BETTER LEADERS.
STRONGER CULTURE.
MEASURABLE RESULTS.
I work with executive leaders of growing companies to develop the people inside their organizations, building the self-awareness and behavioral clarity that strengthens culture is a leading indicator that drives results.
25+ Years Executive Leadership
Former Chief People Officer
ICF ACC Certified Coach
Hogan & Leadership Circle Certified
You have done everything you are supposed to do.
You gave feedback. It landed in the moment and disappeared.
You restructured. The same dynamics showed up in the new org chart.
You sent people to training. They came back with notebooks they never opened again.
And still, something is off.
Maybe it is the executive who delivers results but leaves a trail of turnover behind her.
Maybe it is the leadership team that says the right things but cannot execute in the same direction.
Maybe it is the culture you set out to build, sitting just out of reach.
You are not failing to lead. It is a signal.
The variable you are missing is leadership awareness.
The cost is higher than it looks.
Performance problems rarely announce themselves. They erode. Quietly. Consistently. Long before they show up in the numbers.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
A high performer leaves. Three more follow her out the door.
Execution slows and no one can explain exactly why.
The alignment you built in January has quietly come undone by Q3.
The gap between what your leaders say and what your leaders do is not a communication problem. It is a leadership awareness problem. And it compounds in silence.
Leadership behaviors not aligned create cultural friction, limiting results.
What changes when leaders see themselves clearly.
Most leadership problems are not capability problems. The leaders inside your organization are not struggling because they do not know enough. They are struggling because no one has ever shown them the gap between how they think they are showing up and how they are actually landing.
That gap, once visible, is workable.
Awareness changes behavior.
Behavior changes culture.
Culture drives results.
I am Amy Groff, founder of AKG Consulting and Executive Coaching. I work with executive leaders of growing companies to develop the people inside their organizations, not as isolated individuals, but as the people whose behavior sets the standard for everyone around them.
When a leader shifts how they show up, the people around them notice. The team notices. The culture notices. And you notice, in the results.
“I’ve worked with a lot of HR leaders over my career. Amy is not that. What set Amy apart was her belief that leadership behavior is a key driver of culture, and culture is a leading indicator of business performance. She didn’t just espouse that philosophy. She operationalized it. We moved from an Employee Net Promoter Score of -13 when Amy joined to +58 by the time we sold the company. That's not a coincidence. That's leadership."
- Jim Tormey, Former CEO, MidAmerica Administrative and Retirement Solutions
HOW I HELP
Leadership shapes culture. Culture drives results.
Culture does not change until leadership does.
This is not a motivational premise. It is an observable, measurable pattern I have watched play out across organizations for over two decades. Leadership and culture are not separate conversations.
Leadership is the catalyst. What leaders model, reinforce, and tolerate sets the standard for everything around them.
Culture is the multiplier. How teams think, behave, and perform is a direct reflection of the leadership above them.
Performance is the outcome. The results organizations are accountable for are the end product of that chain.
The work I do with your leaders moves through three connected stages.
See Clearly.
Most leaders have never had an honest, objective picture of how they are actually landing. Not how they intend to land, but how they actually show up under pressure, in decisions, in the moments that quietly set the standard for everyone around them. I help them build that picture through deep coaching conversations and science-backed tools like the Hogan and Leadership Circle Profile. The result is not feedback. It is genuine self-knowledge.
Lead Differently.
Awareness is the beginning, not the destination. The work is in the behavior, the specific, observable changes a leader makes in how they show up in meetings, handle conflict, and respond when things are hard. Between sessions, they are working. In sessions, we are building.
Build What Lasts.
When a leader shifts, the people around them shift. Teams align. Accountability strengthens. The culture they had been inadvertently creating gets replaced by the one you actually want to build. That is the return on investment your organization feels, and what I report back to you throughout the engagement.
This is the AKG Leadership Impact Framework. And it is the foundation of everything I do.
What it looks like when we work together
Every engagement begins with a conversation between me and you, the sponsor. I want to understand the organizational context, what is working, what is not, and what success looks like from where you sit. Then I begin working directly with your leader.
The work moves in three phases.
Discovery.
01
The first sessions are wide. I want to understand who this person is, how they are wired, what they value, where their confidence lives, and where it quietly breaks down. This is not a performance review. It is the foundation for everything that follows.
Insight.
02
When the timing is right, I bring in an assessment. The Hogan Personality Inventory reveals a leader's strengths, their derailers, and the environments where they are most likely to thrive or struggle. Combined with what I have already learned through our conversations, it creates a level of self-knowledge most leaders have never had access to before.
Behavior Change.
