Leadership
Leadership shapes everything.Leaders set the tone through their mindset, behaviors, choices, and the conditions they create.
Research-grounded leadership for healthier workplaces
Build a workplace where people, and performance, can thrive.
Good leaders don’t just drive performance. They help people thrive.
Practical tools and learning experiences grounded in positive leadership, positive psychology, organizational scholarship, and health psychology.
Research-groundedHealth-informedPractical by design
The GLI approach
Leadership is a workplace health practice.
The way people are led shapes culture, relationships, stress, recovery, and the conditions people need to contribute at their best.
Culture
Culture translates leadership.Shared norms and everyday practices shape how people collaborate, communicate, and support one another.
Health & Well-Being
Culture affects health.Stress, support, relationships, and meaning influence physical health, mental well-being, energy, sleep, and resilience.
Flourishing
Health enables people to flourish.When people feel well and supported, they experience greater vitality, connection, growth, and purpose.
Sustainable Performance
Flourishing sustains performance.Healthy, flourishing people and teams support better results, innovation, satisfaction, and long-term success.
The chain is reinforcing.
Stronger leadership builds healthier cultures. Healthier cultures support healthier, more flourishing people. Flourishing people sustain high performance, and the cycle begins again.
The Flourishing Chain™ is an original GLI synthesis informed by research across leadership, organizational culture, health psychology, flourishing, and sustainable performance.
How the evidence is used
Clear about what research shows and what GLI adds.
GLI resources distinguish established findings from practical applications and original tools, so you can see the evidence behind each idea.
Research-supported principleDirectly grounded in established research findings.
Evidence-informed practiceA practical application drawn from relevant research.
Original GLI framework or toolA GLI synthesis or resource, clearly identified as original.
Free resources
Research made useful.
Clear, practical resources for leaders who want to strengthen culture, support well-being, and make better leadership choices without losing the evidence.
Begin here
Six domains. Practical reflection. Evidence-based action.
A practical introduction to six research-grounded domains of leadership, with one reflection tool and two evidence-based action ideas from each.
Get the free guideHealth
Why positive leadership is a workplace health issue.
A plain-language look at how leadership conditions influence stress, recovery, and health.
Read the research briefLeadership
The Leadership Conditions Check.
A focused reflection on the everyday conditions your leadership is creating for other people.
Begin the reflectionAssessments and measures
Know Where You Stand
A curated library of validated instruments, from the Hope Scale to team psychological safety, so you can measure flourishing with the same rigor you bring to any other leadership metric.
Turn positive leadership ideas into everyday practice.
Six research-grounded domains, from positive climate to well-being and flourishing, each with tools you can use in a team meeting or a one-on-one conversation this week.
- 01 Leadership reflection and planning tools
- 02 Team practices and conversation guides
- 03 Evidence summaries in accessible language
- 04 A practical implementation roadmap
Complete leadership implementation system · Available now for $47
Practical micro-courses
Focused learning that leads somewhere.
Coming soonFour connected courses that give leaders both the science and the tools to build environments where people genuinely thrive.
The learning arc
The first four courses move from diagnosing what goes wrong (burnout and stress) to defining what right looks like through flourishing and PERMA+4, understanding the conditions that make it possible through psychological safety, and developing the inner resources that sustain it through Psychological Capital.
Course 01Diagnosis
The Biology of Burnout
The problem
Chronic workplace stress is often noticed only after health, energy, and performance have already deteriorated.
Who it’s for
Leaders who want to recognize burnout earlier and create healthier conditions for themselves and their teams.
How long
3–4 hours
What you’ll learn
- Explain the biological mechanisms linking chronic workplace stress to adverse health outcomes.
- Identify early warning signs of burnout using Maslach’s three-dimension model.
- Apply evidence-based positive leadership practices that buffer against stress and burnout.
- Design a personal recovery and sustainability plan grounded in Sonnentag’s recovery science.
- Create team conditions that reduce chronic stressors and promote flourishing.
Course 02Vision
Measuring What Matters: A Leader's Guide to PERMA+4
The problem
Engagement scores alone cannot show whether people are genuinely flourishing or where leadership action is needed.
Who it’s for
Leaders ready to measure well-being with rigor and turn data into practical team decisions.
How long
3–4 hours
What you’ll learn
- Explain the nine elements of PERMA+4 and the research base behind each one.
- Distinguish between engagement and flourishing and explain why the difference matters for leadership.
- Use PERMA+4 to assess your own and your team’s well-being.
- Design at least three leadership practices that target specific PERMA+4 elements.
- Move beyond annual engagement surveys toward ongoing, actionable well-being data.
Course 03Environment
The Fearless Team: The Science of Psychological Safety
The problem
When people do not feel safe to speak, teams lose learning, surface fewer risks, and carry greater physiological strain.
Who it’s for
Leaders who want candor and accountability without creating fear, silence, or lowered standards.
How long
3–4 hours
What you’ll learn
- Define psychological safety accurately as a team-level climate property.
- Explain how unsafe climates affect cortisol, stress responses, and team health.
- Distinguish psychological safety from conflict avoidance, niceness, and low standards.
- Apply at least five evidence-based leader behaviors that build psychological safety.
- Assess your team’s current level of psychological safety and identify specific gaps.
- Hold accountability conversations that preserve psychological safety.
Course 04Inner resources
Building Your HERO: The Science of Psychological Capital
The problem
Leaders and teams need developable inner resources to sustain performance, adapt, and grow through pressure.
Who it’s for
Current and aspiring leaders who want to strengthen hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism.
How long
3–4 hours
What you’ll learn
- Define Psychological Capital and explain why all four HERO components are developable.
- Apply hope theory, including agency and pathways thinking, to leadership challenges and team development.
- Identify specific strategies for building self-efficacy in yourself and others.
- Distinguish bouncing back from bouncing forward in resilience science.
- Connect optimism-health research to leadership practice and team well-being.
- Apply PsyCap development strategies with attention to aspiring and diverse leaders.
About Dr. Heather Rasmussen
Why Health Belongs in the Leadership Conversation.
Dr. Heather Rasmussen is a leadership scholar-practitioner and licensed psychologist with over 25 years of experience translating psychological science into practical tools that help individuals and organizations thrive.
Her work sits at the intersection of positive psychology, leadership development, and organizational well-being, with a focus on helping leaders build cultures that support both performance and human flourishing.
Dr. Rasmussen has worked across diverse settings, including healthcare systems, Veterans Affairs, higher education, private practice, the service industry, and corporate environments, gaining deep insight into the challenges leaders face in complex organizations. She has spent over a decade as a professor of organizational leadership, where she developed an innovative doctoral-level specialization in positive leadership.
Through The Good Leader Institute™, she brings together her expertise in psychology, research, and leadership development to offer evidence-based, actionable strategies that help leaders create environments where people and performance can truly thrive.
“Workplaces can care for people while achieving meaningful results.”
A useful place to begin
The Good Leader Starter Guide.
A practical introduction to six research-grounded domains of leadership, with one reflection tool and two evidence-based action ideas from each.
Start a conversation
How can The Good Leader Institute help?
Have a question about GLI resources, courses, or future consulting? Send a brief message or reach out directly by email.
Email The Good Leader Institutehello@goodleaderinstitute.com