Join us in Rapid City, South Dakota, at the Rushmore Hotel & Suites Conference Center on October 13-14 for the RBLP 2026 Conference.
Learn More. Lead Better.®
RBLP Certified Leader ($450)
Non-Certified Leader ($550)
Airport: Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
Transportation: Rental cars, rideshare, and hotel-coordinated transportation (coordinate 24 hrs. prior)
Average Weather: 45–65°F in October
The presenter application period has now closed. Please see our outstanding lineup of presenters and speakers below.
The Rushmore Hotel & Suites is located in the heart of historic downtown Rapid City.
Staying on-site at the Rushmore Hotel & Suites is encouraged for networking and convenience.
Monday, October 12 – Arrival & Networking
Tuesday, October 13 – Conference Day
Wednesday, October 14 – Conference Day
Thursday, October 15 – Explore or Depart
Nearby Attractions
Rapid City Attractions
How Signal-Aware™ leadership can deepen client impact and create new opportunities for your business
The dynamics that shape team performance often become visible before they appear in the results—if leaders know how to see them.
Based on Dr. Mike Patterson’s new book, Six Signals: The Dynamics that Shape Team Performance, this presentation introduces Signal-Aware™ leadership—a practical methodology for recognizing what may be happening beneath performance through six critical lenses: Alignment, Trust, Progress, Fit, Sustainability, and Lived Experience.
For coaches, consultants, facilitators, and leadership professionals, Signal-Aware offers more than a powerful way to help leaders. It creates a new way to serve them. Discover how the methodology can deepen coaching and leadership conversations, strengthen team engagements, and open pathways from individual work to broader organizational impact through leadership and team assessments, live and on-demand learning, and a growing library of practical resources.
Help leaders see sooner. Create greater value. Expand your impact. And grow your business by doing work that matters.
Dr. Mike Patterson is a leadership strategist, author, executive advisor, and speaker who has spent more than two decades helping leaders understand what drives people, shapes culture, and strengthens team performance.
His perspective has been shaped across diverse environments—from service as a U.S. Army officer to corporate leadership, executive consulting, higher education, and work with organizations across business, government, military, and nonprofit sectors. Through that experience, he has seen a consistent truth: the dynamics that shape performance are often visible before they appear in the results—if leaders know how to see them.
That insight is the foundation of Six Signals: The Dynamics that Shape Team Performance and the Signal-Aware™ methodology—an integrated system of leadership and team assessments, live and on-demand learning, and practical resources that help leaders see sooner and respond more effectively.
Mike is also the author of Mission First, People Always and co-author of Have a Nice Conflict. He holds a doctorate from Pepperdine University and has taught leadership at the graduate and doctoral levels.
His work is grounded in a simple conviction: Great leaders learn to see what others miss, ask better questions, and act while their choices can still make a difference.
Dr. Andy Garrett is a clinical psychologist, executive coach, and resilience expert who has spent nearly two decades helping high-performing individuals and leaders thrive under pressure. His work sits at the intersection of identity, values, purpose, resilience, and sustainable performance.
Drawing on clinical psychology, systems thinking, and years of work with executives and organizations, Andy helps people understand how deeply held values and identity shape the way they lead, respond to adversity, and perform. He earned his doctorate from Azusa Pacific University and developed the True North framework around the belief that sustainable growth begins with knowing who you are and what matters most.
As a thought leader and co-creator of resilience and leadership solutions with Dr. Mike Patterson, Andy brings a distinctly human dimension to the Signal-Aware™ ecosystem—helping
leaders connect what they see happening around them with the deeper dynamics shaping people, relationships, and performance.
His work is grounded in a powerful conviction: when leaders are anchored in identity, values, and purpose, they are better equipped to navigate pressure, build resilience, and create the conditions for people to flourish.
Connector Profile helps you understand how to create opportunity, then learn what to do next. Connector Profile reveals the relationship-building behaviors that are helping or holding you back and gives you a clearer path to becoming more discoverable, trusted, connected, and ready for what comes next.
Why do some leaders seem to attract more opportunities than others? Nate Champion, author of Nobody’s Coming to Find You and creator of Connector Profile, explores how relationships, visibility, trust, and intentional action create the conditions for opportunity. In an increasingly AI-enabled world, this thought-provoking keynote challenges leaders to invest in the distinctly human behaviors that make us more discoverable, understood, trusted, recommendable, and ready for what comes next.
