Betty Johnson, Ph.D.

Betty is the Founder and President of Bridging the Difference®

Her research examines how inclusive practices enable leaders to generate higher accomplishment and positive relationships in their work.

A lifelong learner about organizational effectiveness, Betty couples her academic knowledge with pragmatic, real-work approaches that get results.

Essentials

Betty’s 30-years’ experience in leadership and change consulting and coaching includes private, public, and non-profit clients.

She uses an empathetic process to help leaders recognize the behavior-goal misalignments that impede success, names them so leaders can see them, too, and shows how to bridge the difference to get extraordinary results.

Accomplishments & Proprietary Methods

Betty formulated her principled, values-based methods while attending an immersive program at the U.S. Army War College with senior leaders of U.S., Latin America, and Asia militaries.

Using an action research approach, she designed and implemented organizational interventions that created higher group accomplishment and built positive relationships.

Her post-doctorate research, consulting, and coaching work continue to focus on everyday leadership practices that transform individual, team, and organizational performance and wellbeing.

Proprietary methods include Align to Transform®, Intentional Meetings®, Mindful Influence®, and Team to Win®. All are grounded in scientific research, focus on helping people reach their highest potential, and demonstrate measurable business results.

Expertise
  • Career advancement
  • Change-readiness
  • Communication skills
  • Conflict and problem resolution
  • Diversity, equity, inclusion, and agency
  • Empathy as a performance enabler
  • High-performance teams
  • Participatory management and employee empowerment
  • Relationship-building strategies
  • Resilient leadership
Education & Certifications
  • A lifelong learner about organizational effectiveness: coupled her undergrad English degree with graduate studies inIndustrial Psychology.
  • She is a certified administrator and team coach for the Campbell-Hallam™ suite of leadership assessments, MRP®/MSP®, Teamwork-KS, TMA™, and other tools that forge a high-performing team culture.
  • A Certified Master Coach, she is also certified in a vast number of validated individual leadership assessments.
Clients

Betty honed her expertise through her work with more than 600 leadership and change engagements in business, government, and non-profit organizations in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and the Caribbean, including:

  • Avanos Medical
  • Aviva Insurance
  • Atrium Health
  • Bank of America
  • Chase
  • Chemence
  • HBSC
  • MetLife
  • Michelin
  • Novelis
  • Southern Company
  • TD Ameritrade
  • Leadership & Change
  • CitiGroup
  • Deloitte
  • Federal Reserve Bank
  • Ecolab
  • Fiserv
  • Halyard Health
Media

Making Virtual Work, How to Build Performance and Relationships by Betty Johnson, Ph.D.

Betty is the author of Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships, published August 16, 2021. The book provides a surprisingly practical and straightforward process any leader can use to stop the drain and get the highest gain from every minute spent in a virtual or hybrid meeting.

More info >


Video Meetings in a Pandemic Era: Emotional Exhaustion, Stressors, and Coping

In the first quarter of 2020, societal upheavals related to the COVID-19 pandemic included employers’ work-from-home mandates and an almost overnight adoption of video meetings to replace in-person meetings no longer possible due to contagion fears and social distancing requirements. This exploratory study aimed to address, in part, the scientific knowledge gap about video meetings as a source of emotional labor.

Read the Dissertation >