Leading With Emotional Intelligence and Well Being – Exclusive Interview with Melissa Owens

Melissa Owens is an Executive Coach and expert in well-being, dedicated to helping leaders overcome burnout and achieve balance. With an MBA and an ICF certification, she specializes in empowering top executives to thrive both personally and professionally. Through her coaching, Melissa helps clients elevate their impact by integrating emotional intelligence, leadership, and wellness practices. Her mission is to create healthier, more resilient leaders, equipping them with the tools for sustainable success. Melissa is the founder of WellEquippedLeadership.com.

Melissa Owens, Executive Well-being Coach

Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better. (Feel free to share your hobbies, your passions, your family life, your pets, and anything that makes you unique.)

I live in Atlanta with my husband and our five kids – and an extended family that’s joyfully close-knit. In a world where families are often scattered, it’s a rare blessing to walk with my sisters and have dinner with my parents every week.

I grew up as the oldest of five daughters in a big-hearted Italian American family, where love was measured in meals. My grandmother – my favorite person – immigrated to the U.S. at sixteen and taught me the art of “making something out of nothing.” Her seventeen-year struggle with Alzheimer’s later inspired my devotion to health and wellness, especially after becoming a mom myself.

When my second child was born, I realized how hard it is to raise healthy kids in an unhealthy food culture. I devoured everything I could find on holistic health and made it my mission to teach other moms to do the same.

Over the years, I’ve learned that family is my organizing principle. That insight helped me design my work around presence – being home when the bus pulls up, hugging my kids as they share the beautiful chaos of their day. Those fleeting conversations are my daily reminder of why I do what I do.

How and why did you transition from health coaching to career coaching?

After a decade in health coaching, I realized that no diet or supplement could heal the damage of a toxic job. My clients weren’t sick from what they were eating – they were sick from where they were working.

That realization changed everything. I began focusing on one of the most overlooked “primary foods” of all: meaningful work. Because the truth is, wellness isn’t just what’s on your plate – it’s what’s on your calendar.

What initially drew you toward integrating emotional intelligence and well-being into executive coaching?

My path toward emotional intelligence started in the trenches of motherhood. With three kids under four, I remember craving just one day of control – one day where I could call the shots.

My mental bank account was in the red: constant fatigue, self-doubt, and reactivity. What I didn’t know then was that I was living through burnout. I simply lacked the emotional intelligence for a role that demanded so much of it.

That awakening became my healing–and eventually, my calling as a coach.

From your experience, what's the most common misconception leaders have about burnout and achieving balance?

The biggest misconception about burnout is that it only happens to people who work too hard. In reality, it’s often the opposite–people who care deeply, but whose values no longer fit the work they’re doing.

Burnout shows up quietly: apathy, irritability, brain fog, or running on autopilot. We misdiagnose it as fatigue or frustration, then try to fix it with temporary relief: a vacation, a spa day, a glass of wine. But real self-care isn’t escape; it’s reflection.

Burnout, to me, is simply doing too much of the wrong kind of work. When our values aren’t invited to dinner, it doesn’t matter how fancy the meal is – something essential is missing.

How did your journey as a stay-at-home mom raising five children influence your coaching philosophy and approach?

Raising five children taught me that no two humans – no matter how similar – grow the same way. Each of my kids has their own blueprint: a distinct mix of values, aptitudes, and dreams. Coaching is no different.

That perspective keeps my approach completely individualized. No templates. No prefab paths. Just thoughtful, custom design–one client at a time.

What unique strategies do you use to help leaders cultivate resilience and emotional intelligence?

I often tell my clients that becoming “well-equipped” as a leader is a lot like being a great cook. You don’t need a shiny new set of tools or exotic ingredients – you just need to know how to use what you already have. Every leader has a kitchen full of raw materials: their strengths, experiences, values, and stories. But over time, many forget what’s on their shelves or convince themselves that what they have isn’t enough.

My coaching begins with a thoughtful self-discovery process that helps leaders rediscover these essential “ingredients.” We unearth the values so core to who they are that they often “meet” themselves for the first time through this new lens. I coach them to craft a foundational human statement – a clear, purpose-driven understanding of what they’re here to do and why it matters. From there, we identify which activities truly animate those beliefs and which ones drain them.

