Email: belinda@belindacoghlan.com.au | Phone: 0414 642 921
Perth-based Psychological Safety Workplace Training
WHAT
is Psychological Safety Training?
We develop knowledge, self-awareness and practical skills people need to speak up, ask questions, challenge ideas, raise concerns and learn from mistakes without fear of humiliation or reprisal.
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Psychological safety isn’t about making everyone comfortable, avoiding difficult conversations or lowering performance standards.
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It’s about creating conditions where people can be honest early, challenge respectfully, have constructive conversations and identify problems before they become bigger risks.
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Psychological safety is a shared responsibility. Staff, managers and senior leaders all have a role to play in creating a workplace where people can speak up - and where speaking up is met with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
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Our training is practical, evidence-informed and tailored to your workplace, with a focus on turning psychological safety from a concept into observable everyday behaviours.
WHO
needs Psychological Safety Training?
Organisations, teams and leaders where silence feels safer than speaking up. Cultures shaped by fear, intimidation, blame, punishment for mistakes or excessive deference to authority can hide risks, prevent learning and contribute to avoidable failure, with potentially serious consequences for employees, customers and organisational performance.
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Staff
Employees need to understand what psychological safety looks like in practice and how they can contribute to a workplace where people:
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Speak up when something doesn’t look right
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Ask questions without fear of looking incompetent
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Raise concerns early
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Challenge ideas respectfully
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Give and receive feedback
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Admit mistakes and learn from them
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Support colleagues to speak up
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Know when and how to escalate concerns.
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Managers
Managers have a particularly important role because their response to someone’s first concern can determine whether that person speaks up again.
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Managers develop the capability to:
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Create psychologically safe conversations
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Actively invite different perspectives
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Listen without becoming defensive
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Respond constructively to bad news
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Encourage healthy challenge and dissent
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Manage mistakes as learning opportunities
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Address harmful behaviours early
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Have difficult conversations respectfully
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Recognise when silence may be signalling a problem
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Build trust while maintaining clear standards and accountability.
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Senior leaders
Senior leaders set cultural conditions for psychological safety across the organisation.
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They need to understand how their own behaviour, systems and decisions can either encourage or discourage speaking up.
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Senior leaders develop the capability to:
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Model openness, curiosity and fallibility
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Create a culture where bad news travels quickly
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Encourage constructive challenge
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Respond appropriately when concerns are raised
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Understand the difference between psychological safety and permissiveness
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Reinforce accountability alongside openness
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Identify systemic barriers to speaking up
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Use employee feedback and cultural data to identify risk
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Ensure concerns are appropriately acted upon
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Role-model the behaviours expected throughout the organisation.
WHY
Psychological Safety matters
When people don’t feel safe to speak up, organisations often find out about problems late rather than early.
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Concerns may be discussed privately rather than raised in meetings. Small issues can become complaints, conflicts or formal claims. Leaders may discover operational or people risks only after they have escalated.
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A psychologically safer workplace makes it easier for people to:
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Raise concerns early → Challenge constructively → Learn from mistakes → Solve problems sooner → Improve performance
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Psychological safety is therefore relevant not only to culture and employee experience, but also to leadership effectiveness, organisational learning, performance and psychosocial risk management.
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It should not, however, be confused with a workplace where anything goes.
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Psychological safety + high standards = a learning and high-performance environment
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It is creating an environment where people can speak honestly while still being expected to perform, take responsibility and meet appropriate standards.
HOW
does Psychological Safety Training work?
Training focuses on the seven skills for psychological safety. We can tailor for staff, managers, senior leaders or deliver as an organisation-wide capability program.
Skill 1. Psychological safety behaviours and impacts
Participants explore content by experts, Dr Amy Edmondson, Dr Timothy Clark and Tom Geraghty:
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What psychological safety is - and isn’t
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Why people sometimes remain silent
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The relationship between psychological safety, trust and accountability
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How workplace culture influences speaking up
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The impact of leadership behaviour on psychological safety
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The difference between psychological safety and avoiding conflict
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Why psychological safety is a team and organisational responsibility.
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Skill 2. Psychological safety brain triggers
Psychological safety isn’t only about what other people do.
