Dr. Paula Butterfield, founder of the leadership development firm Butterfield + Laning, LLC, www.pbutterfield.com, is devoted to helping leaders grow themselves and create organizations in which people can thrive. Her client base includes executives seeking to be more effective leaders, professionals moving into leadership and management roles, entrepreneurs struggling with growing pains, and business owners who want to nurture a more entrepreneurial spirit among their employees.

She works from the assumption that effective leadership is about who you are, not just what you do. Her goal is to help clients expand their capacity for leadership. They can learn new concepts and skills lots of places. But learning to expand their capacity — learning to think differently about situations, to stay resilient under stress, to cultivate trusting and productive relationships, to make emotional connection in order to engage people at a level of deep commitment — is the real challenge for today's leaders.

What absorbs most of your time at work, keeps you up at nights, may even give you a pack-a-day Rolaid habit? If you're like most leaders, it's the people issues: the need for more trust, adaptability, motivation, social harmony, commitment, and inspiration. How do you create an environment with these qualities? It takes guts — not just courage but a whole array of competencies that reflect high levels of personal awareness and development.

Executive/management and other relevant experiences

• Eight years as an executive coach, six as owner of a leadership development business
  
• Twenty years in management and leadership roles in both for- and non-profit organizations
  
• Twelve years of professional speaking, training, and seminar development work

Experience with assessment instruments and other relevant techniques

• Skilled in The Leadership Circle Profile™, a new 360 leadership survey adopted by Notre Dame for use executive MBA and leadership programs, and associated workshops
  
• Skilled in the MBTI, Firo-B, and Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode tool
  
• Experienced user of the Enneagram , a powerful personality type indicator used to help people with self knowledge, self observation, and personal transformation
  
• Skilled in the Lominger Career/Leadership Architect suite of tools

Selected education, training, and certifications

• Certified in The Leadership Circle Profile™, a new 360 leadership survey
  
• International Coach Federation: credentialed as Professional Certified Coach [PCC]
  
• The Ohio State University: PhD, counseling and psychology; MA, English literature
  
• Licensed [Ohio] counseling psychologist.

Personal

• Avid traveler and single mom (my son's a college art student). Favorite activities are weight lifting, sailing, tennis, an 1892 restored inner-city Victorian house and garden when weather complies... and watching movies, reading, writing fiction on foul weather days