Not all leaders strive for culture fit and harmony. Some boldly stand apart – not in isolation, but with purpose. Instead of guiding teams through structured frameworks, Judy Liu creates spaces where discomfort sparks growth and creative expression ignites hidden perspectives. For her, leadership isn’t about blending in but about stepping up when the stakes demand more than quiet agreement. Outdated blueprints are incapable of capturing the wholeness of our being, and no personality or leadership assessment tells our full story.
Judy Liu has never been one to follow conventional paths. Reimagining possibilities when others are trying to operate within existing systems. A colleague said to her when he saw her presenting at a board meeting, “I wondered whether you even wanted your job” because of how comfortably she spoke the truths that others dare not say. For anyone who has met Judy, they will tell you that she is like human sunshine. Her belief in the magnificence of what we can be when we are the full expression of ourselves guides her to coax out the weird and wonderful in others.
From Corporate Outlier to Entrepreneurial Leader
After a fulfilling corporate career as the Head of Learning & Development at Hays, Judy’s journey to founding The Outlier Mind began with what many might consider a setback – redundancy. But where others might see an ending, Judy saw an invitation to play. “One of the most beautiful farewell messages I got was ‘Judy, I’m going to miss your outspokenness’,” she recalls. “I always felt a deep knowing that what I have to give extends beyond the realms of one organisation. So I thought, you know what, life is a playground, and it’s time to play. And so I did, I started my company and set out to see what would happen if I became more of who I knew I was, and less of what others wanted me to be.”
Judy has since carved out a distinctive presence in the leadership development space. She refers to this as ‘leading from the inside out’. This pivot wasn’t just a career change—it was an embodiment of the outlier philosophy that now defines her approach to leadership development. For Judy, outliers are not simply statistical anomalies to be disregarded. They are the courageous few who stand apart not because they seek isolation, but because “they are driven by something greater than the desire to belong.” She recognizes that “the invisible force of conformity is incredibly powerful, and it takes even more power and conscious effort to go against it.”
What drives these outliers? According to Judy, “If we take the time to tune in to what they have to say, more often than not they do it because they care, they care about the betterment of a situation more so than they care about how they may be perceived.”
Redefining Authentic Leadership Through Conscious Presence
Judy’s approach to authentic leadership challenges conventional wisdom. For her, authenticity isn’t about unfiltered self-expression but about connecting with a deeper knowingness. “Authentic leadership is a connection with your knowingness that lies behind all things external. That is, tuning into the calling of our hearts before the world told us who to be and what success must look like.”
She dispels the common misconception that authentic leadership means permission to live life as one’s unchecked self. “Someone might say ‘I’m just an angry person, that’s just who I am, that’s my authentic self’. Your triggered reaction is not your authentic self. Your authentic self is what emerges when you are no longer disturbed by the trigger, when you can return to your knowingness and decide for yourself on how you’d like to respond.”
This understanding frames authenticity not as unrestrained expression but as “the acknowledgement of our inner messiness, without letting it lead your life.” It’s a nuanced perspective that validates human complexity while encouraging conscious leadership.
She shares a powerful example from her own experience: “I remember one of the moments I gained a lot of respect for a boss of mine was when I suggested a wild, outlier idea and, instead of reacting, she paused. Even though she was visibly thrown off, she took a deep breath in and said ‘Judy I am reacting right now, is it okay if I come back to you in 10 minutes?’ I was very moved by her owning up to the messiness she was experiencing.”
Cultivating Value-led Leadership
For Judy, value-aligned leadership begins with self-awareness. “Before you lead with your values you need to know what they are. It’s more than the standard list we throw out there. When asked “what do you value?” its easy for people to jump to the usual, socially expected ones – ‘I value family’ or ‘I value working together’. However, our values are more nuanced than that. Sometimes it may even feel shameful to admit what we value. For example, many people value acknowledgement or power.”
She advocates for a deeper exploration of personal patterns: “Think of the hardest decision you had to make in your life, and why you decided the way you did. Then think of the most painful time in your life and how you responded to it. When does life feel most alive? Dissect it, analyse it, what was present in that moment? You’ll find a pattern, and that underlying pattern will reveal to you a personal truth that holds your values.”
Our values seep into all our behaviours and interactions. “Living aligned with our values is not the grand celebration at the end of a big project, it is the culmination of every conversation, interaction and situation we operate in. Start there. Ask yourself, what is something I can do every day to honour this value?”
Judy consistently emphasizes one core principle: “Leaders are responsible for themselves before they are responsible for anyone or anything else.” She observes that while many leaders focus on techniques for managing others, “few leaders start with gaining greater awareness to manage themselves.” This self-management becomes the foundation for creating space for others: “How are you going to hold space for another person in a difficult conversation if you are unaware of what you are bringing into the room—your energy, internal dialogue, unacknowledged needs.”
The Courageous Dance of Vulnerability
To Judy, vulnerability and courage are inseparable companions. “It’s courageous to be vulnerable. So start creating a mental association of these two concepts. Next time you think of vulnerability think of courage, next time you think of courage think of vulnerability. If you think you are a courageous person, ask yourself, am I vulnerable? If not, try again.”
