Speaking
Leadership Looks Different From the Other Side.
Brendaliz Mak brings audiences into a practical conversation about what leadership feels like to the people experiencing it. She challenges leaders to look beyond intention and gives audiences a shared language for trust, accountability, meaningful growth, repair, and the gap between what leaders mean and what people experience.
Signature keynoteHow People Want to Be Led
Leadership isn’t what you intend. It’s what people experience.
Signature keynote
How People Want to Be Led
Leadership is often evaluated from the leader’s side: intentions, decisions, strategies, goals, and results. Employees experience leadership from the other side.
This keynote explores what changes when leaders begin asking, “What is it like to be led by me?” and organizations begin asking, “What is it like to be led here?” It introduces a handful of ideas audiences can understand and begin to apply, and it does not try to teach the whole framework in one hour.
The keynote shares its title with the forthcoming book, How People Want to Be Led, and draws on the same Led Experience Standard™. The Standard remains the authoritative reference for the framework.
Ideas the keynote draws from
- Intention and experience
- The Intent–Experience Gap™
- Trust, built through repeated experience
- Psychological Safety
- Fair Accountability
- Meaningful Growth
- Repair
- The role of context
- Leadership under pressure
- Intentional leadership development
What audiences take back
Questions to Bring Back to the Team.
The goal is not inspiration for an afternoon. It is a clearer way of seeing leadership, and practical questions audiences can use on Monday.
Presentations are designed to invite reflection. They do not promise particular changes in behavior or in organizational results.
- Recognize the difference between leadership intention and leadership experience.
- Examine what it may feel like to be led by them, and what it may be like to be led in their organization.
- Identify where an Intent–Experience Gap™ may exist, and treat it as a conversation rather than a verdict.
- Reconsider how accountability can be clear, consistent, and humane at the same time.
- Understand why Repair matters after a leadership breakdown, and how confidence is rebuilt through evidence.
- Leave with questions they can bring back to their teams right away.
The question that changes the conversation
What is it like to be led by you?
Not the same as asking
- Am I a good leader?
- Did I make the right decision?
- Did we meet the goal?
- Did I communicate?
Those questions stay inside the leader’s point of view. They matter, and they are easy to answer from the front of the room. “What is it like to be led by you?” moves attention to the person on the receiving end, and to what they experienced rather than what was meant.
- 01What I intended
- 02What I did
- 03What they experienced
- 04What I can learn
The space between the first steps and the third is where the Intent–Experience Gap™ lives. The Gap is not the verdict. It is the conversation.
Additional speaking topics
A Focused Set of Conversations.
Each topic grows from the Led Experience Standard™ and the same central question: what do people actually experience through leadership?
- Topic 01
The Led Experience Standard™
A New Way to Understand Leadership
How leadership can be examined through the experience it creates for the people being led.
- Topic 02
The Intent–Experience Gap™
When What Leaders Mean Isn’t What People Experience
The space between intention, behavior, interpretation, and experience, and how to explore it with curiosity instead of defensiveness.
- Topic 03
Trust Is Built in the Experience
One Moment, Then a Pattern, Then Evidence
How repeated leadership experiences can strengthen trust, strain it, and help rebuild it. Trust is the outcome of that experience, not a technique.
- Topic 04
Fair Accountability
Clear Standards Without Losing the Human Being
How expectations, feedback, and consequences can be experienced as clear, consistent, equitable, and humane. Accountability stays. The question is how it is experienced.
- Topic 05
Meaningful Growth
What Development Feels Like From the Other Side
Learning, contribution, capability, opportunity, and connection to meaningful work, as employees experience them.
- Topic 06 · For employee and professional audiences
When Work Changes How You See Yourself
From Workplace Experience to Professional Clarity
How a difficult workplace experience can affect confidence and professional identity, and how to separate experience from identity, reconnect with agency, and choose a next step. Professional development, not therapy.
About Elite Myth Reclaim™
Where it fits the audience, the supplemental perspective of Leadership Under Pressure can be woven into these conversations. It is kept apart from the core framework.
Customization
Built Around the Room You Are Bringing Together.
The core ideas stay consistent. What changes is how they meet your audience. Topics can be tailored for settings such as:
- Public sector and municipal leadership
- Associations and conferences
- Nonprofit and board leadership
- Education
- Organizational leadership teams
- HR and people leaders
Tailoring may involve
- Examples
- Discussion questions
- Audience context
- Application exercises
- Session length
- Emphasis
Ways to engage
Keynote, Workshop, or Conversation.
- Format 01
Keynote
A focused presentation built around one central leadership idea.
- Format 02
Interactive workshop
A deeper learning experience that adds reflection, discussion, and application.
- Format 03
Leadership session
A focused session for leadership teams, boards, management groups, or organizational gatherings.
- Format 04
Facilitated conversation
A guided conversation about leadership experience, trust, accountability, workplace experience, or organizational learning.
