How to Shift from Surviving to Thriving Leadership with Renee Moorefield

Ashish Kothari: Hi, Renee. It's wonderful to have you on the Happiness Squad podcast.

Renee Moorefield: I am super delighted to be here. It's been a while since we've been able to connect.

Ashish Kothari: I know. I've been so inspired by your work. You're definitely what I would call one of the elders in the field. As you mentioned before we started recording, you've been in this field for over 35 years, focusing on well-being, flourishing, and thriving—long before these concepts had definitions.

There's so much I can learn from you, and I know our listeners would love to hear from your years of experience in helping organizations, teams, and individuals flourish. I'm truly grateful for this time together.

Renee Moorefield: Me, too. I really am.

Ashish Kothari: I’d love to start with your origin story. Tell me about your personal journey—35 years ago, when well-being and wellness weren’t mainstream topics, what inspired you to walk this path and start Wisdom Works?

Renee Moorefield: That’s a great question because you’re right—some of these words didn’t even exist. When I was in college, I somehow knew I wanted to be in the wellness space. There wasn’t much career counseling available at the time, but I was drawn to it.

I trained as an exercise physiologist and wellness educator, and my first job was with six cardiologists at a healthcare system. I was working with people at the back end—after they had heart attacks—teaching them about healthy lifestyles, diet, exercise, and stress management.

I was young, advising people on managing stress when I hadn’t fully lived through it myself. But I understood what it meant to be dysregulated and to try to find ways to regulate myself. I wouldn’t have had the words for it back then, but I knew it on some level.

That experience made me realize I didn’t want to be downstream, addressing the effects of poor health. I wanted to be upstream, building capabilities to prevent these issues. That first job was formative because it showed me that there was a way of living and being that could help us thrive—not just physically, but holistically.

I then joined a global corporation, which I never expected. At the time, I saw corporations as the problem, not the solution. But it ended up being an incredible experience. I ran the health promotion department, and that was my first leadership role. I managed a large budget, fitness centers, stress management programs, and wellness initiatives for 41,000 employees.

That’s when I realized I could create a bigger impact as a leader than I could as an individual specialist. I started shifting my focus from being a wellness expert to understanding leadership—what makes people show up with their full potential, not just individually, but together. When teams function well collectively, they produce results that would be impossible alone. That insight shaped my path forward.

The company was growing rapidly, from 41,000 to 110,000 employees, mostly through mergers and acquisitions. While the technical side of these transitions was handled well, the people and culture side was not. In the health promotion department, we saw the downstream effects—stressed-out employees.

So, I raised the question: Could we do this better?

cquisitions. This was back in: 1993

At the time, books like Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley, and works by Ken Wilber were just coming out. These thinkers deeply influenced me.

One of my mentors was Peter Koestenbaum, a philosopher who brought existential questions of responsibility and freedom into business. He recently passed at 97, but his work shaped my thinking about leadership in a profound way.

I spent nearly a decade at that company, working in different countries. When I repatriated, I joined The Coca-Cola Company, where they asked me to continue the transformative leadership work I had been doing.

By then, I had earned a master’s in business and human relations and a doctorate focusing on the role of spirituality in leadership.

We found that when leaders were more spiritually centered—whether through faith, meditation, a connection to nature, or a deep sense of purpose—they had lower fasting triglyceride levels, lower total cholesterol, greater tolerance for diversity, stronger relationship skills, and higher leadership effectiveness. It was remarkable.

Ashish Kothari: Of course.

Renee Moorefield: Spirituality often relates to the deeper questions of existence, and that was a key part of my study.

Ashish Kothari: Renee, through all the work I’ve done, this all makes sense. No matter what door you enter—whether through spirituality or another path—you’re ultimately working on dissolving the ego. It’s about connecting to a state of interbeing, seeing the whole rather than just the individual.

When you do that, you experience less stress, less fear, and less of a divide between yourself and others. The health outcomes improve, and your ability to connect with others deepens. You break that barrier of us versus them and start sensing the world differently. That’s beautiful.

