Present like a SuperStar: Engage your Audience and Inspire Action

What if you could present in a way that makes people lean in, stay engaged, and want to act?

You have great ideas. But your audience may get distracted, your slides may take over, or you may become so focused on getting the content right that the connection and momentum disappear.

In this interactive session, you’ll shift from delivering information to engaging and guiding your audience. You’ll learn a repeatable structure for making your ideas clear and persuasive, along with acting-inspired tools to ground your energy, use intention, and connect with greater confidence.

Whether you’re presenting in a meeting, to senior leaders, or onstage, you’ll practice ways to make your message land and move people to action.

Three learning outcomes

1. Engage your audience, not your slides.
Keep people involved and focused on your message.

2. Give your ideas a clear structure.
Organize your presentation so it is easy to follow, remember, and act on.

3. Present with intention.
Use your energy, presence, and confidence to make your message land.

Feedback that Motivates Action, Not Resistance

Feedback is meant to help people improve and move work forward. Yet even well-intended feedback can trigger defensiveness, debate, or silence when it lands as judgment or criticism.

The difference is not only what you say. It’s how you involve the other person, connect the feedback to what matters, and create a next step they can own.

In this highly interactive session, participants will use a practical feedback model to prepare for and deliver clear, honest conversations that preserve trust and lead to action. They’ll explore what creates resistance, how to keep the conversation focused on behaviour and impact, and how curiosity can create greater ownership.

Participants will practice how to:

Make feedback clear without making it personal and connect behaviour to its impact

Turn feedback into a conversation with a meaningful next step

Be prepared to practice using real feedback situations and leave with an approach you can use immediately

3 takeaways:
1. Make feedback easier to hear.
Focus on behaviour and impact without making it personal.

2. Create motivation, not resistance.
Connect the feedback to what matters and invite their perspective.

3. Turn feedback into action.
Agree on a clear next step the other person can own.

Change The Script: Get Better at Challenging Conversations.

Challenging conversations often start subtly—a missed cue, an assumption, a change in tone—and quickly become dramatic and stressful.

In this interactive session, you’ll explore practical ways to respond instead of react, understand what matters to the other person, and keep the conversation moving without avoiding the real issue.

You’ll practise how to begin with the right intention, bring greater courage and clarity, and stay soft on the person while remaining hard on the problem.

You can’t control the other person’s script. You can change yours.

Difficult conversations don’t get easier, but you can get better—one conversation at a time.

1. Respond, Don’t React.
Notice what you’re bringing into the conversation before it takes over.

2. Choose Your Intention.
Get clear on what you want the conversation to create.

3. Stay Soft on the Person, Hard on the Problem.
Balance respect and honesty while moving towards a next step.

Become a Super Communicator: Transform your Conversations.

Want to communicate with greater awareness, connect more genuinely, and influence others with respect?

It’s not a Jedi mind trick. These are skills you can practise and improve.

Inspired by Charles Duhigg’s book Supercommunicators and grounded in Joel’s 25 years of helping leaders and teams communicate more effectively, this session explores what makes conversations work—and why some miss the mark.

Sometimes we’re trying to solve a problem while the other person wants their feelings acknowledged. Or we focus on facts without recognizing that identity, values, or relationships are also part of the conversation.

Through interactive scenarios, you’ll practise how to recognize the type of conversation you’re having, listen for what matters, and adapt your approach to build connection, trust, and influence.

Three key takeaways

1. Recognize the conversation.
Identify whether it is practical, emotional, or social—and respond accordingly.

2. Listen for what matters.
Notice the clues, cues, and communication patterns that reveal what the other person needs.

3. Adapt to connect.
Choose an approach that strengthens trust, collaboration, and influence.

Participants will receive and practice effective communication skills techniques backed by science.

Why Won't They *%! Change? Understand What MOVES Them First.

Why don’t they change or take your advice? It’s frustrating, especially when the answer seems so obvious to you.

But you’re not here to change people.
You’re here to move them.

Influence starts with understanding what matters to the other person.
What do they value?
What status are they protecting?
What beliefs have shaped them?

Drawing from the acting world, where moving others begins with intention, connection, and presence, the M.O.V.E. model gives leaders a practical way to uncover motivation and adapt their approach:

Mindset. Observe. Validate. Exchange.

In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to recognize what drives people, respond to the clues and cues they give you, and create influence without manipulation or pushing harder.

Three key takeaways

1. Use the M.O.V.E. framework.
Apply four practical steps to create connection and influence.

2. Find what moves them.
Listen for the values, concerns, beliefs, and motivators beneath their response.

3. Lead with intention.
Shift from pushing your answer to creating ownership and action.

Wanna Get Buy-In? Stop Writing the Script

You want buy-in, so you prepare. That’s fair.

Then you start overthinking it. You write the script in your head. Maybe you even ask AI to help you write it.

Suddenly, preparation turns into a full production:

“I’ll say this.
They’ll push back.
I’ll come back with this.
They’ll probably say that.
Then I’ll really make my point.”

Hello, 3 a.m. dress rehearsal!

Congratulations, you’re now the writer, director, producer, and lead actor in a conversation that hasn’t happened yet.

The problem? The other person never got the script.

While we think we’re preparing, we may actually be getting less present. And there goes buy-in.

In this session, we’ll explore how the scripts we write in our heads get in the way of conversations that require buy-in: feedback, collaboration, and change.

You’ll learn how to prepare without pre-deciding, catch the assumptions you bring into the room, and create the shared ownership real buy-in requires.

Three takeaways

1. Catch the script.
Notice your assumptions before they take over the conversation.

2. Prepare without pre-deciding.
Bring clarity without locking yourself into a monologue.

3. Move from convincing to creating buy-in.
Include others in shaping the next step.