Cherie Gaites gets people to commit when they don't have to.
For thirty-five years she has led volunteers in dance and theatre, and nobody ever had to do a single thing she asked. She is President and Life Member of Tamworth Musical Society. She also leads a Woolworths team of 150, where a title stops working the moment someone quietly checks out. Her keynote, How to lead people who don't have to follow you, gives middle managers three moves to get that effort back. She lives in Tamworth with her partner Dave and two dogs, including Bowie, who has decided he doesn't have to follow her either.
SIGNATURE KEYNOTE
How to Lead People Who Don't Have to Follow You
45 to 60 minutes
Your authority is on paper and it stopped working a while ago. Thirty-five years leading volunteers who could walk out at any time, twenty running retail teams of 150. What gets effort out of people who have quietly checked out.
What your managers leave with:
- Give them the real why. Tell your team where things actually stand before you ask for effort, even when it's bad news.
- Talk to the folded arms. The huddle reaches the room. The person who's checked out needs their own conversation.
- Keep naming the wins. Especially when you're flat out, because that's exactly when they stop.
SIGNATURE EXPERIENCE
The Trust Experiment
90 minutes · 15 to 60 people
You cannot explain your way into a team that trusts each other.
You can't survey it. You can't slide-deck it. You certainly can't write it on a values poster in the breakout room. Trust gets built by doing something slightly uncomfortable together and surviving it.
So that's what we do.
The Trust Experiment gets a room of self-conscious adults out of their chairs, moving, laughing and genuinely connected inside ninety minutes. No slides. No trust falls. Nobody performs alone, nobody is watched, and nobody is put on the spot.
It works best on the people who least want to be there.
What shifts in the room:
- • People who haven't properly spoken in months have a real conversation
• A depleted team finds its energy again
• Psychological safety stops being a concept and becomes something they've actually felt
• They find out what it's like to be brave together
Adapted for corporate teams, school staff development days, aged care, health and volunteer organisations.
MC & HOSTING
Conferences, awards nights, festivals, panels and community events.
I keep your program on time without making it feel like a schedule, and I read a room well enough to know when it needs energy and when it needs to breathe. Thirty-five years on stage means nothing on your run sheet is going to rattle me.
Warm. Professional. Completely unflappable.
Why Cherie
- Currently in a leadership role at Woolworths, one of Australia's largest employers. Present tense, not a past life.
Certificate IV in Training & Assessment and Store Leadership Pathway graduate.
President and Life Member, Tamworth Musical Society.
Member, Tamworth Regional Arts Advisory Committee.
Mental Health First Aider and Return to Work Coordinator.
35+ years in performance, choreography and community leadership.
“The combination nobody else has: current corporate leadership experience, plus three and a half decades of getting people to give their effort for free.”
Who this is for
- Leadership and management conferences
Corporate team days and offsites
School staff development days
Aged care, disability and health providers
Professional services firms
Associations and member organisations