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Managing Difficult Conversations Effectively
Many leaders in schools encounter challenging situations every day.
Managing Difficult Conversations Effectively
Many leaders in schools encounter challenging situations every day. Such encounters can escalate resulting in the avoidance of difficult conversations and a complete breakdown in communication
Key sections of the workshop:
1/Understand how Emotional Intelligence enables us to manage conflict
2/Turning Difficult Conversations into ‘Open to Learning Conversations’ (OLC’s)
3/Listening and communicating non-judgementally
4/Practice, practice, practice!
Takeaways:
• Take responsibility and respect the ‘person and the problem’
• Tools and templates to manage difficult conversations effectively
• Provide feedback with real impact
Matt Messias
Founder Impact Leadership Ltd & Former Headteacher/Professional Premier League & FIFA Referee
Matt is a dynamic leadership coach who empowers leaders in both the private and public sectors. With a background in professional sports and international educational leadership, he combines his unique skill set with a focus on resilience and transformational change.
Matt first experienced the power of professional coaching as a Premier League and International Referee. The experience convinced him that coaching is essential for any leader who wants to achieve extraordinary results.
During his leadership journey, Matt qualified as a leadership and resilience coach and a Mental Health Instructor and now uses these experiences to empower business leaders and senior leaders in education, business, and sport to ensure their actions reflect their values.
“Power & Presence”
Leaders must enhance their influence with teams while maintaining their energy and wellbeing.
“Power & Presence”
Leaders must enhance their influence with teams while maintaining their energy and wellbeing. This workshop provides insights into understanding yourself as a leader and offers practical tools to lead with clarity, connect authentically, and sustain leadership momentum without burnout.
Key sections of the workshop:
1-Influence with Integrity: lead with presence, build trust, and inspire action
2-Energy Management for Leaders: protect your internal leadership battery and stay energized, focused, and resilient.
3-Team Dynamics Mastery: Understand motivations and how to adapt leadership style
Takeaways:
•Self-awareness of your leadership traits
•An introduction to understanding walls of preservation and what you need to know and do to build trust, gain influence.
•Tools to improve trust and communication in diverse teams and understand situational leadership.
Carla Whelan
CEO Empower Multi Academy Trust
With three decades of taming school budgets and navigating the wild terrain of educational leadership, Carla has just about seen it all! From headteacher to senior trust lead, she’s been steering the ship through calm seas and educational storms with flair.
Carla’s superpower is thriving under pressure—whether it’s Ofsted inspections or staff meetings that could double as endurance events. With over 20 inspections under her belt, she is someone who’s truly mastered the art of spotting what makes schools tick.
Not content with just fixing systems, Carla has partnered with many agencies to support growing leaders and is actively involved in ITT training to develop the next generation of educators – a big advocate for helping schools build leadership cultures that are strategic, authentic, and courageous.
Carla has an insightful blog that talks all things education #LEARNFAILGROW – BLOGPOWER – Carla Whelan
The Sales Secret Every Leader Needs: How to Make Any Strategy Irresistible to Any Audience
Tired of presenting brilliant strategies to rooms full of blank stares and silent resistance?
The Sales Secret Every Leader Needs: How to Make Any Strategy Irresistible to Any Audience
Tired of presenting brilliant strategies to rooms full of blank stares and silent resistance? Using the Four Suit Method, you will learn to identify four distinct personality types within your organisation without lengthy assessments or name badges. You will discover how to present your strategy and ideas so that they resonate with the excited innovators, supportive collaborators, results-driven leaders and detail focused analysts all at once!
A good strategy communicated poorly will perform poorly and not yield the desired results so lets ensure our strategies are written in a way that speaks to all not some of our workforce.
Key sections of the workshop:
1. Simple identification of the four personality types
2. Quick mapping to your current SLT
3. Clarity on what each personality type must see in your strategy
4. Template structure for your ♦ Diamonds, ♥ Hearts, ♠ Spades and ♣ Clubs
Takeaways:
• Master the Speed + Temperature Formula – Instantly identify personality types by observing if someone is warm/cold and fast/slow moving
• The Four-Suit Strategy Structure – Present using Opening (♦) → Context (♣) → Implementation (♠) → Support (♥) to connect with every personality type
• Handle Resistance Before It Starts – Spot early warning signs from each personality type and adjust your approach immediately
• Implement the 30-Day Challenge – Leave with a practical action plan to practice and master these skills in your daily leadership interactions
Obi Okwuadigbo
Founder Leadership Hacks Leadership Coach and Mentor – Podcaster
Obi is the founder of Leadership Hacks and a seasoned entrepreneur with over 17 years of experience in Higher Education and 15 years as a managing director. Having navigated the complexities of leading diverse teams across educational institutions and multiple business ventures, Obi discovered that the biggest challenge wasn’t crafting brilliant strategies—it was communicating them effectively to different personality types.
