Kate Ludeman

A widely recognized executive coach, speaker and author, Kate founded Worth Ethic Corporation in 1988. She and her consultants have assessed and coached over 1,200 senior executives in a wide range of industries located in the US, in all major European and Asian countries, and in many South American countries. A BS in engineering and PhD in psychology give Kate a unique approach when coaching analytical, data-oriented CEOs who want to expand their emotional intelligence but who do not fully value some of the softer leadership capabilities.

She recently coached CEOs at Dell, Brinker, NetApp, Gap, Sequoia Capital, Sysco, and WellPoint. She uses a one year coaching process to significantly improve a CEO’s approach to change management, innovation and risk-taking, executive and Board communications and alignment, and executive team effectiveness.
She developed a coaching approach to help newly promoted CEOs successful step into their roles and take on significantly different responsibilities. She uses an in depth 360 feedback process to break through tendencies to rationalize problems and adhere too long to the status quo. She also designed a “first 90 days” approach to support new senior executives, hired from the outside, to build relationships with key partners and stakeholders, adapt to their new company’s culture, and create needed changes.

Kate created a one-year process to transform average executive teams into highly effective teams where major problems are openly vetted, problems are fully owned, and productive debate leads to alignment and accountability. She developed a survey tool to measure executive team effectiveness, which provides a baseline metric for executive teams on trust, alignment, conflict and accountability.

Her books include Alpha Male Syndrome; Radical Change, Radical Results; Corporate Mystic; Earn What You’re Worth; and The Worth Ethic. She is the author of over 30 articles, including Coaching the Alpha-Male (Harvard Business Review, 2004). Her consulting and books have been discussed in such publications as Financial Times, Baron’s, New York Times, LA Times, London Times, etc. She designed and validated the Alpha Assessment to provide coaching tips to particularly driven and aggressive leaders; this assessment has been taken by 12,000 leaders in over 15 countries.

Prior to owning her own firm, she was a human resources executive at KLA-Tencor, a high tech semiconductor inspection equipment company, where she experienced first-hand many of the challenges executives must effectively address.