Episode 101 - Global Workplace Expert and Author, Dr Michelle Gibbings

27 Jan

Written By Jane Anderson

Podcast is also available on the versions below:

Get Notified Of Future Episodes on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Youtube

🎙️ In this episode of The Jane Anderson Show, Jane is joined by the thoughtful and deeply respected Dr Michelle Gibbings—an award-winning leadership expert, author, and trusted advisor known for helping leaders navigate complexity with clarity, confidence, and purpose. With more than a decade building her own practice after a distinguished corporate career, Michelle brings rare depth, warmth, and pragmatic wisdom to the conversation.

Meet Dr Michelle Gibbings

Michelle is a leadership expert, executive coach, and the founder of a globally recognised advisory practice supporting senior leaders through change, influence, and decision-making. Her journey spans senior executive roles, large-scale transformation, bestselling books, Harvard Business Review publications, and a PhD—blending academic rigour with lived corporate experience. Today, she works with leaders and organisations around the world, helping them lead with integrity and impact.

Building Authority Through Substance and Experience

Michelle shares her unconventional career path and the deliberate choices behind building a sustainable, values-driven practice. She reflects on the importance of structure, credibility, and doing the work behind the scenes—whether through research, writing, or deep client engagement—to earn trust and confidently claim expertise.

Courage, Confidence, and the Long Game of Leadership

This episode explores what it really takes to put yourself out there. From writing her first book while grappling with fear, to learning how to reward progress and navigate self-doubt, Michelle offers honest insights into the emotional and practical realities of leadership and thought leadership growth.

Designing a Practice—and a Life—That Works

Michelle also speaks openly about partnership, support, and intentional decision-making. From building financial buffers to choosing how (and where) she delivers her work, her approach shows how clarity, boundaries, and values create both professional success and personal contentment.

✨ Tune in to hear a powerful conversation about influence, courage, purpose, and building a leadership practice that reflects who you truly are—without overcomplicating your life.

Key Takeaways from Today’s Episode:

Jane opens the episode by welcoming Dr Michelle Gibbings—an in-demand leadership expert known for her work in complexity, influence, change, and helping leaders make better decisions. Michelle brings warmth, depth, and a practical perspective shaped by her extensive experience in corporate and in her own practice.
Michelle reflects on her 12-year business journey and her corporate career, describing it as an adventure fuelled by learning and stepping into unfamiliar roles. She shares how she moved across disciplines—spokesperson, transformation leader, head of compliance, chief of staff—driven by a desire to stretch herself and navigate complex environments. These experiences formed the foundation of her work in influence and decision-making today.
Michelle details orchestrating her exit from a difficult corporate role and the moment she decided to start a business without knowing what it would be. Through soul-searching, experimentation, and eventually discovering Thought Leaders, she learned the importance of product, structure, and process. Her early years involved trade-offs, financial sacrifices, and deliberate decisions about what to pursue and what to let go.
Michelle explains how critical her husband Craig has been—from encouraging her exit from corporate, to helping problem-solve, to adjusting their lifestyle during the early financial challenges of business. She highlights the importance of having someone who listens, believes in you, and helps you see possibilities when self-doubt creeps in.
COVID pushed Michelle into online delivery, but she ultimately chose to return to in-person work because that’s where she performs at her best. She speaks candidly about energy, connection, flow, and the difference between online and face-to-face environments. Mastery, she says, requires making choices about where to truly excel rather than trying to be exceptional at everything.
Michelle shares how her books, PhD, and HBR publications strengthened both her external positioning and internal confidence. She values credibility built on research, evidence, and lived experience. For her, true expertise blends academic rigor with practical corporate understanding—allowing her to support leaders with depth and real-world insight.
Michelle challenges the idea that confidence is innate. She openly discusses doing the inner work in her 20s to like herself and the incremental progress that shapes success. She reinforces that setbacks, courage, and showing up consistently are part of the journey—and that storytelling is essential for helping people connect with ideas in meaningful ways.
Michelle emphasises finding meaning in work, referencing research about purpose—even in roles often overlooked. For her, doing your best work each day isn’t about perfection but about intention, presence, and showing up with purpose. This mindset underpins how she leads herself and her practice.
Michelle highlights how valuable community is in an otherwise lonely game. Being surrounded by women on similar paths provides ideas, validation, and encouragement. It also keeps her current and helps her avoid the comparison trap—staying focused on “my race, my pace.”
Michelle and Craig’s annual tradition—reviewing goals and life direction on their anniversary—keeps them aligned as individuals and as a couple. They choose a life of contentment, simplicity, and intentional decision-making. Every choice is filtered through the question: Will this overcomplicate our life?
Michelle highlights how valuable community is in an otherwise lonely game. Being surrounded by women on similar paths provides ideas, validation, and encouragement. It also keeps her current and helps her avoid the comparison trap—staying focused on “my race, my pace.”
Michelle closes by expressing deep gratitude for a career and life she genuinely loves. She’s intentional about the clients she works with and the life she designs. Jane acknowledges the diagnostics, IP development, and thought leadership Michelle is building—recognising her commitment to doing the work her way, at her pace, with integrity.