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Shola Kaye Speaker

Shola Kaye

Communication, inclusive leadership and empathy at work expert, author and award-winning speaker

Shola Kaye MSc FRSA DTM is a communication specialist, award-winning international speaker and author of two books. She speaks on Empathy in the workplace, Inclusion, Leadership and Communication.

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Shola Kaye's videos

What Shola Kaye's clients say

Here is some of the feedback from audiences and clients who have worked with Shola.
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Available for

Languages: 

  • English
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Shola Kaye's 2023 biography

Meet Shola Kaye

Shola Kaye helps global organisations prepare for the future of work using the power of empathy, effective communication and inclusion nudges. Shola’s work is frequently described as practical, easily implementable and inspiring. Her team has developed The Inclusion Launchpad, and The E.Q. Accelerator programs to help support lasting change. She shares accessible case studies and implementable insights gained from working with international corporations across a wide range of industries.

Shola’s clients include American Express, Deloitte, Google, IBM, Nestle, Henkel, Reckitt, HSBC and Oracle. She is the author of two books and has written for a variety of industry publications.

Early in Shola’s career, she worked in consulting and account management in New York and London with clients such as Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab and British Airways. She has conducted neuroscience research at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

What differentiates Shola as a speaker is that she has also spent time performing across the globe and captivating audiences as a professional entertainer. She therefore understands what it takes to keep her keynote attendees engaged and participating throughout the session, and she provides multiple opportunities for valuable self-reflection and outstanding levels of interaction.

Shola’s experiences as a Black woman working for global corporations gave her an understanding of some of the many challenges faced by companies today as they seek to create environments of empathy and belonging, supporting their ever-more diverse, often remote, teams. Her work allows organisations to increase innovation, bolster belonging and develop engaging, productive environments.

At the moment her most popular keynote is on Delivering Feedback with Empathy. Everyone needs to deliver feedback at some stage in their lives, and the way in which this is done has the power to make or break careers, as well as relationships!

Shola also works with many global teams that need to find ways to reduce bias and reach across cultural differences, creating an atmosphere of collaboration, inclusion and high performance. Her sessions on Inclusive Communication and Psychological Safety have been booked by a variety of international associations and, as a skilled facilitator, she’s often called upon to run sessions that are a hybrid between conventional keynotes, town halls, and large group workshops.

As an introvert herself, she loves to create experiences in which everyone feels deeply involved and empowered to participate fully. Her virtual keynotes often elicit hundreds of comments in the chat, with off-the-charts participation from attendees.

She’s also a popular speaker for International Women’s Day and has worked with many organisations delivering communication programs that help women and other underrepresented groups speak up and cut through, enabling them to go further, faster, in their careers.

Shola Kaye's 2023 talks & topics

Delivering effective feedback with emotional intelligence

Develop the skills to support and co-create your colleagues’ success.

Delivering effective feedback is a valuable life skill. Feedback can be empowering, inspiring and can drive an individual, and their team, towards fantastic success.

However, if delivered in the wrong way, feedback can be divisive, demotivating, and destructive. And when we avoid giving feedback to spare someone’s feelings, the eventual outcome can be just as damaging.

Learning objectives:

  • Discover the four elements required to create psychological safety so that your feedback is well-received
  • Gain insights from powerful personal stories and statistics on how feedback affects motivation and performance
  • Explore the repercussions of poor feedback styles such as The Drive-by, The Comparison, The Public Humiliation, and The Wrecking Ball
  • Take away an effective strategy for delivering feedback as an individual contributor

After this session, you’ll feel renewed energy and enthusiasm for giving and receiving feedback. You’ll have a deeper insight into the role your personality plays when delivering feedback and will be able to take steps to optimise your performance. You’ll learn some effective frameworks for sharing feedback in a way that gets results.

