About
Douglas LaBier, Ph.D. is a business psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He is the Director of the Center for Progressive Development in Washington, DC, a nonprofit organization that promotes human development in the workplace and in personal lives, in the context of today’s highly interconnected, interdependent world.
Dr. LaBier’s work has focused on resolving the mixture of personal and organizational management conflicts that often undermine effective leadership, a healthy work culture, and personal relationships and psychological health. Dr. LaBier consults to senior executives and senior management teams on building effective leadership and positive management practices. His executive coaching for individual executives helps them create greater alignment between their personal values and development, on the one hand; and effective leadership behavior, on the other. Dr. LaBier’s believes that integrating these is the underpinning of a management culture that supports learning, development, collaboration and commitment – all necessary for dealing with the impact of climate change; for creating sustainable “green” practices and bringing them into the “DNA” of the organization; and for evolution towards an emerging new business model; one that combines financial success with serving the common good.
In his psychotherapy practice, Dr. LaBier helps individuals and couples resolve emotional conflicts that impact their personal life goals, relationships and careers. He helps them develop emotional resiliency and growth within today’s turbulent, unpredictable environment; and find ways to create more integration within their lives, an increasing need within the midlife years, from about 35 onward.
Dr. LaBier’s work over the last 30 years grew from his efforts to identify the hidden links between success in our career culture and emotional conflict, which he first wrote about in his highly acclaimed book, Modern Madness. A pioneering examination of how work and career within large organizations affect the potential for emotional and values conflict, it was cited by Daniel Goleman in The New York Times as “In the vanguard…offering sobering insights into the costs of modern success.” it explained why personal and career-related conflicts are often caused, paradoxically, by successful adaptation to the roles, pressures, and culture within organizations and careers.
Dr. LaBier has published regularly in the popular press on career and life issues, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Fortune, The Huffington Post, as well as in professional journals and texts. His work has been the subject of frequent coverage by national print and broadcast media, and he has been a frequent guest on TV and radio shows over the years, including the Today show, NBC Nightly News, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Morning News, CNN, FOX; NPR, PBS and others.
His speaking engagements and workshops include such topics as: integrating career success, personal life goals, and internal well-being; global citizenship in daily life; emotional resilience in a turbulent world; and building a positive management culture.
Dr. LaBier has been a faculty member of the Washington School of Psychiatry since 1980, and has served as a Fellow of the Research Council of Healthy Companies, a nonprofit organization supported by the MacArthur Foundation.
Dr. LaBier is currently working on a new book project about the rise of an orientation among men and women towards integrating careers, personal life goals, and serving the common good as a “global citizen.” In it, he explains why this new orientation redefines psychological health and emotional resiliency within today’s post-globalized, interconnected world — one in which we are all, in fact, becoming global citizens.
A native of upstate New York, he’s lived in Washington, DC for decades –but still loves New England and New York’s Hudson Valley.
