ABOUT WES
I spend an absurd amount of time thinking about why people do what they do, why work gets weird, why we make things harder than they need to be, and what helps people actually change.
That curiosity has taken me through organizational development, leadership coaching, facilitation, teaching, writing, speaking, and a doctorate in business psychology in progress.
Different settings, same basic obsession: people trying to figure out how to do life and work a little more intentionally.
I’M A PEOPLE NERD.
HUMANS ARE ENDLESSLY FASCINATING.
PEOPLE ARE COMPLICATED. CHOICE IS POWERFUL.
THAT’S MY WORK.
For a long time, I thought of myself as remarkably average.
I graduated high school with a 2.18 GPA and zero interest in continuing my education. School had given me plenty of what I thought was evidence that I wasn’t particularly smart.
Meanwhile, I could look around and see people who were obviously talented. Artists. Athletes. Great students. I never really saw myself that way.
What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that people had always come to me. Friends, acquaintances, sometimes people I barely knew. When something was going sideways at home or in their life, I somehow kept finding myself in conversations helping them work through it. Looking back, maybe that was the thing I was good at. It still feels a little weird to call it that.
After getting married and starting a family, an employer offered tuition reimbursement and I figured, “well, that’s free money so I might as well use it.” I enrolled late and ended up in an applied logic and critical thinking class I was specifically warned was one of the hardest they offered, and to not be discouraged if I did not pass.
I didn’t just pass. I tied for the second-highest grade in the history of the class. That was a moment where something clicked for me. For the first time, I started wondering whether the story I had been telling myself about what I was capable of might simply be wrong. Education became a test, and then a passion.
Every “A” felt like a tiny middle finger to a system that had helped convince me I wasn’t smart. More importantly, I started realizing how much can open up when we’re willing to test the boundaries of what we think is possible.
None of this was
a straight line
How I Got Here
That idea followed me into work. I found myself teaching, training, leading, coaching, and eventually helping teams and leaders improve how they worked. Continuous improvement gave me an early home for that work, but the tools were never what hooked me. I loved helping someone think, “I think this could be better,” and then helping them figure out how to make it better themselves.
It also taught me that systems and processes only get you so far. You can implement everything perfectly and still fail miserably if you ignore the people expected to live with the change. And leaders don’t get to exempt themselves from it.
You Are Capability Waiting To Be Exercised
If you want things to change the first question you need to ask is:
“How do I need to change?”
Over time, all of this began to connect. Not in one big lightbulb moment, but more like the slow dawning of the sun. The brighter it got, the more I could see how often we underestimate our own ability to choose.
That’s where agency became the thread underneath everything I do.
Not the idea that circumstances don’t matter. They do. Not that we control everything. We absolutely don’t.
But we get one life that we can be certain about. Spending it discounting ourselves, giving pieces of ourselves away, or assuming our current conditions have to determine our future feels like a tragedy.
Your current trajectory is only inevitable if you keep choosing it.
What I Believe
A FEW rules
I try to live by
People First
Before the title, the role, the problem, the disagreement, or the label, there’s a person. Someone who has laughed, cried, been hurt, hurt someone else, and lived a whole life I probably know very little about. I try to remember that first, because the moment we forget the person, it gets a lot easier to dehumanize them.
THE ANSWER IS USUALLY SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE
I’m skeptical of anyone who speaks in absolutes, which I realize is a little contradictory. But assuming the answer lives somewhere in the messy middle puts me in a position to learn instead of prove I’m right. I’m completely comfortable being wrong. The world is too complicated for every answer to be clean, clear, and obvious, and I never want to get so certain that I stop being curious.
DON’T TAKE YOURSELF SO DAMN SERIOUSLY
It’s honestly kind of ridiculous that any of us exist at all. Life is short, improbable, messy, and somehow we still manage to convince ourselves that every disagreement, mistake, or inconvenience is a five-alarm fire. A little perspective goes a long way. Most things just aren’t that serious.
Try TO FIND THE FUN IN ALL THINGS
Life is hard enough on its own. People are complicated, conflict is inevitable, and plenty of things will happen that we would never choose. But we do get some say in how we move through it. I’d rather look for the humor, the joy, and the parts worth enjoying, even when things are hard.
Why the hell not enjoy the ride?
For What It’s Worth
The WOrk
I’ve spent my career inside organizations helping leaders and teams make work better. Culture, change, continuous improvement, leadership, collaboration, and all the messy human stuff that sits between a good idea and what actually happens.
I’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME
STUDYING PEOPLE.
AND EVEN MORE TIME
WORKING WITH THEM.
The classroom
I teach organizational behavior, leadership and employee development, and Lean/Six Sigma at Cal Poly. Teaching keeps me honest. If I can’t explain an idea in a way that makes sense to real people, I probably don’t understand it as well as I think I do.
The study
I earned a bachelor’s in organizational leadership, an MS in Leadership and Management, and a certification in change management. I’m currently completing a doctorate in business psychology.
I’ve also spent an ungodly amount of time reading, researching, and testing ideas about why people do what they do.
the stage & Page
I’ve written a book, spoken to rooms of all sizes, facilitated more conversations than I could count, and somehow even became an “international speaker” from my house in sweatpants. I like taking big ideas and turning them into something people can actually use.
theory is useful. it ALSO has to survive contact with actual humans.
A little more about me
There’s more to me
than a RÉSUMÉ
Being a husband & father is the best thing I‘ll ever do
They aren’t the reason for the work itself, but they’re the people I do all of this for.
Muay Thai COach
Because apparently talking about human behavior wasn’t enough; sometimes you also need to punch and kick people, too.
ELDER MILLENNIAL
I grew up with dial-up internet, remember Napster, and am still suspicious of anything called “content.”
Author & (Technically) International Speaker
I definitely wrote a book. I am *technically an international speaker.
*In Scotland. From home. In sweatpants.