LEADERSHIP BEGINS WITH HOW WE SHOW UP

Step Into Leadership
A Workshop on Presence, Purpose, and Showing Up

Workshop Objectives
Participants will:
- Develop greater awareness of how they SHOW UP in leadership roles.
- Explore how their own backgrounds, values, identities, and lived experiences can inform their leadership style.
- Practice claiming space with confidence and intention.
- Strengthen their ability to communicate purpose, direction, and values clearly.
- Reflect on how presence, posture, voice, listening, and action shape leadership.
- Identify the people, communities, histories, and sources of support that help them lead.
- Learn how to create space for others to participate, contribute, and lead.
- Develop a practical leadership plan that can be applied to their own academic, professional, organizational, or community leadership opportunities.

Intended Participants
This workshop is designed for emerging and established leaders who want to strengthen their leadership presence, clarify their purpose, and become more intentional in how they communicate and lead.
It is especially useful for students, faculty, staff, managers, professionals, community organizers, nonprofit leaders, mentoring programs, women’s leadership groups, career development programs, and teams seeking deeper connection and trust.

The workshop is appropriate for participants at many stages of leadership development, including those who are preparing to take on new leadership roles, navigating transitions, seeking to lead more authentically, or wanting to better align their leadership with their values and lived experience.
No prior dance, movement, or performance experience is required.

Expected Outcomes
By the end of the workshop, participants will have a clearer understanding of how leadership is shaped by presence, intention, identity, clarity, communication, community, gratitude, and action.

Participants will be able to use their own backgrounds and lived experiences to inform how they SHOW UP in leadership roles. They will identify specific leadership opportunities in their own lives and develop practical next steps for applying the concepts learned in the workshop.

Each participant will leave with:
- A clearer sense of their leadership presence.
- A better understanding of how their identity, values, and background inform their leadership.
- Tools for communicating intention with greater clarity.
- Strategies for claiming space, communicating clearly, and participating more fully in leadership settings.
- A deeper appreciation of the role of community support in leadership growth.
- A personalized leadership plan developed through workbook prompts and guided reflection.

Workshop Structure
The workshop is organized around six core leadership practices:
1. Claim Your Space
Participants reflect on where they are being called to take up more space in their work, academic, organizational, or community lives. This section explores confidence, visibility, belonging, and the internal barriers that often keep people from fully stepping forward.
2. Signal Your Intention
Leadership requires clarity of purpose. Participants practice naming what they want to communicate, what they stand for, and what they are inviting others to understand, support, or join.
3. Expressing With Clarity
Participants examine how their actions, words, posture, timing, and decisions communicate leadership. The goal is to become more intentional and more readable to others.
4. Relay on Your Community
Leadership is not solitary. Participants identify the people, mentors, communities, histories, and values that support their leadership growth. They also reflect on how they can become part of the support system for others.
5. Invite Others Forward
Strong leadership creates space for others. Participants explore how to move beyond individual visibility toward shared participation, collaboration, and collective leadership.
6. Lead With Gratitude
The workshop closes with reflection on gratitude, acknowledgment, and responsibility. Participants identify who has supported their leadership journey, how to feel confident sharing the spotlight, and how they will carry the workshop lessons forward.

Workbook and Leadership Plan
Each participant receives a workbook with guided prompts, reflection exercises, and planning tools. The workbook helps participants connect the workshop concepts to their own real-life leadership opportunities.
By the end of the session, participants will have developed a personalized leadership plan that includes:
- The leadership opportunity they want to step into.
- The space they need to claim.
- The intention they want to communicate.
- The strengths and background experiences they can draw upon.
- The community support available to them.
- The next concrete actions they will take.
- How they will create space for others as they lead.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES
Participants will gain confidence and develop a clear plan for their role as leaders. The experience will also foster personal growth and a deeper appreciation for their own cultural background that supports "bringing your whole self to the table".  Participants will leave the workshop with a personalized plan for implementing concepts learned into their own personal and professional environments. 

1. Culture, Identity, and Leadership Presence
Using the Case of Puerto Rico as an Example

• Briefly explore how culture, history, and community shape identity, voice, and leadership
• Reflect on how participants’ own backgrounds, values, and lived experiences can become sources of leadership strength
  
• Learn how culturally grounded practices — including Puerto Rican Bomba — can offer lessons in presence, listening, intention, confidence, and self-expression
  
• Identify how participants want to SHOW UP in their current or future roles
  
• Appreciate how diverse identities and experiences can strengthen teams, workplaces, academic settings, and communities

---

2.  Interactive and Participatory Session: Showing Up with Intention

• Participate in guided reflection and simple embodied exercises designed to strengthen presence, focus, and clarity
• Practice claiming space with confidence, purpose, and authenticity
  
• Learn how to signal intention before speaking, leading, or taking action
• Explore how posture, voice, timing, listening, and purposeful action shape how others understand our leadership
• Reflect on the role of community support: who has your back, whose leadership you support, and how leaders create space for others
  

---

3.  Personalized Implementation Plan: Applying the Concepts in the Real World

• Identify a real leadership opportunity where you want to show up with greater clarity, confidence, and purpose
• Apply six core leadership principles: claim your space, signal your intention, move with clarity, rely on your community, invite others forward, and lead with gratitude
  
• Use guided workbook prompts to connect workshop concepts to your own leadership goals and context
• Create practical next steps, anchors, and reminders for practicing intentional leadership after the workshop
• Leave with a personalized leadership plan that draws from your own background, values, and lived experiences

This workshop is available in multiple formats that can be adapted to your team or organization's needs.  To schedule an exploratory conversation to see if this workshop is right for you, click the button below:

* Any proceeds from this workshop will be donated to Taller Comunidad La Goyco - A community Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico, dedicated to promoting health, environment, and culture on the island.  Learn more about them here: www.lagoyco.org/
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              ** Photography by Juan Caballero