Through Leadership Hacks, Obi specialises in developing future leaders, particularly focusing on authentic communication and inclusive leadership strategies.
His workshops have helped leaders across the UK transform their approach to strategy communication, turning rooms full of blank stares into engaged, motivated teams ready for action.
Obi believes great leaders don’t just have great strategies—they know how to make them stick.
AI – Friend or Foe, you choose your approach
AI is no longer a future concept, it’s a present leadership imperative.
AI – Friend or Foe, you choose your approach
AI is no longer a future concept, it’s a present leadership imperative.
To lead effectively in this evolving landscape, leaders must move beyond curiosity and take purposeful, strategic steps to embed AI in ways that enhance teaching, reduce workload, uphold ethical values, and improve outcomes. Leadership, not technology, is the critical success factor. Don’t be afraid, charge forward!
Key Sections of the Workshop:
1. Understanding the AI Opportunity
2. AI in Action Across Schools
3. Strategic Leadership and AI Readiness
4. The 12-Month Roadmap for AI
5. Ethics, Equity and Safeguarding in AI
6. Transforming and confronting your AI thinking
Takeaways:
• A clear 12-month roadmap about what actions you can take
• Practical, ethical use of AI can reduce staff burnout, improve access for learners, and free up leaders to focus on strategy
• Now is the time to build confidence, test ideas, and set a direction aligned with your school or trust’s values
• Understanding that collaboration is key – no leader needs to do this alone; sector-wide sharing will accelerate safe and effective adoption
Ann Palmer
CEO Figtree International
Ann Palmer is a respected leader, consultant, and executive coach with over 35 years of experience across education, corporate, and non-profit sectors in the UK and internationally. She is best known as the founder of the RACE Charter Mark, a national framework advancing race equality across schools, businesses, and public bodies. She supports ITT providers with developing their provision. As Executive Director of Race Excellence, she advises global corporations on embedding equity into leadership and culture.
A published author and podcast host, her latest book Leading with AI (2025) explores ethical, inclusive leadership in the digital age. She serves on the UK Generative AI Training Advisory Board, shaping policy at the intersection of AI, ethics, and leadership.
Beyond Transaction to Transformation: The Sacred Art of Leadership Connection
True leadership transcends transactional exchanges to create transformational spaces.
Beyond Transaction to Transformation: The Sacred Art of Leadership Connection
True leadership transcends transactional exchanges to create transformational spaces where others feel permission to rise into their full voice and presence.
Key sections of the workshop:
1-The Connection Paradox: Moving from Transaction to Transformation
2-The SCARF Leadership Audit: Examining how our communication impacts
Sacred Spaces of
3-Leadership Framework: Creating genuine connection vs transactions
4-The Transformational Reset: Bringing it all Together
Takeaways:
• Leadership strategies for creating spaces of genuine connection
• Framework for moving from transaction to transformation
• Tools for facilitating genuine dialogue
Ronke Kokoruwe
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‘Ronke Kokoruwe is an outstanding speaker who is intentional about creating spaces of joy and bringing bold energy to her audiences. Her expertise as a consultant and executive coach further enables her to support professionals at the intersection of their leadership and communication skills. All of this is underpinned by a solid legal background.
She qualified as both a barrister and solicitor after undertaking a Master’s in International Environmental Law from the London School of Economics and stepped away from the law after she found what has been described as her true calling.
As the visionary force behind iVerbalize, a leadership and communication training business, ‘Ronke’s purpose is clear – to encourage, equip, and empower leaders to give themselves permission to show up and speak with intention. Her expertise extends globally, with a clientele including Google, Barclays and University of Oxford.
She is a TEDx host and speaker, with a compelling message, ‘The Kindness Manifesto’ focused on the power and transforming impact of kindness. She is also a huge advocate of amplifying female voices and has created a platform to encourage these voices and stories to come to the fore.