“As my executive coach, Michael taught me about human dynamics, team leadership, presentation and communication skill advancement. In leadership training, he did a lot to help my team mature in similar areas. I give my highest recommendation to Michael Papanek.”
– Scott Notebloom, CTO, VP, Yahoo!, Apple
Hi, I’m Michael Papanek
In my 30-year career leading and serving high performance teams, I have found one thing to be true:

The best leaders work collaboratively, decisively and successfully by building resilient relationships.
When leaders do this, magical things begin to happen: customers, partners and employees want to stay connected to the business and see it succeed. Drama gets dialed down and customer satisfaction goes off the charts—which all translates into sustained results, from high performing teams who will breakthrough any barrier to success.
You might say this is my life’s work.
I come to it partly by birth—my maternal grandfather was the legendary Kurt Lewin, the psychologist known globally as a founding father of organizational development. My mother was a professor, my father a doctor—whose family experiences in the Holocaust motivated them to work on social justice. I grew up surrounded by people using scientific approaches to an array of interpersonal issues.
But my later life experiences—as a musician, a sailor, a dad and a consultant—are what solidified my belief in the power of resilience in life and in business.
I started practicing and studying team and organizational dynamics, and their impact on results, as a systems engineer at EDS during their merger with General Motors and then later across a broad array of companies and relationships in my role as head of Learning Innovation for the pioneer of business team facilitation.
I was hooked. So when I left to start my own firm, I made developing resilient businesses a core part of my practice as a consultant, facilitator, educator and coach.
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