Interviews

An interview with Amy Posey, a Silicon Valley-based leadership consultant focused on neuroscience and high performance.

Published

3 years ago

June 18, 2020

Tell us your name and a little about yourself.

My name is Amy Posey. For the past 20 years, I’ve focused on helping leaders and managers to be more effective. In the last decade, I’ve been using neuroscience to enhance this work tremendously. Currently, I’m the founder and CEO of a science-based development company called SUPER*MEGA*BOSS. Prior to that, I was the CEO of The AIP Group (formerly Peak Teams), which stands for Adventures Inspiring Performance, and used extreme adventures to talk about leadership and decision making. My time at AIP is a springboard for my new book, Wild Success: 7 Key Lessons Business Leaders Can Learn from Extreme Adventurers. I like using parallel contexts to explore the realm of leadership behaviours, so I spend a lot of time exploring things that you might not think apply to behavioural science, but when you scratch a little deeper, you find those connections.

What exactly does your company do?

SUPER*MEGA*BOSS develops better bosses with in-person, virtual, short video and SMS training. We combine neuroscience and behavioural research, habit formation and weirdness to make learning to be a boss more relevant, memorable and useful. I sensed a need a few years ago to bring a different approach to leadership development — most of what is available follow a formula where a talking head tells you what leadership is. We wanted to reimagine the experience in a more actionable way for the emerging leaders of tomorrow. Including more of a pop culture context makes it more like “edu-tainment.”

What were the biggest challenges you have faced and how did you overcome them?

One of the biggest challenges in my life was losing my oldest sister when I was 17, one month after I started college. As incredibly difficult as a loss like this is, it re-shaped my perspective on life and about making the most of it. It also allows me to reappraise other challenges in my life and help others do that as well. After all, it’s not about “if” you’re going to have challenges, it’s “when” and how do you come out of them stronger, more informed and in a more resilient position.

What piece of advice do you wish someone had given you at the start of your career?

Try new things. You can learn to do anything. My career has taken me down many interesting paths, from high school poetry teacher to technology consultant, to neuroscience expert to an adventurer. I’ve tried and learned a lot of different things and it enhances my approach to problem solving and innovation.

Who are your biggest influences and people you admire and why?

I get influence from a lot of different sources and intentionally try to surround myself with a wide variety of people to get better ideas. This seems even more important in our world right now. My work team includes music video directors (a strange pairing for the world of leadership development), entrepreneurs and graphic artists who spark creative ideas. There are other entrepreneurs and tech workers in my circle of friends who are always talking about new ideas and different approaches taken from software, aviation, AR/VR and AI. From the adventure world, I deeply admire Lisa Blair and Roz Savage, whose stories both appear in Wild Success. Both are women with passion and internal strength who don’t let anything get in their way.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

Any person’s success is typically a team effort, so it’s hard to narrow it down. I’ve tried to learn a lot through my experiences as a team member and leader, so they have all shaped my growth and my path. I’m particularly grateful to my husband, Bob, who is someone who is incredibly caring and supportive and a great human. We’re each other’s #1 fans.

What do you see as your greatest success in life?

For me, living a really well-rounded life feels like a success. Learning from my experiences and taking opportunities to grow got me to where I am today. Career-wise, writing a book and running two companies has taught me a lot and helps me achieve my purpose in helping others grow.