Our brains continually respond to signals of threat and reward. When we experience a situation as threatening, our ability to think clearly, regulate our response and engage constructively can be affected. The Academy of Brain-Based Leadership’s S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Model provides a practical framework for understanding six domains that can influence our psychological safety.
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The S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Model
S — Security
Our need for certainty, predictability and stability.
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A — Autonomy
Our need for choice, control and influence.
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F — Fairness
Our need for fair and equitable treatment.
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E — Esteem
Our need to feel valued, respected and competent.
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T — Trust
Our need for connection, belonging and confidence in others.
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Y — You
The individual factors that influence how we experience situations, including our personality, biases, experiences and context.
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Identify your triggers. Manage your response.
Participants learn to recognise:
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What situations are likely to trigger their own threat response
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How their brain may respond when psychological safety is threatened
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How triggers can affect communication, judgement and behaviour
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Why different people can respond very differently to the same situation
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How their own reactions can influence psychological safety for others
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How to pause, recognise a trigger and choose a more constructive response
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How to recognise and respond more effectively to the triggers of others
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The model provides a useful shift from:
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“Why are they reacting like that?” to:
“What might be triggering their response — and what can I do differently?”
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This develops the self-awareness and flexibility needed to navigate difficult workplace interactions more effectively.
From reaction to response
The goal isn’t to eliminate triggers or manage everyone according to their individual sensitivities.
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It’s to help people recognise when they may be moving into a threat response and develop the ability to pause, regulate and respond deliberately rather than reactively.
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For leaders and managers, this provides an additional lens for understanding why the same leadership approach can have very different effects on different people.
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The S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Model was developed by the Academy of Brain-Based Leadership and is a proprietary framework. Where the model or assessment is formally used, appropriate attribution, licensing or accreditation requirements should be observed.
Skill 3. Speaking up and speaking out
Participants develop practical skills with help from expert, Catherine Mattice:
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Raise concerns early
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Ask questions
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Challenge respectfully
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Express a different view
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Give constructive feedback
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Admit mistakes
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Raise issues involving behaviour or workplace relationships
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Escalate concerns appropriately
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The objective isn’t simply to encourage people to speak up. It is about creating the capability and conditions for people to speak up effectively.
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Skill 4. Responding when someone speaks up
This is particularly important for managers and leaders shaping feedback culture.
Participants practise how to:
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Listen before responding
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Stay curious rather than defensive
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Ask useful questions
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Acknowledge concerns
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Separate the person from the issue
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Respond to challenge constructively
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Avoid shutting conversations down
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Close the loop after concerns are raised
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Because the response to speaking up teaches people whether it is safe to do it again.
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Skill 5. Healthy challenge and dissent
Psychological safety does not mean everyone has to agree.
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Participants learn how to:
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Challenge ideas without attacking people
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Disagree respectfully
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Ask “What are we missing?”
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Surface different perspectives
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Challenge assumptions
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Handle disagreement productively
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Distinguish constructive challenge from disrespectful behaviour
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The goal is not agreement. The goal is better thinking.
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Skill 6. Mistakes, learning and accountability
Participants explore how organisations respond when things go wrong.
This includes:
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Learning from mistakes
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Distinguishing learning opportunities from unacceptable conduct
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Avoiding blame-based responses
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Identifying systemic causes
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Taking responsibility
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Maintaining appropriate performance and safety standards
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Psychological safety doesn’t mean removing accountability.
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It means creating an environment where people can acknowledge problems early enough for them to be addressed.
Skill 7. Recognising silence as a signal
Silence does not always mean agreement.
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Leaders and managers learn to recognise potential signals such as:
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People rarely challenging decisions
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Concerns being raised only after meetings
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Employees saying “yes” but not following through
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Problems repeatedly surfacing late
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High levels of avoidance or conflict
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People going around managers rather than to them
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Employees becoming noticeably quieter when particular leaders enter the room
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The objective is not to assume silence means something is wrong — but to become curious about what the silence may be telling you.
HOW
do participants learn?
We use experiential learning so participants don’t simply learn about psychological safety. Participants practice, reflect and improve the behaviours required to create it.
This approach aligns with our broader Leadership Development Training, which uses experiential learning to help leaders translate capability development into everyday behaviour.
