About Joe Palm

Joe Palm is a leadership practitioner with more than four decades of experience working inside large, complex organizations. He spent the majority of his career at a Fortune 4 company, where he worked across technology, delivery, and organizational transformation roles, ultimately serving as an Enterprise Agile Coach.

Joe’s professional background includes hands-on work as a software developer, project and program leader, and business transformation leader. His career was built inside real teams doing real work—under deadlines, constraints, and pressure—not in academic or theoretical settings. That experience shaped his practical, grounded approach to leadership.

A pivotal moment early in Joe’s career changed how he understood leadership. A manager took the time to ask a simple but genuine question about how to support him. That interaction altered Joe’s trajectory and sparked a lifelong interest in how leadership behaviors directly affect people’s confidence, performance, and growth. Over time, Joe observed a consistent pattern: when leaders prioritize people as humans, work improves; when they don’t, organizations struggle.

Throughout his career, Joe partnered with teams and leaders navigating large-scale change. As an Enterprise Agile Coach, he worked alongside leaders and teams across multiple countries, helping them improve how they collaborate, make decisions, and deliver value. His work focused on trust, clarity, accountability, and creating environments where people could do their best work without fear.

Joe has led leadership training and coaching engagements for organizations including Marriott, General Motors, Wells Fargo, and military units. He is known for earning trust quickly, speaking plainly, and helping teams apply changes directly to their day-to-day work. His style is practical, direct, and rooted in experience rather than theory.

Joe is the co-founder of a technology startup and holds multiple professional certifications, including Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Kanban Management Professional (KMP), and Organizational Management & EOS Certified (OMEC).

He is the co-author of Practical Servant Leadership: People-First Strategies to Create Value in a Profit-Obsessed World, written with Dr. Mike Moss. The book draws from decades of lived experience and focuses on leadership as it is actually practiced inside organizations.

Joe is based in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a father and grandfather, and his cats are frequent companions during writing and work sessions. Outside of work, he is an avid cyclist who enjoys long rides through the mountains around Asheville.