Building Leadership Accountability and Driving Organizational Success

The Director of Learning and Organizational Effectiveness at Pratt & Whitney is a U.S. Air Force veteran, doctoral student, and Master Executive Coach who focuses on developing leadership capabilities that improve organizational performance and foster culture change. With extensive experience leading teams and advancing initiatives, this leader designs and delivers inclusive learning strategies that empower leaders at all levels. A military background shapes a disciplined, strategic leadership development and accountability approach.

Passionate about creating seamless accountability and promoting practical leadership behaviors that deliver measurable results, proven methods combine with innovative tools to help organizations meet today’s challenges and achieve lasting success.

A Journey in Building Better Leaders

My 22-year Air Force career served as a rich leadership laboratory, as I regularly observed, learned, and practiced leadership. Frequent leadership rotations exposed me to a wide spectrum of styles and offered valuable lessons.

The military’s strong emphasis on leadership development—training leaders as they progress—sparked my lifelong interest in leadership and followership. I educated leaders and advised senior officers for nearly half of my military career.

After retiring, my transition to the corporate sector initially focused on high-potential leadership development. I quickly realized many high-potential individuals were already wired for success. This shifted my focus to supporting aspiring leaders and enabling entire teams and organizations to optimally perform.

Starting in learning and development, I returned my attention to high-potential leadership and team dynamics. Later, moving into an HR business partner role, I gained insight into talent management, including merit and succession planning, compensation, and conflict resolution. This broadened my understanding of how HR systems influence employee experiences.

When I returned to a center of expertise role, my mission evolved to designing broadly applicable leadership development curricula. This led to my current position, where I combine building individual capability through learning with improving team and organizational health. Learning is a driver of broader success, emphasizing how team dynamics and collaboration impact business outcomes.

“We measure outcomes through employee surveys reflecting culture and engagement alongside key business metrics tied to speed, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction.”

I measure success through the company’s performance: when teams thrive, learn effectively, and collaborate well, the business excels. The impact of my role reflects the organization’s overall success.

Building Accountability and Embracing Leadership Fundamentals

Two themes dominate my focus: creating an unbroken chain of accountability and making “leadership layups”—small, daily leadership actions that yield significant results.

Senior leaders are often concerned with the “frozen middle,” where organizational momentum stalls between engaged frontline teams and aligned executives. My response is clear: senior leadership must equip, train, coach, and hold middle management accountable. If the middle is “frozen” it’s the senior leader’s responsibility to thaw it, often through role-modelling and mentoring.

Proper accountability flows from leaders holding each other responsible, not from HR enforcement. Senior leaders must model desired behaviors by having meaningful development conversations with their reports and expecting them to do the same. This consistency builds a seamless accountability chain far more effective than relying on HR as an enforcer.

Leadership layups are simple yet powerful actions: role modelling company values, giving timely feedback, recognizing contributions, and holding development discussions. When leaders consistently miss these layups, employee surveys reveal gaps, such as feeling company values are not modelled or feedback is lacking.

Embedding these fundamentals in daily practice enables organizations to function better and thrive.

A Leadership Accountability Experiment

I recently partnered with leaders on an initiative where the culture was not yet established at a new site—a location with a workforce evenly split between internal alums and new hires. Still, the leaders were eager to build the culture.

My team engaged senior leaders and cascaded a consistent leadership methodology throughout the organization, including a shared language, unified framework, and practical tools. This 18-month initiative tests whether senior leadership alignment and role modelling can drive measurable results.

If successful, this approach will be replicated at other sites; however, adaptations for established cultures will require more complex change management.

We measure outcomes through employee surveys reflecting culture and engagement alongside key business metrics tied to speed, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction. I hypothesize that intentional leadership efforts will correlate with improved business results.

Making Leadership Development Faster, Smarter, and More Accessible

AI is emerging as a powerful tool in leadership development. Through partnerships using AI-generated avatars, leaders can practice difficult conversations in realistic, on-demand settings, building confidence and skills without scheduling constraints.

AI also promises personalized content delivery, surfacing relevant resources and real-time practice tools tailored to individual development needs.

Though still early in adoption, I expect AI to enhance agility and personalization in learning, filtering the noise to provide clearer, more effective development experiences accessible to all.