TRAINING
for Staff, Managers and Senior Leaders
Psychological safety training can be delivered as separate programs or as an integrated organisational approach.
How this connects with Leadership Development Training
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Psychological safety is also one of the six leadership capabilities within our broader Leadership Development Training program.
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For leaders, the broader program develops capability across:
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Human skills
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Creating psychologically safe spaces
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Leading culture
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Women in leadership
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Managing underperformance
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Managing mental health and psychosocial risks
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This means psychological safety can be delivered as a standalone capability for the whole workforce or integrated into a broader leadership development program for managers and senior leaders.
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Psychological safety training asks:
How do we create the conditions for people to speak up, challenge and learn?
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Leadership development training asks:
What capabilities do leaders need to lead people, culture and performance effectively?
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The two services complement each other rather than duplicate each other.
MAKING
Psychological Safety Stick
A workshop can introduce new behaviours. It doesn’t guarantee they will become everyday practice. Where appropriate, we work with clients to embed psychological safety through practical mechanisms such as:
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Clear behavioural expectations
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Leadership expectations
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Team agreements
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Leadership action plans
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Follow-up discussions
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Team-based application
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Coaching
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Feedback mechanisms
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Culture and psychological safety measures
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Accountability for agreed behaviours
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This reflects our broader approach to leadership development:
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Capability builds the skill. Accountability makes it stick.
DIFFERENCE
between Psychological Safety and Psychosocial Risk
Psychological safety and psychosocial risk management are closely connected, but they are not the same thing.
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Psychological safety training can help people communicate concerns, identify problems and create healthier team interactions.
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However, training alone does not eliminate psychosocial hazards.
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Where risks arise from work design, workload, role clarity, organisational change, poor support, bullying, conflict or workplace relationships, organisations also need to identify and manage the underlying work-related hazards.
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Our WHS Psychosocial Risk Consulting can complement psychological safety training where a broader assessment of psychosocial risks is required.
WHAT
changes should you expect?
The goal isn’t simply to have employees who understand psychological safety.
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It’s to create workplaces where people are more able and willing to learn, innovate and grow:
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Speak up early.
Ask questions.
Challenge respectfully.
Give honest feedback.
Raise concerns.
Learn from mistakes.
Listen when others speak up.
Address problems before they escalate.
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For leaders, the shift is from:
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“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” to:
“What are we doing that makes it easier for people to tell us?”
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Improved psychological safety in your organisation or business means less safety incidences and less preventative costs like absenteeism, turnover, recruitment, workers compensation, legal or reputational.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is psychological safety about making people feel comfortable?
No. Psychological safety is not about avoiding difficult conversations, removing accountability or ensuring everyone agrees.
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It’s about creating an environment where people can speak honestly, ask questions, challenge ideas and raise concerns without fear of humiliation or reprisal.
Is psychological safety just a leadership issue?
No. Leaders have significant influence over psychological safety, but everyone contributes to the quality of workplace interactions.
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Staff, managers and senior leaders all need to understand the behaviours that support a psychologically safe workplace.
Does psychological safety mean people can say whatever they want?
No. Psychological safety supports respectful challenge and open communication. It does not remove behavioural standards, accountability or consequences for misconduct.
What is the S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Model?
The S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Model is a neuroscience-based framework developed by the Academy of Brain-Based Leadership. It explores six domains that can influence psychological safety and trigger threat or reward responses: Security, Autonomy, Fairness, Esteem, Trust and You.
Is this mental health training?
No. There is some overlap, but the focus is different.
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Psychological safety training focuses on how people communicate, respond to challenge, raise concerns and learn within teams and organisations.
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Where work-related psychosocial hazards are present, broader psychosocial risk management may also be required.
Can this be delivered to our whole organisation?
Yes. Training can be tailored for staff, managers and senior leaders, with different content and scenarios reflecting the responsibilities of each group.
Can psychological safety training be incorporated into leadership development?
Absolutely. Psychological safety is one of the leadership capabilities within our broader Leadership Development Training program.
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Leaders develop the capability to create psychologically safe conversations, respond constructively when people speak up, encourage healthy challenge and recognise when silence may be signalling risk.