Renee Moorefield: This is why the work of evolving leadership is such profound work. Sometimes it’s about behavior change—deciding to start an exercise program or learning how to manage conflict better. That’s valuable.

But the deeper work is about purpose.

Why are we here?

Who do we think we are?

What does it mean to lead?

What does it mean to stand for something?

 What does it mean to be the kind of leader that leads in such a way that creates the conditions for all people to thrive?

True leadership is about creating the conditions for all people—and the planet—to thrive. That’s the deeper work we founded Wisdom Works on 25 years ago.

Ashish Kothari: Amazing. Fundamentally, enabling a shift in root perspectives, right? If you shift being, the doing follows. But if you only teach the doing, it might not stick.

Renee Moorefield: That’s true.

Ashish Kothari: I love that. Renee, could you share the six-part framework you created at Wisdom Works? Give us an overview and maybe dive deeper into one or two dimensions—something practical that listeners could implement right away.

Renee Moorefield: Sure, and if I’m not doing a good job explaining it, let me know.

Ashish Kothari: I’ve got the framework here in front of me.

Renee Moorefield: Great. So, when I co-founded Wisdom Works 25 years ago, the whole focus was on a different model of leading—one that truly holds the thriving of people and the planet as part of leadership itself, as part of how you show up in life.

For many years, we worked with a qualitative assessment we built ourselves, looking at different factors linked to thriving. But I wanted to be able to do this work at scale, to reach more people at once. So, I wanted to build a framework and an assessment system that could be used with thousands, even millions, of people.

First, we looked at the market to see if something like this already existed—because I can tell you, it takes a lot to build an assessment that is both valid and reliable. But we couldn’t find one that integrated all the necessary factors. You’ve probably heard of bio-psycho-social-spiritual models—there are many different elements that contribute to thriving, and we wanted to bring them together.

So, we partnered with the Positive Organization Center at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, which is part of their business and management school. Their team of social scientists worked with us to take the qualitative insights we had gathered and turn them into a quantitative tool.

The framework consists of six dimensions. You mentioned you have it in front of you. Thriving is the centerpiece.

1️⃣ Thriving – If I had to define it in one sentence, it’s the extent to which you feel internally well-resourced to handle the complexities and demands of your life and work, while maintaining a high quality of life, a sense of growth, and competence. You can already see how much is packed into that definition. Thriving is that state where, despite everything going on in the world, you have a right relationship with it—and with yourself.

2️⃣ Fuel – This dimension focuses on what people traditionally think of as wellness behaviors: the extent to which you are eating, moving, resting, and breathing in ways that help you manage stress, optimize energy, and enhance performance. Many well-being tools in the market focus primarily on this, but we look deeper—how do these wellness behaviors actually support your ability to manage stress, energy, and performance? It’s really about raising consciousness around these factors.

3️⃣ Flow – Flow examines the extent to which you feel engaged in your work and whether your work gives you energy. Not every moment, of course, but overall—does your work contribute to your well-being? Does it provide self-esteem and a sense of self-worth? This dimension also includes mindfulness—your ability to be present in the moment without immediately judging it as good or bad, right or wrong.

4️⃣ Wonder – Wonder is probably my personal favorite. Each of these dimensions is a pathway back to connection—to yourself, to others, even down to the level of your nervous system. They help activate that sense of connection. Wonder, for me, is what does that most in this phase of my life. It’s about bringing a sense of awe and appreciation to life and work. It’s also about seeking perspectives different from your own—getting out of your box, out of your worldview, discovering, and growing. It includes learning how to mine your experiences for personal growth.

5️⃣ Wisdom – Wisdom, in our framework, is about having a vision and purpose to guide your life and work. Often, we find that leaders and teams rely on their organization’s vision to guide them. But when you ask them, What does thriving mean for your own life and work?—many don’t have an answer. They’ve never taken the time to reflect on that. So, vision and purpose are about stepping into the person—and the leader—you want to become. It’s about self-authoring. This dimension also includes wholeness, or having an integrated, coherent life, as well as emotional capacity—the ability to bring lightness to your responsibilities.

