Penny Locaso

Profile

Penny Locaso is on a quest to teach 1 million purpose-driven women how to become sought-after experts so that they can scale their impact holistically and shape a brighter and more inclusive tomorrow.

Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny is her own ongoing impact experiment. A little while back she turned her life upside down in pursuit of happiness. She left a sixteen-year career as an executive, relocated her family from Perth back to Melbourne, left an 18-year relationship, and started her own purpose-driven company HackingHappy.co.

With over 20 years’ experience in enabling adaptability and impact Penny's calling is to empower leaders to harness their fears as a gateway to impact, find their flow, and flourish.

Penny works with governments, corporations, and educators to build a more intentionally adaptable and impactful society. She has partnered with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Booking.com, SalesForce, Deloitte, and LuluLemon, to name but a few.

Penny’s groundbreaking research into adapting with intention has been published in the American Consulting Journal of Psychology. Her Intentional Adaptability theory decodes the skills required to not only navigate but flourish in complex and uncertain change.

Alongside Penny's entrepreneurial endeavours, she is the published author of Hacking Happiness, a Harvard Business Review contributor, a faculty member at the esteemed Singularity University, a passionate yoga teacher, an Honours Psychology student and trauma-informed therapist having studied with world-renowned teacher Dr Gabor Mate.

Imagine what could be possible for you, your team, or your community if you had a Penny as your guide.

Expertise

Talking Points

The Busy Shall Inherit The Future The Intentionally Adaptable Will Shape It

Are you busy?
Do you find every waking moment full?
Do you arrive at the end of your day exhausted by a To Do list that doesn't seem to get any shorter?
Welcome to the busy epidemic. A place where productivity has become our disease and it's catapulting our lives towards burnout.

This interactive keynote calls bulls**t on busy and provides practical tools to remove the barrier it is creating between you and your ability to flourish.

Participants will walk away with:
- An understanding of why we need to focus on new ways of being, rather than more doing, in order to realise our potential and elevate our well-being.
- An understanding of why building skill in Intentional Adaptabilityâ„¢ (IAQ) is critical to flourishing in the age of uncertainty and how you can use it to kick busy to the curb.
- Practical tools that enable you to elevate your skill in intentional adaptability amplifying your ability to unlock greater energy, presence and impact each day.

Fear Is Your Future

The current environment has left many of us feeling afraid: afraid of slowing down, afraid of keeping up, afraid of holding on, and afraid of letting go. It's not only overwhelming but exhausting and it's standing between your people and their unrealised potential.

Fear is the number one barrier to adapting and making impactful change, but it doesn't have to be. What if fear was the greatest opportunity you had to unlock potential and pave the path towards innovation both personally and professionally?

In this keynote, Penny demonstrates how fear is the greatest lever available to us, in making impactful and meaningful change. Participants will walk away with practical tools that they can use to elevate their courage muscle and their resilience.

Flourishing is not a Luxury it's a Necessity

Here's what life looks like at the moment for many professionals:
- They feel like their operating in robot mode and like no one is getting the best of them
- They keep telling themselves when it's all done then I'll make the time for me,� but the reality is it's never all done, and they just keep moving themselves to the bottom of their to-do list.
- They lay in bed at night wondering how much is enough and what am I walking into tomorrow.
- They struggle to set boundaries when there is so much that needs to be done at work and life.

It's time to shift from existing to living and unlock healthy high performance in your team. In this session, Penny will leverage the science of psychology to shine a spotlight on why flourishing is not a luxury it's a necessity for both the business and the individual. Participants will gain clarity on how to define flourishing on their terms, what skills are required to enable it and how to reignite their spark and feel more present in the moments that matter.

Work-Life Boundaries for Energy, Presence and Calm.

Welcome to the Burnout Superhighway, where in the corporate world it's peak hour every day! Pervasive uncertainty and dissolved work-life boundaries are making this a costly road to travel for employees,
corporations, and societies.

Healthy high performance relies on healthy and sustainable boundaries between work and life. Yet with more than 30% of workers now feeling like they are always on (McKinsey, 2021), it's clear that the boundaries between work and life for many are non-existent and the mental and physical impact is proving toxic.

Would you like to support your team in sleeping peacefully at night and then bouncing out of bed feeling energised in uncertainty, courageous in their actions, and nourished at their core?
This micro workshop is the circuit breaker you've been looking for!

Participants will walk away with:
- Clarity on what healthy high performance looks like and how busy is a barrier to its realisation.
- An understanding of their energy resources and where to channel them for enhanced impact and fulfilment.
- Clarity on what a boundary is and how to create one that enables the space for more of what matters.
- An Energy Audit Tool that enables the assessment and redirection of one's energy when it matters most
- A setting boundaries framework that empowers one to take control of their time and how they use it.

The Fear(less) Masterclass

Imagine the innovation that could be created in your business if fear did not hold your people back. Imagine the leadership diversity of an organisation that encourages everyone to bring their whole self to work.

Fear is often the number one barrier preventing your people from stepping into meaningful change, at work and in life. Many tempers themselves and their brilliant ideas due to fear of failure, financial instability or the
judgement of others. This eye-opening, tactics-based program identifies what's holding your people back and teaches them how to use fear to positively influence behavioural and organisational change, build confidence and practice resilience.

The Fear(less) Masterclass will teach your people how to:
- Build resilience through the practice of getting comfortable with discomfort.
- Positively influence outcomes when under stress.
- Respond proactively to fear and positively shift their attitude towards failure.
- Stop fear from being a barrier to achieving what they want in work and life.
- Amplify their change capability.
- Lead with genuine authenticity.
- Level up human connection and empathy-building deeper relationships and understanding of their peers.

The Internationally Adaptable Leader

The world as we know it has changed and it's likely it has changed forever therefore, the way we look at adaptability needs to change too. All of the evidence suggests that our unconscious adaptation to enable the quickest path to productivity and ultimately success has wired our brains into survival mode. Ultimately, limiting our ability to realise healthy high performance.

The biggest opportunity leaders have at this unprecedented moment in time is to bring intention and meaning to the forefront of how they adapt and enable their team to do the same. But ask yourself how might you do that?

Enter the world's first psychometrically validated (and soon-to-be-published in The American Journal of Psychology Consulting) Intentional Adaptability Quotientâ„¢ (IAQ) designed to decode the skills required to
navigate uncertainty and unlock healthy high performance.

This unique framework provides a circuit breaker to empower you and your people to kick toxic productivity to the curb and start living healthy high performance.

We're not here to just talk about intentional adaptability we want to create an experience that enables you to get your hands dirty and build skills in this ground-breaking practice.

This 3-hour workshop empowers leaders to create a culture of adaptability and respond mindfully to challenges as they arise. Using a self-assessment to establish current levels of adaptability, participants create a clear and action-orientated approach to embrace a more adaptable style of leadership.