Psychological safety training for global organisations
Silence is expensive.
Build teams where people speak up before the problem gets bigger.
A practical, diagnostic-led programme that helps managers and teams turn psychological safety into everyday behaviour: raising concerns earlier, asking better questions, disagreeing productively, learning from mistakes and holding one another accountable.
Speak sooner. Challenge better. Learn faster.
Psychological safety is not the absence of pressure, standards or difficult conversations. Done well, it makes those conversations possible.
Psychological safety work with
UNFPA · WHO Europe · FAO · Chanel · WFP · ActionAid · UNICEF · Toyota Europe
Why this, why now
In many organisations, people are constantly deciding whether a question, concern, mistake or dissenting view is safe enough to voice.
Why us
01
Pulse data, interviews and/or focus groups identify where silence, hierarchy, trust or team dynamics are getting in the way.
02
Managers practise with the situations that actually create interpersonal risk: bad news, mistakes, challenge, feedback, uncertainty and disagreement.
03
The programme focuses on what leaders do before, during and after someone speaks up.
04
Teams learn to create candour without lowering standards or confusing safety with comfort.
05
Baseline and post-programme data, behavioural commitments and a leadership debrief show where practices are shifting.
1
Pulse, interviews, patterns
2
Shared language + team reality
3
Tools, cases, simulations
4
Experiments on real work
5
Manager nudges + peer reflection
6
Pre/post data + debrief
Inside the programme
Every format runs in English, French or Spanish, virtually, hybrid or in person.
Flagship
Cohort: 12–18
Teams or manager cohorts seeking sustained behaviour change, practice and measurement.
Cohort: Up to 18
Managers who need practical tools with spaced application between sessions.
Cohort: Up to 20
Teams needing a shared language, reset of norms and concrete commitments.
Cohort: Leadership team
Organisations that need to understand the pattern before deciding on an intervention.
Who it is for
Designed for People & Culture, HR and L&D teams looking to strengthen the day-to-day climate of teams, and for managers, leadership teams and intact teams operating in complex, multicultural or fast-changing environments.
Selected work
From global e-learning to high-pressure country teams, we have worked on psychological safety where it matters most: in the conversations, behaviours and systems that determine whether people speak up, ask for help, challenge, learn and repair.
This experience is why our programmes do not treat psychological safety as a slogan or a one-off “speak up” session. We combine diagnostic listening, manager behaviour, facilitated practice, coaching, team agreements and follow-through so the work reaches the moments where silence actually happens.
Case study from Shiftbalance’s work
Psychological safety is also about what happens when power is in the room. Through UNDP’s Speak-Up Training of Trainers, Shiftbalance equipped internal facilitators to lead courageous conversations inside their own teams. The programme used a cascade methodology and moved beyond theory into supported practice: participants prepared and co-facilitated real sessions, then received individual coaching feedback.
The work connects directly to the behaviours at the heart of psychological safety: speaking up when something feels difficult, raising concerns across hierarchy, creating space for dissenting views, responding constructively when someone takes an interpersonal risk, and helping teams discuss what may otherwise remain unsaid.
We do not only help people find their voice; we help managers and internal facilitators create the conditions in which that voice can actually be heard.
A practical tool
Psychological safety is not one behaviour. Teams experience it through multiple, connected dimensions: how ideas are shared, relationships, group dynamics, communication style, diversity, decision-making, responses to mistakes, clarity of goals and roles, feedback and trust. This 10-dimensions reflection tool helps teams identify where they are strong, where they are getting stuck and which behaviours to work on next.
Use it as a team conversation starter: identify your three strongest dimensions and your three biggest challenges, then translate them into concrete actions.
Source framework credited in the tool to Zircon Be Talent.
We situate our practice within the wider psychological safety field and encourage clients to explore the original thinkers and frameworks alongside our applied tools:
These references complement rather than replace the Shiftbalance methodology: we use established research as a foundation, then adapt the work to the organisation’s culture, power dynamics, geography, language, operating context and real moments of interpersonal risk.
We bring experience across UN agencies, INGOs and global companies, from organisation-wide learning programmes to Ombudsman-led work, manager coaching, team resets and high-pressure country contexts. The common thread is practical: understand where voice is being lost, work with the behaviours that shape it, and leave teams with tools and commitments they can continue using after the intervention.
Let’s talk
If concerns arrive late, disagreement stays underground or managers are asking for more candour without getting it, start with the pattern – not another generic workshop.
Email us directly at susan@shiftbalance.org
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