About Lisa Paasche
Lisa Paasche is the founder and former CEO of award-winning SEO and Digital PR agency Verve Search, which she scaled and sold to Omnicom Media Group in 2017. After leading the agency through post-acquisition growth, she exited in 2021.
Today, Lisa runs EKTE Vision, a coaching and advisory consultancy working with agency founders, leaders, and CEOs to help them grow, scale – and, if they choose, prepare for exit.
Lisa is a Neuroscience-informed coach, and blends evidence-based neuroscience and psychology with real-world leadership experience. Her work focuses on how leaders think, decide, regulate emotion, and lead under pressure – especially during periods of growth, change, and uncertainty.
Known for her no-BS style, creative thinking, and depth of insight, Lisa helps leaders cut through noise, challenge unhelpful patterns, and lead in ways that are both human and commercially effective.
Talk details
HiveMCR Masterclass: Leading Better – The Human Skills Behind High-Performing Teams
Thursday 21st May: Manchester Metropolitan University
A practical, neuroscience-informed training day for modern leaders
At a certain point, growth stops responding to effort.
More hours. More tools. More process.
And yet… teams stall, tension goes unspoken, and leaders quietly become the bottleneck.
This highly interactive training session is designed for anyone leading people – agency founders, heads of departments, digital leads, and senior practitioners stepping into leadership.
Led by Lisa Paasche, former CEO of Verve Search and founder of EKTE Vision, this session blends neuroscience-backed insight with live group experiences that reveal how leadership actually shows up under pressure.
What Makes This Training Different
This isn’t a passive leadership talk.
Participants will take part in a live decision-making exercise that surfaces trust, assumptions, competition, and collaboration in real time – often revealing patterns that feel uncomfortably familiar to how teams behave at work.
You won’t be told what to think.
You’ll experience it, and then gain a very different perspective on leadership, conflict, and growth.
What You’ll Learn
Authenticity as a Leadership Advantage
Why masking, people-pleasing, and “professional polish” quietly erode trust – and what changes when leaders show up more honestly.
What Actually Drives High-Performing Teams
Why perks and pressure fail – and how clarity, psychological safety, and emotional regulation change team outcomes.
Why Progress Requires Disagreement
How avoiding conflict creates resentment and drift — and how to challenge without damaging relationships.
Leadership Under Pressure
How assumptions about intent, fear of being taken advantage of, and short-term thinking limit collective performance – even when everyone is trying to “do the right thing”.
From Doer to Developer
How to step out of being the smartest person in the room and become the leader who grows capability, confidence, and ownership in others.
Who This Is For
Agency founders and directors
Heads of department / Digital / Marketing
Senior practitioners moving into leadership
In-house leaders managing growing or stretched teams
