senior executives, physicians, attorneys and organizational leaders, psychologist and executive coach Dr. Marilyn Puder-York has reached a conclusion that challenges conventional leadership development: organizations rarely become healthier than the people who lead them. The insight, drawn from thousands of conversations with accomplished professionals, carries significant implications for how companies approach leadership training, workplace well-being and organizational culture at a time when burnout and emotionally healthy leadership have become pressing concerns.
Puder-York's perspective is rooted in a career that began long before emotional intelligence became a familiar phrase in boardrooms. As a psychologist and former Vice President who led Citigroup's Employee Assistance Program, she spent decades helping leaders navigate organizational change, workplace conflict and the pressures that come with significant responsibility. Many assumed she was helping executives become better leaders. Puder-York saw it differently. "People assumed I was helping executives become better leaders," she explains. "What interested me was helping people better understand themselves. Leadership was simply where that work became visible."
The people who sought her out rarely came because they wanted greater self-awareness. Usually, something wasn't working. A leadership team might be struggling. Someone could be facing a decision they couldn't seem to resolve. Sometimes the demands of a person's professional life had simply begun following them home. After thousands of those conversations, Puder-York began noticing a pattern. Before people could lead others more effectively, they often had to understand themselves with greater honesty. The management lessons people expected were sometimes the smallest part of the conversation.
That belief followed her through decades of clinical practice, executive coaching and consulting. Along the way, her work attracted national attention. She has been featured by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, CNN, NBC, CBS and Fox, advised leaders across healthcare, finance, higher education and corporate America, and authored The Office Survival Guide.
Those accomplishments established her reputation, but they aren't necessarily what she remembers. Again and again, Puder-York watched accomplished professionals arrive convinced they needed a better strategy, only to discover they were confronting habits, assumptions or fears that had influenced the way they worked for years. Helping someone recognize one of those patterns could matter far more than giving them another management technique. Asked what motivated her throughout her career, her answer is characteristically direct: "I want to add value. The value generally is not my own narcissism."
Today, Puder-York considers herself largely retired. Her calendar is intentionally lighter than it once was, and she has become selective about the work she accepts. She no longer wants the pace that once came with a full professional life, but that doesn't mean she has lost her interest in people or in the problems they bring to her. "I've worked very hard. I still care deeply about helping people. I just don't believe I have to live at the same pace to make a meaningful contribution," she adds.
That perspective feels particularly relevant now, as burnout, workplace well-being and emotionally healthy leadership have become regular parts of the conversation inside organizations. Puder-York believes some of those conversations still begin in the wrong place. Organizations spend enormous energy teaching people how to lead others. Far less attention is given to helping leaders understand themselves. When she looks back, she doesn't measure her career by the number of executives she coached, organizations she advised or titles she held. She thinks instead about what happened after the meetings ended: someone returned to work seeing a situation differently, a conversation that had been avoided finally happened, a difficult decision was approached with a little more self-awareness. Those moments were difficult to quantify, but they were often the ones that mattered.
For more than forty years, Marilyn Puder-York was known as an executive coach and psychologist. Today, she describes the work more simply: helping people better understand themselves so they could better serve the people who depended on them.
