Ruben Consulting Group

Name: Ruben Consulting Group
Address: San Francisco, CA, US
Telephone: 415-564-7135

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Ruben Consulting Group

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Specializing in the acceleration of executive leadership and business performance with a masterful, proven executive development methodology. Fear flourishes.

http://www.leadershiptangles.com Bottom line, I’m driven to unleash your success . For more than 20 years, I’ve partnered with the leadership teams and executives of Fortune 500, medium-size, and start-up firms. Together we straightened the path to increased collaboration, successful change, and accelerated performance. In industries ranging from high technology and clean technology, biotechnology and life sciences to financial services and higher education, I observed persistent/recurring patterns that entangled success in disappointment. After studying these situations in depth, I developed the concept of Organizational TanglesTM. Tangles develop when interpersonal relationships, leadership, culture, structure, and communication don’t align. I’ve identified more than a dozen individual, team, and organizational tangles, including the Executive Brain Knot TangleTM, the New Executive Trip Wire TangleTM, and the Cross Functional Tug of War TangleTM. No matter what the tangle, the symptoms are the same. Emotions overrun reason. Conflict and blame undermine collaboration and accountability. Mistrust defeats teamwork. Communication fails. As the Tangle DoctorTM, I assess the situation to name the tangle and explain the tangle. I pinpoint which misaligned “threads" to pull to untangle the knot and get the company back on track for success. I draw from a huge toolkit to design and enable a pragmatic solution that builds on strengths and increases performance. Solutions include outcome-based executive coaching, team effectiveness offsites, conflict mediation, change integration, and strategic change management consultation. What’s got your company tied in knots? If you’d like to find out, let’s talk.

10/13/2026

I once watched a room of graduate students check out mid-lecture, and it changed how I teach the brain forever.

I was teaching the parts of the brain to a room of graduate students: the amygdala, the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex; technically accurate, entirely forgettable.

I watched their eyes glaze over in real time.

That was the moment I realized nobody remembers a research term under pressure. So I gave the brain a cast of characters instead. The amygdala became the Threat Detector. The hippocampus became the Learning Librarian. The prefrontal cortex became the Thinking Center.

Suddenly, people weren't memorizing anatomy. They were recognizing themselves.

That reframe became part of what I now call Tangleology, my framework for understanding how these parts of the brain "talk" to each other when we get tangled, and how to untangle them.

It started because a room of smart people stopped listening. Sometimes the best teaching tool is watching exactly where you're losing people.

10/05/2026

The most meaningful gift of my career cost nothing, came from someone who owed me nothing, and is still sitting on my desk. Here's the story behind it.

One day, our university librarian handed me a brain model. Unprompted. Unasked.

He'd noticed how often I was talking about neuroscience and leadership around campus and thought I could use one.

I still have it on my desk.

That's the kind of thing that happens when you can't stop talking about an idea, people start showing up to help you carry it. An illustrator turned dense neuroscience into colorful, teachable diagrams for me. A community of faculty from business, law, accounting, and undergraduate programs showed up every other month for seven years to keep exploring it together.

None of it was required. All of it happened because the ideas were good enough, and true enough, that people wanted in.

That's also, in a real sense, how The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead. got written. Link to buy it below.

09/28/2026

The first time I read about how our brains operate in the social world, I was hooked.

I saw the application to leadership development, to my executive coaching practice, to every stuck conversation I'd experienced myself.

Not long after, I was hired as a tenure-track graduate leadership professor and started weaving neuroscience into my courses. Then came a two-year professorship dedicated to integrating leadership and neuroscience, and an idea I couldn't shake: what if people could actually stand inside their own brain?

So I built a giant brain mat. Students simulated real conversations while physically standing in the regions doing the work, the amygdala sounding the alarm, the prefrontal cortex trying to catch up.

It's one thing to explain the neuroscience of a hijacked conversation. It's another to watch someone realize, mid-role-play, exactly where in their own brain they just got stuck.

That mat, and what it taught me, became one of the kernels that grew into my book, The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead. Link below.

09/14/2026

Ever gone fishing and ended up with a completely tangled line? It stops you cold — nothing to do but stop, untangle the mess, and start over.

Every summer, my husband and I head up to a remote lake in Southern Oregon to fish (full disclosure, we hire a wonderful guide who knows exactly where the fish are biting — we are not that good on our own!).

On this trip, I cast my line into the most beautifully quiet water and immediately snagged it on a tree. Reeled it in — tangled, snagged, completely useless. Had to cut it loose.

Cast again. This time, a hard tug — I fought that fish the whole way to the boat, and our guide finally netted it and handed it over.

