Read Laura’s current thinking.
Words That Work™ follows familiar language through meaning, behavior, and lived experience.
Read on SubstackLaura, now
People tell Laura their problems. She hears their words.
Three decades of close listening. Creator of Word Resonance™ and Empow-WORD™.
One-to-one coaching, 1996–2024
The person behind the work
Who is Laura Burkey?
After three decades of coaching, Laura now works with leaders, groups, and organizations.
The discovery
Why can capable people know what to do and still lose access to it?
Across three decades of coaching, Laura heard familiar words beside the same recurring behaviors.
That discovery became
Word Resonance™.
Word Resonance™
Meaning is experienced, not only defined.
Laura shows how everyday words shape people’s state and what becomes available when their relationship to a word changes.
A career spent listening
Many chapters. One enduring question.
Each chapter sharpened Laura’s attention to the space between what people say and what they do.
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Foundation
Psychology and interpersonal communication.
Laura studied at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and followed a lasting question about thought, emotion, language, and behavior.
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Broadcasting
Words that have to land.
Radio and media work, including WBBM/CBS in Chicago, trained her ear for timing, tone, and verbal precision.
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Behavior
Patterns made visible.
Behavior-change work at Jenny Craig brought her into everyday conversations about identity, effort, confidence, and action.
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Three decades of close listening.
Laura’s former one-to-one coaching practice gave her years of direct experience listening for the language beneath a repeated pattern.
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The work moves beyond private coaching.
After retiring from private coaching, Laura focused on writing, interviews, leaders, groups, and organizational experiences.
The through-line is the discipline of hearing what language does.
Laura’s purpose
Help people access what they already know.
Laura illuminates how seemingly no-big-deal words we use frequently shape thought, feeling, and action.
How Laura works
She talks with people, not at them.
Laura listens, asks a question, and follows what the person notices. The conversation shapes what comes next.
The work now
Laura’s work has a wider audience now.
Hear Laura explain the work.
Selected interviews show her pace, precision, humor, and way of working with language.
Explore the media archiveBring Laura to your organization.
Explore Empow-WORD™ for leaders, teams, retreats, and organizational events.
Explore Empow-WORD™Hear the person behind the work
Start with Laura in conversation.
Watch the featured interview, or explore how the work can begin with your leaders.