Two decades in executive search +
a decade of global data
For twenty years, Laura's job was to read talent and ambition for a living. When she sold her executive search firm, she set out to understand what she'd been seeing — and turned it into research. Nearly 10,000 people across 113 countries, a grounded-theory study of intuition, and the four C's of consonance now sit beneath four bodies of work. Start wherever your question lives.
You lived it
You lead it
Once you've understood it and lived it, you can't unsee it. And it changes how you lead.
Spot
We've learned to spot performance, when we should be spotting the patterns in ourselves that predict potential. As a result, we keep looking for what we've seen before, which leaves us only where we've been before.
Stoke
Once you know the nine success-predictive behaviors to spot, you can cultivate and amplify them — in yourself, and in others, so you can know who to invest in, and how to help them thrive.
Strive
We're taught to strive, and to measure how we're doing by status, money, title — the boxes everyone agrees are worth ticking. But the boxes that predict who thrives give us consonance: the combination of calling, connection, contribution, and control that puts us in alignment with our purpose.
Steward
You understand now that people don't stay for the old corporate scorecards of dependence and need. They stay for the same four boxes you went looking for yourself — the ones that give them alignment, belonging, and purpose.
Succeed
We are told success is a finish line, but it is only a tease of what we're capable of next. Instead of arrival, we find doubt, pressure, and the quiet question of what now.
Sustain
As your team achieves more, they find themselves in uncharted territory. That's when the doubt, uncertainty, and impostor syndrome arrive. You've been there yourself. It's time to sustain their performance through it, instead of losing them to the stress and burnout from it.
~10,000
survey responses across 113 countries
100+
in-depth executive interviews
3M+
of views on her TEDx talk
20 yrs
leading executive search
As seen in
Leadership ~ Engagement ~ Purpose
Work That Matters
Why success doesn't bring happiness — and how consonance (Calling, Connection, Contribution, Control) predicts who thrives. The individual's guide to writing your own definition of success.
Explore the research →Change ~ Resilience ~ Sales Kick Offs
The Weight of Ambition
The emotional cost of success — impostor syndrome, self-doubt, and burnout — and why the hardest part of getting what you want is discovering you want more.
Explore the research →Talent ~ Hiring ~ Potential
Spotting Potential in Others
How leaders recognize the potential others miss — the grounded theory of intuition in hiring, and the nine traits that predict who can grow.
Explore the research →Belonging ~ Retention
Why Your Best People Leave
Your best people don't leave for money — they leave because they don't feel seen. The data on consonance, belonging, and what actually makes them stay.
Explore the research →The Keynotes
This research doesn't stay on the page.
Every body of work is also a keynote — built for wherever your people are in the story, from spotting potential to stoking it. Customizable, available in-person and virtually.
Book Laura → See the keynotes →About
Meet Laura Gassner Otting
Laura Gassner Otting is a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestselling author, researcher, and keynote speaker who helps individuals, leaders, and organizations become limitless. A former White House appointee who helped build AmeriCorps, she spent two decades leading executive searches before turning to the research behind engagement, ambition, and potential.
Her TEDx talk has been viewed millions of times, and her work has been featured by Good Morning America, the TODAY show, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and more.
Meet Laura Contact