Choose a Format

Keynote

High-energy. Practical. Memorable.

Your audience will experience a dynamic keynote that blends real-world stories, humor, and research-backed frameworks. Designed for conferences, annual meetings, leadership summits, and industry associations. Your audience will leave inspired and with takeaways they can put to work immediately.

Workshop

Interactive sessions that build real skills.

Workshops go deeper than a keynote, using small-group exercises, structured conversations, and hands-on application. Built for teams that want to develop a specific skill together, with customized materials and tools they’ll keep using long after the session ends.

Keynote + Workshop Combination

For event planners that want lasting change, Shannon combines an opening keynote with workshop tracks for maximum impact. Best for annual meetings, conferences, and corporate summits that want a cohesive content thread across the full event.

Looking for something deeper?

Programs can be expanded into a multi-part series or cohort experience, making them ideal for ongoing leadership development. Book a discovery call to design what fits your team.

Choose a Topic

Each topic below can be delivered as a keynote or a workshop—or expanded into a multi-session series. Every session is customized to your audience, your theme, and the outcomes you care about.

The Guiding Leader

Today’s workplace is more complex, fast-moving, and people-driven than ever. Getting results takes more than authority or technical expertise. It takes the ability to guide people effectively.

Too often, leaders fall into the trap of playing the hero: stepping in with the answers, solving problems for their teams, and wondering why nothing moves without them. The result? Disengagement, dependence, and missed opportunities.

In this engaging and energizing program, I share a powerful shift in how we think about leadership: from being the hero of the story to becoming the guide. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience, research, personal stories, and real-world examples, I show how leaders create better results when they ask instead of answer, set high expectations, and give their teams a clear destination rather than step-by-step directions.

Guiding leaders don’t have all the answers. They create the space where answers emerge. When people feel guided, they step forward with confidence and begin to lead themselves.

Learning Objectives

• See Leadership Through a New Lens: Understand the mindset shift from being the hero—the expert with all the answers—to becoming the guide, and how this approach drives stronger engagement and results.

• Learn the Three Tools of a Guiding Leader: Lead by asking questions, setting high expectations, and delegating with a clear destination and genuine trust.

• Build a Culture of Ownership and Trust: Discover how guiding others—rather than directing every step—builds confidence, encourages initiative, and helps individuals grow into stronger contributors and leaders.

ACE Your Communication and Transform Your Leadership

In today’s fast-paced workplace, effective leadership hinges on effective communication. The goal is clear: build trust, drive results, and inspire action.

Most leaders rely on instinct and experience—choosing their words carefully, giving more direction, and pushing through tough moments with confidence. But even with their best efforts, high-stakes conversations still go sideways. Great leaders don’t communicate more—they communicate differently.

In this insightful and actionable program, I draw on 30+ years as a communication professional and best-practices research to teach your audience three powerful strategies—Alignment, Curiosity, and Empathy—and a simple framework to navigate high-stakes conversations: Anchor, Collaborate, Execute.

They’ll leave with tools they can use immediately to communicate with clarity and lead with confidence.

Learning Objectives

• Master three key strategies of effective communication:

  • Alignment: Discover how alignment provides connection and mutual understanding.

  • Curiosity: Explore the role of curiosity in communication to foster a culture of open dialogue and innovative thinking.

  • Empathy: Understand how empathy can improve your ability to connect with others, manage conflicts, and build stronger relationships.

• Learn how to ACE your conversations. Instead of avoiding the discussion—or reacting emotionally—learn to:

  • Anchor conversations in neutral facts.

  • Collaborate on solutions through shared understanding.

  • Execute with clear commitments and next steps.

• Obtain practical tips and techniques that can be immediately implemented to improve your communication and leadership effectiveness.

Five-Step Framework to Persuade People to Action

Leaders need to move people to action up, down, and across their organizations. Most people approach this by sharing more information, using the authority of their position to get buy-in, and relying on logic to convince others. But information alone doesn’t persuade. Without connection and clarity, people don’t act.

Effective persuasion isn’t about pushing harder—it’s about guiding others to see the path forward. When leaders align their message with how people think, feel, and decide, they create momentum instead of resistance.

In this results-focused program, I share a five-step framework grounded in research and 30+ years of leadership communication experience. Participants will learn how to capture attention, balance logic with emotion, and navigate differences in how people make decisions.

They’ll leave with practical tools to craft messages that resonate and drive results.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the Science of Persuasion: Discover how emotional and logical appeals work together to influence behavior.

• Master the Five Steps of Persuasion: attention, problem, solution, visualization, and action.

• Apply the Framework Across Contexts: Gain insights on using this approach in professional, personal, and leadership scenarios.

Building High-Performing Teams for Lasting Success

High-performing teams are essential to organizational success, but strong teamwork does not happen simply because talented people are placed in the same room.

Even well-designed teams can struggle when people lose sight of the larger purpose, generational differences create friction, or conflict goes unresolved.

In this dynamic and informative program, I help leaders rethink what it takes to build teams that perform well together. Participants will explore the difference between “hero leadership” and “guiding leadership” and learn why the strongest leaders do not try to have all the answers. Instead, they create the conditions for team members to think, contribute, grow, and take ownership.

Participants will leave with clear, actionable strategies they can use immediately to help their teams communicate more effectively, disagree productively, and produce lasting results. Whether you're building a new team or optimizing an existing one, you'll leave with tools to transform how team members work together.

Learning Objectives

• Establish a shared sense of meaning: Connect daily tasks to a larger purpose so team members understand why their work matters and how it contributes to organizational success.

• Enhance Collaboration and Communication Across Generations: Implement proven strategies to strengthen communication and collaboration across multi-generational teams, leveraging the unique strengths each generation brings to build an effective team.

• Handle conflict through learning conversations: Use a simple blueprint to anchor conversations in neutral facts, collaborate on solutions, and execute with clear next steps.

Navigating the Transition to Leadership

Stepping into a leadership role is both exciting and demanding. Most new leaders rely on what made them successful before: working hard, solving problems quickly, and having all the answers.

But leadership requires a different approach. When leaders stay in “hero” mode, they find themselves doing the work instead of leading it, the best people leave, and the remaining people never grow into leaders. Leadership is a different job, one that demands new skills, a new mindset, and a new definition of success.

In this thought-provoking and actionable program, I introduce participants to the principles of The Guiding Leader—a leadership approach that shifts the focus from having all the answers to helping others discover them.

Participants will learn how to move from directing to guiding, build ownership instead of dependence, and create an environment where people can grow and perform at their best. They will also discover practical strategies for communicating effectively and leading with confidence so they can be the leader their team needs.

Learning Objectives

• Develop a Leadership Mindset: Understand the mindset shift required when transitioning from a team member to a leader, including the importance of adopting a strategic and big-picture perspective.

• Build Key Leadership Skills: Identify and cultivate essential leadership skills, such as effective communication, decision-making, and team motivation to lead with confidence and clarity.

• Learn to Manage Challenges in Leadership: Recognize and navigate common challenges new leaders face, including managing former peers, setting clear expectations, and balancing accountability with empathy.

Ready to transform your event or your team?

A great program does more than inform—it inspires action and creates lasting change. Let’s talk about what your audience needs and design a program that delivers it.