Strategic misalignment
Fragmented priorities that undermine the goals that matter most.
For teams: team development, workshops and training
The people in the room are excellent. The room is not.
Executive team development, team workshops and training for leadership teams that have to align and deliver under pressure: team alignment, team building, emotionally intelligent teams. We convert the friction inside a team into better decisions, faster execution and a way of working that holds after we leave. Medford, the Rogue Valley, and across the country.
- ICF Master Certified Coach, Top 1% Globally
- Professional Fellow, IOC, McLean/Harvard Medical School
- Writes for Forbes
- MIT Professional Education
- Author of Leaderwired
Who this is for
Six challenges leadership teams bring us
Pressure tests a team’s ability to work together, and misalignment shows up in the results, not just the schedule. We work with teams that recognize one or more of these.
Trust deficits
New or reshuffled teams still building psychological safety and cohesion.
Implementation gaps
Critical projects falling behind schedule or running over budget.
Interpersonal friction
Unresolved conflict that creates dysfunction and drains energy.
Organizational silos
Departmental barriers that block cross-functional collaboration.
Leadership development
The need to grow next-generation leaders while executing today’s priorities.
How it works
The AdvantEdge Peak Performance Model: five steps
A systematic process that converts tension into collaborative advantage. It draws on organizational psychology, neuroscience and leadership research, and it is built from the ground up for each team.
1. Discover
Understand the team’s dynamics. We begin with human-centered design thinking to build a precise picture of how this team actually works.
- Team diagnostics that identify the specific tension points and the untapped capability
- Stakeholder interviews with team members, key partners and leadership
- Performance pattern analysis: the exact patterns that hold the team back
Outcome: a clear, data-driven picture of the team’s current state and where it can go.
2. Engage
Build collective commitment. Using our adaptation of Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder Centered Coaching, we create high engagement and real accountability.
- Full team involvement: every member takes an active part
- Future-focused: solutions, rather than relitigating the past
- Shared ownership of individual and collective growth
Outcome: a team committed to the process, with clear accountability mechanisms.
3. Resolve
Transform communication barriers. Our From Conflict to Confluence framework converts tension into productive energy.
- Psychological safety: constructive challenge is welcomed
- Productive disagreement: healthy conflict about ideas, without personal attacks
- Decision clarity: how decisions get made and committed to, despite initial differences
Outcome: a team that can raise difficult issues and make high-quality decisions.
4. Align
Unify the leadership vision. We establish clear alignment on strategic priorities and on how the team will execute them.
- Strategic clarity: shared understanding of mission-critical objectives and success measures
- Role optimization: how each member’s contribution supports the collective goals
- Decision rights: authority boundaries that balance autonomy and coordination
Outcome: faster execution and less wasted effort.
5. Optimize
Use the team’s collective strengths. We integrate individual strengths deliberately, so the team gets more from the people already in it.
- Strengths mapping: the unique capability each member brings
- Complementary partnerships: pairings that put different perspectives to work
- Continuous development: practices that reinforce growth and adaptation
Outcome: more innovation and higher engagement, measured at re-assessment rather than assumed.
The assessment phase alone delivered more insight than our previous year of team discussions. It gave us a shared language to discuss tensions we’d been avoiding.
SVP, Technology Company
In the room
What people say after the sessions
Our team is in a much better state today and so is my family.
Charlie HuDirector, US Department of Defense
Anna is a masterful facilitator. Her exceptional ability to connect with diverse groups makes each session a memorable experience.
ParticipantA major U.S. financial institution
She actively listened to our challenges and created a space where all the participants felt confident to speak and share their thoughts.
Osmara R.Participant at MIT Leadership and Innovation course
How we implement
Assessment first, then a plan built for your team
Assess
A detailed assessment phase: data on the team’s current dynamics, challenges and strengths, gathered through diagnostics and interviews.
Design
A development plan tailored to your team’s needs and goals, not a program pulled off a shelf.
Implement
Targeted workshops, ongoing coaching and real-time feedback loops, designed to fit inside the team’s existing workflows.
Review and adjust
Regular reviews keep the process responsive to what the team needs next, and re-assessment shows what changed.
What you get
The AdvantEdge team development difference
Custom-built
At the executive level, no two teams are the same. We design each process from the ground up, around your culture, goals and challenges, so the plan fits the organization’s vision rather than a template.
Results-driven
The approach integrates current findings from organizational psychology, neuroscience and leadership research. Unlike team-building that creates a temporary high, it rewires the team’s fundamental dynamics.
Practical, no theatrics
No trust falls, no ropes courses. Senior executives need practical, high-impact methods that build real connection and measurable improvement in how the team works, without the stagecraft.
Client story
Our leadership team was plagued by polite talk in meetings followed by private disagreements that undermined execution. AdvantEdge helped us transform this dynamic by teaching us to convert tension into productive collaboration. Within six months, we were making better decisions faster, executing with greater alignment and actually enjoying the differences each one of us brings to the team.
SVP Business Development, Technology Company
The two-day workshop
From Conflict to Confluence
Executive teams facing critical business challenges cannot always afford months of gradual improvement. This intensive two-day workshop changes how a leadership team communicates, makes decisions and executes priorities by converting tension into productive energy, and it leaves practices that keep working after the second day ends.
Day one: foundations for stronger connection
Day one addresses the elements that decide whether a team succeeds: trust and open communication, the pain points most senior leaders name first. We begin building a culture where courage and vulnerability are treated as strengths and diverse perspectives are valued, so each member can contribute their best without the usual barriers.
