Psychological Safety speakers

Why organisations work with Shola Kaye Her Emotional Audacity™ framework reframes empathy as an organisational capability – not a personal virtue – giving leaders a structured approach to courageous communication that is immediately applicable in high-pressure, high-stakes environments She holds an unusual credibility position: a Cambridge and Emory-trained scientist who also performed professionally on four continents. That combination makes her content land differently with technical and analytical audiences who typically resist people-skills programming Her work addresses a gap that DEI programmes and EQ training often miss separately: the intersection of speaking up, psychological safety, and inclusive communication as a single, integrated practice Her two published books and LinkedIn Learning instructor role mean buyers are extending into a content ecosystem, not just a single keynote She has worked across the full range of organisational contexts – from board-level at institutions including The United Nations and Deloitte to company-wide culture programmes – with consistent evidence of rebooking Biography highlights BA Natural Sciences, Cambridge University; PGCE, Oxford University; MSc Analytical Chemistry / Neuropharmacology, Emory University, with postgraduate research at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Early career in IT management consulting with clients including Goldman Sachs and Prudential Assurance, followed by account director roles in aviation and finance Professional entertainer and jazz singer; performed on four continents including BBC appearances Author of How to be a D.I.V.A. at Public Speaking (Amazon.com #1 bestseller) and Big Talk, Small Talk and Everything in Between (Callisto Media, 2020) Winner of the Jenny Seagrove Speaking Award (2016); Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM), Toastmasters International; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) Regular contributor to Management Today, HR Zone, and People Management; featured in Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes, and BBC; TEDx speaker on empathy in the workplace Biography Shola Kaye spent her early career moving between worlds that rarely overlap: neuroscience research at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, management consulting at investment banks in New York and London, and professional performance on stages across four continents. That trajectory is not a curiosity: it is the basis of her work. She understands analytically rigorous environments, the dynamics of corporate invisibility, and what it takes to hold a room. The core tension she addresses is one that organisations consistently underinvest in: the gap between stated inclusion values and the actual behavioural competencies required to make them real. Most people, even experienced leaders, struggle to give honest feedback, speak up under pressure, or navigate difficult conversations without defensiveness. Kaye’s Emotional Audacity™ framework names this gap explicitly: combining empathy, self-regulation, and courageous communication into a single, teachable practice. Her two books and a TEDx talk on workplace empathy establish the intellectual architecture behind the keynotes. Her contributors to Management Today, HR Zone, and People Management position her as a credible voice in the professional management conversation, not only on the conference circuit. Clients including The United Nations, Deloitte, HSBC, Google, and IBM have rebooked or extended her programmes into training formats, evidence that the content holds beyond a single session. What makes Kaye distinctive in a crowded DEI and communication space is the precise nature of her argument: that empathy, done seriously, is not a softening of leadership but a structural condition for high performance. For organisations navigating transformation, hybrid work, or underrepresentation challenges, that reframe tends to land where other approaches have not. Key speaking topics Empathy at work Inclusive leadership Psychological safety and communication Emotional intelligence Courageous workplace communication Diversity, equity and belonging People-first culture Feedback and difficult conversations Ideal for CHROs and People Directors building cultures where psychological safety is a practical reality, not an aspiration Leadership development programmes targeting mid-to-senior leaders managing diverse, distributed, or technically-oriented teams Organisations running DEI initiatives that need to move beyond awareness into behavioural change International Women’s Day and women’s leadership events where communication confidence and visibility are the focus Audience outcomes A named framework (Emotional Audacity™) for integrating empathy, courageous communication, and inclusive behaviour into daily leadership practice Practical tools for navigating difficult conversations, delivering constructive feedback, and creating environments where people feel safe to speak up Greater understanding of the structural conditions – not just the personal attitudes – that determine whether inclusion is felt in practice Specific techniques for communicating with clarity and impact, particularly for those in technical, analytical, or STEM-rooted working environments Renewed understanding of how communication behaviours at the manager level directly affect team performance, retention, and innovation output

