BetterUp

BetterUp co-founder Alexi Robichaux sat down with Dr. Brené Brown at Uplift to talk about what the Center for Daring Leadership has learned from their organizational transformation work — what it takes to actually shift culture and improve business performance. The research is clear: courage is not a personality trait. It's a collection of four skill sets that can be taught, observed, and measured. But building it inside an organization requires more than a one-time training program. Brené described the requirements of organizational transformation: a rigorous assessment of what you're going to protect and what you're going to break, followed by skill and mindset shifts, coaching at every level, and systems rebuilt to reflect the culture you're claiming to build. "I've seen no evidence in 30 years of transformational change happening without coaching. Hard stop." What the partnership between Brené and BetterUp through CDL has made possible is scale — the ability to teach, observe, and measure the skill sets that organizations need, across every level. The research keeps pointing to the same conclusion. The skill sets are teachable. Whether they stick depends on the conditions of the organization — which behaviors are measured, cultivated, and rewarded. The full recording is now available at https://hubs.ly/Q04c4VDR0   #Uplift2026 #BetterUp #AgentsOfChange #DaringLeadership

Tomorrow – Wednesday, May 20 – BetterUp’s Chief Scientist Kate Niederhoffer and Stanford Social Media Lab founder Jeff Hancock take the stage at the Harvard Business Review Leadership Summit to present two years of joint research and a practical framework for leaders navigating the problem of workslop. Tune in! You'll leave with concrete tools for addressing workslop at the structural, procedural, and cultural level. Register for the HBR Leadership Summit: https://lnkd.in/gYdTt5Nv Read the latest research: https://hubs.ly/Q04bFlbY0   #HBRLeadershipSummit #BetterUpLabs #Workslop #FutureOfWork

BetterUp Chief Scientist Kate Niederhoffer and Stanford University's Jeff Hancock are taking the workslop conversation to the Harvard Business Review Leadership Summit this Wednesday. Their argument: workslop is a cultural signal and the fix isn't less AI. #HBRLeadershipSummit #Workslop

At Uplift 2026, executive coach, author, and founder Aiko Bethea, Esq., PCC (she-her) Bethea sat down with Dr. Brené Brown for a conversation that had no script and stayed in the messy middle. They talked about why conversations about power are inseparable from real accountability — and why skipping them produces cultures that look connected but aren't. About the difference between assuming positive intent and believing someone is doing the best they can — and why that distinction matters to how we hold people accountable for the impact of their actions. And about why the hardest thing any of us will ever lead is ourselves. Aiko coached Brené in real-time to prepare for an upcoming hard conversation. Aiko encouraged Brené to name how she wanted to be in the conversation, not what she wanted to get out of it, and helped her see ways she was reaching for armor to self-protect. Building that self-awareness opens the door for a new response, one rooted in courage and grounded confidence. Most of us would rather read about leadership than sit in it. That's what this conversation was about. This session was live-only — no recording. In The ROI of Courage: How Daring Leadership Transforms Organizations, Brené Brown joins senior leaders from Lumen Technologies and Eaton to show what real culture change actually requires and what gets in the way. The data are clear. Watch it at https://hubs.ly/Q04c4VDR0

Great coaches do far more than just listen, they actively work to create the conditions where behavior actually changes. That's the standard BetterUp coaches hold themselves to in every session, and with every person. It's real work that deserves recognition year-round, but International Coaching Week gives us a dedicated moment to say it out loud. Over the past year, we've put real resources into coach development: new training programs, certifications, and AI tools built to sharpen how our coaches practice their craft. If coaching is going to scale, quality has to scale with it. Our Chief Coaching Officer Dr. Woody Woodward, PhD, PCC sat down with Mira Brancu, PhD, PCC on The Hard Skills podcast to get into the science of what actually makes coaching work, including the GUIDE framework BetterUp uses across thousands of executive coaching engagements to drive real behavior change. They also got into how AI is reshaping the field, and why 72% of employees are currently passengers in the AI revolution instead of helping shape it. 🎧 Worth a listen: https://lnkd.in/gkEcNHYA #InternationalCoachingWeek

Two organizations. Same AI tools. Same adoption rates. Opposite results. The only variable: coaching culture. BetterUp Labs research found that in organizations with strong coaching cultures — built on trust, feedback, and ongoing development — greater AI usage produces significantly higher performance. In organizations without one, more AI usage produces nothing. In some cases, it makes performance worse. That difference doesn't show up on any AI readiness dashboard currently on the market. Those tools measure adoption, not the conditions around it. The research also identified four manager archetypes based on how leaders invest in AI and people simultaneously. The two highest AI-adopting types look identical on most dashboards. But one produces the highest burnout and lowest baseline performance of all four types. The other produces the opposite on every measure. Coaching is the most direct path to the conditions that separate those two outcomes. It’s important work. Thank you to every incredibly talented BetterUp coach.  https://hubs.ly/Q04fFmL00 #InternationalCoachingWeek #BetterUp #CoachingWorks

At Uplift, Alexi Robichaux shared new research that proves high AI adoption scores can mask declining performance. On May 20, we're going deeper into what that data means and what to do about it. The Walt Disney Company’s Malory Katz and BetterUp Chief Scientist Kate Niederhoffer will walk through what adoption scores leave out, and which signals actually predict performance. They’ll also get into the three behaviors that separate the highest-performing managers from peers with identical adoption rates, and the question leading organizations use to pressure-test rollouts before they go live. Your AI investment is only as strong as the people leading it. This session is about building the conditions where it actually delivers. Register → https://hubs.ly/Q04f33nh0 #Uplift2026

If you're at Workday Elevate London on Thursday, come find us at booth I5. BetterUp is the only coaching platform with a Workday Certified Integration, preparing your workforce for the change your technology demands. Organizations that invest in BetterUp see a 41% lift in employees rated as top tier and a 50% reduction in voluntary attrition. See you Thursday. Booth I5 #WDAYElevate

BetterUp is thrilled to welcome Kristian Talvitie to BetterUp as our new Chief Financial Officer. Kristian joins us at a pivotal moment. As AI reshapes how organizations operate, the demand for measurable, scalable people development has never been higher, and BetterUp sits at the center of that conversation. Kristian's mandate is to translate that market position into disciplined, profitable growth. He comes to BetterUp with deep experience scaling high-growth global software businesses, most recently as EVP and CFO at PTC, with prior CFO roles at Syncsort (now Precisely) and Sovos Compliance. We're excited for what's ahead. https://lnkd.in/gtiMU-jY

At Uplift, Nick Saban called consistency the definition of success. One championship, one exceptional performance — those make you a flash in the pan. Doing it again, under new pressure, with everyone gunning for you — that's the standard. Derrick Henry has 13,018 career rushing yards and five Pro Bowl selections. He's lived that standard. In a conversation moderated by Adam Grant, Saban and Henry traced how the relationship between a coach and a player becomes the architecture of a team's culture — and what separates a transactional leader from a transformational one. The research confirms it. BetterUp Labs data shows that belief and agency, not pressure, are the strongest predictors of sustained team performance. Adam Grant made the connection directly from the stage: process orientation is where motivation, agency, and optimism come from. What Saban called "the mountain" maps directly onto what leaders are navigating right now: the moment after a transformation initiative lands. That moment is a beginning, not a finish line. The question is whether your coaching culture treats it that way. Saban treated it this way. He said players didn't care what he knew until they knew that he cared. Derrick Henry confirmed it was true. Watch the full recording here. https://hubs.ly/Q04c4VDR0 #Uplift2026 #BetterUp #CoachingCulture #AgentsOfChange