A Conscious Approach to Leadership and Life

Leading lightly is about looking at what you do through a radical new lens. It's a way to powerfully transform your performance, make better decisions, gain greater self-awareness, and develop the capacity to manage your work and life with enduring ease and clarity. An alternative to the everyday stress, pace, challenges, and burdens that weigh you down, leading lightly shows you how to shift your mindset, live lighter, and optimize your effectiveness. Part leadership, part mental fitness, part health and wellness guide, Leading Lightly empowers you to work at your best and operate at your fullest potential.

Stress and difficulty don't have to be a given. Learning to lead lightly and live mindfully can profoundly change the trajectory of your day. This book is for anyone who finds themselves overloaded, frustrated, anxious, or exhausted by their life circumstances. It offers more than just tactical strategies for sustained optimal performance at work, but transcends that, helping you develop a conscious approach to all the facets of your life, so you're able to leverage the choices you have each day and take action that puts you in control of your experience. You'll not only be able to create better outcomes but also do this in a way that energizes and enlivens you.

​In Leading Lightly, author Jody Michael brings together 20+ years of her research and work as a psychotherapist, Master Certified Coach, and leadership expert to provide you with a practical, measurable, and proven process for developing your mental fitness. You'll increase your emotional intelligence, discover how to respond to situations with more agility, build stronger interpersonal relationships, and find that the ability to thrive in leadership and life is within your grasp. This book will show you how to think differently, feel lighter, and achieve personal and professional well-being. You'll notice the results immediately, and those around you will too.

Jody Michael is CEO of Jody Michael Associates, a premier coaching company specializing in executive coaching, leadership development, and career coaching. She is recognized as one of the top 4% of coaches worldwide and is an internationally credentialed Master Certified Coach, Board Certified Coach, University of Chicago trained psychotherapist, and Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

Jody brings a rare combination of global SVP leadership, theoretical knowledge, plus extensive field experience. She's built her expertise through 40,000+ hours of individual sessions across 25+ years of coaching; post-graduate education in human behavior, neuroscience, and psychology; and 15 years in corporate leadership with Goldman Sachs, Chicago Research and Trading (CRT)/Nations Bank, and Kidder-Peabody.

Jody has coached some of the nation's top performing leaders and teams across diverse industries and organizations, from hypergrowth tech companies to global Fortune 100 organizations. She has a special affinity for partnering with tech, finance, and healthcare. Among her clients are more than 120 senior executives across 18 Fortune 100 companies.

She's a renowned keynote speaker, author, and thought leader in her field who has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Oprah Magazine, Huffington Post, Crain's Chicago, and more. She has appeared as an expert on MSNBC, CNN, the TODAY Show, and NPR.

Jody and her partner Kathy reside in Chicago, IL, and Palm Springs, CA.