How do today’s leaders navigate relentless change while keeping themselves—and their teams—energized, accountable, and thriving?
In this episode of The Strategic Business Influencer, Paige Velasquez Budde sits down with Laurie Oswald, CEO of InteraWorks, a leader in performance development who has spent over two decades helping executives and organizations unlock human potential. Laurie’s background spans corporate tech, manufacturing, and now purpose-driven leadership at InteraWorks, where she guides global companies through transformation with tools that elevate both performance and well-being.
Laurie shares:
– Why the idea of “work-life balance” is outdated—and how integration is the real key
– The difference between accountability and integrity, and how to create a culture where accountability is energizing instead of fear-based
– Insights on leading across five generations in today’s workforce
– How InteraWorks’ Best Year Yet program helps leaders and organizations achieve lasting results—and why it’s now being expanded globally
– Her personal purpose statement: helping other human beings take flight
Laurie’s wisdom reminds us that performance and purpose aren’t opposites—they’re deeply connected.
Want to learn more about Laurie and the incredible work her team is doing? Visit https://www.interaworks.com/.
For more upcoming episodes, click “subscribe” to my LinkedIn newsletter. I promise you won’t want to miss these upcoming guests!
Want to dive deeper into how today’s most trusted leaders grow their businesses, brands, and influence? Pre-order my upcoming book, The Strategic Business Influencer, and get the playbook for turning leadership into your most powerful business asset.
Paige: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Strategic Business Influencer, my new series for leaders who know that in today’s world trust is the greatest competitive advantage. Today’s guest is Laurie Oswald, CEO of InteraWorks, a leader in performance development, and someone who deeply understands the connection between human potential and business success.
Laurie has spent over two decades in the corporate tech and manufacturing sectors where she experienced firsthand the pressures professionals face when trying to perform at a high level and live a full healthy life. That perspective drives her work at InteraWorks, where she leads large scale development programs that help people increase performance, lead with purpose, and achieve more.
She is an industrial engineer by training a passionate advisor to companies doing meaningful work and the co-founder of Best Year Yet foundation, which brings this performance tools to nonprofits and change makers around the world. I am so excited to have Laurie because she is going to be a wealth of knowledge for anybody listening.
So welcome, Laurie. I’m so grateful to have you on the series.
Laurie: Thank you Paige. So thrilled to be here.
Paige: Well, I wanna start off, you know, our conversation talking about, you know, the, the 20 years that you spent in corporate tech and manufacturing before leading InteraWorks. I, I’m curious to know what was that turning point that made you shift from executive execution driven leadership to more of that human centered performance approach?
Laurie: Hmm. I would say Paige, it goes back to probably my first leadership role pretty early in my career. Uh, the first time I was in a position to lead people, so to speak, and be responsible for, you know, a larger effort. And having had no leadership development ’cause in the industry I was in, we got no training whatsoever on, on much of anything.
Uh, I think I relied on what worked for me with leaders that I had reported to what didn’t work. Mm-hmm. Um, intuitively. Sensing what people needed. Um, what approaches made a difference in terms of their motivation, their joy? So I’d say a, it was my own experience. The other thing would be the industry that I was in started to enter a period of change with digital coming on, um, a lot of m and a activity.
So there was more and more chaos and change. Mm-hmm. And I think recognizing the challenges that that presents and needing to support people to navigate through that. Right. To stay focused on. Yeah, what they’re trying to accomplish and stay upbeat and energetic. While there’s a kind of a lot going on, those are some of the things that come to mind.
Paige: And I’m curious, with your work, have you seen that change, you know, kind of stay at the same level or has it even been accelerated?
Laurie: Well, no question. It, it continues to accelerate. Mm-hmm. Not only that, it’s much more complex. Um, okay. So it’s one thing to have a change as a result of one company coming together, right.
With another. Mm-hmm. Um, but when you’re talking about change in the external world, at the degree that it’s happening now, as well as the change inside of organizations. Uh, particularly as it relates to technology it’s exponentially faster, uh, and more complex. Mm. We hear that a lot.