Why organisations work with Simon Sinek The Golden Circle gives leadership teams a named, diagrammatic model for examining whether their communication and strategy starts from purpose or defaults to product; concrete enough to run a board session around, not just a concept to absorb from a stage. The Infinite Game framework reframes how organisations think about competition: the argument that most organisations are playing a finite game in an inherently infinite one gives senior leaders a precise diagnostic for why short-termism is corroding their culture and decision-making. His work on the Circle of Safety – drawn from military and organisational research – gives leaders a specific language and accountability structure for psychological safety, distinguishing it from vague “culture” conversations. Three consecutive Thinkers50 appearances (2017, 2019, 2021), including the Future Thinker award, position him inside the recognised canon of serious management thinking – relevant where senior buyers are evaluating credibility, not just popularity. His reach into the US Armed Forces, the United Nations, and the US Congress alongside global corporate work gives his frameworks a cross-sector validation that most leadership speakers cannot match. Biography highlights Author of five books on leadership and purpose, including Start with Why (global bestseller, over one million copies sold in the US alone), Leaders Eat Last (New York Times bestseller), and The Infinite Game (New York Times bestseller); published by Portfolio/Penguin and Penguin Random House Creator of the Golden Circle framework, one of the most widely adopted models in leadership communication and organisational purpose TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” (2009) is the third most-watched talk on TED.com, with over 60 million views Named to the Thinkers50 ranking three consecutive times (2017, 2019, 2021); recipient of the Thinkers50 Future Thinker Award Adjunct staff member, RAND Corporation (since 2010); former instructor in Strategic Communications, Columbia University Founder of The Optimism Company, a leadership learning and development platform, and Optimism Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House; has spoken at the United Nations, US Congress, and across senior US military leadership Biography Most leadership conversations begin in the wrong place. They start with what an organisation does or how it does it – and never reach the question that actually determines whether people are engaged, aligned, and willing to give discretionary effort: why. The inability to answer that question convincingly is not a branding gap; it is a leadership gap, and Simon Sinek has built one of the most recognised frameworks in contemporary management thinking to address it. His Golden Circle model – introduced in Start with Why (2009) and subsequently the subject of the third most-watched TED Talk in history – provides organisations with a structured means of diagnosing whether their leadership, communication, and strategy is purpose-led or merely product-led. The argument is grounded in the biology of decision-making: people do not respond primarily to logic and features, but to belief and identity. The practical implication for leadership is significant, and it is why the framework has moved from conference rooms into board strategy sessions, culture programmes, and military leadership curricula. His later work extends the argument. The Infinite Game (2019, New York Times bestseller) identifies a structural problem in how most organisations compete: treating an inherently infinite game – business, leadership, institutional relevance – as if it has a finish line. Leaders operating with a finite mindset optimise for short-term metrics and burn through the trust, culture, and purpose that actually determine longevity. This is not motivational language; it is a specific claim about strategic error, and it gives senior leaders a framework for examining decisions that are degrading their organisations from the inside. Sinek’s affiliations reflect the range at which his work operates. As an adjunct staff member at the RAND Corporation since 2010, advising on military innovation, and having spoken at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit and directly to senior leadership across every branch of the US Armed Forces, he brings institutional credibility that extends well beyond the corporate speaker circuit. Three consecutive Thinkers50 appearances, including the Future Thinker Award, confirm his standing within the serious canon of management thinking. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven leadership and the Golden Circle Organisational trust and psychological safety Finite vs. infinite mindset in strategy and leadership Leadership culture and the conditions for engagement Long-term organisational performance and decision-making Inspiring communication for leaders and teams Values, identity, and organisational alignment Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership development programmes where the strategic case for culture and purpose needs to be made at an executive level CHROs and People directors working on engagement, trust, and the conditions under which employees perform at their best Transformation leads and strategy teams examining how short-term competitive pressures are eroding long-term capability Senior leadership conferences requiring a speaker with both mass-market name recognition and a defensible intellectual framework Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary – Golden Circle, Circle of Safety, Infinite Game – that gives leadership teams a common reference point for conversations about purpose, trust, and strategy A framework for diagnosing whether their organisation’s leadership and communication starts from why or defaults to what A reframe of competitive strategy: the finite vs. infinite mindset distinction as a diagnostic tool for identifying decisions that are weakening organisational resilience Greater clarity on the specific leadership behaviours – protection, consistency, accountability – that build psychological safety and sustain discretionary effort A practical case for why culture and purpose are strategic variables, not HR programmes