Brenda Risner
Leadership in Action: Understanding the Behaviors That Drive Results
45-minute workshop
Strong leaders don’t just focus on what they do – they understand what drives how they think, decide, and show up. In this interactive workshop, you’ll gain insight into the internal drivers that shape your leadership style, communication patterns, and responses under pressure. You’ll begin to recognize why certain situations feel easy while others create friction, and how those patterns impact your effectiveness with others. Through practical reflection and real-world application, you’ll learn how to lead with greater clarity, strengthen trust, and navigate team dynamics more intentionally. Whether you’re leading a team, influencing across an organization, or continuing to grow in your own leadership journey, this session will equip you with tools you can apply immediately to relate better, lead better, and get better results.
*As part of this workshop, all participants will receive a WHY.os Discovery, so they can discover their WHY, HOW, and WHAT – their WHY Operating System.
Marsha Cleff
Showcasing Your Certification on Your Resume
45-minute workshop
Many mid-career professionals find their resumes look like a mere list of job duties rather than a compelling narrative of their professional impact. As RBLP-certified leaders, we need to ensure your resume accurately reflects the level of responsibility, influence, and results you bring to your work.
In this interactive workshop, participants will use the Six Star Resume Strategy guide to step back from their day-to-day work and convert their pivotal professional moments into powerful resume statements. Attendees will engage in practical exercises to:
Identify significant contributions where they took initiative, solved problems, or helped a team succeed.
Learn to structure their experience using the three components of a strong resume bullet.
Use the Professional Impact Tracker to effectively record situations where their actions improved a process or resolved an issue.
Learn exactly where to strategically position their RBLP credential within resume sections.
Participants will leave equipped to create a resume that effectively conveys the true value of their resilient leadership to any organization.
Alvin Keen
Practical Experiences in Apply RBLP Traits in Today’s Disruptive Economic Conditions
45-minute workshop
Workshop to review selected RBLP Traits and how these are applicable to dynamic chaos environment in today’s economy for Professionals as part of their own career development and interaction within and outside of their firms. Engage the audience in how through self-reflection of RBLP Traits they can identify and evaluate these applied in their career.
As part of relevant practical application: I would engage audience with discussion and examine how RBLP certification has assisted my own career in military, aerospace, oil-gas, academic and defense industry in working domestic and international teams. This is especially relevant for professionals with career transitions from one industry to another industry, i.e. Military to Civilian. Lastly, as AI continues to advance rapidly how can the RBLP skills assist the professional in their own careers and how can they as RBLP certified leaders assist their colleagues and firms at this disruptive transformational time.
Dr. Shari Bowen
Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Where Motivation, Competence, and Compassion Meet
45-minute workshop
The workshop EI=MC^2 encourages leaders to understand and demonstrate emotional intelligence in the work environment. The talk hinges on the leader understanding their own emotions, having self-awareness to control and manage themselves. They simultaneously observe and manage those working for them to impact the climate of the organization leading to productivity. Motivation, Competence, and Compassion are qualities brought to the forefront of the leader characteristics to enable productivity of workers in any environment creating trust, action, influence, and transformation. The talk is engaging and interactive. Following the workshop, learners will be able to immediately apply tools teaching them to audit their organization with “Why?” 1. Why am I leading this? 2. Why does this matter? 3. Why should others care?
During the workshop we will identify a responsibility that may feel draining, followed by an understanding of the deeper purpose behind it. We will connect the dots of competence and emotional intelligence teaching “The Pause Principle.” The simple framework helps process your emotions, assess the situation, understand perspectives, speak intentionally, and evaluate outcomes.
The third component of Compassion will be introduced as a strength not a weakness. Learners will apply “The 2-Minute Connection” spending intentional time daily with team members. This reaffirms connection building trust faster than control.
The take-aways will leave learners in position to normalize feedback, practice reflective listening, ask more questions, name emotions properly, and respond instead of react to employees. They will be challenged to commit to one thing; mindset shift, communication improvement, or one relational action the upcoming week at work.
Jaclyn Kirkwood
The Power of Listening Intelligence: Building Connection Before Correction
45-minute workshop
Listening Intelligence (LQ) Overview Workshop is a high-level interactive session designed to introduce participants to the power of Listening Intelligence and how communication impacts leadership, trust, collaboration, and workplace culture. Participants will explore how listening habits influence conversations, relationships, decision-making, and team dynamics while gaining insight into practical strategies for improving communication effectiveness.
This session provides an introduction to the LQ ECHO® framework and the importance of intentional listening in both personal and professional environments. Attendees will also have the opportunity to win a complimentary LQ ECHO® Listening Intelligence Assessment and a 30-minute personalized review session. In addition, all participants will receive access to a special discounted rate for future LQ ECHO® assessments and coaching opportunities.
