Resilience & Stress - Lisa D. Foster, Leadership Coaching & Training

Empathy validation compassion for My Gratitude Project

Empathy is Not Agreement — But It Can Transform Everything: My Gratitude Project Day 2

November 2, 2025

Empathy is not agreement, but understanding others deeply is transformative in ways that lead to gratitude. You can empathize with someone even when you disagree with their beliefs or their actions. Truman Capote’s book, In Cold Blood, is perhaps one of the most powerful illustrations of empathy without agreement. Capote set out to write about a terrible crime, the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas. He spent 4 years researching the book. In the beginning, he describes in excruciating…

my gratitude project 2025 on the magic of empathy

My Gratitude Project 2025: Grateful for the Magic of Empathy

November 1, 2025

Gratitude Project

Every year in November, I dedicate myself to thirty days of gratitude, this year, with a focus on empathy. My gratitude project has become an anchor and compass in my life. This year, my focus is on the quiet power of empathy: the ability to truly see and understand another person. Empathy turns gratitude outward—it transforms appreciation for what we have into appreciation for who others are. Each day this month, I’ll share a reflection on what empathy looks and…

mentor explaining to a colleague how we really learn at work.

If You Can’t Find a Good Mentor, Get a Great Coach: How We Really Learn at Work

October 23, 2025

Find a coach

A great coach for business is the modern equivalent of a good mentor, the person who helps you understand how we really learn at work. If you have the option between coaching vs mentoring, go with the mentor. However, if a mentor is not an option, a coach is the next best thing. If you’ve ever wished you had a mentor—a trusted advisor who could help you figure out how we really learn at work, especially in the toughest situations—you’re…

man in leadership decision making under pressure at a crossroads

A Leadership Guide to Better Decision Making: How to Find the Right Balance to Choose Wisely

October 10, 2025

Decision Making Under Pressure

Leadership decision making is a process—a way of managing the competing factors that pull every decision in different directions. Once you understand the fundamental pulls and build a process to get better information, you can make better choices again and again. The best decisions balance several tensions at once. Because people need to buy in, good decisions balance emotional information with rational analysis. Because innovation is exciting but uncertain, good decision makers balance new ideas with proven data. And because…

A calm, confident person standing clearly in focus while a crowd around them fades into blur — symbolizing how secure attachment builds inner confidence.

Your Attachment Style and Confidence: How to Understand Confidence and Develop More of It

October 8, 2025

Confidence and Managing Yourself

Why are some people confident and others aren’t? Research shows that attachment style and confidence are closely related. Attachment style is the way you connect with others and your ability to build trusting relatinships. Attachment style develops early, shaped by how consistently and safely your caregivers responded to your needs. Over time, those patterns become internalized as your “relational blueprint.” As it turns out, how you form relationships with others has a powerful influence on confidence Three Attachment Styles and…

Human hand pushing a red button, representing stress response at work and emotional triggers

When Small Things Set You Off: Understanding the Stress Response at Work

September 26, 2025

Confidence and Managing Yourself

Have you ever snapped over something small—a late email, a missed comma, a colleague’s tone? You’re not alone. A stress response at work can often feel bigger than the moment, leaving you wondering, “Why did that set me off?” Key Takeaways When you learn how to recognize your triggers at work, you can learn to interrupt you stress response at work and reset to calm. Proven strategies—like pausing to breathe, stepping away briefly, or validating others’ feelings—help interrupt the impulse…