“It’s time to put Love at the center of work!”
Three Talks Help People and Results Rise Together
Many leaders feel caught between caring for people and delivering results. Under pressure they often default to habits that undermine both.
Working in cultures that either rely on control or abandon compassion when it matters most, leaders become exhausted and disillusioned about what’s possible.
Renée’s keynote talks offer clear evidence, practical tools and frameworks, and actionable habits to help leaders lead with love consistently, even when the stakes are high.
Renée delivers conference keynote in Doha, Qatar.
Signature Leadership Talk
“Strong Enough to Love: Leading Without Fear When the Pressure is On”
Today’s leaders are navigating relentless pressure - complex decisions, constant change, rising expectations, and teams that are stretched thin. Many leaders know that fear-driven leadership no longer works, yet under stress, even the most experienced leaders revert to urgency, control, and distance.
In this powerful, research-backed keynote, Renée Smith challenges a deeply embedded myth: that leaders must choose between caring for people and delivering results. Drawing on her original research and decades of work with leaders across sectors, Renée reframes love, not as sentiment, but as a practical leadership capacity that reduces fear, strengthens accountability, and improves performance.
Through real stories, accessible neuroscience, and a new leadership framework, leaders learn how to show up for their team, in organizational systems and structures, and for themselves with true care to create trust, resilience, and sustained effectiveness.
This keynote is designed for leaders who want to lead with clarity and strength without burning out themselves or their teams - and who are ready to align how they lead with what research shows actually works.
Learning Outcomes
Leaders will leave able to:
1. Identify fear-based leadership patterns that quietly undermine trust, engagement, and performance, even when intentions are good.
2. Understand how fear and care affect the brain, decision-making, learning, and performance at work.
3. Positions love as a stabilizing force that enables clarity, challenge, and follow-through.
4. Learn a new leadership framework to guide how they engage their team, lead organizational functions, and care for themselves for sustained impact and a meaningful legacy.
5. Lead with greater courage and confidence, even under pressure, for a more gratifying leadership experience.
Audience: Leaders at all levels, or organization development, HR, or learning and development professionals who work with leaders.
Venues: Leadership team retreats, leadership training kick-off, or industry conference keynotes.
Length: Versions of this talk can be 45 minutes, 60 minutes, or 90 minutes. Longer talks are interactive workshops and involve reflection, breakout conversations, application, and exercises.
Complementary Offerings: This keynote talk can be paired with a workshop to equip participants with emotional intelligence, or with an email series to guide leaders to incrementally adopt loving leadership habits.
Renée gets cooking at a national conference in Georgia.
Signature Leadership Talk
"Knead to Lead with Love: Cooking Up the Leadership That’s Needed Now"
Every organization is shaped by what leaders consistently mix in. Not just strategy or structure, but the everyday leadership habits, assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors that quietly determine whether people feel safe, trusted, included, and able to contribute their best.
In this engaging, sometimes humorous, sometimes profound, research-backed keynote, Renée Smith invites leaders to look honestly at the leadership “ingredients” shaping team members’ experiences today. Drawing inspiration from cooking practices, real workplace stories, and insights from her original research across sectors, Renée helps leaders see how fear often gets baked into leadership unintentionally and how it poisons trust and drains engagement, spoiling performance over time.
More importantly, she shows leaders how and why to lead with love by design. Renée introduces a practical Love-Not-Fear Leadership Recipe that leaders can use to make intentional choices in everyday moments that matter so that people are welcomed, challenged, supported, held responsible, included and encouraged through changes and challenges.
This keynote is both memorable and highly actionable, designed for leaders who want to intentionally “cook up” a healthier, more effective employee experience without mincing on clarity, accountability, or results.
Learning Outcomes
Leaders will leave able to:
1. Recognize how fear shows up unintentionally in leadership habits and why it poisons trust, engagement, and performance.
2. Understand the neuroscience of fear and love and how each affects decision-making, learning, and accountability.
3. Reframe love as a valid and necessary leadership discipline, not a personality trait or “nice-to-have.”
4. Apply a simple Love-Not-Fear decision tool to real leadership challenges -- conflict, change, performance issues, and tough calls.
5. Lead with greater confidence and clarity, even in high-stakes moments, without reverting to control or disconnection.
Audience: Leaders at all levels, or organization development, HR, or learning and development professionals who work with leaders.
Common Venues: Leadership team retreats, leadership workshops, or industry conferences.
Length: Versions of this talk can be 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 90 minutes. Longer talks are interactive and involve breakouts, reflections, and engagement.
Complementary Offerings: Add to this talk a workshop exploring the Love-centered Leaders framework with assessment and planning, or with one-on-one coaching with Renée or one of the AHW coaches.
Signature All Staff Talk
"Everyone Matters: Making Work More Human Together"
A healthy, human workplace is not created by leaders alone. It is built in the moments that matter—through how team members show up each day, handle differences, communicate, respond to challenges, resolve conflict, celebrate wins, and support one another in difficult times.
