Illumify Inc.
Empowering Leaders to Ignite What Matters

Founder and CEO of Illumify Marianne Gobeil has been called “the leader’s leader” for her pioneering work in transformative leadership training. She founded Illumify for those who want to become more influential communicators and ignite meaningful change.

In an interview with Manage HR Magazine, Marianne shared how her unique methodology and expertise have revealed a formula for communicating with impact, which she now teaches to established and emerging leaders around the world.

What got you into high-level leadership development?

I’m a trusted senior advisor to some of the world’s top corporate and political leaders, with 30 years of communication experience including 10 years specializing in crisis communication. I’m also a keynote speaker who travels the world sharing what I’ve learned about leadership that ignites meaningful change.

Throughout my career, I recognized how many leaders struggle to both communicate a clear vision and galvanize tangible action around that vision. So I embarked on a quest to better understand what it means to communicate with impact.

What started as a curious research project evolved into an internationally-recognized, award-winning body of research on highly effective communication for leaders. I now impart this knowledge to leaders who want to effect significant change.

What’s the meaning behind ‘Illumify’?

I named my company “Illumify” to represent the three essential elements of speaking effectively as a leader: To illuminate what matters, amplify it so it also matters to those who can help you realize it, and unify them in thought and action to achieve it.

The first step to strengthening your leadership impact is to reveal your weaknesses because they represent your greatest opportunities for growth. After spending years amassing an exceptional body of knowledge, I developed the Illumifier® Diagnostic, which reveals how effectively a leader is able to express what matters to them and invoke real action in response. It assesses 150 essentials of effective leadership to calculate what a leader excels at, where they need additional knowledge or skill, and what is impeding their ability to engage and mobilize others.

What’s the Illumify Method?

It’s a unique blend of diagnostic, focused learning, game-changing conversations, coaching, and strategic counsel. Learning and applying the Illumify Method will strengthen your leadership authority, earn you trust and recognition, and mobilize your stakeholders into action.

Illumify helps you develop skilled knowledge to optimize your leadership opportunities in real-time and ignite the change you want to see in the world. And we help you determine what that change is through our Game Changer: 57 uniquely revealing questions facilitated in game-changing conversations.
When you play The Game Changer, you reveal powerful insights about the transformation you want to drive through your leadership and identify the words and actions that ignite it. You can play the game live in masterfully facilitated, meaningful conversations and online at your own pace with feedback and coaching.

Who is Illumify for?

Illumify is for people who want to experience real transformation in their leadership capability. It’s for those who want to change their world, and the world at large, in meaningful ways.

The intensive training is available in three distinct packages: Illumify for Executives, Illumify for Leaders, and Illumify Select.

Illumify for Executives is tailored for those at the top of their field, who have little bandwidth for anything that doesn’t significantly impact their growth. I work with executives one-on-one to reveal transformative insights about their leadership communication capability and provide strategic counsel for applying these insights to their real-time leadership opportunities. This package features the diagnostic, customized learning, private facilitation of the game-changing questions, executive coaching, and strategic counsel for real-time leadership opportunities.

Illumify for Leaders is tailored for those on their way to achieving their leadership aspirations, and who value every opportunity to deepen their impact. It provides a blend of individual and peer-learning, making it ideal to expand the leadership capability of any mid-level leader or leadership team within an organization. This package features the diagnostic, online learning and facilitated cohorts, Game Changer conversations in cohorts and online, and expert coaching and counsel provided individually and in cohorts.

Illumify Select is tailored to any leader or emerging leader who wants to benefit from the unique Illumify experience and its transformational impact in self-paced progression. You can complete the sequence of steps as your schedule and professional development budget permit.

Is Illumify truly transformative?

The profound impact of Illumify is reflected in the success of our clients.

A case in point is a senior vice president of a global financial services company who was leading a major new client experience initiative. Her vision of the experience wasn’t as inspiring as it needed to be, and it was essential that people across the organization adopt this major change. Her initial assessment scored low in all three Illuminate, Amplify, and Unify categories. For example, there were no key messages narrative, and nothing that would unify the listeners in response.
To offer a solution to this challenge, Illumify began its work by addressing her broad vision for the client experience and how to express it clearly and convincingly. Through facilitated conversations with the client, Illumify helped her articulate a compelling vision and convey her leadership strategically and effectively, integrating the Illumify Method into each of her communications.

The result was a 64% increase in effectiveness over the course of the engagement, with the client now able to design each leadership opportunity to be successful. She gained great confidence in her leadership and her ability to express it, and immediately secured an even greater leadership opportunity.
What sets you apart from other leadership development?
My life’s work has led me to help leaders become more powerful, influential communicators and ignite meaningful change.

My extensive background in strategic and crisis communication enabled me to enter the leadership development space, and I’ve conducted years of in-depth research across various disciplines including communication, management science, neuroscience, and cognitive science. These studies contributed to the creation of a uniquely comprehensive, internationally recognized body of knowledge, from which arose Illumify, the most thorough communication training of its kind.

There are certain qualities to transformative leadership and I’ve discovered how to cultivate them like no one has before. My vision is to help other people realize theirs.