About April & Wayfindology
Leadership should not consume human potential. It should awaken it.
I don’t believe great leadership comes from becoming a mashup of every leadership book you have ever read.
I believe it starts by understanding how your mind works, what gives you energy, what you value, what you naturally do well, and how people experience you when you are at your best.
Then you stop designing against yourself.
The best leadership is not copied. It is uncovered and designed.
Hi, I’m April
I’m a longtime people executive, leadership strategist, executive coach, author, and founder of Wayfindology.
I have spent much of my career inside complex organizations helping people navigate the places where leadership, people, culture, strategy, and real life collide.
And I learned something the hard way:
Leading like someone else is exhausting. And it wastes talent and energy.
When I first became an executive, I was surrounded by highly organized, execution-oriented leaders.
I was wired differently.
I got work done by understanding people: what they were naturally good at, what energized them, and where their talents could create the most value.
At first, I thought that difference made me a less capable executive.
Then I started paying attention to the results.
Culture strengthened. Engagement grew. People stepped into their strengths.
And leadership became much more natural for me.
I stopped trying to lead like someone else and started designing around the leader I already was.
That changed how I think about leadership entirely.
“I believe you already have more of what you need than you think. Sometimes you just need a different way to see it.”
Leadership Design Starts With What Is Already Strong
Traditional leadership development often begins with a gap:
What are you missing? What do you need to get better at?
Leadership design starts somewhere else.
What is already unusually strong here?
What do you do so naturally that you may not even realize it is a talent?
How can you use more of it?
And where something doesn’t come naturally, do you really need to become the expert?
Sometimes the better answer is a system.
A tool.
A stronger process.
Or someone whose strengths complement yours.
I do not believe every leader needs to become good at everything leadership requires.
I believe we should leverage the heck out of what people naturally do well and intelligently supplement the rest.
That also means paying attention to when strengths become overused.
Responsibility can become carrying too much.
Empathy can become absorbing too much.
Discernment can become paralysis.
Perseverance can become pushing long after you need recovery.
A well-designed role does not only use your strengths.
It protects them from being overused.
You can have a meaningful impact without sacrificing well-being
Why HR Leaders?
For a long time, Wayfindology was broad.
I wanted to help leaders.
Then I looked more closely at the moments in coaching and leadership development that meant the most to me.
Again and again, they involved HR leaders carrying heavy emotional and organizational loads.
I knew that work because I had lived it and loved it.
HR leaders are regularly asked to deliver difficult news, navigate confidential situations, support employees through hard moments, advise leaders, think about risk, and remain calm when everyone else is allowed to react.
They may also become the face of decisions they did not make alone.
And because they are capable and caring, they keep finding a way to handle it.
Until handling it starts costing too much.
Their brain keeps working after-hours.
The next hard thing always seems to be right around the corner.
Strategy gets crowded out by what is urgent.
Recovery gets postponed.
And when that pattern continues long enough, meaningful work can begin consuming the very person who cares so much about doing it well.
Being able to carry a lot does not mean you should have to keep carrying it that way.
I believe HR leaders need clearer ownership, better support, time to process the hard work, and enough space to see the patterns underneath what keeps becoming urgent.
Not so they care less.
So they can keep caring without being consumed by the role.
How Wayfindology Got Its Name
People have sought me out for years when they were trying to find a better path through something.
So I thought of myself as a pathfinder or guide.
Then I watched Moana and saw the moment she understood her history as a wayfinder.
What stayed with me was the idea of finding a way forward when the path you know is no longer enough.
I wanted one word that represented both that purpose and the deeper study of how people find their way.
Years earlier, I had taken a Latin roots class, and after a career in healthcare, “ology” felt strangely natural.
Wayfinder + ology.
Wayfindology.
At first, I thought finding your purpose was the destination.
Now I think it is the compass.
You still have to design the path.
Today, wayfinding means knowing where you want to go, understanding who you are, reading the environment around you, and designing a path that fits.
That is what leadership design has become for me.
What It Feels Like to Work With Me
I tend to listen for more than the problem someone brings into the room.
I am listening for the pattern underneath it.
The strength they may not realize they are using.
The assumption that may be making something harder.
And the possibility they cannot quite see yet.
People have told me they feel heard without being simply agreed with.
Challenged without being made to feel inadequate.
And able to see themselves and the situation differently enough to move.
“April has a way of telling people what they need to work on in a way that doesn't make you feel bad about yourself.”
— Lisa
“Thank you for making me feel heard but also helping me think differently.”
— Darlene
“You helped me get out of my head and into action.”
— Glenda
“April is gifted at understanding people and helping them appreciate their unique value, talents, intuition, and authenticity.”
— Cindy
“April’s coaching is incredibly insightful and she is a great listener that can quickly understand a situation and provide a unique and valuable perspective.”
— Catherine
One colleague described me as the “real deal” because I am honest, direct, and caring at the same time.
That feels about right.
I do not believe people need to feel bad about themselves in order to change.
Three Values At the Heart of my Work
-
Courage
Because leadership asks people to face hard truths, make difficult decisions, and keep showing up with honesty.
-
Balance
Because leadership should not require people to slowly abandon themselves, their peace, or their personal life, in order to do meaningful work well.
-
Wisdom
Because not every problem should be solved with more force. Often the deeper work is seeing clearly, understanding what is really happening, and responding with discernment.
A Little More About Me…
I have been accused, fairly, of overthinking.
Give me coffee, a quiet room, and a hard problem and I am pretty happy.
Then I usually start bouncing ideas off other people until something clicks and I can feel, There it is. That’s the path.
Nature has always been part of that for me.
Some of my favorite childhood memories are of trips to my grandfather’s farm, watching for wildlife along the way and then exploring with my mom and sister.
We looked for tracks in the mud, listened for sounds, and tried to figure out what animals had passed through.
At night, we slept on a screened porch where owls, raccoons, opossums, snakes, mice, and even bobcats turned the whole experience into an adventure.
I think some part of me is still doing the same thing.
Looking for clues.
Noticing patterns.
Trying to understand what is really happening beneath the obvious.
I also love quiet mornings, coffee, wildlife sightings, sunrises, jigsaw puzzles, hiking with my husband, talking with my sister, and an excellent dog or cat meme.
Years in HR taught me that sometimes you cannot share the story.
But you can absolutely share the experience.
A bewildered dog with exactly the right caption can communicate an astonishing amount.
Apparently, I Have Been Wayfinding for a Long Time
When my twin sister and I were babies, our mom took us to participate in a twin study.
One experiment involved depth perception.
We were placed on one side of what appeared to be a drop, with a sheet of clear glass bridging the space.
My sister saw the depth and stayed where she was.
I reached out.
Touched the glass.
Tested it.
Realized it would hold me.
And crawled across toward the reward.
I obviously do not remember any of this.
But when I heard the story later, I thought:
Well. That tracks.
Read the terrain.
Know where you want to go.
Test what is true.
Find a way forward.
That is still how I approach hard problems today.
And, in many ways, it is what Wayfindology is about.
You Do Not Need to Become Less Yourself to Become a Better Leader
My job is not to turn you into someone else.
It is to help you see more clearly what is already there:
Your gifts.
Your patterns.
Your limits.
The support you need.
The responsibilities that are truly yours.
The ones that are not yours alone.
And the life you want the work to fit within.
Leadership should not consume human potential.
It should awaken it.
leadership doesn’t have to take over your life.
It can be designed.
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