For 35 years I've led people who didn't have to follow me.
Volunteers. Cast members. Committee members. People with no contract, no pay, and nothing stopping them from walking out the door on a wet Tuesday night.
They showed up anyway. And they gave me everything they had.
I also lead a team at Woolworths, one of the largest employers in the country. So I know both sides of this. What it takes to lead people who are paid to be there, and what it takes to lead people who aren't.
The second group taught me what the first group actually needed.
SIGNATURE KEYNOTE
How to Lead People Who Don't Have to Follow You
45 to 60 minutes
Authority gets you compliance. It has never once got you effort.
Every leader in your room is managing people they can't really compel. Matrix teams. Volunteers. Committees. Contractors. And staff who have quietly decided to do the minimum and go home.
This is what three and a half decades of leading unpaid people teaches you about earning effort you cannot demand.
Audiences leave able to:
- • Tell the difference between compliance and commitment in their own team
• Use connection before courage, in that order, instead of skipping to the pep talk
• Ask for more without spending authority they don't have
• Build something people opt into rather than tolerate
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.
THE FRAMEWORK
Connection → Courage → Confidence → Wellbeing
- Everything I run is built on one sequence, and the order isn't negotiable.
Connection creates support. Support makes courage possible. Courage leads to action. Action builds confidence. And confidence is what wellbeing actually rests on.
Most organisations try to start at confidence. That's why it doesn't work.
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