I worked for a company in my early days as a director. It was like coming to work with your family. The bosses were approachable and in there with us. And one day the company had to downsize due to an unexpected contract closing. We had to layoff most of our staff and keep a select team to try to win more business. Although the company ended up closing, I saw the most amazing thing emerge. The people stayed, until the end. They knew they would most likely be losing their jobs, but they stayed and did their best work. They were part of something bigger, that they were willing to fight for. That is where I started to realize the power in the connection between the company leaders and the staff, and between everyone who worked there. It was an incredible show of loyalty and just amazing relationships, that I still keep till this day.

I didn't start out with a framework — I started out like most new managers do: thrown into leadership with no real idea what I was doing.

Over the years, though, I started noticing patterns. The teams that stayed engaged, that trusted each other, that actually wanted to be there — they all had something in common. It wasn't a tactic or a system. It was connection. And the teams without it? I watched good people walk out the door, even when nothing was "wrong" on paper.

That observation sent me back to school to test the theory — and my doctoral research on workplace social capital confirmed what I'd been seeing all along: belonging and trust aren't the soft stuff of leadership. They're the foundation.

That's when I knew it was time to walk alongside the next generation of leaders — so they wouldn't have to learn the hard way, one guess at a time. That research became the S.T.A.Y. Framework™, and eventually, Breakthrough & Rise Global.