Inclusive Leadership: Develop cultural awareness, create psychological safety and unleash the potential of your global, remote teams

Inclusive leadership is essential for success in today’s complex, dispersed and diverse workplaces. Inclusive leaders create a sense of belonging for all employees, regardless of their background, location or identity. This leads to increased engagement, happiness, and productivity. If you want your organization to succeed, you need to equip your leaders, and their teams, with the skills and knowledge to communicate inclusively.

Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the need for inclusive leadership, the six key traits of inclusive leaders, and how to translate those traits into essential behaviours
  • Learn to develop a psychologically safe environment that supports innovation and creativity
  • Develop cultural awareness and use language that is respectful and inclusive
  • Recognise the power of inclusion nudges for remote and in-person teams, and learn some simple but effective strategies for running inclusive meetings

After this session you’ll feel better able to support your remote, diverse, cross-cultural teams, creating an environment of understanding, innovation and high performance.

Human skills for the future-ready workplace

This keynote explores how emotional intelligence skills – in particular, empathy and self-awareness – can create a successful, high-performing workplace culture. Enlightened leaders focus on the whole person
rather than on task accomplishment. Through understanding, emotional intelligence, and other ‘power’ skills, we can create environments of belonging, innovation, and productivity. This is an interactive keynote with opportunities for reflection and stories to help land the learning.

Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the benefits of an emotionally intelligent approach to overcoming differences and creating cohesion
  • Recognise the value of self-awareness and self-regulation in the workplace
  • Create a link between empathy, feedback and performance
  • Gain insight into the generative power of encouragement and effective communication

This session helps your emerging and established leaders understand why it’s so important to recognise the whole person and develop stronger bonds with their teams. They’ll walk away with the practical relationship tools and transformational insights that facilitate success in workplaces of increasing complexity and technological advancement. Keynote may be additionally customised by mapping your corporate values onto the discussed skills and behaviours.

Elevating empathy: The power of effective listening

Walk away with the tools and the inspiration to become a more respectful and understanding leader, manager, or individual contributor. During this highly beneficial keynote, you’ll explore the vital components of empathy, how to be a better listener and how to develop compassion. Deepen your relationships and provide support for colleagues, friends and family.

Learning objectives:

  • Explore data points that emphasise the importance of empathy and perspective-taking for workplace success
  • Participate in powerful self-reflection exercises to learn more about your style of listening and your listening strengths and weaknesses
  • Find out how empathy and listening support diversity, inclusion, engagement, retention and innovation in the workplace
  • Explore the themes of curiosity, courage and being a catalyst for change

This session will help create an environment of understanding, lower resistance to change, and will prepare your employees for further interventions in the areas of D.E.I., Wellbeing, Emotional Intelligence, Kindness, Leadership Effectiveness and Respect in the workplace. Participants will take away frameworks and tools for approaching others with compassion, and communicating across differences

LEADERSHIP: Harnessing the power of Empathy

To improve inclusion, productivity and engagement

Creating a workplace where everyone feels that they belong is more important than ever before, but how can you build supportive, cohesive environments within your organisation?

This inspiring keynote speech will provide you with practical and effective strategies for becoming an inclusive leader. It can be modified for senior leaders, management, and whole-company keynotes. You’ll walk away with the tools and the inspiration to become a more compassionate and effective leader, manager, or individual contributor.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION: Create a workplace of respect and belonging

Develop your listening, courage, and compassion to build an environment of trust and inclusivity

Bring our whole selves to work? How is that possible when we may not be accepted and valued by our colleagues?

This inspiring keynote speech shares stories, tools, and interactive exercises to help you see the value of ensuring everyone feels they belong. You’ll understand the vital components of empathy, how to be compassionate while avoiding burnout, and why skills like emotional intelligence are in high demand.

LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION: Delivering effective feedback with empathy

Develop the skills to support and co-create your colleagues’ success

At work and in our personal lives, delivering effective feedback is a valuable skill. Delivered in the right way, feedback can be empowering, inspiring and can drive an individual, and their team, towards fantastic success.