Paige: Mm-hmm. And with all, with your work with a lot of successful executives I am curious, do you, what do you think high performance leaders are really struggling?
With right now behind the scenes?
Laurie: Well, the pace of change, uh, certainly, uh, is right up there. And given that how to best manage their attention and energy as well as, as harness the intention and energy of a team or a division or, or an entire organization. Um. And then we, we also lately are getting a lot of requests for support around accountability.
But it’s interesting, uh, not accountability in the sense that most people. Would define that word, but when there’s a lot going on and you’re trying to stay intentional about what’s important, you have to have flexibility to respond to what’s working and what’s not working, and to be able to do it in a really neutral way.
So, we’re doing keynotes, we’re doing accountability programs that sits right next to some of the other work that we do. But how do you infuse accountability in a neutral, inspiring way that takes the fear and the stress out of it, but really creates an organization that can just constantly learn, leverage what’s working and make changes right.
With, with what’s not working.
Paige: Mm-hmm. And I, I love that you brought up. You know, especially the word accountability, you know, that’s something that, that our team, especially our ex executive team has talked about quite a bit. I’m curious from your perspective, you know, whose role is it to hold that accountability or how does that foster within a culture best?
Laurie: Yeah.
For sure accountability is everyone’s responsibility. So I think the first thing is we want to distinguish accountability from integrity. So integrity is, mm-hmm. Is doing what you say you’re going to do. Right. It’s execute it as you intend. Accountability is being responsible for the outcome, uh, and be being willing to be that stand, ensure that resources are galvanized appropriately.
Changes are made course corrections are implemented, and that’s really everybody’s responsibility. We help each other become accountable. Uh, leader has an important role in that, but it’s not a command and control top-down mm-hmm. Function. Um, we’re all, uh, for example, in the planning work that we do.
When we work with Intacct teams, we strive to foster a sense that everybody is responsible for the whole plan. It may, you may not have a function that’s related to a specific goal, but this mindset of we’re all accountable for success really changes changes the game in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm.
Paige: Absolutely. And, and thank you for sharing that. ’cause I am completely, we, we’ve seen that in, in our culture and company as well. And there is this big shift, um, when everybody steps into that accountability for one another. I’ve heard you say before. The term, you know, work life balance is outdated, that it’s really about integration.
I think this is such a hot topic. I was actually listening to a podcast yesterday that also had very similar sentiments from another female executive and and founder. So I’m curious how you coach CEOs to integrate their professional and personal energy in a way that is sustainable. Yeah.
Laurie: It’s funny, I, I had this sense about this term work-life balance.
Being sort of off kilter and confusing very early in my career, it, it always seemed to me like it set up this competition like a teeter-totter, right. That the two work in life were competing against each other. Uh, and then in order to keep them balanced Right. You had to position them and one was always winning, right.
Right. Or one was always was dropping, but. One of the things that I’ll ask an an executive or a leader is have you ever experienced a team member who’s struggling in their personal life? There’s something going on there, and they’ll of course, you know, acknowledge yes. And then we ask the question, well, what?
What happens to their performance at work? Yeah, when there’s something going on and you know, naturally it, it suffers, right? We’re human beings, we are whole people. Uh, we live our lives in a holistic way. And to not recognize that is really leaving a lot of opportunity and potential for leadership and relationship and mentorship on, on the table.
We. Uh, I think COVID probably helped shine a light on that because all of a sudden people’s personal lives were much more front and center as it related to work. We could see it. We had to deal with it. We had to work around it. We had to work with it. Yeah. And what people were going through with their families and their.
Their health and their environment and their homes were so, right, so clear and apparent. So I think the first thing is shifting that mindset that they are not separate, that they are holistic, and then recognizing that through a system or through certain frameworks of working we can help bring people’s attention and bring leaders’ attention to.
This idea that what’s really most important is to consider the 20% of things in someone’s life that makes the 80% difference, right? And that includes work and keep the focus there and provide systems there. But, you know, we all have personal things. And again, going back to when I started working in a manufacturing plant and this idea that people had personal lives was somehow behind the curtain.