Day two: cohesion and results
Day two shifts to reinforcing cohesion and performance. Through targeted exercises and tactical goal setting, the team refines how it synchronizes effort, addresses misalignment on objectives and inconsistent execution, and leaves with a clear plan for holding alignment with organizational goals after the workshop.
What the team gains
- Collaboration: awareness and appreciation of thought diversity and individual strengths
- Better meetings: higher team output through productive communication
- Engagement: a culture that supports job satisfaction, retention and commitment
- Sustained alignment: ways to keep performance tied to long-term goals
- Conflict resolved: techniques for turning conflict into growth and innovation
Who should attend
Any leadership team that wants to remove collaboration barriers, work more efficiently and find more enjoyment in the work. On completion, participants are recognized as Confluence Champions and receive a certificate of completion.
Team workshops and training
Four rooms for a team, from a half-day to two days
Each one is built for practice, not presentation: the team works on its own situation, leaves with a shared protocol, and can pair the session with a team and culture assessment so the starting point is measured, not assumed.
Half-day, full-day or the two-day intensive
From Conflict to Confluence
Team alignment through productive tension. The team learns to turn disagreement into creative problem-solving, establish the psychological safety that makes constructive challenge normal, and decide despite differing perspectives. Leaders leave with a shared protocol for the next hard conversation.
Leadership teams, project teams and cross-functional groups
The two-day versionHalf-day or full-day
The Emotionally Intelligent Team
The Emotionally Effective Leader workshop, run for a whole team: better decisions under pressure, stronger connection during hard stretches, and the emotional dynamics that block performance named and addressed together. Pairs with an EQ-i 2.0 or EQ 360 baseline for each member.
Leadership teams and the managers who report to them
The EQ 360Full-day or two-day
High-Performance Team Building
Who does what best, and why the team keeps tripping over the same handoff. Built on the team’s own profiles (Working Genius, FIRO-B, the Team and Culture assessment), so the exercises are about this team, not a generic one.
Intact teams at any level
Working GeniusFull-day or two-day
House of Empathy: high performance through empathetic leadership
How a leadership team balances high expectations with human-centered leadership: a working environment founded on trust, appreciation and shared purpose, with the practices that keep engagement and performance tied together.
Leadership teams leading a culture change
The House of Empathy frameworkProof
+10points in psychological safety across the teams involved
84.4%of employees reported positive shifts in how their team works together
100%of participating executives were rated more effective by their own stakeholders
A major U.S. financial institution, eighteen months, 2026. Measured by staff surveys and stakeholders.
I’ve participated in multiple team-building sessions she’s led, and I can honestly say they’ve transformed how my colleagues and I work together.
Space and Critical Infrastructure LeaderAmentum
Attending Anna’s program was a pivotal moment in our team’s development. Her insights and methodologies have been invaluable.
Program participantMIT Leadership and Innovation Program
She illustrated how embracing conflict constructively can enhance a team’s creativity and productivity.
NACUFSThe National Association of College and University Food Services
Pricing
What it costs
Team engagements are scoped after the strategy session: the assessment, the two-day From Conflict to Confluence workshop, and the follow-through that makes the new way of working hold. Every published price is on one page: see programs and pricing.
Leaderwired Institute, the AI-native engine
The training that works never scaled. The training that scaled never worked.
Benjamin Bloom proved it in 1984: a learner with a tutor outperforms 98 percent of a classroom. Forty years later, leadership development still runs on the same trade-off. The offsite and the course scale; the coach does not. Leaders attend, absorb, return to their desks, and revert.
Leaderwired Institute is the answer Anna and Justin built: an AI-native engine, trained on the method you meet in this practice, that evaluates every leader, develops them through unscripted practice against live scenarios, coaches them between conversations, and advances them only on demonstrated mastery. Every engagement with Anna can include it, so the work continues after the session ends and progress is measured, not assumed.
- Evaluate
- Develop
- Coach
- Reinforce
Questions
What leaders ask
How long does executive team development take?
It depends on the team’s starting point. The assessment phase takes a few weeks; the development plan then runs alongside the team’s normal operating rhythm, with regular reviews. The From Conflict to Confluence workshop compresses the start into two days.
What assessments do you use with teams?
It depends on the question. Team diagnostics and stakeholder interviews are standard. Where individual profiles help, we add the EQ-i 2.0 or EQ 360, the Energy Leadership Index, Working Genius, FIRO-B or the Thomas-Kilmann conflict instrument. See team and culture assessments.
Do you work with teams outside Southern Oregon?
Yes. We serve leadership teams in Medford, Ashland, Grants Pass and the Rogue Valley in person, and teams across the country in person or virtually.
What happens after the strategy session?
You receive a custom proposal addressing your team’s specific situation. If it fits, the work begins with the assessment phase, or with the two-day workshop if speed matters most.
From the leaders who endorsed Leaderwired
A comprehensive, multi-layered system that moves from personal transformation to team culture to the unique challenge of leading through AI. This book is a companion to a complex and challenging leadership journey, and Anna is the sherpa you want by your side.
Ronan DunneFormer CEO, Verizon Wireless
Drawing on academic rigor, neuroscience-informed insight, and deep experience developing senior leaders, Anna Barnhill offers a clear framework for why so many transformation efforts fall short in the AI era. A timely and substantive contribution to how we prepare leaders for the future of work.
Jill BruningChief Technology Officer, Amentum
Transformation begins with the ‘me’ — and LeaderWired gives leaders the mirror and the map to see clearly and move forward with purpose.
Claus Torp JensenFormer Chief Innovation Officer and EVP of R&D and Technology, Teladoc Health
Thirty minutes with Anna
No pitch, no deck. What is at stake for your team, what you have already tried, and whether this is the right fit. If it is not, she will say so and tell you what is.