Keynote Topics by Amy S. Tolbert, PH.D., CSP

We aim to help companies bring out the best in their employees and succeed by providing insightful keynotes.

Amy S. Tolbert, Ph.D., CSP, Keynote Speaker

What makes a good keynote speaker? Typically, it is someone who engages the audience with a great story (or stories) to tell. It is someone with energy who can think on their feet during Q&A sessions. It is someone with a combination of education and training, real-world experience, and personality.

“Our inclusion training spread across many deparments. Dr. Amy Tolbert's facilitation gave us valuable tools to increase trust among our team and motivated us to push towards inclusive, innovative practices.”

- Tonya Eichelt, Division Director

Polk County

Amy S. Tolbert, Ph.D., CSP, earned a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation with the National Speaker’s Association. The CSP is the speaking profession’s international measure of experience and skill. Fewer than 10 percent of the speakers who belong to the International Federation for Professional Speakers hold this professional designation.

"I have utilized Dr. Tolbert's services multiple times in the past several years and found her skills to be of the highest caliber. I would recommend her (and have!) to any of my Mayo Clinic colleagues."

- Administrator

Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo School of Graduate Medicine Education

Keynote Topics

The topics listed below are ready to go and indicate the variety of keynote speaker options available to you and your organization.

Is Your Bias Showing?

Are you free of biases? Think again. Knowing we are all biased may be a hard pill to swallow. Unconscious bias, a key component of inclusion, impacts our communication and our workplace relationships every day. It is not a question of if we are biased, but knowing which bias is at play is the first step to awareness. With that understanding, we can then make a conscious choice to shift thinking, which allows us to change behavior. To understand bias, we have to understand ourselves, our own implicit bias, and our target audience.

Develop your mindset and skills to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Examine bias to grow inclusive behaviors.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Moving From Unconscious Bias to Conscious Inclusion (Focused on Leaders)

The implications of not providing the tools to address diversity, equity, and inclusion and the failure to build skills to use them to create an inclusive work environment can not only be devastating to an organization but also undermine its success. Diversity, equity, and inclusion create an organization’s lens for innovation. The impact on the talent pipeline alone can leave an organization stagnant and unable to address the needs of its diverse workforce and customers. To increase corporate strength, learn to harness diversity and foster an inclusive culture.

Communicating Across Styles: Adapting for Increased Effectiveness

Why is it easy to communicate with some individuals while communicating with others creates conflict and confusion? Communication and behavioral styles differ from person to person and cultures; some are compatible with ours and, for various reasons, some are not.

We may improve the quality of our lives by recognizing our behavioral strengths and learning how to recognize and value behavioral talents in others, and we can improve the way we work with others across styles, discover viable solutions to resolve conflict, and relieve stress that comes with miscommunication.

During this session, keynote speaker Dr. Amy S. Tolbert uses audience activities in a motivating, inspirational, life-changing (okay—educational and informative, too) session!

Bring Out the Best in Your Employees To:

Audience Members Learn How To:

Leading Across Styles: Adapting for Maximum Effectiveness

This keynote session is designed to be educational and informative, featuring audience activities. It aims to develop leadership communication strategies to increase performance and bottom-line results using DiSC^®.

How would leadership effectiveness improve if you could control your communication outcomes?

Leaders spend most of their time communicating. Therefore, it is no surprise that the most effective leaders are great communicators. Using behavioral style practices to develop communication strategies can improve leadership skills and maximize your effectiveness with employees, clients, customers, and other leaders.

When you hone your ability to influence and persuade, you enhance several workforce aspects: you develop coaching and mentoring skills, cultivate teamwork from a diverse group of employees, motivate according to style, reduce team conflict, and model behavior for others to emulate as they interact with each other.

Open Mind, Open World: Improving Intercultural Interactions

O.P.E.N. Your Business to the World!

How an organization can effectively harness its collective global thinking abilities, learning capacities, and creativity are all that separates it from every other organization.

Put smart global business communications skills to work and help your clients and organizations cross international waters without drowning in cultural situations by:

Identifying cultural tendencies that impact our interactions and effectiveness with global colleagues
Identifying and responding to situations involving intercultural dynamics
Distinguishing between effective and ineffective intercultural communication
Using global awareness and the O.P.E.N. process to improve communications and productivity

This keynote is designed to equip all-level employees with quick tools to resolve cultural communication conflicts. This educational and informative keynote session includes audience activities. It can be offered as a training session in a one-hour overview, a half-day, or a multi-day session.

Open Mind, Open World is a fresh and relevant video-based training solution that uses engaging, realistic video vignettes and guided discussions; participants learn a simple model to interpret the most complex interactions.

When you open your mind, you open your world.

Reversing the Ostrich Approach to Diversity: Pulling Your Head Out of the Sand!

Although the image of an ostrich burying its head in the sand is based on myth rather than fact, it is the perfect icon to depict the many avoidance tactics we use to deal with complex issues at work, including diversity. All the running, hiding, and avoiding (i.e., the ostrich approach) won’t change what’s going on around us. We need to make a commitment to “pull our heads out of the sand” to communicate more clearly and effectively with one another.

This keynote or breakout session, designed to engage your heart, mind, and imagination, will focus on strategies and techniques for inclusive behaviors.