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Only female leadership speaker with an economics PhD, 11 best-selling leadership and business books, and 20 years of active military service. Get motivated with military leadership that builds profit.

Mary Kelly, PhD, CSP, Commander, Author

Smart, funny, and high-energy, Mary’s audiences request Mary back again and again. Mary provides actionable takeaways that motivate, inspire, and engage. From the C-level throughout the organization, Mary is a hit!

Mary helps business leaders understand current and future economic issues so they can make decisions that facilitate productivity, improve employee engagement, and increases profitability.
A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Mary spent over 20 years on active duty in intelligence and logistics. She retired from the Navy as a commander. She has masters’ degrees in both history and economics, and a PhD in economics.
With over 30 years combined teaching experience at the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy and Hawaii Pacific University, she taught economics, finance, leadership, and management.
Dr. Kelly has extensive experience as a business advisor and executive coach, specializing in interpreting economic data and trends, and providing the leadership advice needed to make the right decisions to move the organization forward. As a CEO, Mary has a track record for success.
In her role as a military leader, Commander Kelly developed a business model for the computer and telecommunications organization for personnel hiring, training and retention that was adopted globally by the U. S. Navy. Managing culturally diverse teams, she orchestrated organizational changes for over 3,000 personnel for 2 military base closures. Her ability to problem solve and provide innovative solutions enabled her to transform the Navy’s largest pay and personnel organization from the lowest in customer satisfaction to the highest in the nation in 18 months, with 23% fewer employees and a 19% budget decrease.
As a speaker and presenter, Mary Kelly pulls from her diverse experience to provide keynote presentations that are engaging and compelling, leaving the audience wanting more. With a warm and sincere style, Mary takes her vast knowledge and provides an educational presentation that holds the interest of her audience. She is a popular speaker on topics of leadership, communication, financial planning, and management. As a communicator, she has chaired academic and military panels for economics, political science and historical conferences. She has conducted over 5,000 programs on financial, business, management, and leadership topics.
Productive Leaders maintains sites in Dallas, TX and Denver, CO. Each of Mary’s 11 books has its own wine label. Mary happily brings samples. Mary likes skiing, kayaking, time outside with her dogs, and building businesses.

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Topics

Why Leaders Fail and the 7 Prescriptions for Success

The news is full of leadership failures. Many good people, when they rise to leadership positions, fail.  Good leadership seems easy in theory but actually living, executing, and fostering strong, effective leadership in corporations and organizations is tough. 

The military focus on leadership is not an accident.  Leadership is most critical during times of crisis.  As Mary says, “Anyone can lead a team of highly-motivated, well-paid, good-hearted employees when there are no problems. That isn’t leadership.” Leadership happens when things are tough and there are problems to solve.

The program and resulting book, Why Leaders Fail and the 7 Prescriptions for Success, developed from studying over 10,000 military, government, and business people, and analyzing what makes successful leaders.  Mary Kelly and Peter Stark realized that there are 7 overarching reasons why leaders fail.  They created 49 Prescriptions for Success to help well-intentioned leaders become trusted advisors, respected advocates, and highly effective team builders.

In this cutting-edge program, participants will gain:

  • Insight into behaviors that may be sabotaging the loyalty of their direct reports
  • Understanding about why their top talent may not be performing up to their potential
  • Tools to align team goals with organizational mission
  • Awareness of how they are perceived by their direct reports, peers, and supervisors
  • The 49 Prescriptions for Success
  • A personalized leadership assessment to help identify leadership strengths and weaknesses

Leading Teams: 10 Military Secrets for Building Effective and Productive Teams

Getting people to work together is challenging. Office tension, competition, gossip, personal agendas and pettiness reduce morale and productivity. 

Do you ever wonder how the military recruits people from diverse environments and coalesces them into cooperative, fighting teams?

Find out how you can use military approaches to enhance communication and teamwork, develop integration, and facilitate a positive work environment. In this workshop you can expect to learn:

  • Ways to be more productive in less time
  • Ways to work together to accomplish more
  • How to communicate clearly among all levels
  • How to set and exceed expectations
  • Ways to conquer the obstacles that create barriers to effective teamwork
  • To use the strengths of people you work with despite cross generational gaps

The military forges cohesive teams and develops leaders, and you can too!

