Manelle Merhi talks candidly to H&R News Ahead of HIRE24
Manelle knows who she is and is not afraid of failing forward.
SPEND ANY TIME WITH MANELLE MERHI and you’ll have no doubt about her passion for the industry, her ability to lift others up and a commitment to a set of personal values that define the way she operates. (Hint: it’s unapologetically authentic.)
“Being unapologetically me means I don’t have to be afraid and hold back who I am, how I act or how I sound, the rawness in my thoughts or my feelings or whether I have an unpopular opinion,” she says. “I’m anchored in my values and what I bring to the table.”
Manelle’s been in hire for 20 years – mostly with Kennards Hire – working her way up from marketing assistant to coordinator to her current role of General Manager, Marketing and Customer Experience. Along the way, she took a step sideways into the OEM side of the industry to gain product management experience, relishing the opportunity to ‘get her hands dirty on the tools’.
Three years later, a phone call brought her back to marketing, this time to lead the marketing team for the merger of Coates and National. It was a role she describes as a ‘marketer’s dream’ involving a full rebrand of company identity and assets. However, after a few years at Coates, she took a time-out from the industry for family reasons and 12 months later came back to Kennards Hire as the Brand Culture Manager to lead a project embedding Kennards values across the organisation. Following this successful project, she took a new role in the company’s growing marketing function.
While Head of Marketing, Manelle took parental leave (she now has six-year-old twin boys) and on her return, decided to pivot, accepting the role of Head of Customer Experience. It was a strategic move designed to broaden her experience, despite feeling uncomfortable about taking on a new discipline.
“I’m a big believer in being curious, challenging yourself and tackling projects where you might fail forward,” says Manelle. “That’s always been instrumental as I’ve taken my next step.”
She says it’s about not being afraid to ‘have a crack’. “The hire industry has a mentality of ‘let’s have a go, fix it and get things done’. If you’re going to have that philosophy and keep progressing, you’ve also got to accept that failure is part of the experience.”
Today, she leads both disciplines at Kennards Hire — marketing and customer experience — and is a valued part of the leadership team; the culmination (so far) of earning her stripes, building resilience, gaining confidence and being authentic in words and actions.
Manelle explains, “When I was offered the GM role, I was riddled with imposter syndrome. In my first 12 months, I wasn’t myself in leadership meetings or the boardroom, not because of a lack of support from the CEO or the people around the boardroom table, but due to my unconscious bias and a feeling that I wasn’t meant to be there.”
“These doubts and fears pop in and freeze you, impacting your ability to communicate effectively, stifling creativity, and impeding the ability to find your voice. I had to stop and ask, ‘why am I so afraid?’”
She says much of her fear was a result of pressure she’d put on herself to know everything and demonstrate to leadership that they’d made the right recruitment decision.
“I had to understand that if I proposed something and it wasn’t taken on board straight away, it wasn’t necessarily a loss of confidence in me. Instead, I had to learn to seed, nurture and grow ideas and take people on a journey.”
It’s what’s helped her overcome the challenges of imposter syndrome.
“Everyone has felt it to some degree,” says Manelle, “but I think many women go straight to rejection. It’s why we need to find ways to build our resilience, become bolder and have the courage and clarity to be our best authentic selves.”
Being authentic is now Manelle’s default position. She has ‘boisterous’ enthusiasm and energy, and while she’s tried to ‘turn the volume down’ in the past, that’s inevitably left her feeling guilty, frustrated, and angry. Finally, the penny dropped.
“I always come from a place of passion and care so why should I feel the need to shrink myself for people to be comfortable with me?” she says. “Sure, I have some rough edges, but I’m a good person who brings good stuff to the table. That’s what being authentic and unapologetic means to me.”
As a leader, her authenticity manifests through trust and consistency.
“People need to know they can trust who you are as a person,” says Manelle.
“You also need to be consistent because if you don’t, your ‘mask’ will eventually come off. Your team needs to know what they’re going to get every single day. That’s how you gain respect as a leader.”
Manelle with a panel of her peers at HIRE23’s Future of Hire session.
“It always comes from a place of passion and care so why should I feel the need to shrink myself for people to be comfortablewith me?”
Manelle speaking at the Future of Hire at HIRE23 in Sydney alongside Dave Cameron from Point of Rental and Gab Robinson from Harry the hirer.
As a professional marketer, Manelle also started to work on her personal brand, starting with a simple question: ‘What do I want people to say about me when I leave a room?’
“There are so many different angles and dimensions of personality,” she says. “By showing up in all my authenticity, I can take ownership of what they’re going to pick up when I leave the room.”
For Manelle, that can mean acknowledging the ‘elephant in the room’ up front: she’s loud, passionate and a great exponent of colourful language! At her core, she’s also guided by a unique set of personal values — integrity, compassion and empathy, courage, equality, and personal freedom — which give her a greater sense of clarity.
“I believe in caring for people and making them feel important, being brave and challenging myself and having the guts to drive equality, standing for people who don’t have a voice, giving women the platform for change and having the personal freedom to be one’s true self to live a life in total authenticity without judgment or constraints,” she says.
“If I can be someone that can change the path in my circle, in my workplace, in my community, so I create a higher mountain for the next person to see further, than I’m going to do that.”
“It’s about breaking gender and organisational curses and being the example that changes the tide, because when our people get better, we get better too.”
It’s not just women who Manelle is championing in this industry — she’s keen for more young people to consider building their careers in hire.
“There’s something really nice about this industry that makes you feel like you’re among friends,” she says. “It’s the spirit of the collective good, helping each other out. It’s us against the problem, not us against each other.”
“So don’t pay attention to any pre-conceptions about hire you may have. This industry offers a phenomenal ability to shape your career in a way that’s so well rounded, giving you a real competitive advantage.”
You can hear more from Manelle at HIRE24 in Brisbane when she joins us on a panel to discuss the Future of Hire (6 June).
Manelle Merhi with Kennards CEO Bill Whitehouse