Session length and format can be adapted to the event and audience.
What an audience can expect
Not Motivation for a Moment.
A different way to see leadership.
People remember how leadership felt.
The conversation is candid without being inflammatory. It respects the leaders in the room and the people they lead, and it keeps returning to something an audience can use.
- PracticalIdeas and questions that travel back to the workplace.
- HumanLeadership as people experience it, not as a diagram.
- ThoughtfulRoom for complexity, context, and pressure.
- GroundedShaped by years inside real organizations.
- SubstantiveA framework behind the ideas, kept accessible.
- Interactive where it fitsReflection and discussion, depending on the format.
- ReflectivePrompts audiences to examine their own experience.
- Action-orientedQuestions to bring home, not slogans to remember.
Real-world experience
Leadership, Seen From More Than One Side.
For more than twenty years, Brendaliz Mak has worked inside complex organizations across the public sector, human resources, organizational operations, public safety, governance, nonprofit leadership, and education, observing both effective leadership and organizational dysfunction firsthand.
She has also served as a university instructor and holds graduate education in management and organizational behavior. That range is why her speaking starts from the people on the receiving end of leadership as well as the people responsible for it.
Vantage points
- Alongside leaders
- Alongside employees
- With boards and volunteers
- In the classroom
- Building organizational systems
Creator of the Led Experience Standard™
The Ideas Grew From One Question.
What do people actually experience through leadership?
The Led Experience Standard™ is the framework Brendaliz created to answer it. It gives leaders and organizations a shared language for examining leadership through the experience of the people being led, and for the circumstances around it. It is a conceptual framework for understanding and development, not a verdict.
The author connection Coming soon
How People Want to Be Led
By Brendaliz Mak
The forthcoming book expands the conversation behind the signature keynote. It puts the Led Experience Standard™ into practice by examining leadership through the experience of the people being led and the culture and environment that shape it.
The keynote introduces selected ideas for a room. The book is where the longer conversation lives.
- Employee experience
- Trust
- Psychological Safety
- Accountability
- Workplace culture
For event organizers
Planning an Event?
These are the kinds of engagements that may be a fit. Details such as fees, availability, travel, and technical needs are discussed during inquiry.
When you reach out, it helps to share your organization, event name, date, and location, your audience and its approximate size, the format you have in mind, the topic that interests you, and what you hope the session will do for your group.
- Conference keynote
- Leadership retreat
- Association meeting
- Board retreat
- Professional-development event
- Municipal and public-sector leadership program
- Nonprofit leadership gathering
- Organizational workshop
- Educational leadership event
For event organizers
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of events does Brendaliz speak at?
Engagements that may be a fit include conference keynotes, leadership retreats, association meetings, board retreats, professional-development events, municipal and public-sector leadership programs, nonprofit leadership gatherings, organizational workshops, and educational leadership events. If you are not sure your event fits, ask.
Can presentations be customized?
Yes. Topics can be tailored to your audience through examples, discussion questions, audience context, application exercises, session length, and emphasis. The core framework stays consistent.
Does Brendaliz offer workshops in addition to keynotes?
Yes. Besides keynotes, the formats include interactive workshops, leadership sessions, and facilitated conversations. Session length and format can be adapted to the event and audience.
Can the Led Experience Standard™ be incorporated into a leadership program?
The Standard is the foundation of her speaking topics. How it fits a particular leadership program or event is something to talk through during your inquiry.
Does Brendaliz speak to employee audiences as well as leaders?
Her central question looks at leadership from the employee’s side as much as the leader’s, and topics can be tailored for leaders, teams, and employee or professional audiences. One topic, When Work Changes How You See Yourself, speaks directly to workplace experience and professional clarity.
Are virtual presentations available?
Delivery format, including in-person or virtual, is discussed during your inquiry.
How do I inquire about availability?
Use the Invite Brendaliz to Speak button to reach the contact page. It helps to share your organization, event name, date, and location, your audience and its approximate size, the format you have in mind, the topic that interests you, and your goals for the session. Availability and details are confirmed in conversation.
Is the book available?
Not yet. How People Want to Be Led is forthcoming and is marked Coming Soon. The signature keynote shares its title and draws on the same Led Experience Standard™.
Related pathways
Continue Exploring
The framework.
The Dimensions, Conditions, and context behind the talks.
Explore the Standard™ Leadership CoachingFor leaders.
Developing how you lead, one conversation at a time.
Explore Leadership Coaching Elite Myth Reclaim™For professionals.
Coaching for making sense of a difficult workplace experience.
Explore Reclaim™ AboutThe founder.
Brendaliz Mak and the thinking behind Elite Myth.
Meet BrendalizInvite Brendaliz
Bring a Different Leadership Conversation Into the Room.
Invite your audience to look beyond leadership intention and examine the experience leadership actually creates.