Speaking Topics

Below are sample topics; please feel free to contact us if you’d like to schedule a talk or discuss customized presentation.

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When Bold Leaders Go Quiet: When Courage Is Expected But Conformity Is Rewarded

Leaders often say they want bold thinking. They want people who challenge legacy assumptions, surface risks early, make smart tradeoffs, and help the work evolve.

But over time, even highly capable leaders and teams can start to go quiet. They soften their recommendations. They avoid naming the harder truth. They defer to legacy voices. And the courage they were asked to bring becomes the caution they learn to practice.

In this experiential session, executive coach and NYU adjunct professor Kathryn Landis will help senior leaders examine how bold thinking gets muted over time, both in themselves and across their teams. Drawing on her Harvard Business Review article on the same pattern, Kathryn will explore why people often pull back not because they lack confidence or capability, but because the environment teaches them that caution is safer than candor.

Participants will learn how to:

  • Recognize when they, their teams, or other leaders are softening, deferring, or holding back
  • Locate where the pressure to conform is showing up, especially in high-stakes relationships and pivotal conversations
  • Take one practical step to restore candor and courage in the next seven days.

Human-Centered AI: What High-Performing Teams Do Differently

AI is already in core workflows. The question isn't whether to adopt— it's whether your leadership practices are evolving fast enough to match. Without clear ownership, sharper judgment, and governance that lives in the work, AI amplifies confusion instead of improving performance.

In this session, Kathryn Landis walks through four practices that distinguish teams who scale AI well from teams who stall: creating decision clarity, shifting humans to higher-value work, building performance resilience, and establishing guardrails for scale. Drawing on her advisory practice and published work in Fast Company, she equips leaders with a practical filter for what to automate, a shared language for recalibration, and a set of questions that sharpen how they lead through this transition.

Participants will learn how to:

  • Clarify decision ownership when AI is in the workflow
  • Apply a practical filter for what to automate versus what to keep human
  • Make governance a team habit, not a compliance document.
  • Recognize the common pitfalls — over-reliance, unclear authority, speed without guardrails — and correct for them

How High-Performing Teams Master Change, Pressure, and Dysfunction

Constant change, expanding responsibilities, and competing priorities place enormous pressure on leadership teams. Even capable teams fall into patterns that stall progress — unclear purpose, shallow structure, missing context, and coaching that never happens. The result is effort without traction.

Drawing on her work advising senior leadership teams, executive coach Kathryn Landis walks through the six conditions that determine whether a team succeeds or stalls — three must-haves (compelling purpose, right people, and a real team — not just a group of individuals reporting to the same leader) and three enablers (sound structure, supportive context, team coaching). Using a live diagnostic scorecard, leaders can determine their team's single point of leverage — the one condition where a small, intentional move will have the greatest impact.

Participants will learn how to:

  • Diagnose the six conditions that drive team effectiveness and pinpoint where their team is breaking down
  • Align a team on a new initiative by surfacing what success looks like, where it could break down, and what each person will own
  • Identify their team's single point of leverage and leave with a specific, prioritized move to make next
  • Build the context needed to execute: the information, resources, recognition, and access to expertise

Maximize Your Career Productivity: Focus on the Work That Gets You Recognized

The definition of high-performing work is changing fast in the age of AI. Drafting quickly, summarizing meetings, turning around first-pass analysis — the very tasks that used to signal a rising star are becoming the floor, not the edge. AI can make any professional more efficient, but efficiency alone is no longer a differentiator, and the professionals who stop there risk being replaced by the very tools meant to help them. The ones who advance from here won't be the ones doing what's currently recognized. They'll be the ones positioning for what will be recognized next.

Executive coach and NYU adjunct professor Kathryn Landis reveals what separates professionals who consistently advance from those who quietly plateau. Drawing on her work advising leaders across industries, she shares a practical framework for using AI to clear the way for higher-value work — the thinking, judgment, interpretation, and relationship-building that can't be commoditized — and shifting time and energy toward the contributions that drive visibility, impact, and long-term career growth.

Participants will learn how to:

  • Spot the productivity traps that keep high performers busy but stuck
  • Identify which parts of their work are becoming easier to automate or commoditize
  • Shift time and energy toward work that requires context, judgement, and relationships
  • Build the relationships that accelerate visibility, opportunity, and career momentum over time

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What Clients Are Saying

Christy Tostevin, Senior Vice President Communications and Community Relations, Victoria’s Secret

“Kathryn your facilitation was masterful! So engaging and thoughtful with excellent callback to presentations from earlier in the day and insightful input throughout.”

Tatiana Fittipaldi, Director, Programs, Global Events and Institute of International Finance

“I had the pleasure of hearing Kathryn Landis speak at PCMA’s Convening Leaders this year, and she blew me away. She brought incredible energy, real leadership insight, and strategies the audience can actually use.”