Shelley Lamothe
Slowing Down to Speed Up
45-minute workshop
This workshop goes through the personal resiliency – the science of the Autonomic Nervous system, practical strategies in the Physical, Mental, Social, and Spiritual Realms to improve personal resilience, and how to use your breath as a tool to reset instantly in the moment to find the calm and clarity to make good decisions.
I also touch on the chaos of everyday information and how to locate the signal from the noise in order to be a present and engaged leader who follows the principles of RBLP in a way that becomes unconscious.
Key takeaways: Adaptive thinking to address negative programming, mastering stillness with breath, and how social connection benefits resilience.
Dr. William Harvey
Stability Is a Lie. Here’s What to Build Instead.
45-minute workshop
Most resilience programs are built on a flawed premise: that stability exists, disruption is the exception, and recovery is the goal.
This workshop challenges that premise directly. Drawing on complexity theory, Toyota Kata, RBLP’s core resilience traits, and over two decades of operational and organizational leadership experience, this session reframes resilience as the capacity to maintain directional momentum inside permanent flux rather than the ability to return to baseline after disruption.
RBLP practitioners, coaches, and trainers will complete a structured diagnostic to identify where their current teams/clients are most exposed to the stability trap, examine three failure modes that undermine RBLP’s adaptability, team building, and communication traits, and practice three immediately applicable coaching moves designed to build flux tolerance at the team level. Participants leave with a scored diagnostic, a concrete coaching question, a reference tool, and a different conversation to have in their next team/client meeting.
Neco Johnson
Leadership Through Chaos: How Leaders Think, Respond, and Serve When the Pressure Rises
45-minute workshop
Leadership is tested most in the moments we do not expect. Leadership Through Chaos is a powerful blend of storytelling and practical leadership insight that helps attendees understand how emotion shapes judgment, how assumptions distort perspective, and how strong leaders regain clarity when the pressure is highest.
Through a real-life moment that challenged identity, pride, and purpose, this presentation walks attendees through a six-step framework for slowing down, seeing clearly, and leading with intention instead of reaction.
This experience reinforces the importance of recognizing when emotions are louder than the facts, re-centering before making decisions, and showing up for people in the moments that matter most.
Attendees leave with greater self-awareness, emotional discipline, and a deeper understanding of what it means to lead and serve others when frustration, emotion, and internal expectations compete for control.
Latoya Thompson
Leading Without the Title: How Real Influence Is Earned Before Authority Is Given
45-minute workshop
Leadership is often misunderstood as something tied to rank, position, or authority. In reality, some of the most impactful leaders are the people others choose to trust, follow, and rely on long before a title is ever assigned.
This engaging and thought-provoking workshop challenges the traditional view of leadership by exploring how influence is built through action, consistency, trust, communication, courage, and presence not hierarchy. Drawing from over 25 years of military leadership, healthcare operations, and executive project management experience, this session provides practical insight into what it truly means to lead in high-pressure environments when you are not the person in charge.
Through real-world examples, reflection, and interactive discussion, attendees will leave empowered to recognize that leadership is not reserved for those at the top, it belongs to those willing to set the standard, serve others, and lead from where they stand.
PJ Ellis
The Weight of Leadership: Building Judgment Under Pressure
45-minute workshop
Leadership failure rarely occurs because leaders lack knowledge. More often, it occurs when pressure, uncertainty, competing priorities, and consequence distort judgment.
Drawing on more than two decades of leadership experience leading teams and organizations in high-consequence environments, this interactive workshop explores why capable leaders make poor decisions under pressure and what separates those who remain effective when the stakes are highest.
Participants will examine common leadership traps, assess the hidden pressures influencing their decision-making, and learn a practical framework for strengthening judgment, resilience, and leadership effectiveness. Attendees will leave with tools they can immediately apply to lead themselves, their teams, and their organizations more effectively during periods of uncertainty and change.
Dr. Christine Lustik
Mindful Leadership: How increased Self-Awareness equals more resilient and productive employees.
45-minute workshop
What if the most powerful leadership tool you have isn’t a strategy framework or a performance metric — but your own self-awareness?
In this workshop, we explore how a leader’s inner clarity directly shapes the culture, resilience, and output of their team. We begin by defining self-awareness in a leadership context: not just knowing your strengths and weaknesses, but developing a real-time understanding of how your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence the people around you.
Participants will walk away with practical, immediately applicable mindfulness-based practices designed to sharpen self-awareness — even in the midst of high-pressure environments. Finally, we’ll examine the why behind the results. Drawing on research in organizational psychology and neuroscience, we’ll connect the dots between a more self-aware leader and measurable shifts in employee engagement, psychological safety, and performance. When leaders lead from awareness, teams don’t just survive challenges — they grow through them.
