Your People are Capable of More.

Keynotes, workshops, and offsites that help them get there.

Something is usually sitting on top of that capability. Sometimes it's personal — a story someone tells themselves about what they can't do. Sometimes it's collective — a tension nobody will name, a change nobody understands, a way of working that outlived its usefulness.

I've been on both sides of this work: in the seat, and studying why the seat is hard. Three of them as chief of staff to C-suite executives, plus an EdD in how organizations learn. When I'm in front of your people, I'm speaking from inside the experience they're having.

Ways to Work Together:

Every engagement is built around your people and what's actually happening in your organization. I ask a lot of questions before I design anything.

Keynote Speeches

Talks for all-hands meetings, offsites, conferences, and leadership gatherings. Practical and personal, with an optional Q&A.

Offsites

Before I build anything, I interview leaders across levels to find where the friction actually is — the themes, the tensions, the places where people believe they're aligned and aren't. Then I design the session around what I find. Follow-up individual coaching can be layered onto this engagement.

Custom-Built Workshops

After learning what your team needs most, I design and teach a specific skill and your team practices it in the room. Ninety minutes to a full day. People leave with tangible skills, able to do something they couldn't do that morning.

Leadership Development Cohorts

For organizations that want development to stick, I run a cohort program for a selected group of high-potential leaders. Over a set period (6 or 12 months), participants meet with me once/month for a blend of dynamic and interactive lectures, open Q&A, and facilitated discussion to learn new skills and work through actual challenges in real-time. Cohorts often include individual coaching and a Leadership Circle Profile™ 360 for each participant, so leaders can see how they're currently showing up and track what shifts. The side effect most sponsors mention: the cohort becomes a real network, and the leaders keep calling each other long after the program ends.

Gina des Cognets delivering keynote speech a Lead with Gina service
Gina des Cognets delivering keynote speech a Lead with Gina service

Most Requested Keynote

You Are Stronger Than You Think

Moving past the beliefs that hold you back

Everyone carries a quiet story about what they can't do. It shows up as the role not applied for, the idea not raised in the meeting, the conversation postponed one more week.

I tell the story of my own limiting beliefs and the times I've worked my way past them, and I give the audience a method for naming their own. People leave with a clearer view of what's actually in their way, and less willing to accept it.

Best for: company all-hands, conferences, women's leadership events, and university audiences.

The result: A room that's energized and considerably more specific about what it's capable of.

Delivered to Impax Asset Management's national accounts team as "Believe in One Billion."

“Working with Gina during our onsite was an incredible experience. Her positive energy was contagious, and it was clear she had taken the time to understand our business, goals, and challenges deeply. She personally connected with each team member, motivating and inspiring us to tap into our superpowers to achieve our 2025 goal. The session left us energized, aligned, and ready to tackle the next challenge. I can’t recommend her enough!”

Coleen Lynch, Senior Vice President, National Accounts, Impax Asset Management

Lead with Gina client Coleen Lynch from Impax Asset Management

How It Works

Every workshop and offsite is custom-designed. My typical process looks like:

Graphic for Lead with Gina Workshops and Offsites for Leadership Teams

Deep discovery before the room

Before your leaders ever sit down together, I do the work to understand what's really going on. This usually means one-on-one interviews with leaders across levels to surface themes, patterns, and points of tension — and to figure out where alignment already exists and where it doesn't. The goal is to make sure we're addressing the real issues, not just the symptoms.

Graphic for Lead with Gina Workshops and Offsites for Leadership Teams

Facilitated conversations create breakthroughs

I design and lead sessions — ranging from half-day to multi-day experiences — that balance structure with space for honest conversation. I build trust quickly and create an environment where difficult topics can actually be discussed. The tone is calm, direct, and grounded, but I also bring optimism, joy, and humor into the room.I diagnose team dynamics in real time and articulate what's happening with clarity.

Graphic for Lead with Gina Workshops and Offsites for Leadership Teams

Turning insight into action

After the session, you get a clear synthesis of what came up — the patterns, the insights, the priorities that matter most. You also get practical recommendations and next steps, plus guidance on how to carry the momentum forward across your team or organization.

Case Study
From a Group of Leaders to a Leadership Team

The Challenge

A newly formed executive team of strong individual leaders was operating in silos. Competing priorities created friction, and the CEO had become the go-between for conversations the team should have been having directly.

What We Did

A full-day offsite, designed after individual conversations with each leader. The day paired trust-building work with practical frameworks for moving from departmental thinking to a first-team mindset, where the executive team's collective success comes before any one function's.

The Result

A year later, the team takes hard conversations directly to each other. They make shared calls on complex tradeoffs like budget allocation. They operate with significantly greater trust, clearer communication, and more effective problem-solving.

“If you're looking to take your executive team from capable to truly high-performing, Gina is the partner you want by your side. We could not recommend her more highly and look forward to continuing to work with her.”

— Danielle van der Lelie, Chief People Officer, InStride Health

Lead with Gina client Danielle van der Lelie from Instride Health

Signature Workshops

These are the workshops I'm known for — core offerings refined through years of real-world delivery and built around what actually moves teams.

Lead with Gina Leadership offsite workshop Effectively leading change

Effectively Leading Change

Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and Human Dynamics

Change is a constant, but leading through it is a skill. This workshop moves beyond the "what" of change and dives into the "how" of human transition – how to communicate with clarity when the path forward isn’t yet  clear, how to hold space for uncertainty without losing momentum, and how to build a team that doesn't just survive disruption but grows through it.

