Drawing on three decades of advising leaders from the corner office to the Oval Office, and Laura's global research on employee engagement, this keynote is for leaders ready to rethink how they identify talent, build meaningful relationships, and create the conditions for people to do their best work.
Employee engagement is at a ten-year high. And yet, only 23% of employees are engaged at work.
If nearly eight out of ten employees aren't engaged, what are leaders missing?
The instinct is to look at the employees. Are they motivated? Are they committed? Are they willing to do the work? But Laura's research points to a more uncomfortable question: What if the problem isn't the people, but the way we're leading them?
Even strong leaders risk losing their best performers when those employees don't feel seen, understood, or connected to the work they're doing. The result is disengagement, diminished performance, and costly turnover.
Employees aren't failing leaders. Leaders are failing employees.
Drawing on more than a million data points from her global employee engagement research and 20 years in executive search, Laura challenges conventional assumptions about what drives performance.
In Limitless Leadership, she shares a research-backed approach to recognizing overlooked talent, building stronger relationships, and creating the conditions for greater engagement, retention, and organizational growth.
Your audience will leave with:
A data-driven understanding of why employees disengage, and practical steps leaders can take to strengthen relationships, improve performance, and reduce costly turnover.
A research-backed framework for recognizing overlooked talent and untapped potential, helping leaders understand what motivates their people and build more engaged, cohesive teams.
A practical methodology for making better talent decisions, identifying strengths at every level, navigating organizational change, and creating the conditions for sustained growth.
“Laura's dynamic presentation style, tailored content, and practical strategies were a great fit for our event.
She challenged our thinking on employee engagement and gave us tools to increase morale, boost productivity, and build more cohesive teams. Laura was awesome to work with behind the scenes, and she tied our organization's mission into her talk like a pro.”
Meredith Rollins
Chief Community Officer, PCMA
The Research
Even good leaders lose great people.
Based on seven years of research involving nearly 10,000 people across 113 countries, Laura's work reveals an uncomfortable truth: leadership effectiveness isn't just about competence. It's about whether employees feel seen, valued, and connected to the people leading them.
The relationship changes everything.
Hey, I'm LGO.
I'm a researcher, a former executive recruiter, and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. My work names the patterns that predict potential, in ourselves, in our teams, and in the people who matter to us most.
For thirty years I've advised leaders from the corner office to the Oval Office. For fifteen of them I ran a retained executive search firm, which meant I was paid to read what past performance was hiding and to see it before anyone else did. I was good at it. I could never explain how. That question is what I study now. (Currently working on my doctorate, finding out whether the instinct I spent two decades trusting holds up under actual scrutiny.)
You may also know me from Good Morning America, Access Hollywood, and NBC News, from Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and HR Magazine, or from my talk on why success doesn't feel the way it should, which has more than three million views on TED.com.
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