Non-judgmental Approach to Understanding Individuals

Maria Kellis shares her insights on the significance of HR and the often-overlooked value it brings to companies. Drawing from her diverse background as an MIT graduate, international speaker, bestselling author, and business professional. Maria emphasizes the integral role HR plays in fostering employee engagement, motivation, and overall company success. She advocates for a non-judgmental approach to understanding individuals within a team, highlighting the importance of emotional and human support alongside business considerations. Throughout the conversation, Maria emphasizes the need for balance, self-leadership, and a holistic view of human potential in the evolving landscape of leadership and AI integration.

 

Contact Maria

Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariakellis/

Website – https://mariakellis.com/

 

Leighann Lovely  00:20

HR professionals, business owners and operations at all levels are struggling to figure out what needs to change. Our system has been shocked practices have been questioned, and conversations are finally happening. We all know there has been a huge shift in what people want. inclusion and diversity are common phrases. But often misunderstood generations are coming together more than ever on what's important. Mental health has been brought to the forefront of everyone's mind. Let's humanize these conversations. Let's talk about what's important for employees to be successful in life and at their job and how companies can create an environment to allow them to do both because successful people will make up a successful workforce. I'm Leighann Lovely. Let's get this conversation started. Maria Kellis is a sought after leadership coach, intuitive business consultant, inspirational speaker and best selling author. With experience that spans multiple continents. Maria's journey is one of resilience, passion and a dedication to elevate individuals and organizations in their pinnacle, an MIT graduate, she seamlessly merges her business acumen and spiritual insight to offer transformative strategies, particularly in transmuting adversity into triumph. Maria firmly believes in the transformative power of inner work to facilitate external success. Maria, thank you so much for joining me today. I am very excited to talk with you.

 

Maria Kellis  01:57

Thank you for having me.

 

Leighann Lovely  01:59

So why don't you start off by telling my art or the audience, a little bit about yourself, and you know who you are?

 

Maria Kellis  02:11

Absolutely. And to start with, I'm excited to be here, I feel that the conversation around HR is incredibly important. Because HR tends to have a bad rap. It's almost that they're the people that everybody says, Who cares about HR, or they're like, oh, we'll just use HR is like, it's a thing. And we forget the value that HR has in our lives in our companies, I believe that our companies are stronger, because of our human potential. In fact, a company can go down, because the employees are not working to sustain the company and the company can survive or thrive, because the employees care. And HR plays a central role in that. So I might my background is that I used to be an engineer, I graduated from MIT then I was in business. I actually graduated from Stanford School of Business. And at MIT. So I used to be in startups have always been startups, and we've always had hire people. And that's when my respect for hires came in. Because I realized that we, in the beginning, we always talked about the A players, and how to hire those. And I realize it's not just a player's team, everybody has a role. And it's not about looking at somebody as an individual, but looking at the team as a whole, that makes a difference in the company. So I have had my own personal journey that got me to be who I am today. And this journey has been, I'm gonna say difficult. In 2004, ended up being in a wheelchair. And I had to learn how to walk again, which is not exactly as easy as it sounds, while actually it's as difficult as it sounds. And I remember realizing that everything is a perspective. At the time, I had a tremendous amount of pain. And I realized, oh, I have a tremendous amount of neuropathic pain. So instead of thinking, I am broken, I realized, oh, I have something to work with. And I started saying that pain is not bad. It's just something I need to remap. And so I started remapping pain. I'm like, huh, that pain was hot. That pain was called that pain is movement. That means pain is done. hang out, that pain is falling out. Pain is hitting something because I didn't pay attention. That pain is way too close. But that's when I realized that when we make things good and bad, we are judgmental, and we're not really looking at what we have. So coming back to