I recently sat down with longtime colleague and dear friend, Dianne Culhane, for a conversation about leadership, thriving, and the arc of a meaningful life. Over several decades, Dianne led large-scale transformation efforts at The Coca-Cola Company and later became deeply involved in developing the leadership strength of the College of Charleston. As we reflected on the experiences that shaped her life and leadership, I found myself returning to a central theme: the quiet but powerful role that vision has played throughout her journey.
Dianne didn’t speak about vision in the conventional sense of an organization’s strategic plans, performance targets, or carefully engineered goals. She described something much more human and alive: an inner orientation toward possibility that often appeared long before she knew how it would unfold.
Vision Often Arrives Before the Path
Early in her career, Dianne identified three global companies she hoped to work for one day. She had no connections to them, no obvious path into them, and no clear strategy for how it would happen. She simply knew these were organizations she felt drawn toward. Years later, when someone at The Coca-Cola Company saw work she’d produced in a professional association competition, she was recruited into the company. One of the three organizations she’d privately held in her imagination suddenly became part of her reality. She said, “I didn’t call it a vision then. I just knew these were the three companies I wanted to work for.”
I believe many meaningful moments in life begin this way. Before there is certainty, evidence, or even language for what we are sensing, something in us recognizes a direction that feels deeply resonant and significant. Yet modern leadership culture often teaches us to trust and reward only what is measurable or controllable. Vision works differently. It often emerges before the path becomes visible.
Holding Vision Without Controlling the Path
This distinction feels especially important right now. Complexity has outpaced control. Leaders are navigating environments shaped by rapid change, uncertainty, and interdependence, yet many organizations still operate from an older paradigm that equates leadership strength with certainty, over-control, and the belief that outcomes can be forced through sheer will. One of the most important distinctions Dianne shared was the difference between holding a vision and trying to control the path toward it. Reflecting on her own growth, she said one of her biggest learnings was to “get clear on the outcomes, but don’t try to control every little bit of getting there.”
I think that insight carries great wisdom for the moment we’re living and working in.
Dianne acknowledged that for much of her career she believed almost anything could be accomplished through sheer determination. And in many ways, that mindset served her well. It helped her navigate highly visible leadership roles and accomplish extraordinary things during periods of significant organizational transformation.
Over time, however, her body began signaling something she could not ignore. In her early fifties, her back suddenly locked so severely during a major executive event that she could barely move. Medical experts could not fully explain it, but she eventually came to understand it as part of awakening to the reality that thriving cannot be sustained through pressure and force alone.
Our State Affects How We Lead
So many leaders today are being asked to innovate, collaborate, adapt, and inspire while operating inside systems that reward chronic pressure and over-control. Yet the internal conditions that support thriving are often very different from the conditions created by perpetual pushing. Over time, Dianne discovered that practices which increased openness, awareness, and internal regulation actually enhanced her effectiveness rather than diminishing it. Even during the game of golf (a huge passion of hers!), she noticed that the harder she forced outcomes, the less fluid and effective she became. As she began integrating practices for mindful breathing and tension release into her life and work, she experienced not only greater wellbeing in the moment, but greater creativity and performance as well.
This is part of the deeper evolution leadership is now asking of us. Increasingly, we are operating in conditions where leadership competence alone is not sufficient. The ability to regulate stress, remain open under pressure, sustain perspective, and create conditions where others can thrive has become essential. How we lead is inseparable from the internal state from which we are leading.
Perhaps this is ultimately what thriving leadership is about. In a world increasingly shaped by disruption and uncertainty, leaders do not need to have every answer to move forward wisely. But they do need an inner compass strong enough to orient them toward what matters most. They need the ability to remain connected to vision, curiosity, creativity, and human possibility even when the future ahead is unclear.
Thriving begins there: in staying connected to what feels deeply alive, meaningful, and possible.
About Dianne Culhane
Dianne’s career began in business theater designing and producing multi-media extravaganzas and culminated with 23 years at The Coca-Cola Company. At Coca-Cola, she served key roles in the C-suite, leading global change initiatives, communications, strategic planning, brand building, including development and creating integrated brand experiences, employee engagement, and executive coaching. One of her career highlights included the roles of key designer, facilitator and participant with 150 top global leaders that effectively changed the way the company ran its business from a singular focus on profit to five critical performance dimensions, including people and planet. Dianne continues as a leadership coach helping individuals and teams facilitate personal wellbeing, leading strategic planning efforts for nonprofit organizations, as well as helping students of the C of C Honors College with the endowed Culhane Summer Scholars Program which offers international experiential learning opportunities. She furthers her personal learning journey on the golf course and divides her time between Eton/Windsor, England and Kiawah Island, USA.
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I cofounded Wisdom Works in 1999 with the belief that thriving and wisdom are the foundation of effective leadership and a better world. If you’re exploring how these principles could transform your team or organization, I welcome the conversation. Contact us here.
Wisdom Works’ Be Well Lead Well® newsletter features conversations, strategies, and resources to empower a global movement of change leaders committed to a world where everyone thrives. I’m grateful to my dear friend and colleague Dianne Culhane for the generosity of her wisdom in this month’s conversation. Wisdom Works’ AI team member, Sage, supported the refinement of this newsletter.