She believes vulnerability dismantles facades and builds genuine connection: “When you speak about the scary stuff it loses power over you. When you’re perfect it’s human nature to want to pick holes at it, either out of jealousy or because it feels fake. When you are open about your struggles, people connect with you through their own struggle.”
Judy illustrates this with a story that captures authentic leadership in action: “One of my favourite moments with a leader was when he invited us (his team) to his house for dinner. Right after we agreed he said ‘I’m doing this because I just did a career review and they told me my expectations of people are too high and everyone is going to leave me. So I read a leadership book about trust and they told me inviting people to your house helps with that.’ We all laughed. Hilarious, brutally honest, and it probably built more trust than the dinner!”
Fostering Creativity and Confidence Through Liberation
Judy’s approach to cultivating creativity and confidence is refreshingly counterintuitive. She suggests leaders embrace the inevitability of criticism: “Know that you are always right and wrong at the same time. Whatever we do, we’ll have lovers and haters, and at some point we die and the world moves on without us. It’s not morbid, it’s reality. So if that’s the case then cool, make up your own mind, sing your own rhyme and do what you feel is best based on the information you have.”
“We need to remember that people think about us way less than we think. You screw up a conversation, you rub people the wrong way, so what? They live in their own world where they are the centre of attention and they have moved on while you’re still watching endless reruns of your mistakes.”
In her work, Judy creates environments where authentic expression thrives: “I invite disagreement, dissent and wild ideas. If I was in a workshop I might say ‘I get the sense you think what I just said is a load of sh*t’ then we talk about it openly and explore it with curiosity.” This approach creates space for genuine engagement rather than robotic compliance. As she notes from a recent workshop, a participant’s key takeaway was simply, “my favourite part was when you told us that it’s okay to be ourselves.”
Reimagining Resilience in Leadership
Judy identifies a fundamental misunderstanding of resilience in organizational contexts. “People think resilience is about detaching from your emotions, focusing on the work and managing it all yourself. Maybe that’s why AI is so popular, so we can have a team of robots in the workplace (joke). Resilience is about feeling it, processing it, supporting each other through it.”
She highlights the paradox many companies face during restructuring: “You have a remaining team of people fearing that their job is next, feeling unstable, and what they need the most in supporting their resilience—wellbeing initiatives, coaching, avenues to explore their feelings—are cut because they are the nice-to-have initiatives when the business is making money.” She likens this to “trying to build a house with weak foundation, but instead of reinforcing the structure, you’re told to decorate the walls.”
True resilience, according to Judy, requires creating spaces for honest exploration rather than superficial optimism. She emphasizes that “resilience is not about being infinitely strong, nor does optimism mean the absence of unhappy feelings. The building of both stems from the creation of spaces where these can be explored.”
Guidance for Aspiring Leaders
For women navigating leadership paths, particularly in male-dominated fields, Judy offers a powerful mantra: “Just like me.” Drawing from Pema Chödrön’s teachings, she explains, “At the end of the day everyone is just like me, with challenges, stressors, worries, joy, excitement and uncertainty. They just manifest in different ways. When you can bring it back to our basic commonality, you feel more comfortable with the people around you, and when you feel more comfortable you feel braver. We are all brave in certain contexts, may it is at home with family, maybe when we are with our kids. How can we bring the energy of those contexts into where we need them. “When I started my career in law it was very daunting. However, whenever I got nervous in the presence of a judge or another lawyer, I’d remind myself – that person is probably goofy like my dad, he is just putting on his work face right now. I would then giggle to myself and suddenly I felt closer to them, and more confident in myself. If we are aware of when we shift into fight or flight, we can ‘think and feel’ ourselves out of it. That is the power of the mind.
Way of Work
Judy invites people to reimagine resourcing when it comes to working with talent. With the waves of redundancies, there is incredible talent in the market that is no longer looking for that next full-time job. Therefore, if that is the only thing you’re offering then you’re missing out!
In addition to developing programs and coaching leaders, Judy works fractionally with selected clients. “Fractional work is when a client is looking for my expertise but does not have the budget for a full-time resource, maybe they don’t even need a full-time resource.” This might involve working a set number of days per month or year, serving as a thinking partner, co-creating leadership frameworks, or helping organizations maintain connections with external learning environments.
Looking ahead, Judy approaches The Outlier Mind’s future with the same authenticity and presence that defines her leadership philosophy. “I’m taking it at my pace, and that means, it can be anything! I’ve had a few people approach me about expansion ideas however I’m taking my time until what I truly vibe with comes through. I’m admiring the scenery on this journey, rather than fixating on the destination.”
A Legacy of Unlearning
“As a coach you start to realise how often our assumptions based on our ‘experience’ is completely off, and how our experience can be our greatest hindrance,” Judy says. This awareness has taught her to “work with what emerges, without preconceived notions,” constantly returning to presence and the art of holding space.
As for her legacy, Judy hopes to inspire “organisations to invest in spaces for people to be their weird and wonderful selves.” She envisions workplaces where “tension and discomfort need not be feared for they are the fertile spaces for us to grow. And while deep conversations may pierce the façade of harmony, but held well, creates magic.”
In a world that often seeks conformity, Judy Liu stands as a reminder that true leadership requires the courage to be an outlier—not for the sake of standing apart, but because sometimes, the betterment of all depends on the willingness of one to chart a different path.
