Executive Coaching & Leadership Development

You're Going to Love the Way You Lead.
And So Will They.

Catalyze Associates helps successful companies and leaders reach higher performance — more wins, stronger results — by clearing the people challenges in the way: inaction, accountability that doesn't stick, talent that walks out the door, and conversations handled clumsily or avoided. Because what separates good leaders from exceptional ones isn't intelligence or experience — it's what gets said, what doesn't, and what gets done as a result.

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95%
Measurable Improvement · Coaching & Immersion Programs
25+
Years Developing Leaders
1000's
of Leaders Transformed
Two colleagues laughing together in a bright modern office
"At the heart of every organization's success lies the often-overlooked art & science of getting things done through others."

Why Catalyze Works

Built on Practice, Not Theory.

The goal of leadership development isn't learning — it's measurable behavior change. Most training doesn't stick because it's all concepts and no reps, a slide deck forgotten by Friday. People don't change because someone told them the right answer; they change by building new habits live, with real feedback — and then measuring what actually changed.

That's the engine behind everything Catalyze does — from the 8-week Cost of Avoidance program to our long-term one-on-one coaching relationships: practical tools, real-world role-play, and supported practice until the behavior becomes muscle memory.

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Is This You?

The Leadership Challenges We Solve

Conversations lie at the heart of leadership. Even the best strategies will fail if your leaders aren't having the right kind of conversations at the right times — using the right approaches.

A diverse leadership team in a working strategy session

Want to Keep and Grow Your Best Talent?

By shifting leadership mindsets and behaviors, Catalyze makes your organization a more desirable place to work. People "join a company" but often "leave a boss."

Ready to Reach Even Higher Performance?

By asking teams for more, you'll often get more — but only if your leaders have cultivated strong, well-thought-out approaches to guiding, coaching, and accountability.

Trying to Shift Your Organization's Culture?

Publishing values rarely works. Changing leaders' daily words and actions to reflect top principles does. Catalyze helps make that shift real and lasting.

Looking for More Effective Ways to Lead?

Save your sanity, get better results, and maybe even have more fun. Catalyze runs private programs for organizations and open enrollment programs individuals can join.

Trusted by leaders at

Flagship Program

The Cost of Avoidance: Mastering Difficult Conversations

Turn your leaders into black belts at the conversations they dread. An 8-week, practice-based intensive — toolkit, live role-play, and real conversations — built for leadership teams and the executives around them.

Explore the Program → Book a discovery call →
  • 8-week behavior-change intensive (live + real practice)
  • Cohorts of 5–8 — everyone practices and critiques real conversations (or private 1:1 coaching)
  • Avoidance Index baseline + 5-month follow-up
  • Behavior-change guarantee — or your money back
  • The #1-rated module of a year-long leadership immersion program — now a standalone "practice engine" for you or your team

Free 5-Minute Assessment

What's the upside of fixing your team's hardest conversations?

Most organizational problems trace back to a conversation that never happened. The Team Avoidance Audit shows you where your team avoids hard conversations, how it derails under pressure, and a conservative estimate of the value in play each year. Bring the program in and we aggregate confidential self-assessments from your key people into one clear picture of how your organization sees itself.

Audit My Team → Assess Myself →
61
/ 100
Accruing Debt
Team Avoidance Audit
Creating Safety54
Listening & Learning62
Shared Accountability71
Est. value in play / yr $1.2M

What We Offer

Programs Built for Real Results

Whether you're an individual leader or driving an organization-wide initiative, Catalyze has a program designed for you.

💬

The Cost of Avoidance

Flagship Program

An 8-week, practice-based intensive that turns leaders into black belts at the difficult conversations they've been avoiding — ending with a real one, backed by a behavior-change guarantee.

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🎯

1:1 Executive Coaching

For Individual Leaders

Measurably transform and upgrade your impact on the organization. Deep 360° feedback combined with targeted coaching to shift the behaviors that matter most — durably.

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📊

360° Feedback

Proprietary Formats

Structured, proprietary 360° assessments that show leaders how they're really seen: the honest baseline that provides a compass for leadership change. And with unique "post-360" techniques, you finally get a quantitative readout on whether the behavior changes you've worked to make have been seen and appreciated by those around you.

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🏢

Leadership Immersion Programs

For Teams · Going Deeper

Multi-month group journeys for teams ready to go all in — private cohorts built around your organization's real challenges.

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What Participants Say

Voices from the Field

"I walked into the program dreading difficult conversations — and left viewing them as leadership opportunities. Years later, I still use the frameworks and techniques I learned."
— Director of Operations

"Kirstin's program has been more than transformational for me. My whole team thinks I've been reborn."

Director, Global Outsourcing

"I address performance issues directly now — without creating defensiveness or eroding trust."

VP, Product Management

"…the turning point in my management career."

Recruiting Director

"…we've saved many a new hire or made an extra deal as a result."

Executive VP

"…improved my ability to deliver difficult messages while preserving trust."

SVP, Capital Markets

"…I'm amazed how everything in the program still resonates."

Senior Operations Manager
Read All Testimonials
Kirstin Lynde, Founder & Principal, Catalyze Associates
Harvard Business School note — Developing Yourself as a Leader Co-author, "Developing Yourself as a Leader" — Harvard Business School

About the Founder

Kirstin Lynde

Founder & Principal, Catalyze Associates

Kirstin has a passion for helping people become the kind of leaders for whom others love to work — those who inspire great performance while making work enjoyable along the way, through trust, respect, and an open mind.

With real-world experience at Bain, American Express, Digitas, Forrester Research, and Randstad, Kirstin brings a practitioner's perspective that's rare in the coaching world. She built a world-class L&D function at Digitas as it grew from 150 to 2,000 employees — she's not an academic. She's been in the room.

Kirstin founded Catalyze Associates to bring innovative leadership development to organizations that want real, durable change — not just another training day.

Meet Kirstin Contact Us

Ready to Transform Leadership in Your Organization?

Let's have a conversation about whether a Catalyze program is the right fit for you or your team.

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