Betty Johnson

Betty Johnson, Ph.D., has 30 years’ leadership and change consulting experience. The firm she founded, Bridging the Difference LLC, serves clients that include private, public, and non-profit leaders and their teams. As president of this firm, Betty helps leaders recognize the behavior-goal misalignments that impede their success, and shows them how to bridge the difference to get extraordinary results.

Her firm’s proprietary methods are grounded in scientific research, and all demonstrate measurable results. Those methods germinated during Betty’s participation in an immersive program at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It was there that—alongside senior leaders from American, Latin American, and Asian militaries—Betty experienced first-hand how empathy is learned through modeling others who exhibit it well. She observed how those military leaders shine a gentle light on others’ biases and challenge others’ assumptions, while maintaining a psychologically safe environment. Their doing so leads to better decision-making and fosters the sorts of relationships that last throughout a career.

Now, organization leaders around the globe consistently describe the consulting, coaching, and training Betty provides as an “empathetic process” that helps them to be better and do better. That process reflects her War College experience and her belief in the poet Goethe’s words, “Treat people as they want to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being.”