Speaking
Leadership speaking and workshops on change and communication.
Michele Smith is a leadership speaker for executives and leadership teams the way she works with them: understand the audience first, then say something useful. Every talk and workshop is built around what your people need to practice, not a canned deck.
Speaking day rate: $5,000.
We'll confirm the format, preparation, travel, and event requirements before booking.
A submitted inquiry is not a confirmed booking or a payment.
Proposed topics
Speaking topics
These are proposed topics, offered as starting points. Michele tailors every talk to the event, and each one works as a keynote, a workshop, or something in between.
Difficult conversations that become useful conversations
Who it is for: Leaders at any level who avoid, dread, or over-prepare for the conversations that matter.
What people leave with: A way to prepare that lowers the stakes, language to open the conversation honestly, and a realistic expectation of what one conversation can and cannot fix.
Leading through change with the people doing the changing
Who it is for: Managers, sponsors, and teams living through a change they did not write.
What people leave with: Why change efforts stall, how to involve the people affected early, and what to do differently in the first week back at work.
What else could be true? Curiosity and leadership assumptions
Who it is for: Executives and senior teams whose confidence has started to narrow their options.
What people leave with: How untested assumptions shape decisions, questions that surface them, and a habit of checking the story before acting on it.
When departments stop working as separate teams
Who it is for: Cross-functional leadership groups that keep optimizing their own area at everyone else’s expense.
What people leave with: What a handoff looks like from the other side, where local wins collide, and practical agreements that make collaboration stick.
Hear how Michele comes across
The clip below rotates through the most popular episodes of the Leadership Sound Bites podcast, and it keeps its podcast label on purpose. It is the most honest preview of what your audience would experience in the room.
Top clip: Leadership Sound Bites
“Michele was an amazing volunteer coach at the UC Berkeley-hosted NOW Conference, the largest career and professional development conference for University of California staff. We could not offer over 30 group and over 800 one-to-one coaching sessions without volunteers like her.”
Speaking inquiry
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What clients say
Clients put it better than we could
Google reviewsIn Michele's clients' own words, verbatim from their reviews.
It has been a pleasure working with Michele over the past year. She has played a key role in helping me grow as a leader in my role and as a professional overall! I like her approach and strategies(she consistently challenges my thinking and guides me to define clear, actionable next steps rather than simply telling me what to do). After every call, I leave with concrete action items that make me feel accomplished, motivated, and confident moving forward. Regardless of industry, her expertise and experience are highly transferable and impactful. Each meeting is positive, productive, and energizing.. I look forward to continuing my development with Michele and building on this progress!
I was fortunate to connect with Michele through the CoachHub platform back in February. We had ~8 months of coaching and I left every session energized and excited to apply new ideas in my work and in my team. Michele expertly lead our …
Have you ever met a person who just always knows the right thing to say, or always has a tool or story to help you? That's Michele. Michele is a fantastic coach. She provided for me in my first experience with career coaching and really helped me a lot. Cannot recommend highly enough!