Sure it wasn’t talked about. It was frowned upon in fact, and no allowances were made in that regard. Mm-hmm. For people. And that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work anymore.
Paige: Absolutely. I, you know, I, I love that you pointed out there was a big shift with COVID and you and I have talked about multi generations in the workplace as well.
And, you know, I, I feel like maybe I’ve even seen a shift from generation to generation in terms of how we’ve looked at that. I don’t know if, if You’all have as well.
Laurie: Yeah. And it’s interesting, we, I think I heard recently there are, there are five generations in the workforce right now. Wow. Which is extraordinary.
Um, and we tend to lot talk a lot about the attitudes or preferences of the different generations capabilities. I think the piece that’s most important for us to recognize is a lot of those differences and preferences are, are a result of a difference in values and values, right? Come from our experiences growing up.
They come from the time right, that we lived in. I think we have so much more in common than we have differences and absolutely there are a lot of shared values, but when we recognize sometimes there’s just a value difference. Rather than, uh, you know, a conflict. Mm-hmm. It creates a lot of grace, uh, to support, you know, all of those
Paige: generations.
Yeah, absolutely. And in the work that you do, it’s very high touch. I mean, y’all are working with leaders, executives and trust is everything because it’s, you know, not only professional work, but it’s a lot of times personal development as well. So how do you. Earn and maintain that trust with leaders who are also used to be the ones that are in control and have all the answers.
Laurie: Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, we’re fortunate at InteraWorks that our core programs, the work that we’re known for, most known for. They’ve been around a really long time are still some of the most popular programs in enterprise companies today. And that, you know, just that level of experience and expertise and sort of proof helps quite a bit.
But we, we have to show up authentically. We. I think our, as a team, we walk the talk, we model the work that we do. Mm-hmm. We practice the work that we do. We take a stand for the work that we do. I think clients get a sense too when we’re working with them that we listen, um mm-hmm. We really wanna understand and get beneath sort of what’s going on in their immediate world of concern or their immediate challenges and.
You know, our purpose at InteraWorks is we elevate the human experience. And I think there’s that sense as well that, that commitment to, that, that mission I believe shines through.
Paige: I. Absolutely. And I, I wanna talk about one of your programs Best Year Yet. Mm-hmm. It has become a core part of how InteraWorks helps leaders.
So I’d love for you to share the origin story of that program. How did it get started? And then why does it continue to resonate with leaders across industries?
Laurie: Hmm. You for that, that question best is, I believe the. A piece of work that we have that was created back in time before the rest of it we’re going on over 40 years now.
Vest yet was created by a woman named Jenny Dittler who’s. She’s known as being at the ground zero of the coaching profession. So before executive coaching or coaching in business was even, uh, a thing, she was doing that kind of work with executives and she created a system then to guide her coaching that ultimately turned into a book and then became a business and started training people around the world to do this work and.
I, I think it’s so precious when you have something that is a product or an experience that’s been around a long time and is still as relevant and universal and timeless as it’s ever been. Probably even more so now with where we are in the world. Sure. And. It’s really simple and profound and provides a framework for you to answer a series of questions and create a plan to get to accomplish anything that you want to achieve.
Literally anything. We’ve worked with adventure and sports teams, students, entrepreneurs, CEOs. And this idea that you can, you can go through a process that pulls from you rather than pushes knowledge at you. It pulls from your own inner nature, your wisdom, who you are, and helps you architect a plan for success and do it really simply and powerfully, and then supports you to actualize it and then do it again.
And then do it again. And, uh, it has a lot of different applications and, we are just finishing a project that we’re super excited about, which is we’re taking that experience and, and creating a fully digital, uh, self-paced app that will allow anybody in the world now to access that program. So we bring it into businesses and organizations quite often, but mm-hmm.
Really anyone with a device that’s interested to. Create a plan to actualize either what’s important in their life or work or in some other endeavor. We’ll be able to experience it and
Paige: wow,
Laurie: we’re, we’re very thrilled to have the opportunity to do that and bring it to the world.
Paige: Yeah.