6️⃣ Thriving Amplified – This is the outermost ring of the framework. The first five dimensions focus on you—your well-being, your resilience, your ability to thrive. But this sixth dimension looks at how you extend that to others. It’s about the extent to which you act as an agent of thriving—how you energize others, maximize their potential, and cultivate an environment that fosters pro-social behaviors like collaboration, care, respect, and reciprocity.

That’s the whole framework.

Ashish Kothari: It’s beautiful, Renee. As I hear you speak about this, so much of the work you’ve been doing resonates deeply—with our own thinking and with what’s needed today.

You mentioned thriving, this idea of self-evaluation of well-being. I was looking at research we were doing at McKinsey, and if you combine that with the Harvard work on complexity theory, only about 20% of leaders and individuals today would say they’re thriving.

Renee Moorefield: Yeah, for sure.

Ashish Kothari: The complexity, the volatility, the uncertainty—it’s stretching us. And our ability to hold that complexity is much lower than what the world is demanding. So most people are stuck in survival mode rather than thriving.

Renee Moorefield: I totally agree. That’s really the point of this work. It’s not just about creating our own happy little lives in isolation. We exist in a larger world, where we all need to live on this planet together. The real question is: How can we meet these complexities in a way that allows us to resource ourselves within them? How can we learn, grow, and innovate through complexity rather than being defined by it?

Ashish Kothari: Yeah. Instead of trying to dumb things down or pretend they don’t exist.

Renee Moorefield: Totally. Or trying to deny it.

Ashish Kothari: Exactly. It’s either-or thinking. So I love that. And I actually want to start with your sixth dimension first.

By the way, there’s so much I appreciate about your model. One thing I really love is that thriving is at the center, and amplification is the outer ring. And I love that for two reasons.

First, so much of the work around well-being at work is being done in organizations where the leaders themselves are not well. If you’re not thriving, it’s very hard to amplify thriving for others. It doesn’t matter what words you use—how you show up will always have a bigger ripple effect.

Second, in all the change work we did at the firm, role modeling was one of the biggest levers. You can’t just talk about well-being; you have to live it.

But beyond that, I love that you’ve dedicated 25, 30, 35 years—25 years since founding Wisdom Works, 35 years in this space—not just for yourself, but in service of others. That’s why this work continues.

Even in Buddhism, there’s the idea of the bodhisattva—that the desire for enlightenment isn’t for oneself but for others. If you’re pursuing nirvana only for your own liberation, it’s just another ego game, another illusion. And I love that your model holds both—personal thriving and the higher, collective purpose behind it.

And honestly, you need that deeper reason, because this is hard work. You outlined four core areas—fuel, flow, wonder, and wisdom—that help us reach thriving. So before we can amplify it, we need to ask: Are we thriving ourselves?

And friends, just assess for yourself:

✅ Fuel – Are you energized? Are you moving enough, eating well, resting? A simple check: Are you sleeping more than seven hours a night? If not, that’s a fuel issue.

✅ Flow – How often are you in flow? Or are you stuck in back-to-back meetings? Do you find meaning in your work? If not, this is a gap—not just for you, but for your teams.

✅ Wonder – Are you curious? We live in a world of unknowns. In fact, the last two years have introduced more unknown unknowns. If you’re not cultivating a mindset of wonder, you’ll keep grasping for old knowledge to solve new problems—problems that old knowledge wasn’t designed to address.

✅ Wisdom – This is where deeper wisdom—accumulated over years, even centuries—comes in. If we can tap into that, beyond our ego-driven structures, we unlock something powerful.

I love how intuitive and holistic your model is, Renee—the frame you’re putting around it.

Renee Moorefield: Thank you so much. I can feel that. Literally, in the center of my chest, my heart, everything is warming up. I really appreciate the extent to which you get this—not just intellectually, but intuitively.

And the fact that you get it without ever having taken the assessment, without seeing the scales or the science—it speaks to the path you’ve personally been on.

