Tuesday, 17th Nov 2026
6:30 am - 8.00am
LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE
Please join us for a Free Member Workshop, hosted by Melissa Thomson
You will need to log in to register.
The WORKSHOP
Through facilitated reflection, discussion and practical application, participants will explore:
- What happens when we shrink or push in communication, and how to recognise our own patterns when the stakes rise.
- Why communication isn't simply about what we say, but what is actually received.
- How our presence and state influence the way we communicate and how others experience us.
- How to stay connected to another person without abandoning our own voice or authority.
- Why courage can come before confidence, and how everyday conversations influence trust, relationships and workplace culture.
What you will leave with
Participants will leave with:
- Greater awareness of what happens to them when the stakes rise, including their tendency to shrink, push or move between the two.
- An understanding of Presence, Connection and Courage as three capacities for more intentional communication.
- Practical ways to stay connected to others without losing connection to themselves or their message.
- A different perspective on confidence: courage can come first, and confidence can grow through action.
- Greater clarity about one real conversation they want to approach differently and how they want to show up within it.
Breakfast:
Tea and coffee are available at the venue. A fruit platter and selection of light finger-style breakfast bites will be served.
About Your Host:
MELISSA THOMSON
High Performance & Leadership Expert | Speaker | Facilitator | Coach
Melissa Thomson is a High Performance and Leadership Expert, speaker, facilitator and coach whose work sits at the intersection of human wellbeing and organisational performance.
With more than two decades of experience across wellbeing, human development, coaching and leadership, Melissa brings together an unusual combination of disciplines and lived experience. Her background spans leadership development, communication, coaching, counselling, NLP, body-based practices and facilitation, alongside the rather less theoretical experience of actually leading an organisation through growth, complexity and change.
As the founder and leader of an independent school, Melissa has navigated the realities of leadership firsthand: people and culture, conflict and difficult conversations, governance and risk, community relationships, competing priorities and the decisions that don't arrive with a neat answer attached.
It shaped a question that sits at the heart of her work:
What if excellence doesn't require us to sacrifice ourselves in order to achieve it?
Melissa calls this Joyful Excellence: an approach to high performance where people and results are not competing priorities, and wellbeing is understood as a foundation for sustained excellence rather than a reward we earn after the work is done.
Her work is grounded in the belief that the way we lead others begins with the way we lead ourselves.
It all starts with connection to self: knowing your values, noticing your patterns, understanding your state, listening to your inner compass and developing the discernment to know what is true. From there comes the capacity to act courageously, connect authentically and influence the people and cultures around us.
Melissa brings embodied wisdom and leadership rigour together, exploring not only what we do at work, but how we show up while doing it.
Her work invites leaders and professionals to cultivate greater presence, inner authority and courageous communication, and to reconsider one of the most persistent myths about confidence:
You don't always need confidence before you act. Sometimes you do it, you don't die, and confidence catches up afterwards.
Courage over confidence. Heart and rigour. Joy and excellence.
That's where Melissa believes a more human and powerful way of working and leading begins.