Well that’s incredibly exciting because that, that program is so proven, I know time and time again, and that y’all are creating that accessibility for anybody to be able to access that is absolutely huge. For those that are seeking that, you know, personal and professional development, and I know that you’ve also co-founded the Best Year Yet Foundation, which I believe brings this program.
As well to nonprofits around the world. So I’m curious how that mission has really shaped the way you lead and, and define success, being able to continue to, to scale the reach of the program.
Laurie: Well another thing near and dear to our hearts, we started the foundation when we launched the business. Um mm-hmm.
With the intention to. Provide access and resources to the same work we do inside of corporations that are fortunate to have the budgets and the awareness right around development and systems for performance and productivity, and with the recognition that nonprofits and community projects around the world don’t always have know about them, have access to.
Uh, to lead and, and work and implement systems to be success successful. So the foundation helps us do that with the idea that together, whether we’re in partnership with a funding sponsor or in partnership with a grantee, we can. We can bring not only Bester yet, but our effective edge productivity work and our leadership, um mm-hmm.
Body of work that we do as well. And we’ve got projects right now going on in Poland and India and Kenya, various places in the United States. Wow. And, you know, those relationships are, um, just so fulfilling. So I think the, in terms of influencing leadership or maybe the way we go about what we do is looking for needs and how do we solve that need together.
Mm-hmm. Uh, in a way that’s going to equip and enable. People in the world, whether it’s a business leader or a nonprofit staff member, to do more of what they do, right? They’re doing right. Incredibly important work in the world, and how do we equip and enable them to do more of what they’re doing and what they were meant to do.
Paige: Well, that’s re remarkable and thank you so much for, for leading that work because I know that makes such an impact, um, especially as with the nonprofits with their missions as well, and even companies in their missions. It’s absolutely huge. Thank you. Uh, Laurie, there are two questions that I love to ask every entrepreneur, CEO leader.
And the first question is, who are you in addition to being a CEO?
Laurie: Hmm. Oh goodness. Well, right now I’m a fundraiser raising some, some capital and funding, which is a bit of role. An important role. Yeah. Um, I am a practical, creative, I guess you would say. Certainly a, a parent and spouse, a family member, friend, all of those things are really important to me.
Uh, spiritual seeker. I’m always sort of present with what’s going on that we can see and trying to understand, understand more of the world and my, my own experience in that way. Problem solver sometimes galvanizer, uh, architect. I love building things in all sorts of formats. And. Exerciser in training always, I would say.
Paige: That’s amazing. I love it. In, in the last question I have for you is, what is the impact that you wanna have at the end of every single day?
Laurie: Hmm. I crafted a, a purpose statement sometime back, and I, I feel like it’s still something that, that provides the most fulfillment, which is helping other human beings take flight.
So I do believe that one of the meanings of life, if not the meaning of life, is to serve each other. And yes, uh, if I. If I can have helped one person, right, fly a little higher, a little more smoothly after a day, or a group of people or an organization that’s. That’s what what means the most.
Paige: Absolutely.
And hopefully they’re replicating that in their lives too. I love that. Well, thank you so much for, for all the insight that you’ve shared. Laurie if anybody wants to learn more about you, Ann and Tara works, can you tell them where they can find you?
Laurie: Yeah, absolutely. The best, best thing would be to go to our websites, uh, interaworks.com, I-N-T-E-R-A works.com.
And shoot a note off and, anyone on our team would love to, to share and understand what you’re up to and how we might be able to help.
Paige: Yes. Well, thank you so much. And, um, you all look out for the new program that is gonna be accessible for all, which is Best Year Yet. And we’ll be sure to share that.
I’ll be sure to share that on my channels once that’s available. Oh, thank you. Um, and, and probably reshare this interview at that time, but. I told you all there was gonna be so much value here and thank you so much, Laurie, for coming on, sharing your experience, the work that you all do. It’s so meaningful and I’m just so grateful to, to have you as a guest.
Laurie: Thank you. Thank you, Paige. Thank you for creating this space. Uh, love the conversation. Absolutely.
Paige: Absolutely. Alrighty, all. Well, we will see you next time.