03
From there, the work becomes specific. We identify the two or three behaviors having the most impact on the people around your leader and work on them directly, real situations, real relationships, practiced responses to the moments that keep tripping them up. A standard engagement runs eight to twelve weeks, with the option to continue based on scope and progress.
Throughout the engagement, I check in with you. Not to share what is discussed in our sessions, that stays confidential, but to share progress as well as what I am observing organizationally and ensure the work is landing where it needs to.
This is not the right fit for every organization.
I do not work with leaders who are not willing to look honestly at themselves. Coaching requires genuine openness to seeing the gap between who they believe they are and who the people around them actually experience. Without that willingness, the engagement does not work, and I am direct about that from the beginning.
I do not work with organizations that are looking for a quick fix. Behavior change takes time. Eight to twelve weeks of consistent, honest work will produce real results. A two-hour workshop will not.
I do not work with organizations that treat culture as a communication problem. Culture is what your leaders model, reinforce, and tolerate every single day. If you are not willing to look at leadership behavior as the root cause, we are not going to get very far together.
What I do work with is organizations that are serious. Leaders who know something needs to change and are ready to do the work. CEOs who understand that the investment in one leader's development has a return that ripples across the entire organization.
Those are the engagements where something real happens.
What 25 years in the seat actually looks like.
Hi, I’m Amy Groff.
Before I was a coach, I was a Chief People Officer. I sat at the executive table. I managed leadership teams. I dealt with the exact dynamics my clients now hire me to help them solve.
I also spent fifteen years at The Walt Disney Company, including helping open Disney's Animal Kingdom, coordinating talent from 92 different institutions, and leading a team of 500. I oversaw all operational training and talent development for Walt Disney World, which then expanded across the Walt Disney Company to deliver world-class experiences. I watched what happened when leadership alignment was strong.
And I watched what happened when it quietly broke down.
All too often, I’ve seen leaders create one of two very different environments: one where people thrive — building a culture that multiplies performance and results — or one that quietly drains the oxygen from the organization, diminishing the work environment and ultimately constraining performance.
I am ICF ACC Certified, Hogan Certified, and Leadership Circle Profile Certified. My credentials matter less to me than my track record. But they exist, so you know the methodology is grounded in something rigorous.
For organizations navigating broader leadership and culture challenges, I also partner with executive teams on consulting engagements. Reach out to explore.
Here is what the people who have hired me, and the leaders who have worked with me, say.
Questions worth answering before you ask them.
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The answer is in the numbers. An Employee Net Promoter Score (ENPS) that moves from -13 to +58 is not a soft outcome. Reduced turnover, faster execution, a leadership team that is finally aligned — none of that is soft. Culture has a cost. It also has a return. Culture is the invisible infrastructure of execution. It determines whether strategy succeeds or stalls.
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Most coaching treats the leader as if they exist in isolation. They feel better about themselves, the organizational dynamics stay exactly the same, and six months later nothing has changed. I hold both simultaneously — I coach your leader and I read the organization around them. That distinction changes everything.
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Eight to twelve weeks. Sessions built around a real executive schedule. The return on that time is a leader who stops creating the friction that is costing everyone around them far more than the coaching ever will. The leaders who say they do not have time are usually the ones whose teams are spending the most energy managing around them.
A Few Things You Won’t Find on My LinkedIn
I started my career in zoos and aquariums. I have been reading behavior my entire life.
I helped open Disney's Animal Kingdom, the fourth Disney theme park, coordinating talent from 92 different institutions.
I once led a team of 500. I know what it feels like to be in the seat I now coach others through.
I oversaw training and talent for Walt Disney World, then Disneyland, and consulted with parks internationally. Because they kept asking.
I was not just an operational leader, I was aligning people, strategy, standards and behaviors to deliver a consistent world-class experience to scale.
I think about organizations the way ecologists think about ecosystems. Pull one thread, everything moves.
I moved an Employee NPS from -13 to +58 as an executive, because coaching was always my job before it was in my job title.
I have never once believed that training alone fixes a leadership problem.
I have never believed culture is solved by programs - it starts with leadership awareness.
I have the perspective of someone who has sat in the seat, making the decisions, leading teams, and being accountable for the results.
The organizations that outperform are not the ones with the best strategy.
They are the ones where leadership behavior and organizational direction are aligned, where the people in the room are moving together, where executives lead in a way that makes everyone around them better, not more cautious.
That does not happen by accident. It happens when someone is willing to look honestly at the leadership behavior inside their organization and do something about it.
If you are watching something erode and cannot quite name what it is, that is usually where we start.
I will tell you honestly whether I think I can help.