Conversations That Open Something
Lauren Polly, MEd., CCC-SLP, is a speaker, speech-language pathologist, healthcare leader, and multi-award-winning author who explores a pattern most of us know without having a name for it:
We learn which ways of being help us belong, succeed, stay safe, and be understood. Then we get very good at them.
Lauren calls this The Version That Works.
Through personal storytelling, more than 20 years of communication expertise, humor, and practical reflection, Lauren helps audiences notice where the roles and responses that once worked have become automatic—and what can change when we bring a little more range into the room.
Why This Matters
The Version That Works can be incredibly useful. It can also become limiting.
The leader who built a career on having the answer can find it hard to say, “I don’t know.”
The dependable person keeps carrying the load long after they need help.
A team can become so practiced at keeping things moving that no one asks the question that might change the conversation.
Friends, partners, and colleagues can know exactly how we’ll respond without knowing much about what we actually think.
None of this means something is wrong.
It means human beings adapt. We repeat what works. And sometimes the very patterns that helped us succeed, connect, or get through something begin narrowing how we communicate, create, relate, and respond.
Lauren’s talks make that pattern visible without turning it into another problem to fix. Audiences leave with language for what they’re noticing and practical ways to experiment with a wider range of responses.
Women’s Event Keynote Author Feature
Interview with PBS’s Jim Masters
Signature Talks & Conversations
One body of thought. Different doors.
Lauren’s talks can be shaped around the audience in front of her while staying rooted in the same question: When the version that works becomes automatic, what else might the moment be asking of us?
When Being Seen Isn't Being Known
What does it take to feel genuinely known by another person?
We can be surrounded, appreciated, and even loved while still showing people a very practiced version of ourselves. At work, people may know exactly how we’ll handle a meeting. At home, they may know the role we usually play in conflict. Online, people may see more of us than ever while knowing surprisingly little about what is actually happening inside.
Drawing on her work in communication, Lauren explores the distance between being visible and being known—and how what we say, edit, avoid, and assume shapes the quality of connection between us.
The Colors We Leave Behind
What do we stop reaching for once we know who we’re supposed to be?
As our lives become more established, certain sides of us get used again and again while others receive less airtime. The creative part. The playful part. The person who asks a strange question, tries something badly, changes their mind, or does something simply because it feels good.
Through story, reflection, and the metaphor of a box of crayons, Lauren explores how our environments shape expression and how small experiments can bring curiosity and creativity back into lives that may already be working perfectly well.
Beyond the Version That Works
When the ways that made us successful become the only ways we know how to show up.
The capable one. The expert. The leader. The easygoing one. The person who always has it together.
Lauren explores how useful roles become identities, why success can make our behavior surprisingly predictable, and what happens when the response we’re best at is no longer the response the moment needs.
Audiences learn to recognize their own Version That Works and experiment with more flexibility in communication, leadership, relationships, and everyday choices.
Beyond the Label
When a useful description becomes a definition.
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at fourteen, Lauren learned early how powerfully a label can shape what we notice about ourselves—and what we begin to monitor, distrust, or leave out.
Using her story as a doorway rather than a prescription, Lauren explores the labels, roles, and interpretations all of us inherit and the point at which “this describes something about me” becomes “this is who I am.”
A strong fit for mental health, healthcare, education, women’s communities, and audiences navigating identity or change.
Workshops & Interactive Conversations
Less lecture. More discovery.
Lauren’s workshops combine short teaching segments, personal storytelling, guided reflection, group discussion, and live Q&A.
Participants don’t leave with another personality ideal to perform. They leave noticing their own patterns more clearly and with practical experiments they can try in the conversations, relationships, and work they are already in.
Sessions can be tailored for leadership teams, healthcare and helping professionals, women’s groups, universities, creative communities, retreats, and workplace culture or well-being programs.
Communication and feeling known
Professional roles and the habits success reinforces
Creativity and the parts of ourselves we stop using
Labels, self-perception, and identity
Belonging, loneliness, and connection
Recovering range in leadership, relationships, and everyday life
“The problem isn’t that The Version That Works didn’t work. Sometimes it works so well, we mistake it for all that we are.”
What Audiences Experience
Warm enough to disarm. Clear enough to land.
Lauren does not speak at an audience as though they are there to be fixed. She creates a conversation.
Her style combines emotionally resonant storytelling, humor, communication expertise, ordinary examples, and questions people can recognize themselves inside. A story may begin somewhere deeply personal and end with an audience member suddenly seeing a familiar conversation, work habit, or relationship differently.
The result is reflective without being vague: people have room to think, but they also leave with language for what they noticed and something concrete to try.
Audience Take Aways
Recognize The Version That Works—the roles and responses they have become especially practiced at using.
Notice when a strength or adaptation has become an automatic response rather than a choice.
See how professional roles, labels, success, and belonging can shape what they say, edit, try, and avoid.
Communicate with more flexibility, including when a conversation calls for a different response.
Understand why being visible, appreciated, or surrounded by people is not always the same as feeling known.
Experiment with small, practical ways to bring more curiosity, creativity, honesty, and range into existing work and relationships.
“Being really good at one way of showing up can make it surprisingly hard to notice when the moment is asking for something different.”
Client Reviews
“Lauren’s true gift lies in her ability to connect – whether that is one on one or in a group of 100+. I’ve sat in her presence in both circumstances and truly felt seen, heard, and inspired to take action on the tools she shares.”
~ LeAnn, HR Manager, Los Angeles
“I was impressed at Lauren’s vast knowledge base, real-life examples, and the simple tools she shared. I was particularly impressed that she invited group participation and fielded questions so that everyone got help on the issues that were directly impacting them. We all left with a lot of practical tips to help lead our team into healthier dynamics.”
~ Joe, Cardiac Manager, Los Angeles
“A note to express my appreciation and gratitude for what you brought to Transport Topanga Literary Festival. It’s amazing to me that a person can be a container for so much transformation and still hold a brilliant, genuine smile and bounce in their step. Your triumph over doctors and labeling and pain is truly inspiring and educational. I hope our paths cross again.”
~ Kim, Director of Topanga Literary Festival
About Lauren Polly
Lauren Polly, MEd., CCC-SLP, is a speaker, speech-language pathologist, healthcare leader, and multi-award-winning author of The Other Side of Bipolar.
For more than 20 years, she has worked with communication: helping people express what is inside, connect with other people, and participate more fully in daily life.
Her own story began with a different kind of communication problem. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at fourteen, Lauren spent years understanding herself through a label that shaped which parts of herself she trusted and expressed.
That experience became her award-winning book and eventually led to a wider question: How many of us are living inside versions of ourselves that once made sense, but no longer tell the whole story?
Today, Lauren brings that question into conversations about leadership, relationships, mental health, creativity, identity, and human connection.
As Seen in:
Lauren is a strong fit for audiences navigating success, change, communication, leadership, belonging, or connection—and for organizations that want people thinking beyond the roles and habits they already know how to perform.
Leadership and professional conferences
Healthcare and helping professionals
Women’s conferences and communities
Executive retreats and offsites
Workplace culture and well-being programs
Universities and educational communities
Creative and ideas-based gatherings
Literary, mental health, and author events
Facilitated conversations and small-group workshops