How do you take your already strong executive team and make it world-class?
Most executive development programs focus on leadership skills, on what leaders "do." But your team probably doesn't need more skills. To become world-class your team needs to develop who they are — how they "be" — and how they show up with each other and your organization, especially when things get hard.
We were trying to fix the exterior, and we hadn't dealt with the interior.
Susan Gray, CEO, Tucson Electric Power (TEP)
Walk the Talk of Change isn't another leadership course or team-building event. It's where your executive team does the real inner work that produces a level of Self-Mastery that excellence in everything else they do depends on.
We emerged from Walk the Talk as a much stronger team — what I considered actually the strongest team in retail in Canada.
Domenic Pilla, CEO, Shoppers Drug Mart
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Tucson Electric Power (TEP) Susan Gray, CEO & TEP Execs
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Shopper's Drug Mart Domenic Pilla, CEO
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Loblaw Vicente Trius, President
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FirstEnergy Corp. FirstEnergy Execs
Executive teams rarely fail because their thinking was wrong.
They fail because the team can't yet do what the strategy asks of them. Work through hard decisions without going to war. Back each other through conflict. Choose the enterprise over the fiefdom. Tell each other the truth in the room instead of to someone else in the hallway afterward.
Those aren't strategic capabilities. They're human ones. Not skills you bolt on, but ways of being you develop from the inside out.
The team started working for the team, not just for themselves. You start seeing people helping other people, people not being afraid to speak up.
Vicente Tríus, President, Loblaw
Self-awareness. Mindfulness. Emotional intelligence. Modeling the change you want. Your executives have heard all of it.
But knowing you should change and knowing how to actually do it are two completely different things. Many programs send your leaders home inspired and motivated, but days later, still running the same old internal patterns they walked in with.
Walk the Talk is not words on paper or a one-day seminar where you go through a PowerPoint and then you go home and do your best. You get actionable homework... so the change grows organically and is real.
Mary Swann, Senior Corporate Counsel II, FirstEnergy Corp.
Walk the Talk of Change teaches your leaders the actual process of personal change from the “inside out” — how to catch a reaction before it ruins the meeting, how to find and shift the belief underneath the behavior, how to change your own inner state deliberately rather than waiting to feel differently. These aren’t concepts about Self-Mastery. They are the real work of Self-Mastery.
- Your leaders identify the single most important personal breakthrough in mindset and behavior that will radically uplevel their life and leadership.
- They learn their self-limiting ego patterns that stifle that breakthrough.
- They learn to Optimize, a 7-Step Process for shifting their inner state to manage their ego patterns in pursuit of their breakthrough.
- They learn to apply the actual mind-body practices used by Olympic athletes to accomplish their breakthroughs.
- They practice the real scenarios where they apply what they've learned to make real change happen after the program in both their life and leadership.
- And they do this inner work together, as a team, with deep and meaningful communications that develop a level of trust and alignment most executives have never experienced.
Being First is beyond just being a company. They are a totally different force. Their leaders have profound insights into people and massive experience on all kinds of large projects. Besides – they have changed my brain somehow, I don't know how, but that's what they've done!
Valgerdúr Hrund, CEO, Sensa, Iceland
We guarantee them..
Let's be honest: these outcomes don't all arrive the moment your team leaves the program. They develop as your leaders apply what they've learned. Our guarantee is this — by the end of the program, your team will see these outcomes as genuinely within their reach, see themselves progressing toward them, and have the practices to achieve them.
If they don't, you don't pay us. Pure and simple.
- Greatly improved ability to stay centered amid stress and challenge
- Increased ability to manage and change self-limiting mental, emotional and behavioral patterns
- Increased ability to see solutions and new possibilities
- Increased ability to move beyond command and control to more effective forms of co-creative leadership
- Improved modeling of the behaviors and culture you want
- New found ability to deliver your full potential and lead from your Best Self
- Increased trust and authenticity among team members
- Increased team alignment and cohesion
- Better communications: openness, listening, truth-telling, and the ability to dialogue through tough conversations to decision
- Increased ability to solve strategic challenges together
- Enhanced collaboration and cross-boundary support
- Increased ability to lead transformation successfully
Rated 96 out of 100.
Dr. Dean Anderson built Walk the Talk of Change for DTE Energy in the 1990s. The company set a goal: $100M in new net revenue over five years — from businesses that didn't yet exist.
1,500 DTE leaders went through the program, C-suite down, in more than 50 cohorts. DTE closed at $108M. Plus, the culture shifted from entitlement and risk-avoidance to innovation and collaboration.
Three decades later, we've refined WTTC across dozens of executive teams in virtually every industry. Participants from 2018–2026 rate the program 96 out of 100. That's an eight-year average, not a highlight reel.
The most positive impact on my leadership and personal life... more than any other program in my entire career.
Tony Earley, Former CEO, DTE Energy and Pacific Gas & Electric
Most teams who do this were sure they didn't need to.
The executive teams who come to us are usually already high-performing. That's what they tell us going in.
Coming out, nearly all of them describe the same discovery: they had been running on assumed alignment, not real alignment; friendly but not fully supportive; with conditional trust only “as long as you agree with me.”
They came in a good team. ----------> They left a great one.
“We were all walking around with a bit of rose-colored glasses on.”Dallas Dukes, Sr. VP of Customer & Strategic Affairs, TEP
“Once people became vulnerable, you felt comfortable trusting them.”William Crawford, CEO, Pacolet Milliken
“I’ve never seen a team like that firing on all cylinders outside of like a Super Bowl champion. We were all in sync. We were all approaching things the same way.”Erik Bakken, President, TEP
Not a one-time event.
3.5-day in-person retreat
at the Being First Center in Durango, CO, or at another retreat center of our mutual choosing
75-minute pre-retreat coaching interview
for every participant
60-minute post-retreat coaching call
two to three weeks after the retreat
4-hour follow-up virtual group session
one month after the retreat
Sustainable human development takes practice over time. Our process is intentionally built on this fact. (No, we can’t accomplish these outcomes in a day.)
Professional credits 38 SHRM PDCs · 34 HRCI hours
Your team is already strong.
Let's make it world-class.
Walk the Talk of Change is delivered exclusively for executive teams and leadership cohorts within a single organization.
Book a Conversation with Being First“Leaders must change themselves to have a company breakthrough.
Farrokh Khalili Farrokh Khalilin