An untangled line lets you actually enjoy why you're out there. A tangled one just stops you in your tracks.

I can't stop thinking about how true that is off the water, too. What are the tangles in your life?

09/08/2026

I became interested in applying neuroscience to leadership right as the field was just starting to take shape.
So when Golden Gate University hired me as a tenure-track professor in 2012, I jumped at the chance to bring it into the classroom — teaching students how our brains are wired to detect social threats and what to do about it.

I remember the first time I shared with a group of MBA students that a perceived threat shuts down the manager-employee relationship and how they could defuse it before it does damage. Eyes lit up. Weeks later, students came back and told me they'd used it—with direct reports and with peers—and that their relationships were shifting. So were their business results.

That response kept me going, and I put more neuroscience-based curriculum into my graduate courses on personal leadership, teamwork, and leading complex change.

Years later, that classroom curiosity became The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead.

Thank you to my Gate University students, past and present, for asking the questions that kept me digging. This book exists because of you.

08/31/2026

Every week brings another headline about AI reshaping how teams work, and another wave of leaders scrambling to respond.

Robert J. Marshak, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence Emeritus at American University and author of Covert Processes at Work, points out exactly why that scramble so often goes sideways. He writes that a leader's automatic responses to complexity and ambiguity can lead to unintended and counterproductive thinking and actions, and that The Neuroscience of Leadership offers a way to rewire that response.

That's the real AI leadership challenge. It's not technology. It's whether your brain's default reaction to uncertainty is helping you lead, or working against you.

The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead. Link below!

Link to my book:
Print edition ($26.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ48KVSF
E-book edition ($9.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ122GJ8

08/30/2026

A question worth sitting with this week:

When have you caught yourself mid-blame and shifted toward accountability? What helped you make that pivot? And how do you ensure you repeat that success?

Our first automatic response to a tricky challenge is almost always to look outward, at the circumstances, the team, the timing, the person who dropped the ball. That's not a character flaw. It's biology. The brain under threat moves fast, and blame is one of its quickest exits.

But some leaders learn to pause. To notice the pull toward blame before acting on it. To choose accountability instead, not as a performance of virtue, but as a genuine orientation toward what's true and what's actually within their control.

In The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead., I call this the difference between a Tangled Leader and an Untangled one. The gap between them isn't talent or intention. It's awareness and the practice of building it.

I'd love to hear your answer to the question above. Drop it in the comments.
And if you want to go deeper, the book is waiting. Available now on Amazon!

Link to my book:
Print edition ($26.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ48KVSF
E-book edition ($9.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ122GJ8

08/28/2026

Leadership development has a blind spot.

We talk endlessly about strategy, communication, and ex*****on. What we talk about far less is what's actually happening inside the brain when a leader faces complexity, ambiguity, and pressure, and why their automatic responses so often work against them.

That gap is exactly what The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead. was written to close.

Link to my book:
Print edition ($26.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ48KVSF
E-book edition ($9.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ122GJ8

08/26/2026

You're new to the leadership team. The CEO turns to you mid-meeting and asks for your take on a major strategic shift, one that touches a technology you know well, but this particular version isn't quite your wheelhouse.

For a second, you freeze.

That's the Must Not Be Found Out Thought Knot the deeply wired fear that not knowing something instantly equals not belonging. Your brain treats the gap in your knowledge like a threat to your standing in the room.

Then you remember something your coach told you: this isn't a test. It's a learning opportunity.

You exhale. "Let me take a closer look and get back to you and the team with a real answer."

Untangled leadership isn't about always having the answer. It's about trusting that not having one yet doesn't cost you your seat at the table.

Want to learn more about Thought Knots like this one and how to untangle them? The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead. is where it all started.

Link down below!

Link to my book:
Print edition ($26.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ48KVSF
E-book edition ($9.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ122GJ8

08/25/2026

"I need you piloting this next week," Christopher says. "Measurable gains by end of quarter."

Matthew pushes back gently; his team's scared, worried about their jobs.

"Oh, please. They should be grateful they still have jobs."

Matthew tries once more. Christopher cuts him off:

"Trust is earned through results. Not coddling."

Chair scrapes back. "Meeting over."

He's out the door before Matthew can finish a sentence.

That's the Must Be In Control Thought Knot, control mistaken for leadership. It buys short-term compliance. It costs long-term trust.
Tangled or untangled? What would you do in Matthew's chair?

The Neuroscience of Leadership: Rewire. Untangle. Lead. Link down below!

Link to my book:
Print edition ($26.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ48KVSF
E-book edition ($9.95): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ122GJ8

Address

San Francisco, CA

Telephone

415-564-7135

Website

http://www.leadershiptangles.com/

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