Media
Talks, interviews & conversations
Steve Nolan on trust, presence, the business case for training and people-first leadership.
Transparency, Trust and Customer-Centric Culture
TED
Drawing on 30+ years in Fortune 500 and growth-stage companies, Steve looks at how often leaders assume a problem, once named, is understood — and what distinguishes those who catch the gap in time.
Watch on TED
Podcast · October 2026
Corporate Training is Not a Cost Center
The Balancing Act with Andrew Temte, PhD, CFA — Episode 266
Why companies cut training first when budgets tighten, where assessments like MBTI still add value, why leadership alignment matters, and how to run a mission-driven firm alongside a private equity partner. Plus Steve’s budgeting approach for protecting training line items.
The Discipline of Presence: An Interview with Ariel Group CEO Steve Nolan
The Consulting Report · May 2026
Steve on what clients bring to Ariel — rebuilding trust through change, turning technically strong people into influential leaders, aligning leadership teams — and how Ariel uses AI to reinforce, not replace, human-led coaching.
“The client experience is at the heart of what we do.”Read the interview
Why Leadership Training Fades by Monday and Steve Nolan of Ariel Group on Changing the Company, Not Just the Leader
New York Weekly · October 2026
Leadership training often fails once people return to a workplace that hasn’t changed. Steve argues companies have to restructure alongside their leaders, because satisfaction surveys don’t show whether the business actually changed.
“If the company structure isn’t changing, the behavior change is not going to last.”Read the article
Steve Nolan of Ariel Group on Why You Can’t Train Your Way Out of a Structural Problem
CEO Weekly · September 2026
Complaints like “poor communication” are often symptoms of something deeper. Steve argues that good advisors diagnose the root cause before recommending a fix.
“You can’t train your way out of a structural problem.”Read the article
Media kit
Official bio
Steve Nolan is the CEO of Ariel Group, a leadership development, training and executive coaching firm that works with many of the world’s best-known organizations, including Fortune 10, Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. Over more than 30 years, he has led over 1,000 people and influenced upwards of a billion dollars in revenue and growth outcomes, building, scaling and transforming organizations from the inside. Before stepping into the CEO chair, Steve spent five years as Chief Revenue Officer of The Myers-Briggs Company, one of the most recognized names in the assessment and leadership development industry.
But Steve hasn’t just studied leadership, he’s lived it. He’s carried revenue targets, integrated acquisitions, navigated private equity ownership and made high-stakes decisions with incomplete information, all while learning as much from the calls that didn’t work as the ones that did. Today, Ariel Group trains 20,000 people a year across 27 countries with a team of 250+ facilitators and coaches, and Steve brings a candid, refreshingly practical point of view to conversations on leadership, growth and what it really takes to run a business. His core belief: the problem you think you have is rarely the real one, and the smartest growth often comes from fixing the revenue you’re already quietly losing rather than chasing the next customer.
Media and interview requests: message Steve on LinkedIn.