Erik Berglund

About Erik Berglund

I bombed a job interview so badly that I flew home questioning everything I thought I knew about leadership.The CEO asked me one simple question:\"How do you hold your people accountable?\"I had 16 people reporting to me. I thought I was a good leader. But in that moment, I realized I had no idea what I was actually doing.That failed interview changed everything. It led me to create the Language of Leadership.I started leading at 20, running a residential painting franchise. By 29, I was managing people who used to be my peers. I quickly discovered that being good at the work doesn\'t make you good at leading people who do the work.I was working insane hours, covering for my team, micromanaging everything. I thought leadership meant handling ALL the \"important\" stuff. But then I worked with a coach who showed me leadership wasn\'t about working harder. It was about communicating better. Most leadership problems are communication problems in disguise.Your team is unaccountable? You just haven\'t learned how to hold the right conversations. They\'re not motivated? You haven\'t learned how to inspire action through your words. They seem incompetent? You\'re just hoarding all the challenging work instead of developing their capabilities.I\'ve spent over two decades figuring out what actually works in the messy middle of leadership. The real conversations you need when someone misses a deadline, when performance slips, when you need to reset expectations without destroying morale.Language of Leadership is built on three pillars- Clarity: Say what you mean in a way that drives action- Connection: Build relationships that create trust and accountability- Consistency: Develop leadership habits that compound over time.Through our courses, academy, and coaching, we practice the actual conversations you\'re avoiding and we teach leaders how to stop being chief problem solvers and start building self-reliant teams. I’ve used this framework to coach C-suite execs, fast-rising managers, and entrepreneurs across industries - and I’ve seen the transformation that happens when communication becomes a tool for alignment, not just instruction.I believe every leader deserves to feel confident in their voice, not overwhelmed by their role.If you\'re working too many hours, doubting every delegation, or stuck being the bottleneck… I\'ve been there. And this is probably your next step.Thousands of professionals have already shifted how they lead using this framework.Ready to stop winging your most difficult conversations? Let\'s connect.

Experience

1. Founder

   The Language Of Leadership

   Jan 2021 — Present · Bend, OR, US

   How do you hold people accountable?\'That was the question the CEO asked me as I was interviewing for a job circa 2016. I\'d ran a business in college, held leadership positions before, and at that time led a team of 16 across 3 states, and had for about 5 years. This felt like it should have been a layup. But it wasn\'t. I had no answer, and I left the interview (didn\'t get the job) haunted that I couldn\'t answer this very simple question. Then I started asking other leaders -\'How do you hold people accountable\' and I observed the same thing in other leaders that I had felt. No answer. Sure, some people shared \'incentive plans\' or \'KPI scoreboards\' but none of them could tell me what they did when people weren\'t motivated by the incentive plan or didn\'t score well. What did they say? That\'s what I really wanted to know.\'What do you say to someone who isn\'t being accountable\'. That\'s where my journey began. I now have an online course, an academy for professionals to practice leadership, and do 1:1/group coaching that very clearly answers this question. The Language of Leadership is a wildly different approach to leadership. It focuses on the words you say and what you listen for - the language - that happens when you\'re leading other people. I use this to help leaders build cultures of accountability and develop the talent already on their team by transforming the way they speak and listen to their people.

Education

• Oregon State University

  BS, General Science, Pre Education

  2003 — 2010

Skills

• Franchising
• Coaching
• Leadership
• Online Marketing
• Management
• Integrated Marketing
• Account Management
• Sales
• Advertising
• Marketing
• Competitive Analysis
• Strategy
• Customer Service
• Lead Generation
• Cold Calling
• Recruiting
• Time Management
• Entrepreneurship
• Online Advertising
• Marketing Strategy
• Business Development
• Digital Marketing
• B2b
• Customer Relations
• Entrepreneur