Email: belinda@belindacoghlan.com.au | Phone: 0414 642 921
Perth-based Leadership and Human Skills Training
WHAT
is Human Skills Training?
More than ever human skills are needed in the workplace in this virtual world we navigate. Human skills training, builds the conversational competence that lets people speak up about mistakes, ideas, struggles and safety risks without fear of the consequences. These skilled conversations provide the glue to greater connection, belonging, learning experiences and continual innovation.
Human skills help address root causes, not symptoms. Excessive workloads, stress, burnout and unsafe behaviours usually stay hidden until someone has both the skill and the safety to raise them.
As the founder of Psychological Safety Systems™, I design human skills training that treats psychological safety as something you build deliberately — not a soft-skills afterthought bolted onto a culture program. Human skills training helps uplift organisational capability to let risk surface early enough to act on, before it escalates into harm. It is backed by accountable guardrails to set up the organisation for success.
WHO
needs Human Skills Training?
Almost every modern organisation reaches a point where issues are getting buried instead of raised - and that's when human skills training needs to be on the table.
Why? Because the organisations I work with are usually facing one or more of the same patterns.
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Leaders and teams allow issues to get buried instead of raised; or feedback encouraged
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Leaders are not equipped with conversational skills to keep their teams safe and productive
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Growing requirement for leaders to manage the emotional/wellbeing workspace
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Organisations that have measured a psychological safety gap and want to close it
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Workplaces with rising grievances, near-misses or unreported overload
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A culture lacking in innovative ideas or solutions focussed mindset
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Anyone building the capability layer under a broader culture or WHS strategy
Whatever's brought you here, if silence is costing your organisation more than the hard conversation would, I'm here when you need me.
HOW
does Human Skills Training work?
We deliver face2face or online training, individual and group coaching to help shift the dial on complex issues that stem from a lack of self-knowledge, self-awareness, poor psychological safety, lack of healthy boundaries, poor job design, or inadequate conversation tools to deal with supervisor conflict, receiving feedback or calling out harmful behaviours.
We uplift human skills capability with experiential learning to train the specific behaviours that make speaking up possible. Each workshop involves learning about the techniques (self-knowledge), understanding how you show up (self-awareness) planning and practicing a conversation (small group role plays), and receiving constructive feedback.
Participants are held accountable by setting individual improvement goals; and planning and executing conversations back in the workplace with buddy support.
Source: Harvard Business School
Building these capabilities will future proof your organisation in an increasingly virtual world:
Personal values alignment
Participants identify their personal values; reflect on how everyday actions are aligned/not aligned with their values; and set goals and actions that are more aligned for a fulfilling life.
Creating psychologically safe spaces
These modules help leaders and their teams create psychologically safe spaces at work.
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Assessment of team psychological safety to identify hotspots and leadership capability workshops for accountable positive behavioural change.
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Identify and manage the triggers that threaten your psychological safety and hijack your brain using the Psychological S.A.F.E.T.Y TM Model by the Academy of Brain Based Leadership.
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Demonstrate Dr Amy Edmondson’s psychologically safe behaviours of openness to learning, fallibility and curiosity in role play conversations.
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Co-design a Team Charter by Tom Geraghty, psychsafety.co.uk to provide the team clarity on direction and behavioural expectations.
Above and below the line behaviours
A simple and highly effective and tool to respond to everyday events that land on a more positive outcome.
Participants identify distinguish between above the line thinking and behaviours (ownership, responsibility, accountability); and below the line thinking and behaviours (denial, blame and justification).
Speaking up against toxic behaviours
At some point, most of us would have been impacted by harmful workplace behaviour like bullying, micromanaging or gossip. In this module, we draw on the work of international expert, Catherine Mattice, Navigating a Toxic Workplace, 2026. We focus on readiness for setting up the right environment for change, the myths about toxic workplaces, why people don’t speak up and strategies for speaking up against toxic behaviour. Participants use a clear conversational framework to plan, practice and receive supportive feedback for a range of scenarios. Participants will walk away with more confidence to practice these strategies in the workplace.
For a systemised approach, it is recommended that leaders also participate in training to measure and build capabilities to create a positive work culture; creating psychological safe spaces; giving and receiving feedback; and setting and maintaining healthy boundaries.
Giving and receiving feedback
This module focuses on empowering a thriving feedback culture to drive performance and minimise harm.
