Average sucks, so laugh and learn while getting better at getting better.
A seasoned leadership trainer and people engagement specialist, Terry Williams has spent nearly three decades helping organisations develop stronger leaders, more effective teams, and high-performing workplace cultures.
Since establishing The People Engagement Experts in 2001, Terry has worked with organisations across New Zealand and internationally, delivering leadership, communication, sales, and performance development programmes that equip people with practical skills to succeed in complex workplace environments. His work spans a diverse range of industries, including healthcare, banking, defence, retail, manufacturing, local government, law, and hospitality.
Terry's expertise is grounded in real-world leadership experience. Before moving into full-time consultancy, training, and facilitation, he spent more than a decade in customer service and contact centre leadership roles, including managing a 40-person team and a multi-million-dollar operational budget at North Shore City Council. There, he built and expanded the council's customer contact centre and was recognised as a finalist in the TUANZ Call Centre of the Year Awards.
Recognised for blending evidence-based leadership principles with humour and relatability, Terry has trained more than 14,000 participants since 2007 and has worked with organisations including Red Bull, Kia, Southern Cross Healthcare, TSB Bank, McDonald's, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, Gallagher Insurance, Orion Health, Downer, and MinterEllisonRuddWatts. His practical and engaging approach helps make challenging topics such as leadership, change management, difficult conversations, emotional intelligence, and workplace performance both accessible and memorable.
In 2019, Terry was awarded the prestigious Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation by Professional Speakers Australia, an accreditation held by only a small percentage of professional speakers worldwide. He is also the author of two books, The Brain-Based Boss and The Guide: How to Kiss, Get a Job & Other Stuff You Need to Know, and has contributed extensively to New Zealand business media, including as a columnist for Employment Today and a regular contributor to the New Zealand Herald Careers section.
Holding a Postgraduate DBA (Management) from Massey University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Canterbury, Terry combines academic insight with hands-on business experience. He is widely respected for helping organisations create cultures where people perform at their best, lead with confidence, and achieve meaningful results.
Talking Points
The High Cost of Avoided Conversations (and what to do about it)
Unresolved workplace tension and delayed tough conversations cost businesses millions annually. While traditional leadership workshops teach vital communication frameworks, classroom theory often falls flat because real-world execution carries high social friction and fear of [insert your personal fear here]. The High Cost of Avoided Conversations (and what to do about it)
Designed specifically for executive leaders and CEOs, this interactive presentation delivers a scalable solution to close the capability gap without a huge investment of time, money and risk. Facilitated by People Engagement Expert Terry Williams, you will discover how to capture your organisation's unique operational DNA and convert inhouse lessons-learnt into dynamic, low-stakes AI ‘Conversation Practice Partners.’ (Like flight simulators but for people skills!)
With 35+ years as a leadership development and people-skills trainer, Terry has seen a lot of time and money spent and a lot of variation in how effective it was in actually making a difference back in the real world of work. People that know stuff don’t necessarily do stuff. Bridging the knowing-doing gap is what this new tool is all about.
What You Will Experience & Learn:
• Calculate Your Evasion Tax: Quantify the hidden costs of leadership avoidance, team drama, and lost productivity in your organisation.
• The Flight Simulator Model: Learn how low-stakes AI roleplay provides a safe runway for managers to practice tough performance conversations anytime, anywhere, without peer judgment.
• Hands-on Character Lab: Map custom operational archetypes, hidden objections, and guardrails to tailor AI voice partners directly to your company's culture.
• Proven Case Studies: Discover how industry leaders like Foodstuffs and Niko transformed manager confidence and normalised proactive feedback using interactive AI simulations.
Stop letting avoided conversations drag down execution speed. Walk away with actionable frameworks and a blueprint to transform your firm's leadership culture.
