Keynote · Webinar · Executive session
AI leadership speakeron the questions executives and managers are actually asking
Six talks, each one built from a question executives and managers are already typing into a search bar at eleven at night. No technical background required, and nobody leaves with a reading list instead of a decision.
Speaking topics
- 01How to handle employee resistance to AI without breaking trustThe four human barriers, why tech shame is the one nobody reports, and why people never sustainably sacrifice their values. The argument.
- 02Who should own AI in your companyWhy adoption stalls when nobody owns the outcome, what shadow AI is telling you, and the four things a mid-market company needs instead of an AI team. The argument.
- 03Should you hire a Head of AI?Yes, once the leadership layer around the role has moved. What happens when it has not, and what skills executives need as a company becomes AI-native. The argument.
- 04What kills an AI pilot after the tools are inThe gap between implementation and adoption, why most companies skip the redesign stage, and where the ROI actually goes.
- 05How to get employees using AI when nobody explained whyWritten for the person handed an AI rollout without being handed authority. Meaning, permission, and why announcements do not change behavior.
- 06When your team thinks AI is coming for their jobsIdentity threat, role reinvention, and what an honest conversation about changing work actually sounds like.
- 07Request a custom talkIf your room is wrestling with something adjacent to these, say so and it gets built for them.
What formats are available?
- Keynote · 30 to 60 minutes
- Conferences, association events, company all-hands. One argument, carried to a conclusion, with research the audience can check.
- Webinar · 45 to 60 minutes
- Live or recorded, for associations, membership organizations, and partner audiences. Includes live questions, which is usually where the useful part happens.
- Executive session · 90 minutes to half a day
- A leadership team in one room. Less presentation, more structured discussion, and the group leaves having made a decision rather than having heard an idea.
Available remote anywhere, and in person in the Portland and Vancouver metro area or with travel arranged.
Who is this for?
Three rooms, and the talk changes depending on which one it is.
- Executives and managers at founder-led or privately owned companies, where the leadership team is the constraint on how fast AI can be adopted
- HR, L&D, and operations leaders handed responsibility for an AI rollout without being handed authority over it, where traditional change management or tool training is not producing the movement anybody expected
- Association and membership audiences of business owners, where the room is at wildly different stages and the talk has to work for all of them
No technical background is assumed, and no part of any talk requires the audience to already be using AI.
What does the audience leave with?
Every talk ends on something a person can do on Monday, not a framework they have to remember.
Fifteen-plus years on a platform teaches you that being right is not the job. Plenty of people know this material. Far fewer can hand it to a room in a way that survives the drive home, and fewer still can do it without making anyone in the seats feel stupid for not knowing it already.
So the talks are built to be used, not admired. Concepts land in language people already speak. The examples are recognizable enough that someone sees their own team in them. And there is real humour in it — usually at my own expense, because a room that laughs is a room that has stopped defending itself, and nobody changes their behavior while their guard is up.
None of it is a lecture. The room works. Short exercises, a reframe people try on themselves rather than watch me demonstrate, questions handed back to the group instead of answered from the front. Then a deliberate pause, because information needs somewhere to land before the next thing arrives.
Most speakers fill that gap. It is the most useful part of the hour.
That is not a stylistic preference, it is the same principle the assessments measure: people keep what they have practised, not what they were told. A talk about why adoption fails that only transmits information has already failed at the thing it is describing.
It is not forty-five minutes of straight talk while the eyes glaze over.
People think differently by the end. New thoughts, a reframe or two, conversations that keep going in the hallway and into the next meeting. They leave able to name what is actually happening in their organization, and to take one specific next step without waiting for permission.
The measure I care about is simple. People leave in a better place than they came in.
The most common one is a single question to take back to a leadership meeting: what have you personally shipped with AI in the last month, and who saw you do it? The silence that follows, when it follows, tells a room more than a readiness survey will.
Tools do not create transformation.
Adoption systems do.
About the speaker
Lesley Bodine is the founder of Accorda Advisory LLC in Camas, Washington, and an AI Adoption & Executive Readiness Advisor.
She has spent more than fifteen years in organizational development, leadership development, and L&D, building programs from the ground up and improving performance across distributed, multi-site organizations. She is certified in AI leadership and cultural adoption, and trained as a neurolinguistic coach, which is where the belief-level material in these talks comes from.
The work behind the talks is an assessment practice. She measures leadership teams with the Accorda Leadership Index, runs the development that moves them, then re-measures. That means the material comes from live rooms rather than from a literature review. More on the background.
Accorda Advisory LLC
Frequently asked questions
What does Lesley Bodine speak about?
The human layer where AI adoption actually stalls. Employee resistance and how to handle it without breaking trust, who should own AI inside a company, whether to hire a Head of AI, what kills a pilot after the tools are in, how to get employees using AI when nobody explained why, and what to do when a team believes AI is coming for their jobs.
What formats are available?
Keynote of 30 to 60 minutes for conferences and company all-hands. Webinar of 45 to 60 minutes, live or recorded, for associations and member organizations. Executive session of 90 minutes to half a day for a leadership team, which includes discussion and a decision the group leaves with.
Who is the audience?
Executives and managers at founder-led and privately owned companies, HR and L&D leaders responsible for an AI rollout nobody gave them authority over, and association or membership audiences of business owners. The talks assume no technical background.
Can a talk be built for our specific situation?
Yes, and it usually is. Tell me what the room is actually wrestling with and the talk gets shaped around that rather than delivered off a shelf.
Booking
Tell me about the room.
Who is in it, what they are stuck on, and how long you have. That is enough to know whether one of these is right or whether it needs building for you.
Not ready to talk yet
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People who find this page are usually reading something that finally names a piece nobody had named for them. Every week or two I publish one more of those — where AI adoption is actually breaking down inside companies, built from the research and from what I see in real leadership teams.
No pitch, no sequence designed to wear you down. If it stops being useful, one click and you are out.
Would you rather start with a read on your own organization? The AI Adoption Gap Snapshot™ takes five minutes and covers all twelve domains.