Master Your World: 10 Leadership Strategies to Improve Productivity, Profits, and Communication

One of Mary’s most popular presentations! In this informative, engaging and entertaining program you’ll learn what it takes to be a great leader, which will, in turn, result in a great team. Leadership is all about creating a vision as well as executing the strategy. Leadership is also why people, and companies, succeed or fail. Some people believe leadership is limited to the people at the top, but real leadership happens at all levels in every organization.

True leaders strategically plan and implement long-term programs to take advantage of talent and increase morale throughout the organization.

Everyone benefits when leaders apply three core techniques, and then refine them with seven critical applications. Mary can’t wait to share these key pieces of leadership knowledge with you! This program is engaging and immediately applicable. Master Your World is packed with templates and tools so leaders can achieve optimal results.

So what can you expect to learn by selecting this inspirational program?
In this presentation Mary will teach you:

  • What most employees are not getting from their leaders and managers that they need in order to be more effective and successful in the workplace
  • How to implement actionable items to create cohesive teamwork and better engage those around you 
  • How to improve personal and professional productivity with less stress
  • Ways to best use your networks and relationships to further your influence and your business 
  • How to find the keys to being happier and more productive at work (and at home) by applying the Master Your World techniques

360° of Leadership: Steering Around the Icebergs

Great leadership is an upside down pyramid. You as the leader are there to support the people working for you. Great leaders build effective teams and remind managers and leaders to communicate, develop employees, listen, and strategize for optimal results.

The military asks employees to sleep at work, but your organization doesn’t expect your people to work for several weeks without a day off. Learn the secrets of leadership and motivation from a 21-year Navy veteran who lead multi-cultural teams all over the world in this thought-provoking, action-packed session.  This program is designed for teambuilding, experienced managers, and senior management.

Is the 360° of Leadership the right program for your group? In this powerful and thought provoking session, you will learn the following:

  • What to consider as you assume a new role with new responsibilities
  • How to communicate effectively with your diverse workforce
  • What most employees wish their leaders knew
  • Ways to use the strengths of your workplace demographics
  • How to motivate employees even without a budget

Let Mary help you navigate the waters of the workplace, we promise you won’t even need a floatation device!

Change Management: Survive and Thrive in the New Economy

Change is fun for some people, but miserable for others. Personality type, job position, seniority, and past experiences all determine how different people react to the idea of changing the way they conduct business. Understanding how people will react and addressing their concerns in advance of implementation can determine the success or failure of the new process.

Change management is a critical part of any organization that leads, manages, or enables people to accept and embrace new processes, technologies, systems, structures and values. This fun and interactive experience explores how health care professionals can maximize new opportunities and help others understand the change process.

The intent of effective change management is to:

  • Address the concerns and barriers of the people who will need to adopt the new methods.
  • Address the concerns and trepidation of the supporting roles.
  • Overcome the uncertainty obstacles that impede necessary change to achieve greater effectiveness.
  • Ensure that everyone in the organization is ready, willing, and able to perform his or her role in the new environment.

Outcomes: Through this entertaining and interactive session focusing on leadership at all levels, we increase productivity. Participants learn how to enact change, how to explain why the change is being implemented, how it is going to benefit them, and why adapting to the new system is in their best self-interest. We overcome ambiguities, barriers, resistance, and reluctance to change behavior and methodologies.

15 Ways to Grow Your Business in Every Economy

You are wonderful with clients, you understand what you need to do to stay current in your field, and you have a great staff, but running a business is tough.

Wouldn’t it be great to prosper all the time? Would you like to grow your business regardless of the economy? Do you want to be recession-proof?

In this fast-paced, dynamic, and fun session, renowned economist, speaker and leadership expert Mary C. Kelly, PhD covers 15 ways to assist business owners in more effective marketing, enhanced productivity, and achieving greater profits all the time. Mary would love to help you grow your business!

  • Learn how to put together a dynamite, well-organized business plan that defines your business strategy with Mary’s easy-to-use, fill-in-the-blank templates
  • Discover how to use your business relationships to further your business with a structured referral system
  • Be able to track the strengths and weaknesses of your teams to best assign tasks, align goals, and achieve optimal outcomes
  • Implement actionable items to create cohesive teamwork, improve personal and professional productivity, and better engage those around you using a daily tracking tool
  • And 11 other actions that grow your business

Testimonials

Mary is my new favorite speaker!

