About
Hi, I’m Jonathan.
I’ve spent 25 years trying to answer one question: what makes a leader worth following?
Not the kind of leader who has the best strategy deck or the most polished presentation. The kind who changes how people feel about coming to work. The kind whose team grows faster than anyone expected, not because of pressure, but because of presence.
Chapter One
The School of EMyth
I cut my teeth as CEO of EMyth, where I led a multi-year transformation of a global coaching brand. It was there I learned that the gap between knowing what great leadership looks like and actually doing it is the most expensive gap in business.
Managers knew they should have better conversations. They attended the trainings. Read the books. But when it came time to have the hard conversation with the underperforming team member, they froze. Or overreacted. Or avoided it entirely.
Chapter Two
Good Authority
That gap became my obsession. I wrote Good Authority to give leaders a framework for having the conversations that matter, the ones that develop people rather than just manage them.
The book introduced The Accountability Dial, a five-stage framework that thousands of managers now use to hold people accountable with compassion. Seth Godin called it “a modern classic.”
Since then, I’ve delivered keynotes and workshops to organizations ranging from TikTok and Amazon to Southwest Airlines and Okta. I was named one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers and wrote about accountability for Harvard Business Review.
Chapter Three
Building Ren
After working with hundreds of organizations, I saw the same pattern everywhere: the workshop was great, but the behavior change didn’t stick. The training faded. The old habits returned. There was no system holding managers accountable to actually developing their people.
That’s why I built Ren, where I’m founder and CEO. It’s a coach for the conversations people dread having — the one on this site’s homepage is the same one. Building it is how I get to hand someone the words at the moment they need them, without needing to be in the room. It’s the technology expression of everything I’ve learned in 25 years.
Off the Clock
Encinitas, California
When I’m not thinking about leadership, you’ll find me surfing, hiking, or spending time with my family in Encinitas, California.
