Meet Julia Milner, the Leadership Professor who practices what she teaches

“I don’t do dates”, she says, laughing, almost right away. What she means is that her story isn’t a straight line so much as a rosette pattern: different arcs, different loops, converging on a central point, the person she has become. Each path looks distinct on the surface, yet each keeps returning to the same center: empowerment through practice.

There are lots of expected things Julia doesn’t do: blanket advice, New Year resolutions, five-year plans, restrictive labels. In a world obsessed with defining, she embraces change, constant change, while holding fast to an underlying principle that keeps her grounded: consistency over perfectionism.

A few times a year, when she notices the season outside shifting, she does something simple. She sits down and writes three mottos for the months ahead, short mantras aligned with her values. Later, when decisions pile up, she returns to those lines and asks herself one practical question: “Is this aligned with my seasonal mottos?” It’s a small ritual, but it reveals her method. Focus less on outcomes you can’t fully control, and more on the process you can.

That same method shapes her teaching. Milner doesn’t see herself as the expert dispensing wisdom from a stage. “I learn in every class. It's exciting!” she says. Listening to her, it is clearly not a form of false modesty; it’s a larger stance on how she approaches her role as an educator and leadership coach. “I'm not here to tell them what to do. I'm here to empower them to figure out what's best for them.” The best learning, she believes, is the kind that leaves you with agency: techniques and tools you can choose from, adapt, and carry forward into a life that won’t behave like a case study.

She has a word for the role she tries to play. “In German we say Wegbegleiter,” she explains, a sort of accompanying presence, walking alongside someone rather than dragging them toward an answer. In her view, advice is often a shortcut masquerading as help (1). It can feel efficient, but it keeps people dependent. As she puts it, “even the best-intentioned ‘you should…’ quickly becomes micromanagement 101, the biggest red flag. (2)” What she wants instead is that people try, test, learn, and let go of the fear of quitting (3).

If her story is rosette-shaped rather than linear, it’s also crowded with proof. There are lots of things Julia could have been: a German soap opera screenwriter (she has), a TV presenter (she also has), a lifeguard (she technically is), a fitness trainer (she is too), a fashion designer (she is, though she won’t call herself that), a published writer (she is about to publish her 6th book (4)). 

These aren’t quirky footnotes; they’re different arenas where she trained the same muscle. Screenwriting sharpened her sense of narrative, how identity forms, how people justify their choices, how small turning points matter. Sports licenses and training anchored her in repetition and responsibility: you don’t argue your way into competence; you practice. Designing and writing made her practical philosophy tangible and exposed her to the realities of entrepreneurship.

Her academic path carries the same thread. She has accumulated degrees and training but talks about learning as a habit, and she doesn’t hide that she still sees herself as unfinished. “I’m a lifelong learner,” she says, as she looks forward to finishing her fourth master’s degree. Having worked or studied at more than 25 institutions, Milner is not one for the status quo: she is constantly questioning what she knows and her ability to translate it into tangible impact.
 

It’s also the question at the heart of her research. Milner’s interests span leadership, coaching and positive psychology, organizational cultures, empathy and neuroscience, and digital leadership. Together, they explore an everyday problem she keeps returning to: how do leaders learn and help others grow?

For the past several years, she has focused particularly on coaching as a core leadership skill that many managers are asked to demonstrate long before they’ve learned it (5). Her work doesn’t romanticize leaders as born coaches; it treats coaching as something that can be developed through practice, feedback (6), and the humility to realize that “helping” isn’t the same as solving. Her recent publications include looking at the role of empathy in leadership ethics (7), or the subgenres of micromanagement (8).

Anchored in everyday pragmatism, she is drawn to formats that force clarity. She treats research not as a sacred shrine but as raw material that needs translation. This is where her more public experiments fit, not as a personal brand but as extensions of the same urge to make change a framework. For a long time, putting herself out there wasn’t easy. She describes delaying her YouTube channel for years, worried about being judged. An internal tug-of-war between the inner perfectionist and the passionate entrepreneur. “In my mind, I had to be perfect before starting”, she recalls. A role model pushed her to flip the question: what happens if she doesn’t share her ideas at all? The point, she realized, is that waiting for perfect conditions isn’t caution. It’s a form of hiding.

So, she built ways to practice visibility the same way she practices everything else: without thinking twice about quitting what doesn’t work to make room for more promising experiments. A way to constantly dare herself, while cultivating gratitude and positivity. The formats vary, but the logic stays the same. Two successful TEDx Talks (9) and a first YouTube channel, where she disseminates her research as ideas on positive leadership, sit alongside a second channel with workout sessions, and a clothing line Theia Moon born out of a need for practicality and positivity. 

Even her forthcoming book, Habit Maker and its accompanying app are a practical guide readers can use for their own habit making journey. “It’s about prototyping different versions of yourself”, she says, “an encouragement to test habits until you find the ones that work for you, and to learn to let the others go. Consistency as a process, over perfectionism as an objective.”