In this engaging and interactive keynote, Renée Smith invites team members at every level to explore the role each of us plays in shaping the everyday experience of work. Drawing on her original research and work with organizations across sectors, Renée introduces a simple but powerful lens: fear and care are both present at work, and our daily actions either reinforce or interrupt them.
Through real workplace stories, reflection, and shared discussion, participants discover how small, human choices—acknowledging one another, listening with care, practicing inclusion, showing respect, acting with courage, and repairing when harm occurs—create environments where people feel safe, valued, and able to contribute their best.
This talk helps teams move beyond the belief that culture is something “management creates for us” and instead recognize culture as a shared responsibility practiced in everyday interactions. Designed to set the stage for culture, climate, or employee experience initiatives, this keynote elevates what’s possible at work and invites teams into a more connected, human, and effective way of working … together!
Learning Outcomes
Participants will leave able to:
Recognize how everyday actions (large and small) shape the experience and culture of work
Understand how fear and care show up in team interactions and the impact each has on trust, belonging, and collaboration
Identify practical ways to contribute to a more respectful, inclusive, and human workplace, regardless of role or title
Take shared responsibility for creating a work environment where people feel safe, valued, and able to do their best work
Audience: Team members at all levels and in all roles, in organizations committed to a more human way of working. Conference attendees from any kind of organization or role who want to impact their teams positively.
Common Venues: Leadership team retreats, leadership workshops, or industry conferences.
Length: Versions of this talk can be 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 90 minutes. Longer talks are interactive and involve breakouts, reflections, and engagement.
Complementary Offerings: Add to this talk a signature Human Workplace Gathering or a follow-on 21-day email series with prompts anyone can try to make work more human.
Renée speaks to staff at a Portland conference.
Watch Renée Speak!
“Renée is so much more than a great speaker!”
“Her message is a challenging one - the need to promote Love over Fear in the workplace. However, her delivery is perfect. She is empathetic and engaging but also hard-hitting and effective. This powerful combination leaves no-one in any doubt of the seriousness of her message.
It is my belief that everyone hoping to lead people through these incredible changing times, needs to hear Renée's talk and introduce her to their team to facilitate meaningful conversations.”
— Simon Phillips, The Change Man and Founder of the Changemaker Group, United Kingdom
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Renée speaks to groups of 15, 150, or 1500
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Renée loves to interact with audience members.
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Renée's talks inspire action!
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Renée doesn't talk and leave. She stays and connects!
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Renée works with clients to adapt her message to their purpose and strategy.
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Renée's message touches all kinds of groups.!
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Renée's joy is infectious!
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Renée connects with leaders making an impact.
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Renée takes time to listen and answer questions.
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Renée loves to laugh with participants.
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Renée makes events memorable.
Why Renée Smith Speaks
In 2015 Renée was an award-winning executive in Washington State government, leading a culture and operations transformation. She had a life-changing insight into what it takes for employees to really be engaged, so they speak up, point out problems, share ideas, innovate, and improve to deliver value to constituents.
The secret is less fear and more love in the workplace.
Love?
Yes love!
Convinced that love is fundamentally helpful while fear is harmful, Smith wanted to truly understand their impacts.
As a behavioral scientist, she launched a research project that continues to this day, interviewing people about their experiences of love and fear at work.
Since 2017, she’s been honored to listen to and receive hundreds of people’s stories in research interviews and workshops. Here’s what became crystal clear: Fear at work is devastating to people, teams, and organizations as well as to the customers and causes they serve. The human toll is heart-breaking. Looking so many people in the eye and seeing the cost of toxicity, bullying, shame, and harassment in their lives motivates Renée to speak out against fear.
But stronger than all that fear is love.
Stories of love at work are truly inspiring. Whether that loved looks like respect, compassion, equity, or appreciation, Love unleashes the very best in people.
It became clear to Renée that love supports our greatest contributions. Love inspires our most meaningful team experiences. Love fosters more productivity. Love delivers sustained, long-term business results. And, love at work ripples its benefits to families and communities too.
Shrinking fear and expanding love FEELS BETTER, but it also helps us DO BETTER and BE BETTER in business, in society, and in life!
Why wouldn’t we put love at the center of work?
Renee speaks remotely on respect from her studio in Washington State.
Renee Smith speaks at the Canadian Institute in Toronto.
“I love her positive message and could use a dose of her each day of my life!”
-Keynote Talk Audience Member
Renée laughs with the audience at Washington State Government Conference.
Renée teaches at ITeC - The Catalonia Institute of Construction Technology in Barcelona.
“I want to thank you for your presentation during our Leadership Conference, I was motivated to look at my leadership style and make necessary changes to improve myself as a leader.”
— Manager, State of Arizona