The Presence Lab Podcast
Learn
Ideas, frameworks, research, and practical tools for understanding what happens to communication when pressure rises.
Use the podcast when you want to understand the problem or learn a new way to approach it.
The Presence Lab Community
Practice before the pressure arrives.
You already know that communication changes when the stakes rise.
The Presence Lab Community gives leaders a place to deliberately practice the skills that are easy to understand but harder to access when the room gets tense, the question gets difficult, or the camera turns on.
Work on the skill before you need it.
Free on Sphere.
The practice gap
Knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it under pressure.
You can understand how to answer a difficult question and still rush when someone challenges you.
You can know that silence is useful and still fill every pause.
You can understand audience-first communication and still retreat into your slides when the stakes rise.
You can know your message cold and still go blank.
That is the practice gap.
Communication skills become more useful when you deliberately retrieve and use them before the important moment arrives.
The Presence Lab Community is built around closing that gap.
Podcast + Community
Learn there. Practice here.
Explore the Podcast
The Presence Lab Community
Practice
A place to put those ideas to work, ask questions, participate in deliberate practice, and continue developing with Dale and other leaders.
Use the community when understanding the idea is no longer enough.
How it works
Small reps before the big moment.
The goal is not to manufacture pressure for its own sake.
The goal is to practice useful communication behaviors often enough that they are easier to reach when something important is actually happening.
Practice
Work on specific communication behaviors rather than vaguely trying to “be a better communicator.”
Apply
Take ideas from The Presence Lab Podcast and use them in actual communication situations.
Ask
Bring questions about presentations, difficult conversations, Q&A, executive presence, cameras, messages, and moments where communication gets harder.
Repeat
Improvement comes from repeated retrieval and use, not simply hearing a good idea once.
Inside the Community
What do Presence Lab members actually get?
Bring the communication moment you are actually facing. A board presentation. A client challenge. A hard employee conversation. A media interview. Your next all-hands. Start there.
Field Guides
Take an idea from the podcast and put it to work. Presence Lab Field Guides turn concepts into prompts, drills, and preparation you can use before the next high-pressure moment.
Monthly live Q&A with Dale
Bring the moment you are preparing for, or the one you just walked out of. Ask the question that gets harder when the room is real.
Early episodes + working ideas
Members get access to new episodes and ideas Dale is still developing before everything is packaged for public release.
The conversation between episodes
The community lives on Sphere. Sphere is the container, not the benefit. The useful part is having a place to keep working on communication moments that do not fit neatly into a podcast episode.
Membership is free.
Practice, not a content vault
Turn the idea into a rep.
- Notice what pressure changes.
- Use the relevant Field Guide to prepare one response.
- Pressure-test it in Q&A.
- Run it in the real meeting, interview, presentation, or conversation.
- Come back with what happened.
That loop turns communication advice into readiness.
What you can practice
Work on the communication moments that tend to get harder.
Difficult Questions
Practice staying with the question, organizing the answer, and responding without rushing or retreating.
Message Clarity
Find the point, remove unnecessary complexity, and make important ideas easier for another person to understand.
Executive Presence
Work on clarity, connection, listening, composure, and how you are experienced when pressure rises.
Audience-First Communication
Practice beginning with what the other person needs rather than what you want to say.
On-Camera Communication
Become more comfortable communicating when a camera changes the environment and every word carries more weight.
Presentations
Practice openings, transitions, key ideas, difficult moments, and audience connection rather than merely rehearsing slides.
Pressure
Notice what changes in your communication when the stakes rise and deliberately work on the behaviors that tend to disappear.
Q&A
Prepare for skeptical, unexpected, challenging, and emotionally loaded questions before someone asks them for real.
Who it is for
For capable people who want to keep getting better.
The Presence Lab Community is for leaders and professionals whose communication affects decisions, trust, reputation, relationships, or results.
- Executives
- Founders
- Business owners
- Organizational leaders
- Subject-matter experts
- Professionals becoming more visible
- Speakers and presenters
- People preparing for greater communication responsibility
You do not need to be a professional speaker.
You do need to be willing to practice.
What this is not
This is not another place to collect content.
There is already more communication advice available than any leader could consume.
The problem is rarely access to another tip.
The problem is turning useful ideas into behaviors you can actually reach when the pressure rises.
The Presence Lab Community is not designed around passive consumption. It is designed around deliberate practice, useful questions, experimentation, and application.
Not the point
- More content
- More scrolling
- More communication hacks
- Collecting advice
- Performing for other members
The point
- Practice
- Application
- Useful feedback
- Better questions
- Repeated reps
- Greater readiness
Dale's role
You are not practicing alone.
Dale Dixon spent nearly 30 years in broadcast news before moving into leadership coaching, keynote speaking, and executive communication work.
His work has consistently involved communication where time is short, audiences matter, questions are not always predictable, and clarity has consequences.
Inside The Presence Lab Community, Dale's role is not to hand out generic presentation tips.
It is to help members look more closely at what happens when communication gets difficult, ask better questions about their own behavior, and deliberately practice becoming more capable before the important moment arrives.
Community or coaching?
Choose based on what you need now.
Community
I want to keep getting better.
You want ongoing practice, ideas, questions, and opportunities to strengthen communication before you know exactly when you will need it.
Coaching
Something important is already on the calendar.
A board presentation, media interview, major announcement, difficult Q&A, high-visibility presentation, or another consequential communication moment is approaching and you want direct preparation with Dale.
Explore Executive CoachingThe Presence Lab
Learn. Practice. Prepare.
01
Learn
The Presence Lab Podcast
Understand what happens when communication gets harder and learn practical ways to respond.
Listen to the Podcast02
Practice
The Presence Lab Community
Put the ideas to work before the important moment arrives.
Join the Community03
Prepare
Executive Communication Coaching
Work directly with Dale when a specific high-stakes communication moment requires individualized preparation.
Explore CoachingKeep practicing
Get better before you need to be good.
The important moment is a bad place to begin practicing.
Join The Presence Lab Community and work on the skills now, while there is still room to experiment, ask questions, and improve.