About Working with Power

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Our Work
The Problems We Solve
The Clients We Serve Best
Company Origins
Associate Team
Founders' Biographies

Our Work

Working with Power is an international consulting and training firm dedicated to helping people and organizations leverage the 12 Elements of Power™. Our programs help clients ranging from Fortune 100 executive teams to start-up entrepreneurs build cultures of success, sustainability, and ease. We elevate company cultures by transforming individual cultures: we teach individuals to work in a way that doesn’t deplete them. Our work with thousands of leaders and their teams have taught us that using all 12 Elements of Power™ effectively is the key to creating better results at work AND more fulfilling lives.

The Problems We Solve

Working with Power solutions address a wide range of problems well, and our engagements often lead to follow-on work with a wider scope. Our initial engagement with a team or company usually directly addresses one or more of these problems:

• Losing women

• Getting feedback that women are not happy with their work or the way they’re being led

• Strong teams with funky decision-making processes

• Frustrating conflict, back-biting or work-arounds on teams

• Re-work and waste stemming from communication gaps

• Needing deeper leadership competency

• Needing excellence in your managers

The Clients We Serve Best

We do our best work when a company, division, or team brings us in because they understand it’s time for a game-changing shift in how they work, both individually and together. We know the work is going to produce fantastic results when leaders are saying one or more of the following:

• “We’re really smart around here, but I need us to be smart in ways we don’t seem to be.”

• “We’re highly successful but I know that to stay that way, we’ve got to retool to be less reactive and more thoughtful.”

• “I want this for my people, but I’m also seeing how the 12 Elements of Power™ can help me personally.”

• “We seem to make things harder than they need to be; I want us all to learn to bring more ease into our work.”

• “We need more emotional intelligence, but I want to raise the level in a practical, grounded way that fits with our culture, personalities and company objectives.”

• “We’re losing women, but I think that’s a symptom, not the root problem we need to address.”

Company Origins

Working with Power was established in 2005 to meet the demand for practical, robust programs that help companies retain women and help women - and men – work, lead, and communicate in sustainable ways. Though the Working with Power business entity is fairly new, our professional history and reputation have been formed over the past decade, both in the Pacific Northwest and internationally.

Our company was formed through the merger of Sara Harvey Yao and Company and Lisenbury, Inc., which had been the professional service firms owned, respectively, by Sara Harvey Yao and Michele Lisenbury Christensen. Working with Power encompasses the capabilities of both firms and has allowed the principals to build a multi-national team of facilitators and experts to serve our clients across the globe.

Sara Harvey Yao & Company brought The Candid Solution™ communication skills training to companies and provided keynotes to associations whose members wanted to be able to skillfully navigate difficult conversations in a way that strengthened relationships. With The Candid Solution™ leaders and their teams reduce re-work, improve morale and retention, and save time and stress previously wasted in avoiding important conversations. The renowned concepts and tools from The Candid Solution™ are now available through Working with Power.

Lisenbury Inc. had been a boutique consulting firm sought by business owners and corporate leaders who intended to bring higher purpose, meaning, or spiritual perspective to their work. The firm’s Success&Spirit programs married solid business foundations with far-reaching philosophical and psychological tools. Leaders and their employees used these programs to see their businesses, their clients, and their employees as mirrors reflecting their own strengths and learning opportunities. This compassionate but relentlessly honest approach is still evident in everything we do at Working with Power.

You can read more about the founders and their individual backgrounds on the founders’ biographies page.