Participants will be equipped with the basic skills to give honest, candid and supportive feedback. This includes the equally important skill of asking for and receiving feedback to reduce defensiveness, resistance and an unsafe space for frank discussions.
Emotional intelligence
Even though some people are innately better at emotional intelligence, everyone can learn to better at it. Participants learn how to become more competent in managing their own emotions and others in social interactions. Through a series of reflective and feedback activities, each participant strengthens their personal competencies with self-awareness, self-motivation, self-regulation; and social competencies with social confidence, empathy and social skills.
This module has strong links with our training module, Psychological S.A.F.E.T.Y TM Model by the Academy of Brain Based Leadership.
Setting and maintaining healthy boundaries
The healthy boundary tool is one strategy in the system that helps workers prioritise self-care to help reduce stress levels, overload and burnout and other psychosocial hazards.
Communicating healthy boundaries lets your boss and work colleagues know how to keep you safe, engaged and productive. In this workshop, people learn the principles of boundary management, identify, set and maintain workplace boundaries and practice boundary conversations.
Source: From Stressed to Centred: A Practical Guide to Health and Happier You, Dana Gionta, Dan Guerra
Redesigning work (coming soon)
This module is for leaders looking for a robust wellbeing and mental health strategy. This holistic approach draws on the work by Curtin University, Future of Work Institute and the Thrive at Work Framework.
Women in Leadership ©
This highly successful program draws on the work of Danielle Dobson and her book, Breaking the Gender Code, 2020.
For females, this 3-5 day program enables the thinking and conversation tools to:
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build self-knowledge and self-awareness to be more confident to lead.
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increased understanding of what is important to you, through alignment of core values with everyday actions.
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increase confidence to hold emotionally intelligent, psychologically safe conversations and set healthy boundaries.
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explore the impact of imposter syndrome and unconscious bias.
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harness your strengths, energy and resources to sustain and support yourself and the important people in your life.
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leverage professional and support networks to enable the success of each other in a male dominated environment.
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engage with male leaders in a conversation on how we can improve the worklife for all female workers.
At the end of the program, participants will have their unique C.I.R.C.L.E code as a touchstone, to springboard their success in the workplace.
WHERE
to apply Human Skills Training?
Wherever issues are getting buried instead of raised, that's where human skills training earns its place — the cost of silence compounds the longer it goes unaddressed.
Good human skills training starts with the specific behaviours, then builds outward: issues get raised and resolved earlier, before they escalate; fewer unreported safety risks, mistakes and near-misses; leaders equipped to have the hard conversations, not avoid them; and a direct lever on psychosocial risk, not just a soft-skills add-on.
WHY
choose me?
I'm certified in the psychological S.A.F.E.T.Y. model by the Academy of Brain-Based Leadership, with over 25 years of organisational development experience behind the training design. This isn't generic soft-skills content — it's built on the same evidence base that underpins my psychosocial risk and OD work.
What clients say
"Belinda Coghlan was Lead Facilitator with the Farm Business Resilience Program run by Curtin University, which successfully developed and delivered critical parts of the Pilot of Drought Reform Measures for the Australian and Western Australian governments. Belinda effectively stepped into leading the delivery teams and facilitated the learning program to achieve very good strategic plans for farmers across WA. We were able to use her extensive knowledge in change management, strategic planning and workshop design to make continual improvements to the program. I would highly recommend Belinda for her comprehensive skills in delivering facilitated learning programs."
John Noonan, Farm Business Resilience Director, Curtin University
Frequently Asked Questions
Is human skills training the same as psychological safety training?
Largely, yes — human skills training is how we build psychological safety in practice: the specific conversational skills that let people speak up.
Who should attend — just leaders, or everyone?
Both, ideally. Leaders need the skills to invite speaking up; teams need the skills and safety to actually do it.
How do you hold leaders accountable to creating a safe space to speak up?
We train your leaders on psychological safety, conduct team psychological safety assessments, insert leadership behavioural metrics into performance and development plans; provide individual coaching; and co-design reporting metrics to the Executive and Board.
How does this connect to psychosocial risk?
Poor psychological safety is often a root cause of psychosocial hazards like bullying and unreported overload. This training addresses that root cause directly.
Is this a one-off workshop or an ongoing program?
It can be either — a single workshop builds awareness, but lasting behaviour change usually needs a program with reinforcement over time.