Empowering Leaders: How Elise Smith is Removing “Luck” From the Success Equation

In the competitive entrepreneurship landscape, Elise Smith has emerged as a visionary founder, redefining how companies should think about their future leaders. As the co-founder and CEO of Praxis Labs, Elise has dedicated her career to leveraging immersive learning experiences to drive meaningful change in the workplace. Her journey is a powerful example of how determination, innovation, self-reflection, and a willingness to learn can remove luck from the equation of success. Elise’s personal experiences fuel her professional ambitions, the unique methodologies Praxis Labs employs to enhance leadership skills, and their significant impact on organizations striving for excellence.

We invested in Praxis Labs’ Series A round in 2021, excited by their vision to use immersive learning to create better leaders and teammates in the workplace. Recently, we asked Elise a few questions about building teams, helping their learners, and Praxis Labs.

What’s your most proud moment as a founder? 

Elise: I’m most proud of the team my co-founder, Heather Shen, and I have built. We’ve had the privilege of working with some of the most brilliant, talented, and passionate humans I have ever met. I have so much gratitude for past and present team members. Our impact on our learners and clients is because of their hard work, curiosity, and commitment to our mission. I’m so proud to have been able to work, learn, and grow alongside each and every team member.

What is the most valuable thing you’ve learned in building Praxis Labs?

Elise: I’ve learned so much about leadership and how I show up as a leader. Our platform leverages an inclusive mindset framework developed by Dr. Castro and Dr. Snyder on our team. The framework is broken up into three categories of skills: Relational Skills, Team-Org Skills, and Self Skills. My most important work is to build stronger self-skills – to manage my emotions, be adaptive, and take accountability. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity Praxis has provided me to do some of that self-work and be a better person and leader. There’s still so much more to learn and more growth to be had!!

What keeps you up at night?

Our learners. I’m always thinking about how we continue to innovate and tweak our immersive learning experiences so that they really help our learners develop new skills, practice those skills, and feel confident and comfortable applying them in their everyday lives.

I have so much empathy for many of our learners–most of them people managers. When I first started Praxis Labs, I became a first-time manager. While I knew I needed to give feedback, I wasn’t sure what was the most effective or compassionate way to deliver feedback. I wish I had a tool like Pivotal Practice to learn frameworks, try new approaches, and get personalized coaching.

What keeps me up at night is how we can continue to improve our practice experiences, personalized coaching, and outcomes for our learners. This would help our clients achieve their goals of creating a more engaged, inclusive, and higher-performing workforce.

What was your motivation for starting Praxis Labs?

Elise: My lived experiences and those of my family! I believe luck shouldn’t be the main contributing factor in one’s outcomes. I also believe that learning and development can be a tool to help everyone lead more inclusively, support more equitable outcomes, and drive more value for us all.

Why Praxis Labs?

Elise: It’s incredibly hard to be a people leader right now. The expectations of what leaders must navigate are higher–from navigating the socio-political conversations entering the workplace to the technological advances transforming how we work–it can feel like the goalposts keep changing and there are fewer resources to achieve more aggressive goals. It’s a lot! Praxis Labs helps people leaders meet this moment. How can you respond when there’s conflict on your team? How do you set performance expectations with accountability and care? What do you say when someone starts crying on a Zoom call? How do you benefit from the diverse perspectives on your team and drive towards the best solution? These are the human moments that make or break team outcomes. We help people leaders prepare for these moments through learning and practice – and we do it at scale so workforces with tens of thousands of managers can provide these high-impact learning experiences to everyone who can benefit from them.

What’s the most important trait you look for when hiring someone for the Praxis Labs team?

Elise: It’s hard to name ONE most important trait, but we love meeting mission-aligned and self-aware folks. If you’re mission-aligned and care deeply about making workplaces work better for everyone and creating products and services that better serve everyone, then even on the hard days (there are some of those days in a startup), you’ll be motivated to do it for the learner (our users!). And if you’re self-aware, then whatever obstacle we need to overcome, you can be thoughtful about your role in driving toward our collective outcome and can be unafraid to ask for help. These traits align nicely with our values of being brave and being human.

What are the top 3 apps used on your phone today?

Elise:

I try not to have too many apps on my phone, but if I’m on my phone, I’m likely using:

Learn more about Elise at praxislabs.co and connect with Elise on LinkedIn.