Ashish Kothari: Thank you. So let’s talk about the assessment itself, because I think that’s a key piece. It’s a mirror that leaders can hold up to themselves and get clarity quickly.

So, Renee, tell us about the Be Well, Lead Well platform that you created. How does it bring this framework to life? And could you share a client study or a real-world example of what’s become possible through this work?

Renee Moorefield: Sure, sure. The Be Well, Lead Well platform is a collection of resources, programs, trainings, content, newsletters—various tools designed to support people and remind them that they are hardwired with the capacity to thrive.

You already came wired for it. You also have the hardwired capacity to survive, and in every moment, you get to choose how you’re going to show up.

The platform also helps leaders remember and experiment with different practices—not just new behaviors or patterns of behavior and thought, but deeper questions that shift how they see their role. Because leadership isn’t just about your thriving—it’s about stewarding an environment where others can thrive as well.

Of course, that includes yourself. But when I say “leader,” I want to be really clear: everyone can be a leader. Leadership, to me, is about how you use your life energy to create outcomes that matter.

So ask yourself: How am I choosing to use my life energy in this conversation? In my next meeting? In the next action I take? Not everyone is a manager, but everyone can be a leader. And that means everyone can reflect on these kinds of questions.

The Be Well, Lead Well platform includes all of these resources. Be Well, Lead Well Pulse is the assessment, and it’s based on 19 biopsychosocial-spiritual factors—the ones I mentioned earlier at the dimension level. Underneath each dimension, there are all these scales that measure specific aspects of thriving.

We’ve used the assessment with close to 4,000 leaders over the last few years. And from a meta-analysis of that work, we’ve found that about 34% of a leader’s reported impact is linked to their psychological well-being—the relationship they have with themselves and their capacity to thrive.

That’s pretty significant when you think about all the factors that contribute to leadership—things like task management, financial resources, relationship capital, and everything else you need to drive outcomes. While this isn’t a causal relationship, the correlation is strong—about 34% of leadership impact is linked to personal well-being and the capacity to thrive.

Ashish Kothari: Honestly, I’m surprised it’s only 34%. I would’ve guessed something closer to 80%!

But that makes sense—we see the world as we are, and we create the world through the actions we take from that place.

Renee Moorefield: For sure. That’s exactly it.

So, part of the Be Well, Lead Well platform is the work we’ve been doing with clients. You asked about case studies—we’ve been working with leaders and organizations for 25 years, and with this specific tool for the last few years since we developed it.

A few years ago, we started getting a lot of interest from leadership development practitioners who wanted to integrate this work into their own programs. They saw how powerful cultivating a leader’s thriving capacity could be in making them more effective.

So we created a certification program—the Coach for Thriving program. Now, we have about 240 practitioners and leaders worldwide who are trained to bring this framework and assessment into their own work, which is incredibly exciting. It means this work is being carried forward in different organizations and regions across the world.

Ashish Kothari: A couple of questions on that, Renee.

First—do leaders take this assessment individually, or is this something that an organization would implement at scale? Like, if you were working with a company of 1,000 employees, would all 1,000 take it?

Renee Moorefield: We haven’t yet had all 1,000 employees of an organization take it.

Wait—do you mean the assessment, or the coach certification?

Ashish Kothari: The assessment.

Renee Moorefield: Oh, we have had whole organizations—smaller ones—take the assessment. In one global pharmaceutical giant, for example, we’ve skilled a group of internal coaches who support their 110,000 employees.

These are professional coaches who were already trained in individual, team, and executive coaching. What we did was help a subset of them integrate this thriving framework into their work—at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

Of course, this assessment can be used with all employees, but our real focus is on building internal capacity. The goal is that, at some point, the organization looks at us and says, Why are you still here?—because that’s actually the whole point.

If you’re truly building capacity, you’re not there just to sell more work. You’re there to empower the organization so that, eventually, they don’t need you. And when that happens, these leaders take this mindset with them—into their families, their communities, and beyond. That’s the real vision and purpose.

