Stretch Capacity, Build Resilience, and Ignite Team Performance

Through her research-backed speaking programs, Michelle McCullough, CSP® shows leaders how to build emotional intelligence and resilience, giving teams practical tools to grow beyond their comfort zones, with the support they need to stay energized and engaged.

Support Your Team’s Growth Capacity (Without Burning Them Out)

Today's workplace demands more than traditional productivity metrics — it requires emotional intelligence, resilience, and the ability to help teams grow in sustainable, healthy ways. The biggest challenges facing leaders aren't about pushing harder but about building the capacity for teams to perform at their best while staying energized and engaged.

Michelle McCullough combines research-backed insights with practical strategies to help organizations create high-performing cultures where emotional wellness fuels results. Through her engaging, science-based approach, Michelle equips leaders to recognize where growth is possible, and how to guide their teams with empathy, clarity, and support.

Michelle offers flexible formats to meet your needs, from high-energy keynotes and interactive breakout sessions to comprehensive full-day workshops. All programs are available both in-person and virtually.

SOME OF MICHELLE’S CLIENTS INCLUDE:

Stretch Capacity: Building Resilient Teams That Consistently Perform Without Breaking

Leaders at all levels face an impossible challenge: push their teams to achieve more while preventing burnout and disengagement. The pressure to deliver results often leads to stretched-too-thin teams operating in survival mode, where innovation stalls and top performers quietly quit.

In this high-impact keynote, Michelle shares research-backed strategies that help leaders understand and develop their teams' capacity for growth. Through powerful storytelling, she demonstrates how to recognize the crucial differences between optimal stretch, rest and recovery, and dangerous burnout zones. Leaders learn practical tools to help their teams bounce back from challenges while maintaining the energy for sustained high performance.

The result? A transformed workplace culture where teams expand their capacity with confidence, resilience becomes a renewable resource, and growth happens naturally — without the burnout.

Key Takeaways:

• How to assess and develop individual team members' stretch capacity

• Practical strategies to help teams bounce back stronger from setbacks and challenges

• The critical balance between pushing for growth and allowing for recovery

• Research-backed techniques to build sustainable resilience in your organization

• Tools to create a culture where emotional intelligence drives peak performance

Make It Happen Blueprint: Turning High Potential into High Performance

In a demanding business environment, having potential isn't enough. Leaders and teams often know what they need to do but struggle to execute consistently, leading to missed opportunities, stalled initiatives, and unfulfilled potential. When overwhelm sets in, even the most promising projects and talented people can get stuck in the gap between goals and results.

Drawing from over a decade of research and real-world application, Michelle reveals her proven blueprint for turning plans into action. Through engaging stories and interactive exercises, she breaks down the 18 key attributes of high performers into practical steps anyone can implement. 

This is where potential meets performance — teams and leaders consistently executing at their highest level, turning their biggest goals into reality while maintaining the energy to take on new challenges.

Key Takeaways:

• The three critical mindset shifts that separate high performers from high potentials

• A practical framework for moving from overwhelm to focused action

• Research-backed strategies to maintain momentum when facing obstacles

• Tools to build accountability and sustain long-term success

• Techniques to achieve ambitious goals without sacrificing what matters most

Be the HappyIST: Where Science-Backed Happiness Fuels Excellence

Traditional workplace wisdom suggests that success leads to happiness. But research tells a different story: when leaders and teams prioritize emotional wellness and happiness as a strategy, performance naturally follows. Most organizations get this backwards, chasing metrics and milestones while watching engagement plummet and innovation stagnate.

Through groundbreaking research and her unique "HappyIST" framework, Michelle reveals how happiness acts as a multiplier for team performance. Moving beyond the limiting perspectives of pessimists, realists, and even optimists, she demonstrates how "Happyists" create sustained success by making emotional intelligence their superpower. 

Imagine the difference when teams don't just look on the bright side — they live there, consistently delivering exceptional results while maintaining the enthusiasm to tackle new challenges.

Discover How Emotional Intelligence and Resilience Drive Leadership Results

Your leadership team deserves more than just survival mode. It's time to equip them with the tools to enhance emotional intelligence, build resilience, and drive team performance. Download my latest research that reveals how these behavioral influences are the keys to improving productivity, strengthening workplace communication, and achieving measurable business results through small, intentional actions.

“We had Michelle do an in-depth training with our top leaders, because she came highly recommended. Now I'm the one recommending Michelle! She presents ideas and improvements in a way that's easy to implement. Weeks later, our leaders are still talking to each other about the changes they've made since the event. And we're already making plans for Michelle's next training.”

- Eric Morgan, President, Thrive Life

“Michelle had great content that you do not find at any other business events, or my university education.”

- James Harward, Business Owner

“Very meat-y content! Lots that are immediate deployable tools. This presentation was fun, upbeat but even more than being entertaining, she was one of the best I’ve ever seen at providing immediately deployable and effective tools. Loved her presentation.”

- Cecily Condie

“…[Given a broad topic] Michelle came prepared with a stimulating and informative presentation. We laughed, learned, participated and enjoyed ourselves. The content was well researched, the presentation style very warm and open yet professional, and we all learned new techniques we could use in bettering our sales and coming together as a sales team….I would highly recommend Michelle to you as someone you would want as a speaker or trainer.”

- Shelley Pollock Western Regional Sales Manager, TERI

“Michelle, I had to tell you that I love your “life prioritization” idea you spoke about. I have been applying that to my life and it really is so much better than trying to have perfect balance each day… Just had to tell you that I like you and your wisdom.”

- Jessie Funk, singer

“Michelle has amazing enthusiasm and content. I loved all the amazing things I learned that I haven’t heard of anywhere else. She is so knowledgeable and helpful.”

- Tamara K. Anderson

“The content, tools and the specific planning templates were great! Your awesomely fun personality makes the mass of content digestible and makes the time fly!”

- James Stevens, Recording Artist and Producer