That clarity becomes their recipe for resilience. It allows them to lead from a place of authenticity rather than exhaustion. And the first step on that path is often forgiveness, releasing the guilt and self-judgment tied to past missteps so they can show up fully in the present.

Once that foundation is in place, we begin cultivating higher-level emotional intelligence skills that elevate them from good to exceptional. Using the internationally acclaimed Genos Emotional Intelligence framework, I help leaders strengthen self-awareness, empathy, and emotional reasoning – skills that not only build better leaders but healthier human beings.

Can you share a memorable success story of an executive you've coached who transformed their leadership through improved well-being?

I once worked with a female executive who had built her entire identity around being the hero. Her worth was tied to crisis – she felt most valuable when everything around her was on fire. But when calm finally came, she felt lost, unsure who she was without the chaos.

Through coaching, we peeled back the layers to uncover her core values, the things that made her come alive as a person, not just as a problem solver. As she reconnected with what truly energized her, she began to make space for new priorities and a new kind of leadership – one that wasn’t fueled by adrenaline, but by alignment (and the prospect of one day getting married!).

The shift was profound. She moved from constantly reacting to intentionally creating. That mindset change brought the missing ingredients to the table for a richer, more sustainable sense of fulfillment.

What's one essential piece of advice you'd give executives struggling to prioritize their health alongside high-level career demands?

Treat your well-being as a strategic priority, not a side project; it’s the operating system that runs everything else. Without it, your performance, creativity, and relationships all suffer.

Start by noticing where misalignment exists, where your time, energy, and values don’t match. Then, make one small but meaningful change that restores congruence. It might be setting firmer boundaries around rest, scheduling reflection time before big decisions, or re-evaluating which meetings actually deserve your presence. Sustainable success comes when leaders realize that health fuels high performance, not the other way around.

Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.

My greatest achievement has been helping leaders rediscover who they are underneath the titles, expectations, and constant pressure to perform. I’ve watched executives move from exhaustion to energy, from confusion to clarity, and from self-doubt to purpose.

Building Well-Equipped Leadership has allowed me to integrate everything I value - emotional intelligence, well-being, family, and meaning, into one body of work. It’s deeply fulfilling to know that what I’ve built is not just a coaching practice, but a movement toward healthier, more human leadership.

If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?

There’s a temptation to treat coaching like a transactional service, “fix this behavior, hit this goal.” But true leadership development requires depth, reflection, and time.

In the same way that companies invest in environmental sustainability for their processes, I would love to see them invest in human sustainability, the care, growth, and restoration of the people who make the work possible. When leaders operate from depletion, they create what I call social pollution – a ripple effect of stress, disengagement, and disconnection that seeps into teams and the organizational culture. But when leaders are well, emotionally aware, and purpose-driven, the opposite happens: they become powerful forces for health and belonging.

I’d like to see organizations view coaching not as a perk for burnout recovery, but as a proactive investment in cultivating emotional resilience and human connection across all levels of leadership. When leaders thrive personally, cultures change systemically.

Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.

The most defining moment for me came during the years I spent as a stay-at-home mom with three little ones under four. I was exhausted, lonely, and questioning my identity. What I didn’t realize then was that I was living through burnout. That period became my greatest teacher. It forced me to confront the importance of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and the need to design a life aligned with my values.

That journey set the foundation for everything I do now. It gave me empathy for people who appear strong on the outside but are quietly struggling on the inside. It also gave me the conviction that well-being is not a luxury – it’s a leadership imperative. That’s what inspired me to build Well Equipped Leadership: a place where purpose and health can coexist, and where leaders learn that the best way to lead others is to first be well themselves.

About the author:

Melissa Owens, MBA, ACC, is an Executive Coach and Emotional Intelligence Practitioner dedicated to helping leaders thrive from the inside out. She’s the founder of Well Equipped Leadership, based in Atlanta, GA.  Send her a note: melissa@wellequippedleadership.com

Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info!

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