In the end, Milner always returns to the same center point: empowerment. She is an educator in the purest sense: not here to proclaim answers and distribute virtues, but to shape minds and walk alongside people as they build their own. She is, in more ways than one, the kind of leader she encourages others to be: value-driven, unafraid to restart, and committed to becoming.

Key dates

Since 2016: Full Professor of Leadership, EDHEC Business School (France)

2017–2020: Academic Director, Global MBA, EDHEC Business School (France)

2015–2016: Associate Professor (Organisational Psychology & Leadership), Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China); MBA Director & lead academic for Executive Education programs

Since 2015: Honorary Professorial Fellow, Sydney Business School (Australia)

Since 2004: Keynote speaker, management consultant & business coach (worldwide)

Selection of recent publications

Milner, Julia (2026), Valentine’s Day: What’s love got to do with habit-building? - https://theconversation.com/valentines-day-whats-love-got-to-do-with-habit-building-275593

Nakamura, Yoshie Tomozumi, Milner, Julia, Yu, Deyang & Hinshaw, Jessica (2025): The Role of Empathy in Leadership Ethics: Examining Empathic Relational Leadership Practice through Video-Based Methods. Business Ethics Quarterly:1-38. doi:10.1017/beq.2024.27 - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-ethics-quarterly/article/abs/role-of-empathy-in-leadership-ethics-examining-empathic-relational-leadership-practice-through-videobased-methods/306215B36DE1325557D459BE781001C9

Milner, Julia (2024) Harvard Business Review: Is Your Career Heading In The Right Direction? - https://hbr.org/2024/10/is-your-career-heading-in-the-right-direction

Milner, Julia (2024) The Training Journal: From cringe to constructive: A guide to giving feedback that sticks - https://www.trainingjournal.com/2024/content-type/features/from-cringe-to-constructive-a-guide-to-giving-feedback-that-sticks/

Milner, Julia (2024). The motivational micromanager. Organizational Dynamics, 53(3), 101054 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2024.101054

Milner, J., & O’Reilly, S. L. (2024). Beyond distraction: A cross-cultural look at instructors’ perspectives on smartphone use in university classrooms. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 62(3), 767–780 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2024.2382416

Milner, Julia (2024) Harvard Business Review: Are you a Micromanager? April - https://hbr.org/2024/04/are-you-a-micromanager

Milner, Julia, (2023) Why empathy constitutes the ultimate leadership skill, The Conversation France, December - https://theconversation.com/why-empathy-constitutes-the-ultimate-leadership-skill-218647

Nakamura, Yoshie Tomozumi, Milner, Julia, (2023): Inclusive Leadership via Empathic Communication. Organizational Dynamics, vol.52, no.1, pp 1-7 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2023.100957

To know more about Julia Milner

• LinkedIn, where she regularly posts on leadership and habits
• EDHEC Vox: “4 questions to Julia Milner around the power of habits” (interview)
• Poets&Quants: “2018 Best 40 Under 40 Professors: Julia Milner” (profile)
• YouTube channel
• TEDx talks 
  o    How to turn regrets into change
  o    The surprising truth in how to be a great leader
• Julia’s Google Scholar profile
• Julia’s articles for The Conversation

References

(1) https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/julia-milner-empowering-others-listening-asking-questions-always-good-not-bring-ready-to-use-answers

(2) https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/are-you-micromanager

(3) https://theconversation.com/managers-abandonner-nest-pas-une-preuve-dechec-cest-une-competence-274078

(4) 

2009 - Ahrens, Julia. Going Online, Doing Gender. Alltagspraktiken rund um das Internet in Deutschland und Australien, Transkript - Critical media studies

2010 - Ahrens, Julia. Health Coaching, Coaching International

2012 - Ahrens, Julia. Health Coaching, Random House

2013 - Milner, Julia & Franke, Ronald. Interkulturelles Coaching - Coaching-Tools für 17 Kulturkreise, managerseminare.de

2014 - Milner, Julia & Couley, Alex. Coaching: How to lead, Inspiring Publishers

2026 - Milner, Julia. Habit Maker: Build Good Ones, Quit Bad Ones, and Thrive in Between, Greeleaf Book group press.

(5) https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/empowering-encouraging-how-coach-approach-can-counter-micro-management

(6) https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/from-cringe-to-constructive-a-guide-to-giving-feedback-that-sticks

(7) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-ethics-quarterly/article/abs/role-of-empathy-in-leadership-ethics-examining-empathic-relational-leadership-practice-through-videobased-methods/306215B36DE1325557D459BE781001C9

(8) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0090261624000275

(9) The surprising truth in how to be a great leader (2019) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_PN3BDa0A

How to turn Regrets into Change (2022) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vi4W8VDag