Dr. Nick Graham
Impasse or Irritation: A Workshop on Interpreting Signals and Appreciating What They Can Teach Us.
45-minute workshop
Often, in business, we experience interruptions in flow. A shipment was missed, inventory demand was miscalculated, or the new hire left due to poor culture fit. Whatever the work to be done, stumbling blocks are inevitable– But how do we perceive the challenges we face?
This workshop focuses on deciphering genuine impasse versus productive signals that inform our work. We will use real-world examples and a team-based learning approach to build recognition skills of common adversities and co-construct methods for adapting to our ever-changing environments that we can apply immediately.
Participants will work together to explore multiple perspectives on a given situation, learn to communicate what the signals they recognize are teaching them, and implement iterative improvement processes to amplify their success. Participants will leave with a transferable signal classification framework to facilitate this process within their own teams, creating a team climate where setbacks become data and adversity becomes an engine for learning and growth.
With these tools, we will shift our understanding of trouble from impasse to opportunities for constructive solutions.
Heather LaRue
The 3 Relationships of a Leader
45-minute workshop
What if everything we know about leadership development starts with just three relationships? In this workshop, we explore the 3 relationships of leader model—based on the simple but powerful idea that every leader operates within three essential relationships:
The health of these three relationships determines the success and sustainability of any leader. When all three are strong, leaders maximize their potential. But when just one or two relationships are neglected, the damage spills over into the others—poisoning progress, eroding trust, and stunting growth.
During this hands-on session, participants will:
Drawing on over 20 years of hands-on leadership experience across retail management, distribution leadership, restaurant management, and state government for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I’ll guide participants through real-world examples, reflective exercises, and practical tools to help you leave with a clear, actionable roadmap. Whether you’re a new manager or a seasoned executive, this workshop will help you see your leadership through the lens of these three relationships and take immediate steps to grow.
Dr. Donna Newman
GRIT: What is it?
15-minute talk
This talk will highlight how leaders can embrace grit, gain a deeper understanding and apply it from a universal lens. Across cultures and contexts, grit is that steady determination, when applied, leads to lasting leadership impact. Learn ways to leverage grit as a force multiplier in your leadership.
Brenda Risner
What’s In Your Bucket? Know Yourself, Show Yourself, Grow Your Team
15-minute talk
What shows up in your leadership under pressure isn’t accidental—it’s internal. Based on the principle that “what’s in the well comes up in the bucket,” this session challenges leaders to examine what is driving their decisions, communication, and team impact from the inside out.
Designed for RBLP-certified leaders, this presentation focuses on leading yourself first through increased self-awareness, values-based decision-making, and intentional behavior. Participants will explore what to reinforce, what to remove, and how to clear the buildup that can quietly erode trust, consistency, and effectiveness. The result is a simple, practical framework leaders can immediately apply to strengthen credibility, improve communication, and lead with greater clarity when it matters most.
Dr. Carrie Morris
RBLP Certification: An Untapped Market in Educational Leadership?
15-minute talk
Educational leaders — from teacher leaders and school-based administrators to district personnel and advisory boards — represent a significant and often overlooked audience for RBLP certification. Unlike corporate organizations, education systems operate under tight budgets, but what they do have are mandatory continuing education and licensure renewal requirements that create a built-in demand for high-quality, credentialed professional development.
This session invites an open conversation about the potential of bringing RBLP certification into educational contexts, drawing on participants’ own experiences and insights, while exploring how resilience-building frameworks can shift teams away from hierarchical, compliance-driven leadership toward shared decision-making, adaptive capacity, and a culture of relational trust that sustains teams through adversity rather than fracturing under it.
Michael Rodriguez
“Temet Nosce — What Failure Reveals About Who You Are”
15-minute talk
Failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s the moment that reveals who you really are.
In this talk, Michael Rodriguez shares how injury, adversity, and pressure didn’t break him; they clarified him. Through the lens of temet nosce – “know thyself” – he reframes failure as data, not defeat.
Because failure doesn’t just test your skills… it exposes your standards, your mindset, and your leadership under pressure.
You don’t rise by avoiding failure. You rise by understanding what it reveals, and choosing who you become next.
Desmond Walker
Stockdale Paradox and Resiliency in the Workplace
15-minute talk
This talk is about VADM James Bond Stockdale and his POW experience that was used to create the US Navy’s Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Award for Inspirational Leadership. As a recent winner of the award, present a narrative that examines the “Stockdale Paradox” that highlights a specific dichotomy for leadership in the workplace.