Workshop/Webinar: Change & Resilience
1. Change is inevitable the accelerating rate of changeWorkshop/Webinar: Change & Resilience
2. Countering the claim that if it aint broke don't fix it (The Sigmoid Curve)
3. Establishing the need for a strategic rather than reactive approach to change
4. Kotter's 8-step framework for organisational change
5. My 8-part framework for personal change
6. Characteristics of teams and individuals prepared for change
7. The WIIFM Grid Leveraging self interest
8. Synching up with the natural human emotional response cycle (Denial. Avoidance, passive acceptance, challenged, committed)
9. Developing change management plans
10. Developing communication management plans
11. Gaining support
12. Building momentum
13. Utilising both logic and emotion (The elephant and the rider)
14. Building resilience
15. Building flexibility
16. Learning from this change for the next one
17. Action planning
Workshop/Webinar: Building High-Performance Teams
1. Self-identify characteristics of high-performing and low-performing teamsWorkshop/Webinar: Building High-Performance Teams
2. Gap analysis of current team versus model high performing characteristics (Team diagnostic)
3. Individual team dynamic style types (rationals, idealists, artisans, guardians)
4. Role clarity
5. Values overlap
6. Trust (Above the line; Below the line)
7. The Team Lifecycle (Tuckman's model of forming, storming, norming, performing)
8. Leveraging the wisdom of the group: brainstorms
9. DeBono: lateral thinking, group problem solving, 6 thinking hats
10. Decision making
11. Constructive conflict and negativity
12. Team planning tools (SWOT)
13. Shared leadership
14. Team self-maintenance
Workshop/Webinar: Leadership Introduction
1. DefinitionWorkshop/Webinar: Leadership Introduction
2. Purpose
3. Leadership vs management
4. Behaviours of effective leaders
5. 10 different leadership techniques
6. Personal leadership styles
7. A toolbox' approach to leadership no one right way
8. Adapting your leadership as your career progresses
9. Self leadership
10. Situational leadership
11. Leadership research (Covey, Kouzes & Posner)
12. Role modelling
13. Vision
14. Challenging process
15. Enabling
16. Encouraging
17. Self-assessment & gap analysis against characteristics of successful leaders
18. Leadership planning
19. Indirect influence
20. Action planning
Your seminar helped transform our company in terms of building and keeping an effective team. I am a chronic skeptic of business seminars and the slightly evangelical feel that many of them ... keep reading CEO, KeepUp.com
A great job not only as MC but your keynote was brilliant in its simplicity.
Awesome presentation! Loved the content, takeaways, and of course the laughs
Terry has a natural gift of humour, and the ability to bring together a room full of strangers, and make them feel like a cohesive unit. He brings with him an ability to take charge of any situation and can take a muted crowd to being pumped and ready to go. From an organiser's perspective he gives the reassurance that everything you need him to do is taken care of. Undeniably, Terry's sincerity, professionalism, talent and wonderful energy will inject success into every conference or event he hosts!
Terry, you did another amazing job MCing our conference. I love your work! A great, big thank you from NZ Certified Builders.
Thank you for your guidance, enthusiasm and humor in MCing the #HRGrow event. You are an amazing talent!
Terry was recently the MC at our annual conference in Auckland. Both myself and the audience really enjoyed Terry's professional high-energy during the day and his enthused humour during the conference dinner. But it's what the audience didn't see that sticks in my mind even more, the way he ensures the conference runs smoothly, the speakers are on and in time, and both myself and the audience has a good time. Terry is totally professional, and I totally recommend him.
Terry kept our team energised & engaged through the day. He capped it off with an excellent motivational talk that caused us all to reflect, inbetween the bouts of laughter. I can thoroughly recommend Terry for any event of this kind.
Terry is a delight. His energy and enthusiasm is contagious and his presentation hit the perfect note for our conference. He had the audience in the palm of his hand whilst sharing some great insights and nuggets of truth for everyone to take away. I would absolutely recommend Terry as a Key Note speaker.
Celebrating a 100 years as a company is a major achievement. So when we were put on a function for our professional peers to celebrate this milestone of achievement we really wanted it to go well. With this we wanted a speaker who would be informative and humorous. This would be crucial to the success of our major external event in celebrating our 100 years. We quickly settled on Terry Williams as the ideal speaker for us and when he was able to confirm his attendance we gave him a précis of what we hoped for and he delivered. A witty , informative, challenging presentation that had the audience laughing as well as giving them great information to take away and ponder. The feedback from our guests has been excellent, Terry's involvement made it the perfect event we were hoping for. Thank you Terry!
Thank you so much Terry for being such a terrific MC at our Lead To Succeed Graduation Dinner. It was immensely helpful having you conduct the proceedings. You read the crowd well and provided the perfect mix of professionalism and humour.
He takes to the stage like a seasoned pro... some of the best punchlines I've heard. Terry's superb comedic timing and innate ability to tell and build up a good story will have you hooked. His stories are engaging, well written and just downright funny.
