Trudy MacDonald - Hire Keynote and Guest Speaker

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Key Points for Trudy MacDonald

Trudy MacDonald Co-founded and held Senior Executive roles in a number of organisations (3 acquired by international companies).
Trudy has more than 12 years coaching and advising leaders across a range of organisations.
Her career spans across Australia, NZ, USA and parts of Asia.
Trudy has coached Board members, C-suite and Senior Management for over 15 years across a range of industries.

Topics for Trudy MacDonald

Emerging trends and future proofing
Within ever changing market pressures and an unpredictable global environment, leaders must build their capability and knowledge of agile leadership and look beyond the physical and technologial aspects of work in order to be responsive, prepared and thrive.
In this session participants will learn:
- To look beyond the technological and physical aspects of the future of work.
- Explore the role of leaders in shaping the future of work and creating more human centric organisations.
- Discover how we can support our teams to bring the human element back into the way we work.
- Why, so we can thrive no matter what changes continue to happen around us.
- This session focuses on exploring existing and emerging threats and challenges to the organisation and workshopping real time people solutions.
Talent attraction, retention and engagement
The current state of the talent market and the ongoing 'talent war' means leaders need to adopt more agile and flexible strategies for attraction and selecting talent. Once you have them, the focus becomes 'how do you keep them'. In this session, Trudy discusses some simple strategies for developing a fit for purpose talent attraction strategy and how to further extend this into an employee value proposition that provides benefits for ongoing talent retention and engagement.
In this session participants will learn:
- The current state of the talent market.
- Strategies for retaining top talent.
- The structures of a high performance culture.
- Strategies for talent attraction and selection.
- The focus of the session is providing leaders with a simple and repeatable approach to talent attraction and retention.
Retention, development and ways of working
In the current environment, the focus for leaders should be around the engagement, retention and wellbeing of their staff. The foundations of high performance and satisfaction develop from effective ways of working and alignment around communication, decision making and collaboration. In order to ensure our leaders and staff are effectively engaged and retained, a culture of development, psychological safety and feedback must be sustained.
In this workshop participants will learn:
- The current state of the talent market and best practice approaches for retention.
- Establishing effective ways of working to support a culture of performance, development and engagement.
- Development as a driver of success and engaging in a continuous learning culture.
- The focus of this session is providing leaders with a simple and repeatable approach to talent retention and engagement.
Strategy implementation: Embedding disciplines of accountability
Many organisations fail to execute on their strategy with lack of time, focus and discipline being the most common contributing factors. However, changes in the way we work and the way leaders should be engaging with strategy has meant these excuses are no longer palpable. The successful implementation of strategy is linked to the ability of leaders to create an effective culture and decision-making framework that creates focus, assigns accountability, promotes innovation and provides clarity on outcomes and expectations.
In this session participants will learn:
- How to lead an effective strategy culture and engage with the new normal for strategic organisational priorities.
- How to balance delivering on 'business as usual' with rapid strategic action.
- Clarity on roles, responsibilities, measures of success and best practice behavioural charters/frameworks.
- The disciplines of measurement and accountability that drive strategic results.
- How to shift away from an annual strategic plan to a faster paced, more targeted and agile strategic process.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to quip members to implement their ideas.
Creating a culture of accountability: Role clarity and performance measurement
One of the most common challenges leaders’ face is creating a sustainable culture of accountability that allows the organisation to deliver on its strategic objectives and business as usual. By creating role clarity, assigning purpose and ownership and setting clear expectations of what success looks like leaders can create an engaged and motivated culture. More recently a number of organisations are needing to re-define roles and their purpose within the business to support high performance and establish clear expectations around performance measures as a way of determining individual success and contribution to overall growth.
In this session Participants will learn:
- How to define ‘greatness’ at a company, team and individual level.
- How to engage people so there is clarity on their roles and expected outcomes to create a desire to achieve these great results.
- How to rethink traditional performance reviews to avoid common pitfalls.
- How to have effective accountability conversations that inspire, engage and motivate individuals.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.
Remuneration and retention to create a high-performance culture
Employee engagement is one of the key drivers of individual and company performance. An effective remuneration structure and strategy can play an important part in employee engagement and motivating performance. However in a climate where many salaries are being reduced, variable incentives are being adjusted or withheld, how can we set up an effective framework that supports the strategies and financial position while still retaining and attracting best talent.
In this session Participants will learn:
- How to impact individual and organisational performance through remuneration design.
- How to build an effective remuneration strategy and policy for the new economic environment.
- How to create effectives fixed and variable remuneration models.
- How to incorporate remuneration into your performance strategy.
- Effective communication and implementation of remuneration strategies and policies.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.
Unlocking leadership potential
Setting leaders and emerging leaders up for success
