Growing authentic, heightened leadership in the trusted spaces of greatest potential
What we do

We love to engage with clients who have the energy for change created by discomfort (personal/corporate) but who also have a desire to create a clear vision for their most successful and most joyous future. Through our belief in the personal power of authenticity, curiosity, congruency and an abundance mindset, we work with clients to find the right balance of challenge and support to achieve unique outcomes.

Foundational to the success of the journey is helping clients optimize their internal self-awareness (how well you know yourself) and their external self-awareness (how well you understand how others see you). Building on increased awareness clients are better able to define, refine and demonstrate their unique character, through integrity and intention, while honing their competence with improved capacity and capabilities creating optimal results.

Why Heightened Leadership?

There is no “one way or right way” to get where you want to go. There is also no “one way or right way” for a client and a coach to find the unique spaces of greatest potential for personal and professional growth. We are all different; coming from and heading to different places on our journeys.

At Heightened Leadership, we believe that personal and business performance, e.g., results or success, however you define it, is equal to one’s potential minus one’s own interference.

Performance = Potential – Interference*

* Credit to Eric De Nijs, Grace at Work

Maximizing potential might include small adds to skillsets or big shifts in mindsets that drive highly leveraged, repeatable, consistent and resilient results. Our own interference can come in many forms; historical, personal identity, environmental, cultural, etc. and identifying, understanding, embracing and then minimizing those vectors of interference can drive huge personal and professional growth.

Meet the Founder

David Cramer, CEO

David spent 40 years in Corporate America across numerous companies, cultures and roles. David thrived in fast-paced environments leading teams to drive revenue, client satisfaction/NPS, employee engagement and leadership growth. That journey exposed David to the vast amounts of gray where leaders either thrived or failed because those hard skills that got them there were not enough to keep them there.

After retiring from almost 20 years as a Senior Vice President at Visa, leading Sales teams, Product teams and People Teams, David now focuses on executive coaching and leadership development across senior executives, high potentials and key individual contributors. David is also a graduate of Cohort 75 of the Certificate in Leadership Coaching Program at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership.

    • David is also an International Coaching Federation credentialed Associate Certified Coach (ACC) and he is also fully certified in the Advanced Hogan Assessment and Feedback methodology, a fundamental part of the majority of his coaching engagements.

    As a leadership coach, Through a combination of leadership assessment tools and curated 360’s, David helps his clients uncover and then develop their unique leadership edge required to navigate the business case for change in harmony with the people case for change. David works across the organization to maximize leadership effectiveness and build a culture of personal growth, trust, respect and engagement. He also helps clients develop new personal capacities and perspectives based on their resources, capabilities, opportunities and their unique types of interference. His background in solving business problems and coaching creates unique value as leaders learn to self-recognize, self-monitor, self-correct and self-sustain while both solving their business problems and developing and optimizing their leadership capacity.

    Previously, David was Senior Vice President, Head of People for North America and numerous other global business functions at Visa, Inc. In his role, he and his teams were responsible for partnering with leaders to deliver Visa’s business objectives through a people lens: through attracting top talent, investing in employee growth and career development, identifying and preparing future leaders, and optimizing organizational design to better drive business results.

    Prior to his role leading the People Team, he oversaw all activities related to Visa’s relationships, from the C-suite down and across client organizations, with its largest financial institution clients in the United States. Also, in his career at Visa he was both senior vice president of sales and integrated solutions and senior vice president of commercial products where he oversaw product development strategies, business development strategies and deployment of Visa’s commercial payment products among financial institutions and organizations in the public and private sectors.

    Prior to joining Visa in 2003, David held various roles in sales, marketing and business development for JPMorgan Chase, GE Capital and Citicorp. David received his bachelor’s degree in politics from Ithaca College. He is active in Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

    Links

    References
    “Working with David has been transformative. His insightful guidance and personalized approach have helped me unlock new levels of leadership potential. I highly recommend David to anyone looking to elevate their leadership skills and achieve meaningful growth.”
    “Enlisting David was a game-changer for me. His strategic guidance and unwavering support have empowered me to lead with confidence and clarity. For anyone that is looking for a trusted partner in your leadership journey, I highly recommend David.”
    “Choosing David as my leadership coach was one of the best decisions I’ve made for my career. His expertise and dedication have helped me overcome obstacles, hone my individualized leadership style, and achieve tangible results.
    Things you might find interesting


    David, and daughter Molly, are annual participants in JDRF's Ride for the Cure.

    The first category, which we dubbed internal self-awareness, represents how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others. We've found that internal self-awareness is associated with higher job relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and happiness; it is negatively related to anxiety, stress, and depression.

    The second category, external self awareness, means understanding how other people view us, in terms of those same factors listed above. Our research shows that people who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others' perspectives. For leaders who see themselves as their employees do, their employees tend to have a better relationship with them, feel more satisfied with them, and see them as more effective in general.

  • Source: What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It), Harvard Buisness Review

    •
    Thought for the day

    Source: Systemic Team Coaching, 2024