Alan’s authentic desire to disrupt how a leader thinks is born from a deeply embodied belief that doing it the way we have always done it is the path to mediocrity, which is not what is expected of leaders. His creative approach to business and leadership, combined with his strategic ability to sort through the clutter to find the best route has yielded consistent results for his clients. Alan’s unwavering proclamation is that leaders are hired to produce results, not have “the” answers. For his clients, he relentlessly and directly illuminates the truth, which is that the success of an organization is directly correlated to the leader's ability to get the things that matter, done. This requires the leader to leverage their positional power by giving authority away to their teams to make things happen. 

Ultimately, he believes that leaders increase their impact when they give power away. It’s what he calls—Reciprocating Authority.

Reciprocating Authority is any scenario where a leader is distributing authority to his/her team to increase the velocity of an intention. When a leader demonstrates belief in and trust and respect for their team by distributing authority, the team reciprocates with belief in and trust, and respect for the leader and each other. Evidence of Reciprocating Authority is found in ideas being shared regardless of title or station, demonstration of ownership by all team members, and collective consciousness that results in higher performance.

Alan came to this philosophy organically over the years, but a strong seed was planted one particular afternoon when he found himself as a teenager sitting in his father’s office. On that day, his father, the company comptroller, asked, “What do you think is the most valuable asset of a company?” His father proceeded to share that the most valuable asset is also the most difficult to manage—its employees.

His father's statement was confirmed years later in management roles when he discovered that to reach his version of success, he was going to have to get good at recruiting, training, and developing his team. With this human-focused approach to delivering results, he began witnessing the impact of Reciprocating Authority in action.

Now with more than 35 years of sales, management, leadership, and consulting experience, Alan has translated his philosophy, and those same results, across a variety of organizations. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies, middle market companies, and small entrepreneurial firms and owned his own businesses. Alan developed and led a custom executive leadership program for forty-five Oracle sales vice presidents. He also delivered leadership training for more than 1,800 first-level leaders at Boeing. He has led and coached 90 high-performance leaders through an eight-month High-Performance Leader program. Many have made significant career progress including one becoming divisional President of a $1B+ business unit.  In his career, Alan created a licensing concept that generated $250 million in revenue and led sales teams that exceeded quotas by as much as 176 percent. In one engagement.

Today, Alan works directly with senior executives to create a culture of Reciprocating Authority in their organizations. As an Executive Coach, he works with open, enthusiastic leaders whose commitment and energy transform those around them. As a creative business person, he likes to challenge the status quo and explore new ways of doing things. Working with humble and driven leaders allows him the opportunity to leverage his creativity on a broad scale and impact many organizations and people. He loves nothing more than to see others excel beyond what they thought possible.

When he’s not working with bold leaders, teaching them how to instill a culture of Reciprocating Authority in their organizations, you can find Alan doing something active—namely skiing, hiking, biking, yoga, and working out—or traveling the world with his wife Carol and two adult sons Joel and Simon. Both boys are passionate Ultimate Frisbee players, and Alan is vocal about how his role as father greatly influenced his leadership style. The Prushan family enjoys particularly active vacations such as rock climbing in Acadia National Park in Maine and hiking from Sylvan Lake to the highest peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota. They’ve even traveled to Costa Rica where they went on canyoning hikes before rappelling down waterfalls, zip-lined over the rain forests, and satiated the need for speed with ATV treks. They’ve even done the most challenging hike in America, Angels Landing at Zion National Park in Utah.

Alan uses his travels to toil with photography. He enjoys taking pictures of nature landscapes, flowers, sunrises, sunsets, and of course, people. All of the photos you see on the site are Alan Prushan originals.  

Alan has learned that in addition to composition, photography is about managing light. You will see Alan’s use of light in his photographs. Alan believes that light illuminates and energizes the subject.  Similarly, a leader's job is to illuminate and energize the company's mission, vision, and purpose.  

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