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 to navigate our virtual, rapidly evolving world. Training in conversational competence empowers people to speak up about mistakes, ideas, struggles and safety risks without fear of the consequences. 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. Organisations with an uplift in human skills can expect greater connection, belonging, learning, adapting and incubation of ideas.
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Some human skills include:
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Emotional intelligence
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Empathy
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Healthy boundaries
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Personal values
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Psychological safety
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Giving and receiving feedback
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Speaking up against toxic behaviours
Source: Harvard Business School
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.
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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 may stem from unproductive thinking and conversations in the workplace.
We uplift human skills capability with experiential learning to build confidence with real experiences. Participants learn about conversation techniques and body language; plan and practice a conversation; and receive constructive feedback.
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Participants set improvement goals; and plan/execute conversations back in the workplace with buddy support.
We deliver these human skills:
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
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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.
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Above and below the line behaviours
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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
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Most workers have experienced harmful workplace behaviour like bullying, micromanaging or gossip.
However more can be done to empower bystanders on how to move from the role of reinforcer to advocate and ally. In this module, we draw on the work of international expert, Catherine Mattice, Navigating a Toxic Workplace, 2026. This workshop focuses on the myths about toxic workplaces, why people don’t speak up and strategies for speaking up against toxic behaviour. Using a clear conversational framework participants plan, practice and receive feedback for a range of scenarios, to build confidence to call out toxic behaviours 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
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This module focuses on empowering a thriving feedback culture to drive organisational performance and minimise harm. Through practice and feedback, participants will be equipped with basic skills to
(a) give timely, constructive, honest and supportive feedback (b) receive feedback to reduce defensiveness and increase psychological safety, and (c) ask for feedback to keep growing.
Emotional intelligence
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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
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A healthy boundary conversation helps workers prioritise self-care to help reduce stress levels, overload and burnout and other psychosocial hazards. Participants learn how to communicate healthy boundaries with their boss and work colleagues to stay safe, engaged and productive. The workshop covers principles of boundary management, how to 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)
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This module is for leaders looking to understand how to prevent harm when designing work in the workplace. The SMART work design (Thrive at Work Framework) is evidence based, industry backed work by the Future of Work Institute, Curtin University.
A snip of the SMART work design:
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.
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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.
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.