The Roots of Leadership Podcast

The Roots of Leadership Podcast


There is No Right or Wrong – Dr. Laura Gallaher

July 08, 2019

Dr. Laura Gallaher is an organizational psychologist who is obsessed with the idea of building cultures and organizations from the inside out. She is a speaker, facilitator and executive coach.

At 24 Dr. Gallaher had the opportunity to work at NASA. After the Columbia tragedy, there was an investigation into what went wrong and why lives were lost in the incident. Although much of the report had to do with the technicalities of the incident, there was a large portion of the report which cited the company culture at NASA during the time. Factors in the report stated how the company was designed and how emerging culture faltered to provide an environment where colleagues felt like they could voice their opinions or make suggestions. After a year and a half of identifying key leadership behaviors NASA thought was important, Dr. Gallaher was part of the team hired to help transform the culture and develop leaders to create psychological safety to ensure the best possible decisions were being made for the organization.

Dr. Gallaher currently runs her own company, Gallaher Edge, which is a consultancy that works with small businesses. They primarily work with executive teams to help the team members become more self-aware and practice more self- accountability so executives can truly align, build trust, and collaborate. By helping the leaders of an organization improve, the goal is to have the results cascade through the organization to help improve the overall culture of the organization. She attributes much of her success to those she has surrounded herself with throughout her career. Learning different techniques and skills from her peers and colleagues, Dr. Gallaher has developed a unique skill set which is instrumental in her work and success.

Dr. Gallaher explains how accountability starts are the self-level. Each individual in any given situation or scenario should be asking themselves what have I done to contribute to the situation and what can I do now to create the solution I want. Accountability should always be future focused. Dr. Gallaher has seen many people in organizations think accountability means knowing who to blame when something goes wrong. In an organization where culture creates highly productive, motivated, inspired and engaged employees, accountability cannot become a blaming game where you take a powerless stance. It is natural to have a victim mentality when it comes to accountability because subconsciously we are trying to protect our self-concept. Dr. Gallaher challenges listeners to not think about right and wrong. During situations where you see what someone else is doing and find it fearful to confront them, think in terms of your own experience and what you see and believe and the other person’s experience and what they see and believe. Using self-accountable communication to create and design something together will likely result in the most effective way to solve the problem.

To learn more about Dr. Laura Gallaher and Gallaher’s Edge, visit her website: www.gallaheredge.com.