Becoming The Highly Successful Professional

Once having done a university course in a vocational area that gave you a body of specialised knowledge, a set of related skills and a qualification that gave you an accompanying license to practice, you had everything you needed to be successful. You had a career, not just a job. It gave you status, power and influence, above average income and an expertise that the ordinary person did not have that allowed you to control your knowledge and resources.

There is a revolution going on in all the professions and the reality of professional life is now very different. It is being radically disrupted. All professions are being challenged to rethink their traditional role as globalisation, technology and a changing generational demographic redefine the work of professionals. If you don’t take heed of this change then you will be left behind. This disruption has the potential to send many financial services firms to the wall if they cannot or do not adapt to this changing professional reality.

The one part of being a professional that has not changed is that all professions have a value base that is characterised by service, trust, integrity and putting the client first. It has been the profound breech of those value characteristics by professions in recent times that have seen them lose respect and credibility with their public and the financial services sector has been highly criticised in this regard.

This workshop is about bringing this value base of the professions back into focus by putting your clients at the centre of everything you do. It is about recognising that they now want far more from you than compliance, tax and robo advice. They want a relationship with a trusted adviser and authority, someone whose interpersonal and communication skills are as well developed as their technical skills. They want you to be able to articulate the value you can offer them in advancing their wealth creation or growing their businesses because only then will they pay you for that value.

This workshop is about helping you develop those soft skills for leadership that will see you be the successful professional for and with your clients.

It will discuss how you can:

  • Build your personal brand which is a huge differentiator and moves you beyond the sea of sameness in your profession.

  • Learn to be the emotionally intelligent professional who can respond to whatever presses your buttons in a calm and professional way.

  • Be pro-active, solution focused, a can-do professional.

  • Be resilient with and for your clients in these challenging and uncertain times, able to bounce back from whatever adversity you and your clients face.

  • Manage your energy so that time-management is not an issue for you.

  • Build connections and commitments with empowering and empowered people who enhance your professional life and support its advancement.

This workshop can be contextualised to the differing situations that accountants and financial planners find themselves in at the present time. Accountancy has been acknowledged as a profession for some time, while financial planning is in the process of creating a professional identity for itself, adopting and implementing the criteria demanded to call yourself a profession. Parallel to this is the blurring of knowledge boundaries that is occurring between the two sectors. While acknowledging these realities, the content of the workshop is relevant to all finance professionals.

What Maree's Clients Have To Say

Maree first conducted a professional development workshop for us a couple of years ago and we have had her back a number of times since. That is a high recommendation in itself.
Our professional development program, that has traditionally been around the development of our member’s technical and professional skills, has been enhanced by the workshops Maree conducts. Maree’s engaging style of presentation that includes discussion and interaction has allowed our members to also share their experience with others and this has been invaluable. We highly recommend Maree to any organisation who wants to develop the interpersonal, people and communication skills of its employees or members.

CPA Goulburn Valley

North East Branch Council

The training sessions provided by Maree have been highly beneficial and invaluable. Maree has provided numerous soft skill sessions as part of the Bendigo CPA Regional Branch professional development program. Maree’s ability to engage with all  levels of staff expertise in a pleasant and tranquil manner enables staff to gain confidence and achieve a greater understanding and learning.  This is demonstrated by Maree’s ability to engage with her audience and have them actively and willingly  participate.  We highly recommend Maree to any professional group wishing to develop and reward their staff with soft skill development.  The results in and outside of the workplace are evident through greater efficiency, productivity and attitude.   Our recommendation of Maree’s services are evidenced by our continued use of her services.

CPA Bendigo Branch Committee

Maree's seminar on empowering employees and leadership I highly recommended. Recently I received a promotion, however, did not know how I could empower my employees to think outside the box and vest my time and knowledge into them, as I had not much experience in managing and empowering employees to stretch and grow. This seminar helped me to understand how important it is to invest time into your growing team. The biggest challenge was to stop what I was doing and spend the time to help my employees understand what they were doing and why, and how to research and investigate problems as opposed to just asking someone who knew. Maree suggested that I continue to invest time in my team members but instead of giving them the answers, rather ask questions. That way I was empowering them to learn and grow themselves rather than relying on me to provide all the answers. Within 2-3 months, it really paid off.

Fiona Hammond, CPA.

CFO at Mt Hotham Resort Management Board

I engaged Dr Maree Harris PhD to speak at the OzPlan Financial Services Annual Conference. Her presentation was “How To Be A Highly Successful Professional”. She provided a grounding in the basics of great client relationships and then included the latest thinking from around the world on this topic; conference delegates participated with workshop activities. Maree demonstrated great interest in attendees, taking the time to talk with them informally to get to know her audience better. Since our conference I have received a lot of very positive unsolicited feedback from delegates. Many found the tools learned most helpful in their professional relationships. I would recommend Maree to any organisation aspiring to best practice in the soft skills of its personnel.

Brendan Smith B.Bus CFP FIPA GAICD

Director OzPlan Financial Services Pty Ltd

Maree provided great insight into the benefit of using ‘Soft Skills’ in the area of Performance Motivation in both our business and personal worlds. I found these were things I could easily relate to in the way Maree presented them but I hadn’t considered them in the context of managing performance at all levels of an organisation or been able to recognise the practical measures that could be used to do that.
I would thoroughly recommend Maree to anyone looking for a fresh approach to managing positive change in the way we handle the challenges we encounter in both personal and professional aspects of day-to-day life.

Robyn Blake

CPA Dip Business Studies (NZ)

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