Building the Leadership Cultures That Make Organizations Perform
New Sincerity helps executive teams strengthen trust, communication, accountability, and cross-cultural effectiveness—particularly as organizations navigate AI adoption and change
Organizational culture. Leadership development. Human-centered transformation
The Foundation of Our Practice: The Earned Candor Framework
Developed by New Sincerity founder Michael Rolph, Earned Candor is a leadership approach focused on creating the conditions for people to speak openly, challenge assumptions, and contribute their expertise without unnecessary interpersonal or organizational risk.
Effective candor is not simply a matter of encouraging people to speak up. Leaders must earn it through consistent behavior, trust, clear expectations, and a willingness to engage constructively with disagreement.
This becomes especially important in multinational organizations, where cultural expectations of authority and direct communication differ, and in AI transformation, where leaders depend on people exercising judgment rather than simply accepting automated recommendations.
New Sincerity applies these principles through leadership development, team facilitation, and organizational advisory. Michael Rolph also integrates Earned Candor into his executive coaching and human-centered AI advisory practice.
About This Practice
Founded in 2016 by Michael Rolph, New Sincerity began as an editorial project celebrating overlooked stories of American creativity, identity, and achievement. It evolved into an organizational culture and leadership advisory consultancy focused on the conditions that enable people and teams to perform at their best. Today, the practice works at the intersection of organizational trust, cross-cultural leadership, executive communication, and human-centered transformation. Its Earned Candor approach helps leaders establish the conditions for constructive disagreement, accountability, and better collective judgment. Founder Michael Rolph brings 25 years of international experience across Silicon Valley, the U.S. Foreign Service, and organizational leadership. His complementary executive coaching and organizational AI advisory services are available through Michael Rolph Executive Coaching, including Organizational AI Coaching and Leadership Advisory.
EVOLUTION STORY
The organization we've become reflects what we learned along the way
New Sincerity was founded in 2016 with a specific ambition: to tell the stories of remarkable Americans whose contributions rarely made it into the mainstream. Scientists, artists, activists, and community builders from every background — documented with care and elevated as the model of ingenuity they were.
Those stories earned an audience and won accolades. More importantly, they taught us something about organizational life that shaped everything that came next. The cultures where people do their best work are not the ones with the best policies. They're the ones where people feel that who they are is an asset rather than a liability — and where leaders create that condition through how they operate, not what they mandate.
New Sincerity became a consulting and coaching practice because that's where the change actually happens. Not in the workshop. In the leadership behavior that either builds organizational candor, structural alignment, and deep psychological trust, or doesn't.
WHAT WE DO
Our work spans three interconnected areas: organizational culture consulting, inclusive leadership development, and executive coaching. We work with leadership teams, HR and people leaders, and individual executives navigating the challenge of building high-trust, high-performance organizations.
Our founder, Michael Rolph — AI executive coach, certified diversity trainer, and leadership advisor — brings 25 years across Silicon Valley, the U.S. Department of State, and organizational leadership to this work. His individual coaching practice, currently focused on AI transformation, scaling executive AI fluency, and senior leadership development, is available at the canonical hub: Michael Rolph AI Executive Coaching.
Start a Conversation →
Where the work began
In 2016, New Sincerity launched as a culture and identity magazine with a specific ambition: to document the stories of Americans whose contributions rarely made it into the mainstream. The people we featured — among them Hallease Narvaez, Rashad Nimr, and Khloe Thompson — embodied something our research in social science and organizational psychology kept confirming: belonging is not a feeling people manufacture on their own. It's a condition that gets created, or doesn't, by the environments they're in.
That insight shaped the consulting and coaching practice New Sincerity became. The archive below is where it started.
Our Stories