She is smart, funny, engaging, and attentive to our members. She is fabulous with our sponsors (she worked them into the presentation and made them feel special) and she knew our issues. My audiences loved her.

I’ve booked her 3 times for 3 different organizations and she is great!

– Executive Director, Housing Colorado

Loved having Mary at the Special District Association! This is our third year with Mary. Mary connects with the audience every time and they love her energy and message.

She always goes above and beyond to help the meeting planning team – whatever we need, Mary says yes.

– Executive Director, Special Districts Association Colorado

Mary’s programs are always perfect for whoever is in the audience. She tailors every program and is interactive and funny. She researches the audience and knows what they need.

I’ve seen her present several times and she is always a hit!

– Executive Director, SBDC

“Dr. Mary Kelly was fabulous with our group. We had people from several different countries and we were using translators, which is tough for some speakers. The interpreters said Mary was the best speaker they worked with – she gave them material ahead of time to help make their job easier. Mary integrated every country represented and made them feel included. She participated in our conference and spent time talking to and engaging our participants on her own time. I have received nothing but positive feedback-even unsolicited- about her presentation and her outgoing personality. Everyone enjoyed having her at our conference!”

– Construction Safety Manager, Freeport-McMoRan Mining Company

Excellent material presented in an exciting way! When she presents her leadership material she makes it seem as though we can all be great leaders. We left each session excited and motivated.

We brought Mary in for a leadership and a change management program, and she was a home run in both sessions!

– Director of Public Health, North Dakota Public Health

Happy to recommend Mary! She is a great speaker and she worked well with my team.

– Human Resources Director, City of Gillette, WY

Great content and entertaining style! Mary provided fabulous programs for our real estate professionals to grow their business.

Attendees raved about her and asked for more.

Want lots of content, a great presentation, and a low maintenance (and really nice) speaker? Call Mary.

– Professional Development Coordinator, Colorado Association of Realtors

I am pleased to recommend Mary C. Kelly, PhD, of Productive Leaders, whom we recently worked with as a guest instructor at our V-Wise National Conference, an alumni training event for close to 300 women veterans and military spouses.

Mary created a wonderful, powerful, and effective environment where she connected to several women veterans and and military spouses throughout the three day conference.

She also made a commitment to really take the time to get to know the women participants, which demonstrates who Mary is as a person.

Even now, a few months after the program, Mary is staying connected to our participants, serving as a continued resource.

– Program Manager, V-Wise, Institute for Veterans and Military Families

I so completely enjoyed your terrific presentation to the Colorado Speakers Academy. It was such a great day, and wow! What great ideas and recommendations you shared – so worth my time and that is the highest compliment I can give.

– Business Owner, StearlingSease

I can’t thank you enough for coming to Casper and visiting with my group! Everyone raved about how wonderful and personable you were. I hope you had a safe trip home and hope we get to work together again in the near future!

– Director, Human Resources, Wyoming Community Development Authority

Our group loves Mary! We want her to come back every year! Mary’s takeaways are so helpful, and we can use them right away. She relates to our audience and they love her humor and energy.

– Policy Specialist, Colorado Association of School Boards

From myself and the Board of Directors, we want to send another sincere thank you. The SRC prides itself on education for our members, and to get quality speakers is not an easy task. You FAR exceeded quality for us all yesterday. You have such a gift and I am so glad you love sharing it with others. The feedback was incredible.

– Executive Director, Senior Resource Council

Mary was awesome for the Texas Payroll Association!

She presented an amazing general session leadership program and gave us 10 techniques we can all use and people raved about that session.

Then she did the In Case of Emergency program and people stood in line and missed other sessions to talk with her and Mary stayed all day to meet with our attendees.

Absolutely fabulous speaker and a dream to work with. Mary made my job easy.

– Functional Advisor- Payroll, Ensco

You were both informative and entertaining! This session helped our members with growing their real estate businesses. Thank you!

– Programs and Events, Women’s Council of Realtors

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