However, delivered in the wrong way, feedback can be divisive, demotivating, and destructive. And when we avoid giving feedback to spare someone’s feelings, the eventual outcome can be just as damaging.

So what’s your intention as a manager? Is it to break or build? To crush or to co-create? Do you restrict your feedback to the obligatory once or twice a year, or do you feedback continuously, increasing the motivation and confidence of your team members?

This interactive, high energy keynote contains insightful stories, impactful data, and valuable tools you can use again and again.

COMMUNICATION: Powerful under pressure

Communicate with impact and influence during meetings, Q&A sessions, interviews, and other high-stakes situations

Do you thrive under pressure, communicating with poise and power, or do you crumple into a stumbling wreck?

This practical, inspiring, and essential keynote will help you develop strategies to excel under fire during tough meetings and conversations. You’ll learn frameworks and strategies that will help you stay cool and collected, inspiring trust and respect in those around you. Whether dealing with a difficult customer, handling a question that could trip you up, or putting your best foot forward during an interview situation, these techniques will help you come out on top.

COMMUNICATION: Expressing your personal brand at work as a woman or minority

Articulate your value, develop your brand story, and shine!

For women and minorities, speaking up in the ‘wrong’ way can lead to the perception that we’re angry or have a chip on our shoulders. This can hamper progress at work, keeping us from reaching our full potentials. In addition, we may be reluctant to share our stories of overcoming challenges out of fear of being seen as too pushy or boastful.

So, how do we communicate our worth in the workplace? How do we convey the important work we do and achieve the recognition we deserve?

This speech shares valuable tools and mindset shifts to help you move ahead with confidence, shoring up your foundations with the understanding that you’re putting your best foot forward and presenting yourself as a person of influence and value.

Break the Bias with Powerful Communication: Practical Skills for Challenging Bias

In this session, we’ll look at strategies to fight gender bias.

You’ll walk away with practical tools and communication frameworks to make a difference.

What this session covers:

  • Common examples of gender bias and the damage they cause
  • Strategies for breaking bias
  • Calling out vs calling in – and how to decide which is appropriate, given your situation
  • Common gender-related microaggressions and strategies for responding to aggressors
  • Bystander interventions for male allies and anyone who wants to help fight gender bias
  • Recognising and understanding intersectionality: the overlapping of gender bias with other types of discriminatory behaviour

Session duration and format:  40-60 minute virtual keynote OR 60-90 minute virtual workshop with breakouts

CHOOSE TO CHALLENGE: The D.I.V.A. way

For IWD 2021, Shola Kaye shared how we can all be D.I.V.A.S. in the workplace, elevating our voices, increasing visibility, and creating opportunities for permanent change.

Challenging the status quo can be tough, and when we’re under pressure at work, instead of speaking up it can sometimes seem easier to take a back seat.

This celebratory, interactive keynote, with live demonstrations, chat and real-time Q&A,  is designed to support you in being seen, heard and valued. You’ll leave with practical communication tools to help you become more:

*DYNAMIC – Stop being a wallflower and instead, receive the attention you deserve during meetings and high stakes conversations
*INSPIRING – Develop a powerful brand story and use your career challenges to motivate and mobilise others
*VALUABLE – Share your opinion with clarity and precision using a simple but effective communication tool
*AUTHENTIC – Determine your communication values and develop an unshakeable foundation for speaking up
*SUPPORTIVE – Pick up strategies to amplify the voices of your colleagues and peers

Everyone can learn from this talk, not just women. We can all be D.I.V.A.S.

Shola Kaye's 2023 speaking fees

Shola travels from:
  • United Kingdom

Specific fees fall within the ranges shown. These are presented as a guide only and are subject to change without notice.

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Complete the form below to check Shola Kaye's availability. If you prefer, you can also send an email directly to our head office.

How would Shola Kaye deliver their presentation at your event?
Please provide details of your budget for Shola Kaye's speaking fee, including currency.