State Before Strategy: training for people who lead and people who teach
I’m Maria Galli, PhD, a researcher and educator based in Barcelona. I work with universities, business schools and organisations to help people notice what is happening under pressure before they try to regulate it, fix it or push through it.
My work brings together more than twenty years of scientific research into what drives behaviour outside conscious awareness with years of professional training in presence, in stress responses and in what lies beneath the way we present ourselves.
Most recent programme: five sessions for the teaching staff of the Esade Language Center. Teaching was rated 4.6 out of 5, and 29 of 30 respondents found the training useful or very useful in their work.
There’s no pressure to work with me after the call. If I’m not the right fit, I’ll tell you.
Not ready to talk? You can see how I work first.
Why strategies come apart under pressure
A lecturer can know that what a struggling student needs most is to be heard, and still find it almost impossible not to step in and fix things for them.
A leader can know how they want to handle a difficult conversation and still become defensive when the pressure rises.
A team can have an effective process in place and still make poor decisions when the people using it are overloaded.
That is the territory I work in. State before strategy is the idea that a strategy is carried out by a person, and the state that person is in shapes what they notice, judge and do next.
What is attention before regulation?
Attention before regulation means noticing what is happening in yourself, in the other person and between you before deciding what to do. For a lecturer facing a distressed student, it is the difference between calming them down and understanding what is going on underneath. Calming someone is a useful skill. But if that is all that happens, the student leaves calmer and not understood, and whatever brought them to your office is still there the next month.
This is not about eliminating pressure or pretending it does not exist. It is about becoming better able to recognise what pressure changes.
Who I work with
Universities and business schools: faculty, professional services teams and programme leaders supporting students in difficulty, and institutions with duty-of-care obligations to meet in practice.
Executive education and alumni programmes: participants applying these ideas to leadership, judgement and decision-making, in sessions they can use on Monday.
Companies and leadership teams: people navigating high-stakes decisions, difficult conversations and sustained pressure.
Ways to work together
Talks and keynotes: 60 to 90 minutes on attention, stress and behaviour under pressure.
Faculty and staff training: multi-session training built around the situations faculty and staff face with students.
Student-facing courses: for-credit electives or standalone series on the gap between what students know and what they can do under pressure.
Executive and corporate programmes: tailored half-day sessions or short series built around your leadership team’s decisions.
Every engagement starts with a conversation, and I design and deliver all of it myself.
Something to share internally first: Programme Overview (PDF)
What this looks like in practice
In May 2026, I designed and delivered a five-session training in compassionate accompaniment and understanding stress responses for the teaching staff of the Esade Language Center, commissioned by its director. About 35 people took part.
“I’d been thinking for a long time about how to better support our students, and I wanted to start by preparing the ELC teaching team. María’s training has been a genuine gift: real depth and, at the same time, very warm. The team was fully engaged, session after session, and when we reached the last one, we were sorry to see it end! Something completely new at Esade, and a lovely start to a new path.”
— Conny Hübner, Director, Esade Language Center (ELC)
The aim is not to give people another set of instructions to remember. It is to help them notice more of what is happening while they are in the situation.
Looking for individual support?
AI for Conscious Creators is a small live course for using AI without handing over your thinking. AI for Leaders is an eight-week one-to-one programme for people who lead teams or companies.
About Maria Galli
I earned my PhD in Management at INSEAD and am an Academic Collaborator in the Marketing Department at Esade Business and Law School (Universitat Ramon Llull) in Barcelona, where I teach The Action Gap and Evidence-Based Decision Making. My research on conditioning and nonconscious associative learning appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Consumer Psychology, where my 2011 lead article received the C.W. Park Award for the best paper published in the journal that year.
My current research is on psychological safety in learning environments, with Raquel H. Ribeiro. Our paper, Feedback, engagement, and integrative learning: a trace-based case study in a synchronous course, is published in Research in Learning Technology. You can read my full publication record on ORCID.
Start with a conversation
If you’re considering a programme for your faculty, students, leadership team or organisation, we can start with a 20-minute conversation. Tell me what is happening, what you have already tried and what you are hoping to make possible. If I’m not the right fit, I’ll tell you.
If you would rather write first, email maria@statebeforestrategy.com.