After more than four decades advising senior executives, physicians, attorneys and organizational leaders, psychologist and executive coach Dr. Marilyn Puder-York has reached a conclusion that challenges conventional thinking about leadership development. While many assumed her work was about helping executives become better leaders, Puder-York saw it differently. "People assumed I was helping executives become better leaders," she explains. "What interested me was helping people better understand themselves. Leadership was simply where that work became visible."
That distinction matters. Organizations invest heavily in teaching leadership skills, but far less attention is given to helping leaders understand themselves. Puder-York's experience suggests that self-awareness is the foundation of effective leadership. "Organizations rarely become healthier than the people who lead them," she says. This insight has profound implications for how companies approach leadership development, workplace well-being and organizational culture.
Puder-York's career includes serving as a Vice President who led Citigroup's Employee Assistance Program, where she helped leaders navigate organizational change, workplace conflict and the pressures of significant responsibility. Long before emotional intelligence became a boardroom buzzword, she was helping executives understand the human side of leadership. Her work attracted national attention, with features in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, CNN, NBC, CBS and Fox. She also authored The Office Survival Guide.
After thousands of conversations, Puder-York noticed a pattern: before people could lead others more effectively, they often had to understand themselves with greater honesty. The management lessons people expected were sometimes the smallest part of the conversation. What mattered more was what the person sitting across from her began to understand about themselves. Helping someone recognize a long-standing habit, assumption or fear could matter far more than giving them another management technique.
This perspective is particularly relevant now, as burnout, workplace well-being and emotionally healthy leadership have become regular parts of the conversation inside organizations. Puder-York believes some of those conversations still begin in the wrong place. Organizations spend enormous energy teaching people how to lead others but neglect helping leaders understand themselves.
Today, Puder-York considers herself largely retired. Her calendar is intentionally lighter, and she is selective about the work she accepts. "I've worked very hard. I still care deeply about helping people. I just don't believe I have to live at the same pace to make a meaningful contribution," she says. Asked what motivated her, her answer is direct: "I want to add value. The value generally is not my own narcissism."
When Puder-York looks back, she doesn't measure her career by the number of executives she coached, organizations she advised or titles she held. She thinks about what happened after the meetings ended: someone returned to work seeing a situation differently, a conversation that had been avoided finally happened, a difficult decision was approached with a little more self-awareness. Those moments were difficult to quantify but often the ones that mattered. For more than forty years, Marilyn Puder-York was known as an executive coach and psychologist. Today, she describes the work more simply: helping people better understand themselves so they could better serve the people who depended on them.
