Welcome to Leadership BioDynamics @ LLNL: A Biology of Behavior Approach to Executive Presence

OBJECTIVES AND APPROACH. The Leadership The Leadership Biodynamics: A Biology of Behavior Approach to Executive Presence workshop equips you with the knowledge and practical tools to elevate your leadership effectiveness. Leadership Biodynamics is a science-based, practice-proven approach to executive presence. It has been developed and tested to meet scholarly standards.

Our philosophy is rooted in the belief that true leadership is not defined by formal authority but by being a freely-followed person—someone others choose to follow, even in the absence of positional power.

Your presence plays a pivotal role in earning that kind of followership. Our goal is to help you develop the ability to command attention when necessary while also creating environments that foster genuine connection, open communication, and productive collaboration—enabling you and your teams to achieve shared goals more effectively.

This workshop focuses on empowering you to:

• Connect authentically with others.
• Communicate with clarity and impact.
• Co-create shared value through collaboration.

We will break down and explore the essential elements of executive presence, including voice, gesture, posture, facial expression, storytelling, status dynamics, and even the power of silence. You’ll learn how these elements interact and how to leverage them intentionally to build positive, compelling connections with those around you.

We’ll give you a safe place to practice, with lots of positive and constructive feedback and coaching. This is not a time for you to try to be “perfect.” Instead, it is a time to see and consider what you are doing now and try on a number of strategies and techniques that may be more effective than what has become your norm. We are certain you will walk away with immediate improvements. You will have new awareness and practical tools to help you improve dramatically as you adopt techniques over time. Authentic and effective executive presence takes time and experimentation. Our workshop will give you dedicated time and lots of opportunities to experiment! 

WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU. We need you to do a couple of things ahead of our workshop. First, we need an example of your current “executive presence” style. We’d like you to come to the workshop prepared with a talk or interaction that is about five minutes long. It could be a talk given to several people or even a large audience. It could also be an important message you need to communicate one on one. In most cases it is helpful if the purpose of your interaction is to get someone to enlist, support, or buy into a different way of doing something. It should be a message that is useful for your work. It’s only five minutes, so we would like you to talk without notes or slides. It will also be important to keep your remarks to five minutes. 

Here are some examples of talks and interactions others have brought into the workshop.

• One participant needed to prepare a briefing to clearly communicate progress toward a set of mandatory requirements related to health and safety.
• Another practiced a pitch to a supervisor, making the case for a new idea.
• One person simulated a recruiting talk to a group of college seniors.
• Another wanted to practice a scenario in which they were breaking difficult news that a project was cancelled and that some layoffs would start soon.
• Many scientists and engineers present an overview of something they are working on

Last, we need your undivided attention during our time together. When you demonstrate your interaction, we will ask your fellow workshop participants to simulate your audience…the types, the characters…the reactions you might get in real life. We will also ask them for constructive ideas on how the interaction could be more effective. So, you will be very engaged either as a presenter, audience member, or advisor throughout the two days. As a result, there will be no opportunity for multi-tasking. We ask that all participants detach from their electronic devices except at breaks, lunch, or in emergencies.

ABOUT YOUR WORKSHOP LEADER. Your workshop leader will be Scott Hutcheson, PhD. Scott teaches, writes, and speaks about leadership, team, and organizational performance from a biology of behavior perspective. He is founder and Chief BioSocial Scientist at Hutcheson Associates. Scott is a professor of engineering and technology leadership at Purdue University where he teaches graduate courses, including one that includes the content of this workshop. Through Hutcheson Associates, Scott has worked with over 4,000 leaders from 143 different countries.

The course content is also the topic of his forthcoming book Biohacking Leadership: Leveraging the Biology of Behavior to Optimize Your Impact (Wiley). He is also a Forbes Contributor, with his column ranking in the top 1% of all Forbes articles in readership. Scott leads workshops and gives keynotes all over the world. His TEDx Talk on the science of prospection has received over 1.3 million views on YouTube.

QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS? We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming workshop. If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, feel free to contact the person within your organization who is bringing this workshop to your team.