Martine Harkin

Martine is one of Leading Teams’ longest serving facilitators, a member of the first group of full time employees who trained under the founding partners in 2008.

A teacher by trade, she is valued by her clients for her rapport building and ability to keep things simple and aligned to the model. Her approach balances showing genuine care for the team while challenging deftly when required.

An AICD graduate, Martine is now Chair of the LTA Board and plays a key role in the training and quality development of our team. Currently she is based in Brisbane, where she has helped hundreds of teams and leaders become high performing.

How would you like to be described by your family, friends, and clients?

I would like to be described as:
Genuine – showing a great balance of care, empathy, and challenge
Generous – sharing of myself – knowledge included – without expectation
Grounded – acceptance that I am enough and constantly learning
Grace – lead by example in seeking feedback and modelling what courage and vulnerability look like

What is your favourite piece of leadership advice, or quote?

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday” – Eleanor Roosevelt

What does success look like with a client?

Success for a client ultimately is a higher performing team and that will look different for each team, depending on where they’re starting from and where they choose to take it. For teams, this will generally be a greater weight of numbers pulling in one direction for a common purpose. It means the right behaviours will consistently be rewarded and the less desirable ones will be challenged. Through stronger relationships and adherence to an agreed framework, the group will feel safer in having the genuine conversations and in turn their performance will improve. Everyone in the team will also have their own journey of improvement and that is the rewarding aspect of this program – harder to measure but it brings great joy and reward.

Tell us about your culture and leadership experience?

Joining Leading Teams has given me the greatest opportunity to improve as a leader and as a human. We live our model so are constantly applying what we do to our day to day lives. We don’t always get it right, so I feel immensely proud that we can share those experiences with our clients and also that I am – no doubt – a better person for being a part of our team. I am proud to have been voted in by my peers as a leader at Leading Teams for the last few years.

Martine Harkin

In my opinion, Martine is brilliant! If you’re wanting to go on a true journey of transformation as an individual or a group, digging deep, confronting your truths, she’s your person. I’d describe her as a ‘no-bullshit’ type of coach, however super human with her approach with a brilliant read on people and behaviours.

Adriarna Nunn

Head of People and Culture, Melbourne Real Estate

Martine Harkin's Articles

News

At Leading Teams, we’ve spent more than 25 years helping organisations build what’s now widely known as psychological safety. Long before that phrase entered boardrooms and academic journals, we were having conversations with teams about something more familiar and more practical: trust.

News

Storytelling is critical to the work we do as facilitators at Leading Teams. It allows us to build relationships and show empathy with the team we’re working with by sharing our own experiences and helps people to learn through the messages in the story.

News

I’m not a Queenslander. When I moved here three years ago, it was made very clear to me that it would take anywhere between ten to twenty years up here to never to be fully accepted – all with tongues firmly in cheeks, but there was something in it. Sharing my thoughts, then, on the situation with the current Queensland-based NRL sides should probably be done with trepidation.

News

  As someone who is passionate about culture, leadership and team dynamics, the current political environment as provided plenty of content to reflect on and write about. The recent leadership spill and new Prime Minister appointment of Scott Morrison, had me intrigued as to what he was going to do first in his new role.