Ashish Kothari: Yeah, I love that. So, typically, do you deploy this assessment with individual leaders, or do you also use it to assess an entire organization’s overall state of thriving?

Renee Moorefield: Great question. There are three ways to deploy the assessment.

1️⃣ Individual Leaders – Some leaders take it on their own as part of their personal development journey, just to assess where they are and how they’re doing.

2️⃣ Teams – This is for a group of people working together toward a goal who want to build a thriving team environment. The assessment helps them create a shared language and framework for those conversations. We generate a team report, which becomes part of their developmental process.

3️⃣ Organizations – We also have a mechanism for deploying the assessment at scale across an organization. Employees take it, and we can code it demographically to generate organizational-level insights. This allows leaders to see trends and patterns in the workplace.

So, those are the three ways we apply it.

Ashish Kothari: Beautiful. You know, something you said earlier really stuck with me—it sparked a reflection.

You said, We are hardwired for thriving, and we are hardwired for survival. That immediately connected with the work I do. I’ve always led with the idea that we are hardwired for fear.

It reminded me of the old story about the two wolves—have you heard it?

The grandfather tells his grandson that inside each of us, there are two wolves. One represents fear, greed, and destruction; the other represents kindness, generosity, and service. And the grandson asks, Which one wins?—to which the grandfather replies, The one you feed.

And I think that’s exactly it. We have both capacities within us. But for so many people today, the way we grow up—the little experiences we have as children, the way the world apprentices us—keeps feeding the fear-based wolf.

As a result, 80% of people become hardwired for survival. They don’t see a way out. And they become afraid of the very things that could help them—wonder, flow, wisdom, and a higher purpose.

Instead of embracing these, they’re just trying to get through the day. But the beauty of your framework is that it offers a possibility—because if you know where you are, you can take steps to move forward.

Renee Moorefield: I do want to acknowledge that for many people in the world, external resources matter.

Some don’t have access to the basic conditions needed for thriving—nutritious food, a safe place to sleep, time in nature. Those things do make a difference.

At the same time, as a global society, we are wealthier, better fed, and more knowledgeable than ever before. We have more access to information, tools, and practices that can help us.

So I agree with you—we have more opportunity than we think to not be defined by our circumstances. We can expand our capacity to thrive and respond from a place of well-being, rather than being stuck in survival mode.

That said, our family systems, school systems, and workplace cultures often reinforce a fear-based mindset. Maybe “fear-based” is too strong a phrase—perhaps a reactive orientation is a better way to put it.

But regardless of the wording, we are conditioned to react rather than respond. And making that shift—learning to recognize your state of being in the moment and consciously moving from a reactive state to a more balanced, well-regulated state—is an act of personal leadership.

Ashish Kothari: Yes.

Renee Moorefield: And honestly, this shift is especially difficult in today’s world.

If you have the news on all the time… if you’re constantly on social media… if you’re overloaded with negative input… then you’re constantly giving your energy away.

And when that happens, making this shift becomes even more challenging.

But I just want to reinforce what you’re saying—we do have a choice.

Ashish Kothari: Oh, absolutely. And I think that’s why we have to approach this work with a lot of compassion—rather than judgment—by meeting people where they are.

Renee, we could talk for hours, but I know we have a hard stop in 10 minutes. So, I want to ask you this:

From all your 35 years of work in this space, what are four or five interventions that you’ve found to be the most effective?

For listeners who might feel stuck in a reactive state—who are thinking, This is interesting, but what do I actually do?—what are some practical things they can try right now?

What can they do tomorrow to see if a shift is possible?

Renee Moorefield: That’s such a great question because every person is different. Every team is different. Every organization is different. It’s deeply personal.

But if I were to look for patterns, I would say:

1️⃣ The ability to notice yourself in the moment, without judgment and with compassion, is one of the most powerful things you can develop. This is the difference between being driven by your stress—by your internal dysregulation—and having just enough space to name what’s happening and choose a different response.

