Two powerhouses in the world of motivational speaking and professional coaching shared their expertise in leadership, performance acceleration, and confidence building in an expanded five-session Leadership Excellence Series during PayrollOrg’s 41st Annual Payroll Congress.

Pegine, a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and author, and Carolina Caro, a motivational speaker, trainer, coach, and consultant, shared a wealth of information and advice designed to help payroll professionals become strong and effective leaders.

Pegine, who has been a staple at Payroll Congress since 2020, taught three important sessions to payroll leaders. The sessions were:

  • Confidence Karma: This examined the four key pillars of the Confidence Karma process, which included competence, dominance, prominence, and presence, and challenged payroll professionals to apply these principles to their career.
  • Play Big: Becoming a Powerful Force in Your World: This zeroed in on five limiting beliefs behaviors that bring chaos and limit potential, and the seven steps payroll professionals can take to harness their power.
  • How to Give Feedback, Coach for Success, and Help Your People Grow: This was a primer that taught leaders and managers how to deal with deal with diverse personalities, and how to guide and influence team members to strive for excellence.

“After working with thousands of leaders, I learned that who we think of ourselves matters in how we lead and how positive we are in all aspects of life,” Pegine said.  “Life is a journey of constant change and learning. This is true at work. How you communicate feedback is critically important.”

Caro, who is also no stranger to PayrollOrg members, taught two important leadership sessions. Those sessions were:

  • Accelerated Leadership: The Art of Managing Up, Down, and Across: This was aimed at payroll managers and focused on relationship building and promoting collaboration with team members to build a cohesive unit.
  • The Great Re-alignment: Developing Influence Through Personal Power: This focused on the power of presence—a power that manifests in every human being, and that can be used to influence others in either a good or a bad way.

“These courses were developed part textbook, part from my own experience, and another part from the experience of my coaching clients,” Caro said. “I actually share a lot of stories about mistakes I made in my own career as it relates to each dimension of management and use those as learning opportunities for the audience since they might resonate with similar situations.”

Pegine and Caro do a lot of planning and creating to develop these programs, which have helped build a real following among payroll professionals.

“I think of each program as a rock show with a playlist that has variety, high emotions, and thoughtful moments. I think about the energy and the mood of each part of the program,” Pegine said. “Then the day of I do the following: meditate, pray for a positive outcome for the audience, pray for my ego to stay at bay so I can serve, and I play a pumped-up song list and dance, stretch, and I do voice exercises to loosen up. Then BAM, it’s show time.” 

Like Pegine, Caro says she molds each of her teaching programs and message delivery to fit her audience, which helps them feel connected to the content.

“As a speaker, my process is to first make sure that the content is tailored to the audience in a way that will resonate with them. That means taking time to review the slides and make adjustments,” she said. “Then I think about any activities, stories, or ways that I’ll engage the audience so that they have an experience of the content rather than simply sitting through a presentation.”

Caro, who took part in Virtual Congress last year, said she is thrilled to be making her first appearance at a PayrollOrg Congress.

“I’m just thrilled that I get to engage live rather than in a virtual space,” she said.

Attendees left the Leadership Series energized and excited to take what they learned back to their organizations.

Shannon Tousaignt, who described herself as “the payroll department” at Talley Construction in Chattanooga, Tennessee, said the information shared was both thought-provoking and inspiring.

“What you put our into the world is what you’re going to get back,” Tousaignt said. “This workshop really taught me the importance of carrying myself with confidence.”