Speaker Themes
These are broad areas of speaking rather than fixed packages. Each theme can be tailored to the audience, setting, and question being addressed.
01
Teams, Teaming, and Speaking Up
Teams do not become effective simply because people have been placed together or encouraged to speak up. This theme examines how people coordinate, use one another's expertise, and recognize where their work depends on someone else. It also looks at the conditions that make it easier or harder for people to raise concerns, ask questions, and contribute what they know.
Ideal audience
Healthcare teams, leaders, professional associations, academic programs, and organizations working on communication, coordination, teaming, or speaking up.
Example titles
- When Silence Isn't Golden: Psychological Safety in Health Professions
- Psychological Safety in Healthcare: The Role of the New Clinical Manager
- Psychological Safety and Effective Teams: Building Better Teams Inside and Outside the Clinical Laboratory
- Teaching Students How to Team: Perspectives from Team Science
- A Team of Leaders: Navigating the Dynamics of Executive Peer Teaming
02
Power and Influence
Organizations often give people responsibility before they give them much authority. This theme examines how leaders gain influence when the title alone is not enough. It looks at political skill, relationships, and the difference between being promoted into a role and already having the influence to move decisions.
Ideal audience
Emerging leaders, newly promoted managers, technically strong professionals moving into leadership, executive-development programs, and leaders working across organizational boundaries.
Example titles
- Promoted Without Power
- The Invisible Work That Gets You Promoted With Power
03
Leadership Requirements
Leadership requires more than technical expertise, experience, or confidence. This theme focuses on the cognitive work of leadership: recognizing what deserves attention, making sense of incomplete information, understanding consequences, following what happens after a decision is made, and learning from organizational results. It can also focus on the problems leaders fail to see when formal reporting does not reflect how work is actually being carried out.
Ideal audience
Managers, executive leaders, leadership-development programs, professional associations, and organizations examining how leaders make decisions and oversee complex work.
Example titles
- The Five Cognitive Functions of Leadership
04
Beyond Technical Excellence
Many health professions invest heavily in technical expertise while giving far less attention to the capabilities needed to lead, use evidence, think strategically, and influence organizations. This theme examines why technical excellence alone is no longer enough to meet the demands of today's healthcare environment, rapid technological change, and persistent workforce and organizational challenges.
Ideal audience
Professional associations, health-professions conferences, academic programs, department leaders, and professions responding to AI, workforce change, technology, and changing models of care.
Example titles
- Reengineering Organizational Capacity in the Health Professions: Building Beyond Technical Excellence for a Changing Healthcare Environment
- Beyond Technical Excellence: Building the Capabilities Healthcare Now Requires
