Maree Harris, Ph.D.
Facilitator of Leadership Development
Leadership Development
With the establishment of People Empowered in 2005, Maree commenced her leadership development
work around Australia. It centred predominantly around live workshops, masterclasses
and the facilitation of two-day leadership development retreats for small teams.
She also consulted to CEOs and leaders assisting them to manage the performance issues
they had with their people. She continued to provide EAP work to organisations and
consultative supervision to the human service sector.
She has also been a mentor and coach to a wide range of professionals in recent years,
predominantly leaders and managers.
The focus of Maree's leadership development was on professional and personal
transformation, helping leaders become the leaders they needed to BE in this
challenging new world.
Maree's expertise has been in developing and enhancing the soft skills of highly
skilled technical professionals who've come to realise their importance as
complementing those technical skills. CPA Australia led the way here
in making a commitment to the development of these skills and Maree
provided 57 workshops for accountants between 2008-2018.
In recent years Maree's work has focused around developing and enhancing
the Self-Leadership skills of leaders, believing that if they can't
lead themselves, they won't be able to lead others.
She highlights 7 soft skills she sees as essential for leadership
- self-awareness, emotional intelligence, pro-activity, resilience,
high energy, the integration of work and life and being a connector.
What Maree's clients say about her
CPA Australia Geelong Branch
We approached Maree Harris of People Empowered to assist us with our Professional Development program. Maree was fantastic in working with us to develop a 'soft skills' program and was more than willing to customise sessions to meet our needs. She made sure she understood the profession and the challenges for developing less-technical aspects of the CPA's role in a busy workplace. Her delivery style is very engaging and she uses examples that we can all relate to in our own working lives to demonstrate her point. Maree's sessions have been a welcome addition to our Professional Development calendar.
Joe Grgic, Director, Harcourts Real Estate, North Geelong.
We recently attended Maree's "Rethinking Performance Appraisal" masterclass. Maree completely exceeded our expectations with her insight, wisdom and guidance of the group to discuss and share ideas and concepts. Not only was the class informative but fulfilling when you can walk away with immediate and practical implementation strategies. Maree's perspective on performance and leadership development is on point and refreshing.
Vicki-Tree Stephens, CEO, Youth Involvement Council, Port Hedland, Western Australia.
After reading a book about the importance of soft skills written by Maree and just generally being in her presence, I figured it would be a great idea to engage her to work with my team. Living and working in regional Australia makes it challenging to provide my team with afforable high-quality training and development opportunities. During our initial conversations Maree was very good at listening to what we needed and suggesting what would work. After some conversations we decided to work with the leadership team separately from the rest of the team before bringing the entire team together and this worked far better than I could have imagined. I promote a culture where team members can use their voice without management around. After Maree's visit, the team produced some suggestions, one of which was implemented immediately and is continuing two years later. It gives junior staff the opportunity to have short-term opportunities of acting in a senior role so they can get a feel for what it is like and the various challenges it presents. This experience has taught the succesful applicants a lot in a short period of time and made them more empathetic to the challenges of their senior staff once returning to their roles. Most importantly it came from them. I would get Maree back anytime! She has such depth and breadth of knowledge in leadership and working with teams so she can create a workshop which will be relevant and probing yet informative and empowering. If you get the feeling that your team just needs a little something, it is highly likely they could do with a dose of Maree!
CPA Goulburn Valley North East Branch Council
After Maree's first professional development workshop, we had her back a number of times. That is high recommendation in itself. Our professional development program, that has traditionally been around the development of our members' technical and professional skills, has been enhanced by the workshops Maree conducts. We, like all professionals, have become acutely aware in recent years that we need to complement our technical skills with well-developed interpersonal and communication skills. Maree's knowledge and expertise in this area has contributed greatly to the enhancement of our members' skills and has attracted a much broader membership base to become involved in our professional development programs. 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.