About Us

About

I study why work stops working — then I fix it

I'm Dr. Joey Collins. I'm a Psy.D. and founding faculty member of Seattle Pacific University's Industrial-Organizational Psychology program, and for more than 20 years I've coached leaders — from mission-critical teams at Blue Origin to global operations at General Motors and Ford — through the moment where working harder stops producing results.

Early in my career, I kept seeing the same thing: talented people working harder than ever, in organizations that kept telling them to be more resilient — while the actual conditions around them stayed broken. So I built a study to test it. 212 professionals, measured across job demands, organizational resources, leadership support, boundary protection, and burnout indicators. Four distinct profiles emerged directly from the data: Managing Well, At Risk, Burning Out, and Optimal.

The finding that changed how I coach: 73% of the professionals in the study were working in conditions long known to produce burnout, regardless of their effort or resilience. And the most acute burnout profile skewed toward the top of the org chart, not the bottom — the people with the most power to fix the problem were burning out fastest. That research is now a formal working paper and the foundation of my newest book, When Work Doesn't Work.

About

An academic home most consultants can't claim

I'm a founding faculty member of Seattle Pacific University's Industrial-Organizational Psychology program, where I also designed and direct the Leader as Coach Accelerator™, a professional certification program that's trained practitioner cohorts across healthcare, professional services, technology, and nonprofit sectors. It's not just a teaching role — it's a live testing ground that feeds directly back into my research and my books.

I'm also a member of:

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)
The Society of Consulting Psychology (SCP) — I’ve presented this research at both organizations’ annual conventions

Most consultants haven't designed the curriculum, let alone written the research behind it. I have.

About

Before the research, there was the discipline

Before I studied burnout, I raced through it. I qualified for Team USA in duathlon at Nationals in Bend, Oregon, and went on to compete at the World Championships in Penticton, Canada, finishing 33rd overall in my age group.

Duathlon — run, bike, run — is brutal in a specific way: you pace yourself through fatigue you can't hide from, then transition into a completely different kind of effort while your legs are still screaming from the last one, and do it again. You learn fast that raw effort isn't the same as smart effort. The athletes who win aren't the ones who go hardest early — they're the ones who can read their own state in real time and adjust before they blow up.

That's the same skill I coach leaders on now, just in a boardroom instead of on a course. In the WAVE model, it's the Velocity and Equilibrium pieces — sustainable performance isn't about sprinting non-stop, it's knowing when to push, when to settle back into rhythm, and how to recover fast enough to be ready for the next leg. Racing taught me that in my body before I ever had language for it professionally. It's still the question I watch for in every client: are they pacing themselves for the whole race, or just surviving the current mile?

About

Coaching, not therapy — and I'm explicit about the difference

I'm a psychologist, and that training shapes how I read people and organizations. But Collins Alliance is a coaching and consulting practice, not a clinical one — I keep a separate, minimal profile for clinical work that's unrelated to this practice and isn't linked from this site. What you get here is research-backed executive coaching: real assessment, real feedback, and real accountability for change, not a therapy relationship.

I'm also explicit with every client about which mode we're in at any given moment: coaching, where you generate the answer through the right questions, or consulting, where I bring the expert answer. Naming the switch keeps the relationship honest about what's actually happening in the room.

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