Motivation and a Culture of Performance - Lisa D. Foster, Leadership Coaching & Training

How to build environments where motivation is embedded in the team fabric. This skill integrates confidence, empathy, trust, alignment, and decision making to create sustained performance rooted in human purpose and real needs.

senior leader showing that he has made the shift from execution to ownership

From Execution to Ownership: The Shift Senior Leaders Must Make to Have Leadership Impact

February 2, 2026

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

As a leader you are measured by your leadership impact, not by your individual output. As your career grows, so does your leadership impact. At some point as you rise into the ranks of leadership, doing excellent work is no longer enough. Not because the work isn’t good—but because leadership is no longer measured by individual output. It’s measured by impact. At senior levels, leadership stops being about what you deliver and becomes about what others are able to do…

A smoking tire as a symbol of leadership friction

The Hidden Cost of Leadership Friction (And Why It Rarely Shows Up in Metrics)

January 28, 2026

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

Leadership friction is the hidden drag created when leadership systems, signals, and habits make it harder for people to do their best work — even when they’re capable, committed, and trying. If leadership friction were obvious, most organizations would have fixed it by now. But it’s not. Low performance becomes normalized when leaders emphasize values that crowd out quality. Priorities like speed, meeting deadlines, office politics, or surface-level agreement can quietly shift attention from excellence to compliance. The impacts become…

leader wondeing why leadership stops working at scale

Why Leadership Stops Working Even When You’re Doing Everything Right

January 21, 2026

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

If you’re wondering why leadership stops working, consider the impact of the scale of your job. Has encouraging others replaced doing it yourself? In my clients, I see why leadership stops working pretty often. For example, a senior leader I worked with had doubled his firm’s size and revenue and could clearly see a path to doubling again. Yet he was increasingly frustrated. Mistakes were creeping in, and his team didn’t seem as committed as he was. As the organization…

paper airplanes as a metaphonr for the value of leadership skills banner

The Business Value of Strong Leadership

January 14, 2026

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

The Value of Strong Leadership Shows Up in Results The value of strong leadership isn’t abstract or theoretical. It shows up in faster execution, fewer mistakes, lower turnover, and teams that solve problems before they escalate. In most organizations, managers at the same level are judged on similar criteria: results. Everyone is busy. Everyone has their own work to deliver. What separates effective leaders from struggling ones is not effort or authority—it’s how well their teams perform. Organizations don’t just…

Why Leadership Feels Harder Than It Should — and Leadership Skills that Actually Help

December 22, 2025

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

A Leadership Skills Framework that Works as a System to Improve Results without Force or Pressure Leadership skills work together as a system to achieve the results your organization needs, and that every leader needs to be more effective. These skills build on one another and create a system for improving motivation, engagement, and performance. If one of your leadership skills is undeveloped, the whole system weakens. Leadership rarely fails because people don’t care or aren’t trying hard enough. More…

employee engagement vs employee satisfaction at work

Employee Engagement vs Employee Satisfaction: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters for Your Business

December 5, 2025

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

When comparing employee engagement vs employee satisfaction, which should you measure? If your company is still relying on employee satisfaction surveys, it may be time to shift toward measuring employee engagement — the metric most strongly linked to performance, retention, and profitability. For more than a century, researchers have tried to understand what helps employees thrive and what drives productivity. Today, most organizations focus on employee engagement, not satisfaction, because engagement is what truly predicts effort, innovation, and long-term value.…