Employee development is a key driver of employee engagement, retention, organizational performance and growth. Accurately identifying your developing leaders and emerging leaders is a key point of differentiation for high performing organisations. Developing and setting up effective leadership behaviours is critical to ensuring your teams have the right capability to continue supporting the business through uncertain or difficult times, teach your people to be exceptional and they will step up to the challenge.
In this session Participants will learn:
- Why development is critical to the success and growth of your organisation.
- Succession planning and the business case for investing in development.
- How to identify and nurture leadership potential.
- How to unlock talent and develop your managers, leaders and emerging leaders.
- The benefits of group/peer coaching approaches to support training.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.
Creating a people and culture strategy to underpin sustainable performance and growth
In many organisations there is either a lack of P&C strategy or the P&C initiatives are undertaken contribute little strategic value to the future success of the business. As people are arguably intrinsically linked to performance and success, it is critical that all organisations have a P&C Strategy that is directly aligned and supportive of the broader business strategy and direction.
In this session Participants will learn:
- Why you should be conducting a P&C audit and review.
- How to create a meaningful link between strategy and P&C strategy.
- Why you would be supporting your P&C leaders to drive organisational results.
- The key strategic P&C questions every organisation should be asking to drive performance.
- Developing a best practice P&C roadmap to maximise ROI on initiatives.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.
Resolving your biggest people challenges
Participant driven workshop
Getting the people side of your organisation right is critical to creating or maintaining the momentum underpinning organisational performance, success and growth. This member driven workshop starts with members sharing their biggest people challenges. The themes underpinning these challenges form the agenda for the rest of the workshop whereby frameworks for thinking through member issues and practice guidance is provided.
In this session Participants will learn:
- Walk away with practical tips to resolve their biggest people challenges.
- Understand the root causes underpinning issues.
- Broaden thinking around people as a driver for sustainable performance.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.
Leadership in times of uncertainty
Given the economic, community and personal turmoil we are currently experiencing, your behaviour and actions as a leader will have a significant impact on the future state of the organisation. Added to this, ways of work are rapidly changing which creates even greater uncertainty and issues many leaders have not previously experienced.
In this workshop, members will:
- Understand how to establish a Continuity Plan and your options for managing people costs and structures within the organisation.
- Learn how to create a Go Forward Plan to provide clarity on what the organisation needs to be doing right now to survive while setting yourself up to thrive in the future.
- Re-evaluate and cascade organisational measures of success.
- Access tools, techniques and proven approaches to inspiring performance and holding remote workforces accountable.
- Shift their thinking to the future state to leverage and act on the opportunities created.
- Inspiring and mobilising your team to act smart and fast will be driven from the clarity, reinforcement and systems you create as a leader and will enable the organisation to get the balance right between being responsive and working on the organisation to set you up to thrive.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.
Planning to thrive
Many leaders are experiencing for the first time the impact of significant external pressures on their organisation and teams. The economic, community and personal turmoil associated with COVID-19 has stopped many leadership teams in their tracks with their focus turned to survival. We know this period of disruption and uncertainty will end which creates a unique opportunity for organisations, teams and individuals to emerge stronger, more resilient and better equipped than ever before to thrive in the future.
In this workshop, members will:
- Access the tools and thinking to identify and leverage the opportunities presented by the crisis.
- Learn how to leverage disruption to build stronger, more empowered teams.
- Understand how to optimise the leadership development opportunity that is created through disruption and crisis.
- Never let a good crisis go to waste! From every situation winners will emerge. How will you ensure that your organisation and your team emerge stronger than ever before?
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.
Resilience and mental toughness
Given the economic, community and personal turmoil we are currently experiencing, it is more important than ever that leaders, managers and teams have the tools and know how to manage their own resilience and create a supportive environment whereby others feel safe, empowered and mentally prepared to deal with uncertainty.
This workshop provides practical tips and resources to support leaders and managers build capabilities in the following critical areas:
- The role of leaders in building personal and team resilience.
- Understanding the causes of stress, common behavioural responses and the impact on individuals and teams.
- Understanding the psychology of resilience and mental toughness.
- Applying a tool kit for building personal resilience and mental toughness
  Supporting teams to build resilience and mental toughness.
- Personal action planning to apply learning back to the workplace.
- Templates, case studies and practical tools will be provided to equip members to implement their ideas.

Testimonials for Trudy MacDonald

I’m glad to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Trudy and TalentCode HR. They have been instrumental in supporting the Management Team in building the foundations of our Global Culture, Leadership and High Performing Teams initiatives across the business. We have successfully established the first milestone for sustainable growth in the Australian Market. I look forward to continuing to partner together to support our next strategic initiatives.
Capabilities and Change Director
Global Sales Organization

Our leadership team is now aligned and onboard with a guiding framework for accountability and performance.
Managing Director
Stellar

We have had one of our best strategic planning days and we now have something we can implement.
CEO
Goodman

The advice and contribution of Trudy MacDonald to the remuneration package for our CEO was terrific.
Executive Chair
Bisley International