Empowering Clients to Become Great Leaders
Leading Minds Executive Coaching, LLC empowers clients to manage stress, develop leadership capacity, and reach peak performance in all aspects of their careers. David Brendel, MD, PhD is the Founder and Director of the firm.
A Leading Minds coaching engagement is comprised of a thorough assessment, strong action plan, and sustainability plan to ensure ongoing success and development. By collaborating with you, your colleagues, and other key stakeholders, Dr. Brendel is able to gain a comprehensive view of where you are in your career and where you would like to go. The core of a Leading Minds coaching engagement is a powerful set of conversations that occur during regularly scheduled sessions. In addition, many coaching engagements also include the following services:
Focused Interviews
Behavioral Style Assessments
360° Evaluation with Key Stakeholders
On-Site Observations
Coaching Sessions
Practical Exercises Between Sessions
Executive Presence Training
Continual Feedback from Colleagues & Stakeholders
In addition to his work with individual clients, Dr. Brendel provides executive team coaching services. Dr Brendel is also co-founder of Strategy of Mind, LLC which provides leadership training and coaching rooted in great works of literature and philosophy.
Achieve Your Goals
Whether you are looking to become a more effective leader, advance your career, grow your business, or reach your professional goals, Leading Minds Executive Coaching, LLC can guide you. Dr. Brendel uses proven, evidence-based strategies and a coaching process to support clients in developing and implementing effective action plans for success. Each client has unique struggles, goals, and definitions of success. Dr. Brendel will address your personal needs and help you develop a customized plan.
Dr. Brendel has coached scores of clients to:
- Transition to challenging leadership roles
- Solidify a positive mindset for success
- Increase self-confidence and “executive presence”
- Develop and sustain healthy work habits
- Improve self-awareness and emotional intelligence
- Enhance interpersonal relationships at work
- Manage stress and avoid burnout
- Achieve peak performance and personal fulfillment
- Improve executive mental health
Develop Action Plans and Solutions
Dr. Brendel uses a wide range of effective coaching strategies with clients. One of these approaches is Active Inquiry, in which he asks the client a series of thought-provoking and transformative questions.
When you reflect upon and respond to these questions, you realize the inner strengths and assets that you have to find solutions and move forward. Powerful coaching conversations empower you to develop strong, practical action plans for success. These coaching conversations are deepened by data from behavioral style assessments (such as the Myers-Briggs) and 360-degree feedback from colleagues and other key stakeholders. All Leading Minds coaching engagements conclude with a strong sustainability plan that ensures ongoing development and future success. Dr. Brendel remains available as needed for ongoing coaching needs beyond the conclusion of the formal engagement.
Coaching for ADHD and Other Mental Health Challenges
I am a certified executive coach and Harvard-trained psychiatrist specializing in coaching clients with mental health challenges including ADHD, burnout, and anxiety. Along with my highly accomplished and trusted Associates, I focus on helping clients to develop greater self-awareness, manage stress, and achieve peak performance.
The Leading Minds coaching approach integrates my extensive background in psychiatry and philosophy, employing evidence-based strategies to address clients’ unique challenges. The methods include thorough assessments, action plans, and sustainability plans to ensure long-term success. We offer personalized coaching sessions, practical exercises between sessions, and in some cases 360-degree feedback from colleagues and other stakeholders.
For individuals with ADHD, professional coaching can be particularly beneficial for improving executive function skills such as strategic thinking, priority setting, time management, and self-regulation — all of which are crucial for professional and personal success. Development of these skills helps to enhance executive presence, effective communication, and collaborative teamwork.
For those experiencing burnout and severe stress, I offer a multifaceted coaching plan. This includes empowering clients to make mindset and behavior changes to improve their self-awareness and performance of their roles. The goal is to improve functioning and support career growth while ensuring mental and emotional well-being.
I consider it essential to collaborate with clients on the development of a customized action plan tailored to their unique challenges and goals. The action plans are aimed at fostering effectiveness in their roles, self-awareness, relationship building, and avoiding burnout in order to ensure sustainable, long-term success.
Executive Coaching FAQ
Executive coaching is a collaborative, results-oriented process that helps business leaders and professionals reach their full potential. Dr. Brendel works with you through structured sessions combining focused interviews, behavioral assessments, 360-degree stakeholder feedback, and evidence-based action plans. Each engagement concludes with a sustainability plan to ensure lasting growth beyond the formal coaching relationship.
Executive coaching benefits a broad range of professionals — from CEOs and C-suite executives to senior managers, physicians, attorneys, academics, and entrepreneurs. If you are navigating a leadership transition, managing stress or burnout, looking to strengthen your executive presence, or aiming for peak performance, coaching with Dr. Brendel can help you move forward with clarity and confidence.
Dr. Brendel brings a rare combination of credentials to every engagement: a Harvard Medical School-trained psychiatrist, a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago, and a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation. This depth of training lets him address the psychological, philosophical, and practical dimensions of leadership that most coaches cannot reach. He has also published extensively on executive coaching in the Harvard Business Review.
Yes. Dr. Brendel specializes in coaching professionals with ADHD, anxiety, burnout, and other mental health challenges. His background as a Harvard-trained psychiatrist allows him to integrate evidence-based clinical insights into the coaching process — helping clients improve executive function, manage stress, and build sustainable performance strategies. This is a significant differentiator from coaches without clinical training.
Yes. While Dr. Brendel offers in-person executive coaching sessions in Boston and New York City, virtual coaching via video conference is equally effective and available to clients throughout the United States and worldwide. Many ongoing coaching relationships successfully combine in-person and virtual sessions depending on the client’s location and schedule.
A typical Leading Minds coaching engagement runs three to six months, with sessions ranging from weekly to bi-weekly. Some clients achieve meaningful breakthroughs in a single consultation; others continue working with Dr. Brendel on an ongoing basis. The engagement length is tailored to your goals — Dr. Brendel will discuss the right structure for you in an initial consultation.
About Dr. Brendel
Dr. David Brendel is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) of the International Coach Federation (ICF). Trained at Harvard Medical School, he has years of experience as a psychiatrist and hospital executive. He has published extensively on his approach to executive coaching, including articles in the Harvard Business Review. Dr. Brendel is Founder and Director of Leading Minds Executive Coaching, LLC. The firm provides a wide range of executive and career coaching services to clients in New York City, the Boston area, and throughout the United States.
Case Studies
Learn about the powerful methods Dr. Brendel uses in his coaching practice:
- Case Study: Active Inquiry – Executive Coaching in Boston
- Case Study: Family Business Coaching
- Case Study: Executive Coaching – Healthcare
Interviews with Dr. Brendel
Dr. Brendel's Proprietary Coaching Models
Every Leading Minds engagement draws on two complementary frameworks developed by Dr. Brendel to guide the coaching process:
The Human Quotient (HQ) Model — an evidence-based framework defined as proactive divided by reactive, operating across cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal dimensions. HQ is trainable, and increasing it is the central goal of every executive coaching engagement.
The 4-M Wellness & Stress Management Model — addresses the four foundations of sustainable performance: Medical wellness, Mindfulness, Mindset shifts, and Meaning structures. This model ensures that coaching attends to the whole person, not just the professional role.
Get In Touch
Contact Dr. Brendel for a consultation to assess whether his Executive and Career Coaching services are a good fit for you.
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