  • Best for: Leadership teams and organizations navigating growth, mergers, or significant shifts in strategy — especially when the people side of change feels like it's lagging behind the plan.

  • The Result: A team that meets change with steadiness rather than resistance, and leaders who know how to bring people with them.

Gina des Cognets speaking at leadership offsite workshop Lead with Gina Design Thinking for your Career

From Me to We

Unblocking Silos to Create a Unified Team

Inspired by years of facilitating high-performing teams, this session tackles one of the most common — and costly — dynamics in organizational life: the tendency to optimize for your own team's success at the expense of the whole. Leaders learn to shift from a "my team as hero" mindset to a genuine "we" orientation, building the skills to partner across functions, navigate tension, and keep the whole organization rowing in the same direction.

  • Best for: Leadership teams and cross-functional groups who are ready to perform at their highest potential but are experiencing friction, misalignment, or breakdowns in collaboration.

  • The Result: Teams grounded in trust, equipped to work through conflict with candor, and capable of sustaining the kind of dialogue that drives results — together.

Gina des Cognets certified Designing Your Life coach offsite workshop Lead with Gina speaking at Tuck school of business

Quieting your Inner Critic

to Lead with Impact

Inspired by my work with Tara Mohr’s Playing Big framework and years of executive coaching, this session addresses the internal barriers that keep leaders from showing up at their full potential. We identify the "Inner Critic," distinguish it from your truest self, and practice leading from a place of "Inner Wisdom" rather than fear or self-doubt.

  • Best for: Leaders in new, expanded roles; women-in-leadership groups and initiatives where the goal is to go deeper, not just broader.

  • The Result: Leaders who speak up more confidently, take smarter risks, and lead with authentic authority.

Lead with Gina Leadership workshops and offsites

Imagine the Possibilities

Design Thinking for your Career

As a certified Designing Your Life coach — based on the renowned Stanford course — I help participants apply design thinking principles to their own careers and lives. This is a highly interactive, generative session that uses curiosity, creative ideation, and genuine collaboration to tackle the real tensions of work and life that don't have easy answers.

  • Best for: Small groups of ten or fewer, including executive cohorts and retreat settings where there's room for reflection and honest conversation.

  • The Result: A renewed sense of purpose and a tangible "Odyssey Plan" — a concrete vision for the next chapter of your professional life.

Tailored For Your Team
Leadership Development Topics

Don’t see exactly what you need? I design custom workshops around your team’s specific sticking points. Topics I work with frequently include:

  • Mastering Communication: Practical tools and frameworks for the kind of communication that actually changes how teams work together — not just how they talk.

  • Coaching + Feedback: Making the shift from manager to coach, and building a culture where feedback flows continuously rather than landing once a year and going nowhere.

  • Healthy Conflict as a Performance Driver: Learning to navigate difficult conversations with skill and intention — and discovering that conflict, handled well, is one of the fastest paths to a more aligned, stronger team.

  • Developing High-Performing Teams: How the best leaders identify, invest in, and grow talent.

  • The Team Reset: Establishing the norms, first principles, and shared agreements that rebuild trust and accountability when a team needs a fresh start.

  • The Power of the Retro: Using retrospectives and after-action reviews to build a team culture where learning from experience is a habit, not an afterthought.

Strava logo

Case Study
Building a Manager Cohort at Strava

The Challenge

Strava's engagement data was saying something the leadership team couldn't ignore: people didn't feel good about their managers. I was brought in to fix it.

What We Did

I started by listening to learn and understand where the gaps existed. We built the program around the way Strava operated. First, I designed and launched a 90-minute course called "Great Managers at Strava Are..." built around a simple idea: great managers are coaches, leaders, and multipliers, drawing examples from current Strava leaders and externally validated experts. We kept the momentum going with monthly manager workshops — part learning, part coaching, part creating space for managers to support each other.

The Result

A year in, over 80% of Strava's managers had completed the course. Confidence in manager performance jumped more than 10 percentage points. What stuck with me most was watching the manager cohort shift from operating in silos to leaning on each other for support and guidance. Not only had we helped them uplevel their abilities, we created a leadership community.

Gina des Cognets speaking to women leaders Lead with Gina workshops and offsites

What’s Unique About My Approach?

I've seen how leadership teams actually work — from the inside

I've been a Chief of Staff three times across different organizations. I've watched leadership teams navigate hard decisions, work through tension, and figure out how to align when the stakes are high. That experience — combined with years leading teams myself — means I come into the room with a rich bank of pattern recognition. I can quickly diagnose what's happening and help teams move through it.

The pre-work makes the breakthroughs possible

A lot of facilitators start from scratch in the room with only the leader's perception of what needs to change. I don't. The interviews I do beforehand uncover the full picture — all the dynamics, not just the ones leadership can see. That's what allows us to get to the real issues faster and have those "aha" moments that actually stick.

Every element has a purpose

I build sessions around what you're actually trying to achieve: focused, productive experiences that get your team where they need to go.

I diagnose in the room.

I'm there to bring an outside perspective and read what's actually happening as it happens, rather than voice over a plan you've already built. You're hiring me for what I can see that you can't see from inside.

Ready to create a breakthrough for your team?

If your leadership team is capable of more and you want to help them get there, let's talk. We'll figure out what kind of experience makes sense for where you are — and design something that actually moves your team forward.