How to Grow a High-Trust Consulting Firm Through Emotional Intelligence With Michelle Choate

Look into the "3 Ways to Generate Leads With Your Podcast" E-book for free here on our website! (https://ghapodcast.com)**********************************************************************Michelle Choate has spent more than two decades inside organizations, developing leaders, shaping culture, and building emotionally intelligent teams, including as Senior Director of Culture & Community at Ascension and as an internal OD leader at St. Luke’s Health System. Today, through MLChoate Inc., she works as an executive coach, EQ strategist, speaker, and retreat leader. Her work centers on one core idea: self-leadership first. Michelle helps leaders and teams get clear on what they want to achieve, how they’ll measure it, and how aligned they are around outcomes, from the C-suite to HR to the teams delivering the work. Emotional intelligence, for her, is not “soft stuff”; it’s a practical lever for performance, engagement, and reduced people-risk. In this conversation, we’ll dig into how consulting firm owners can use emotional intelligence to lead better teams, run better projects, and protect their firms, from strained client relationships to internal conflict and burnout. We’ll also talk about how Michelle uses speaking, retreats, and partnerships with organizations to win and keep high-value clients. ********************************************************** Proposed Interview Structure: 1. What first pulled you toward emotional intelligence and self-leadership, and how did that evolve into launching MLChoate Inc. as your own consulting and coaching business? 2. When organizations bring you in, what specific problems are you most often solving, and how do you translate “EQ” into business outcomes leaders actually care about? 3. Who are your best-fit clients today, industries, types of teams, and decision makers, and what signals tell you, “This is a great engagement for me”? 4. In practice, what has worked best to grow your business, keynote speaking, referrals, retreats, HR/legal partners, and how intentional are you about positioning yourself around EQ for leaders and teams? Sub Question: What’s your take on podcasts as a marketing tool in the coaching/consulting space, when do they make sense, and when do they not? 5. Your work often involves sensitive dynamics and multiple stakeholders. How do you typically move a potential client from “we’re curious” to a committed engagement? 6. As a coach, facilitator, and retreat leader, how do you keep clients coming back, what do you deliberately do to build long-term relationships and turn one-off projects into ongoing partnerships? 7. Where do you find yourself most stuck or stretched right now as a coach and consultant, whether it’s scale, capacity, pricing, or something else (if at all)? 8. Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunities for emotional intelligence and self-leadership work with consulting and leadership teams over the next few years?*********************************************************************Know more about Michelle ChoateWebsite Link: https://michellechoate.com/Connect with Michelle Choate on LinkedInLinkedIn link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/choatemichelle/Apply to be a guest on Consulting Leaders:https://ghapodcast.com/application-to-be-a-guest-on-consulting-leaders/