2️⃣ Learning to recognize your own signature of stress. For example, I know that when I feel expansive across my chest, I’m in a state of well-being. But when I feel contraction in my chest or a sore throat, it’s often a sign that I’m not being fully honest with myself. If I’m making a situation seem better than it actually is, my body tells me.

So, understanding your own signals—the cues your body gives you—is incredibly important.

3️⃣ Practicing state shifts—learning how to self-regulate. This can be as simple as taking a conscious breath.

There are literally thousands of breathwork practices—some that lift your energy, some that downregulate your nervous system, some that help you find balance. The key is recognizing where you are:

Am I anxious and overstimulated?

Am I feeling low and unmotivated?

Based on that, you can choose the right practice to balance yourself—so that when you walk into a sales meeting or a feedback session, you’re radiating well-being rather than just performing it.

4️⃣ Movement. If breathwork isn’t enough, take a quick walk. Moving your body moves energy—it’s always a good reset.

At Wisdom Works, we have about 100+ macro and micro practices linked to the six pathways in our framework. We’ve spent years identifying science-backed practices that help people make these small shifts.

These small shifts are acts of personal empowerment.

Then there are bigger, macro-level practices, like:

5️⃣ Asking yourself, “What does thriving mean to me?”

Everyone can do this. For the next week or month, just start noticing:

When do I feel most alive?

What activities give me energy?

What drains me?

Let that question sit in your consciousness. Pay attention to what shows up—in your waking life, in your dreams. If you’re open to it, you’ll start receiving insights about what thriving actually means for you.

And the next big step? Designing your life and work around that.

Ashish Kothari: I love that.

In a lot of the work we do, we have a practice called “Awareness, Pause, and Shift”—it’s a meta-practice we introduce early on.

✅ Awareness – Know your story, your breath patterns, your emotional state.

✅ Pause – Create space before reacting.

✅ Shift – Choose a response that aligns with what’s actually called for in the moment, rather than just defaulting to your conditioned approach.

It’s about consciously choosing how you want to show up—rather than just reacting on autopilot.

Renee Moorefield: Yes. And I want to acknowledge something—this pausing and shifting takes energy.

You have to be intentional. You have to decide, I want to be more effective, more fulfilled, have more meaning, more vitality, more thriving in my life.

If you commit to putting energy and conscious thought into your own journey—and supporting others in doing the same—you will see results.

I don’t even need to reference the science anymore—because the science already confirms it. But more importantly, we see it every day with our clients.

✅ You see the results personally.

✅ You see the results in how you show up at work and how work gets done.

✅ You see the results in the quality of the outcomes you produce.

Ashish Kothari: Yes.

And I love that you said you have 100+ micro and macro practices—because often, just one small shift can make a difference.

We’ll include links so that people can find you, take the assessment, and access the different practices you’ve developed. These tools have already helped so many leaders thrive—and through that, create better outcomes for their teams, their customers, humanity, and even the planet.

Renee Moorefield: Wonderful, Ashish. The last thing I would say—based on everything you just mentioned—is this:

One of the most powerful practices we can adopt right now is finding others who are on this journey, too. It can feel lonely when you’re trying to step into flourishing and thriving in a world that constantly reinforces survival mode.

That’s why communities like The Happiness Squad matter. It’s why our community at Wisdom Works exists. We’re building a global network of people who are committed to this work.

Margaret Wheatley, whose book Leadership in the New Science I mentioned earlier, talks about finding “islands of sanity.”

I like to think of them as “islands of thriving”—places where, when you forget your innate capacity to thrive, others can remind you. And right now, we need that more than ever. So, I really appreciate you inviting me into this conversation—because we need each other.

Ashish Kothari: Absolutely. And thank you, Renee, for a lifetime of work. For me, this has been a 10-year journey. You’ve been doing this for over three decades.  So, thank you for really leading the way, long before others even thought about this.

I’ve learned a lot from you today, and I truly hope we can continue to collaborate—to amplify this work and, hopefully, create something even more beautiful together.

Thank you for joining us.

Renee Moorefield: Thank you. It’s been a gift.

Ashish Kothari: Have a wonderful day.