Gerrie Hawes’ Post

📣 Introverts! Here’s why you make great public speakers. (And great leaders too.) It’s not just the loudest voices who have the best ideas. 🧐 Introverts sit back and take it all in. 🧐 They deliberate before speaking. 🧐 They are able to join the dots. Throw me on stage with a mic and no preparation, and I will freeze and fumble. But give me a bit of time to plan + get my thoughts straight, and I can run a whole day from the stage. (Like I’m doing today.) What’s been your experience? - - - - - - - - - - 😎 I post management + leadership skills daily 💙 Follow me for training that sticks ♻️ Repost if you found this useful

🎙 As leaders, one of our most powerful tools is our voice. We can inspire, influence, and transform the world through our words, our stories, and our presence. Public speaking isn’t just a skill—it’s a leadership necessity. ❌ In this photo, I’m proud to be standing on the TEDx stage after curating, organizing, and coaching all 11 incredible TEDx Praia do Forte speakers. Each speaker shared ideas worth spreading, and it was their authenticity and ability to connect with the audience that made their message unforgettable. 🎙Whether you’re leading a team, inspiring change, or simply wanting to connect on a deeper level, mastering the art of public speaking is essential. It empowers us to not only share our ideas but to ignite movements, foster connections, and leave a lasting impact. 🎙Let’s continue to hone our voices as leaders and use them to make a difference in the world. 🌍

Last week, we launched our weekly Confidence Boost newsletter on linkedin with the following principles: 1) Perfect is the Enemy of good. 2) Consistency is better than motivation. 3) 1% better every week Here's what's happened since pressing "publish" on July 4th. At the time of writing this post, we now have 956 subscribers and we've already learned so much via the back/forth in the comment boxes and dm's. We're filled with gratitude and thrilled to be part of your leadership journey.🧡 We're always looking for topics, interesting studies and stories that we can share via this medium. Keep em coming. Together is Better, let's keep learning from each other!

Strategic focus. Over 8 yrs of running Northern Value Creators, this is something that I find all too easy to let wander. So Amanda Cookson and I have been working on our focus and clarity recently. We want to narrow our sometimes eclectic thoughts into a tighter, more impactful focus. So, this is where we are now: If you're working in technical or professional services teams, if you're on a leadership journey, then I am here to help. To succeed in your leadership journey you must master that often difficult,  sometimes confusing & occasionally terrifying part of your role … managing people. My goal is to help you become as confident managing people as you are solving technical challenges. Through focused coaching, training and empowering self help tools I will work with you in two key areas: 1: understand human behaviour, then use this to 2: re-wire your conversations at work By taking these two steps you'll become just as confident with managing people (even those you don't get on with!) as you are with technical challenges.

One of my absolute favorite keynotes to deliver is “Ten Characteristics of a Value-Driven Professional.” This keynote is all about helping teams level up by embracing the traits that drive success—not just in their roles but in how they approach life and work. The new year is the perfect time to set fresh goals, spark inspiration, and rally your team to deliver exceptional value in everything they do. This keynote is packed with actionable insights, real-world examples, and a healthy dose of motivation to help your team: ✨ Define what it means to bring value to their roles every day. ✨ Build a culture of accountability and excellence. ✨ Stay aligned with a bigger vision of impact and purpose. If you’re planning a kickoff event, leadership retreat, or team training for the new year, I’d love to bring this keynote to your organization. Let’s start the year strong and make 2024 the year your team thrives. 📩 DM me or drop a comment below if you’d like to chat more about how we can make this happen! Let’s make big things happen together. 💪

3/9 From the (short) series of posts about what useful and effective leadership development looks like in my experience. Feel free to debate or disagree! **This was all written by me, not AI** 3. Effective leadership development creates more time for you. It unburdens you. This is a weird one for some people to wrap their heads around, but the best learning I've seen never ends up being 'another thing to do'. It should be so clarifying and enabling, that things that were sitting on your shoulders simply start to slide off. This rarely happens, which is a real shame. It's hard to give clear examples of how to do this in a brief pithy way, but it often relates to: - becoming more self-aware and the impact of seeing your own self-expectations, and then dropping them - stopping doing things that other people should be doing - taking small actions now that prevent big time sinks later Anyone ever seen/done/felt this? Love to hear about it.

Welcome to your Wednesday Wake up call! Each week I’m going to select one of my favorite videos and share (I post 1 minute Continuous Improvement Encouragement videos daily at work). What if…? I remember early in my career when I worked in Cd. Juarez, where there was a paradigm about which language would be spoken in meetings. It was an opportunity for me to ask ‘What if … I learn Spanish?’ When I led a Quality organization I was looking for ways to accelerate the leadership development of my team. As I researched potential ‘consultants’ to help, I remember thinking to myself and writing ‘What if … I become an expert in Leadership?’ And ‘What if I teach and set the example for Leadership?’ Both scenarios have developed into so much more in my growth journey. How about you? Any great stories where you asked ‘What if … ?’ Keep the ‘What if ?’ question in front of you. Use it as a filter. Fill in the blank! Break the paradigm, set the tone, be the example, continuously grow and improve. Set yourself on a trajectory towards greatness! I’d love to hear your thoughts

Leadership, at its core, is a relationship between leader and follower. The quality of that relationship is based on the quality of the connection between them. How do you improve the quality? Show people you understand them and care how they feel. In other words, connect with empathy. The good news is that while empathy may seem intangible, it’s actually a group of specific learnable behaviors; empathic skills can be practiced and eventually mastered. Think of empathy as a muscle—if you exercise it, it gets stronger! The key skill to develop empathy is listening with purpose. This type of listening is quite different from what most people are used to. It’s not about waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can give advice. https://loom.ly/8TAf-Ro

Join me this Monday on LinkedIn Live as I talk about "Empowering Leadership: Strategies for Personal and Professional Growth. Discover practical approaches to enhance your leadership skills and cultivate personal development.