Jean-Paul Courville
Warrior to Wanderer: Leadership, Life, and Resilience
15-minute talk
This session explores leadership and resilience through real-world experience – from structured environments to a solo Appalachian Trail thru-hike. Drawing from decades of leadership, international work, and personal transition, it challenges how we think about control, adaptability, and forward progress when the path isn’t clearly defined.
Grounded in the perspective behind Forward On: Warrior to Wanderer, the focus is on practical application – how individuals operate when structure is removed, uncertainty increases, and accountability becomes personal.
Attendees will walk away with actionable insights on maintaining momentum in uncertain conditions, adapting without losing direction, and applying discipline and perspective to both professional and personal challenges.
Chad Bacastow
When Leaders Decide to Leave an Organization
15-minute talk
Most of us have experienced the privilege of serving on great teams within organizations we were proud to be part of. The themes of climate, culture, and a leader’s role in shaping both build naturally on the foundation of RBLP. But what happens when a leader finds themselves fighting against a culture that challenges their values, conflicts with their beliefs, and undermines the positive climate they strive to create for their team?
How long should a leader remain in an environment that steadily erodes morale, where every effort feels like paddling against a current of deceit, dysfunction, or unethical behavior? At what point does perseverance become self-sacrifice? And how do leaders determine when it is time to step away and invest their passion, energy, and leadership in an organization that truly aligns with their principles?
The answer is deeply personal and different for everyone. This talk explores the difficult decision to leave a corrosive culture while still caring deeply for the people within it. It will highlight the tension between commitment and conviction, the cost of staying too long, and the courage required to let go of a great team in pursuit of healthier leadership and organizational alignment.
Zormarah Lyda
The Art of Humility and Vulnerability in Leadership
15-minute talk
This session challenges the traditional image of leadership by exploring how humility and vulnerability are not weaknesses, but essential leadership strengths. Designed for RBLP leaders both vetted and inspiring, The Art of Humility and Vulnerability in Leadership will unpack the hidden cost of performative strength, emotional isolation, and silent pressure many leaders carry.
Through powerful storytelling, practical insight, and candid reflection inspired by the mission of Candidly Unsed, attendees will learn how authentic leadership fosters trust, resilience, connection, and lasting impact. This transformative conversation will empower leaders to lead with courage, humanity, and the confidence to create spaces where honesty and growth can coexist.
Dr. William Harvey
I Build Things That Won’t Last. So Do You.
15-minute talk
Nothing we build survives intact. Training programs drift after the trainer leaves. Coaching relationships end. Standards erode. Organizations restructure. And yet the work advances.
This talk makes a single argument: impermanence is not the enemy of good leadership work. It is the operating condition. Drawing on complexity theory, doctoral Toyota Kata sustainment research, and over two decades of building things in manufacturing, education, and organizational development, this session reframes what it means for our work to matter.
RBLP coaches and trainers will leave with a different measure for their own impact: not whether what they build holds its shape, but whether it advances the line.
Keith Griffin
What Happens on Monday? Turning Leadership Training into Leadership Practice
15-minute talk
Leadership development doesn’t end when the certificate is printed, or the conference concludes. In fact, that’s when the real work begins.
Drawing from three decades of leadership and operational experience in U.S. Navy Search and Rescue, Flip Griffin explores why even the best leadership training often struggles to create lasting organizational change. Through personal stories, practical lessons, and the principles behind Firehouse Freedom’s accountability & mentorship model, attendees will discover that leadership isn’t sustained through information alone. It grows through intentional relationships, accountability, consistent practice, and most importantly, the “Next Shift Actions” that get change actually happening.
This session challenges leaders to think beyond teaching leadership and begin developing leaders long after the classroom doors close. Participants will leave with practical ideas they can immediately apply within their own organizations to bridge the gap between learning leadership and living it.
Leonardo Riley
The Gift Was Never the Packaging
15-minute talk
What if your purpose was never tied to a title, career, or role? This session explores how resilience grows when we recognize that while the packaging may change, the gift – and our purpose – remains.
Joshua Marano
Problems & People: The Power of Framing
15-minute talk
What’s more dangerous: a divided team searching for the right problem, or a unified team solving the wrong one?
Leaders aren’t just problem solvers. They create space, provide direction, and empower people to understand, frame, and solve the right problem – together.
Drawing on behavioral science, executive coaching, and more than two decades of leadership experience leading people through complex, uncertain, and high-risk environments as a U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran and NATO strategic advisor, Joshua Marano explores why the most effective leaders don’t rush to solve problems. They create the conditions for better questions, divergent thinking, and shared understanding. Through an engaging practical exercise and research-backed insights, attendees will leave with practical leadership tools to unlock potential through problem-based coaching.
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