Run Calm Under Change: EQ Scripts for When Projects Hit Resistance
Cohort-based Course
EQ-informed scripts for Program, Project & Ops leaders to calm resistant project conversations and leave with one clear owner and next step.
Run Calm Under Change: EQ Scripts for When Projects Hit Resistance
Cohort-based Course
EQ-informed scripts for Program, Project & Ops leaders to calm resistant project conversations and leave with one clear owner and next step.
Course overview
The project handbook covers the plan, not the humans in the room
Project and Ops leaders are usually handed the same playbook: define the scope, clarify roles, tighten timelines, communicate the “why,” and track risks. The promise: The promise: If I do everything by the project management handbook, people will get on board.
So, you sharpen the plan, run another alignment meeting, and push harder on owners and deadlines—maybe even hit your milestones on paper—while resistance still shows up as side comments, stalled decisions, or “we don’t have capacity for that.” You did everything “right,” and you’re still having the same resistance conversations, meeting after meeting.
The problem isn’t your plan. It’s that the handbook doesn’t show you how to work with what’s happening in the room when the stakes and emotions are high. More structure and status updates can’t fix eye-rolls, silence, or cynicism.
Run Calm Under Change starts from a different assumption: those moments are normal human reactions to change, not a compliance problem to fix with more pressure.
In this two-week intensive, you will:
Join two live half-day labs where we workshop your actual change meetings, not hypotheticals
Use four EQ cues—Empathy, Flexibility, Reality Testing, and Impulse Control—to read the room in about 90 seconds
Practice a simple 90-second Ladder that names what’s real, protects what must stay true, and lands one clear owner and next step
Turn what works into a one-page Run Calm playbook, a two-week micro-pilot you’re ready to run with your team, and a simple debrief guide to capture what you learn
By the end of the course, you’ll have specific language to use when you hear “we’ve tried this before” or “we don’t have capacity for that”—and a practical, EQ-informed pattern for moving the work without burning trust or yourself out.
Who is this course for
01
Program & Project Managers leading change-heavy projects where meetings get tense and resistance shows up as pushback or silence.
02
Ops/Technical leaders stuck between senior demands and stretched teams, running the meetings where resistance keeps stalling progress.
03
Go-to meeting lead when change gets tense; you want clear, humane language to cool tension, move work, and protect trust.
Prerequisites
Lead or influence change-focused meetings
You regularly join or lead high-stakes change meetings and have real rooms where you can apply the tools.
Some control over how meetings run
You can influence agenda, norms, or follow-through so you’re able to try new scripts and structures in live meetings.
Willing to test new scripts between labs
You’re ready to experiment with new language in your own meetings and briefly reflect on what happened.
What you’ll get out of this course
Detect silent resistance in 90 seconds using 4 EQ cues and respond with EQ-informed moves
Get a Heat & Meeting Map plus an EQ pocket guide linking Empathy, Flexibility, Reality Testing, and Impulse Control to phrases.
Use EQ-informed scripts to cool hot moments, say what’s really going on, and land on one owner and next step
Includes a personalized 90-Second Ladder, 1–2 If-Then habits tied to your EQ pattern, and closing language for agendas and trackers.
Turn one good meeting into a repeatable pattern with a 2-week micro-pilot and a one-page Run Calm playbook
Includes a 2-week micro-pilot plan for key meetings and a one-page Run Calm Under Change playbook you can keep refining.
You’ll walk away with:
- A one-page Run Calm Under Change playbook tailored to your meetings
- Three core scripts for hot moments and pushback
- A Heat & Meeting Map of your toughest rooms
- A 2-week micro-pilot plan to prove the pattern in your context
What’s included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Judith Walton & Marek Rudak in a real-time, interactive format.
Lifetime access
Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.
Community of peers
Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.
Certificate of completion
Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.
Maven Guarantee
This course is backed by the Maven Guarantee. Students are eligible for a full refund up until the halfway point of the course.
Course syllabus
3 lessons • 4 projects
Week 1
Module 1: Live Lab – Read the room & run the Ladder
Module 2: Field work – Test your scripts in real meetings
Week 2
Module 3: Live Lab – Refine scripts & design your micro-pilot
What people are saying
Author name
Author name
Meet your instructor
Judith Walton
Judith Walton is a leadership coach and former organizational development leader at NASA, with more than two decades working alongside technical and operations teams in high-stakes environments. Her work focused on supporting managers and project leaders through constant change, helping them navigate competing priorities without burning out their people or eroding trust.
She brings a practical emotional intelligence lens to her coaching, especially in how leaders show up in tense, high-visibility meetings. Over the years, she noticed that progress rarely came from bigger decks or tighter scripts—it came from leaders who could read the room, name what was really happening, and move the work forward with clear ownership and next steps.
In Run Calm Under Change, Judith works with Program/Project Managers and Ops/Technical leaders who sit in the middle of pressure from above and stretched teams below. The course focuses on small, usable scripts and habits—grounded in EQ—that help leaders steady the room, handle resistance more honestly, and turn difficult meetings into clearer decisions and healthier working relationships.
Marek Rudak
Marek is an emotional intelligence expert who has designed workshops for premier organizations such as NASA, Fidelity, and Rice University. He is certified in the EQ-i 2.0® & EQ 360® assessments that help his clients quickly understand what they need to do specifically to improve their leadership skills and effectiveness. Marek is also certified in Red Team Coaching, a revolutionary set of tools first developed by the military and intelligence agencies, then evolved to help business executives thrive in complexity and make better decisions by ensuring emotions are an asset, not a liability.
Marek graduated in the top 10% of his class at West Point and became a Ranger in the 82nd Airborne Division, where he deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Upon separating from the Army, he joined ExxonMobil, where he worked on global, multi-billion-dollar projects for ten years.
As an executive coach, Marek accumulated over 3,000 hours coaching C-suite leaders and their teams for organizations like Google, the NBA, and UNICEF.
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Run Calm Under Change: EQ Scripts for When Projects Hit Resistance
Course schedule
4-6 hours per week
Tuesdays
1:00pm - 4:30pm CT
Live sessions: Two live half-day labs (about 3–3.5 hours each, including breaks and practice)
Total live time: ~6–7 hours
May 12, 2026
Format: Live cohort-based course on Maven
Cohort length: 2 weeks
Between-session work
1–2 hours per week to test scripts in your meetings and complete reflections.
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Run Calm Under Change: 3 Scripts for High-Stakes Rooms
Start Human + Pulse Check (EMP + IC)
Build Daily EQ Habits (IC + FLEX)
Respond to Pushback (RT + FLEX + EMP)
Get the free recording
Learning is better with cohorts
Real-room practice, not hypotheticals
You’ll test scripts in your actual meetings and bring back what happened, so the learning sticks.
Personalized EQ playbook
You’ll walk away with a one-page Run Calm Under Change playbook tailored to your EQ pattern and leadership voice.
Micro-pilot you can run with your team
You’ll design a two-week safe-to-try pilot for your key meetings so you can prove the approach works in your context.
Interactive and project-based
You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams
Learn with a cohort of peers
Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you
Frequently Asked Questions
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