Why organisations work with Skip Bowman The Safe2Great model is the only publicly available integrated framework that treats psychological safety and growth mindset as a single system – giving organisations one coherent diagnostic language that connects leadership behaviour, team dynamics, and organisational culture without requiring them to hold multiple competing frameworks simultaneously. The Growth Mindset Leadership 360 converts leadership culture into quantified, benchmarked data – replacing the subjective impressions that dominate most culture assessments with comparative insight on where specific leaders are enabling or blocking growth, measured against a global dataset. His research found that more than 60% of leaders assess their own impact inaccurately relative to how their teams experience them – a specific, repeatable finding that reframes the conversation with senior leadership teams from aspiration to accountability. The Safe2Great model names and maps three distinct protective mindsets – controlling-competitive, complying-complacent, and critical-skeptical – that remain invisible in standard leadership frameworks, enabling organisations to identify the specific cultural blockers at play rather than working against a generic leadership gap. Both the book and the assessment tools are designed for practitioner deployment through a formal accreditation programme, meaning organisations can embed the methodology independently – Bowman’s work scales beyond the keynote. Biography highlights Author of Safe to Great: The New Psychology of Leadership (Figure 1 Publishing, 2023) Creator of the Safe2Great model and suite of four proprietary diagnostic tools including the Growth Mindset Leadership 360 – available in over ten languages Founder and CEO of Global Mindset, leadership and organisational development consultancy based in Denmark MA in Psychology and Languages (Copenhagen); MA in Organisational Psychology (Denmark); trained in cross-cultural management, group dynamics, and coaching Over 25 years of applied consulting with global organisations including Danfoss, Siemens, Nestlé, Ericsson, VELUX, and Merck Bilingual in English and Danish; consulting engagements across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East Biography Skip Bowman starts from a finding that most leadership programmes prefer to avoid: the majority of leaders believe they behave very differently from how their teams actually experience them. His Safe2Great research, conducted across more than 500 leadership teams, found that over 60% of leaders inaccurately assessed their own impact. That data point is the foundation of everything he does. His 2023 book, Safe to Great: The New Psychology of Leadership (Figure 1 Publishing), sets out the argument in full. The central claim is that psychological safety is not a cultural aspiration that organisations approach through values statements and team workshops – it is a direct output of specific, identifiable leadership behaviours. The Safe2Great model maps those behaviours against three protective mindsets – controlling-competitive, complying-complacent, and critical-sceptical – and connects them to a suite of validated diagnostic tools that make the invisible visible. The Growth Mindset Leadership 360 is the operational core of this system. It benchmarks leaders against a global dataset, measuring the behaviours that enable or obstruct growth-oriented team dynamics. Combined with the Great Teams Assessment and Culture for Growth Survey, the result is an assessment architecture that links individual leadership behaviour to team experience to organisational culture in a single, connected methodology. The tools are available in over ten languages and come with a formal practitioner accreditation programme. Bowman grew up in Perth, Australia, and has spent the majority of the last 25 years in Europe – working in Switzerland, England, France, and Denmark and consulting across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. He holds an MA in Psychology and Languages from Copenhagen and an MA in Organisational Psychology from Denmark, with additional training in cross-cultural management, group dynamics, and coaching. His consulting client history includes Danfoss, Siemens, Nestlé, Ericsson, VELUX, and Merck. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and leadership behaviour Growth mindset in leadership and organisational culture The Safe2Great model and leadership diagnostics Transforming organisational culture Leading change and transformation Cross-cultural and global leadership Leadership development and behavioural change Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive committees navigating transformation or cultural change CHROs and people directors responsible for leadership development strategy and investment decisions L&D and organisational development leads in multinational or cross-border organisations Boards evaluating the relationship between leadership behaviour and organisational performance Audience outcomes A clear, working model for understanding how leadership behaviour directly creates or dismantles psychological safety in teams – beyond the concept, into measurable practice Ability to identify the three protective mindsets that most commonly obstruct cultural change, and to recognise them in their own leadership environment A shared organisational language connecting leadership assessment, team dynamics, and culture in a single coherent framework Practical understanding of what a diagnostic-led approach to leadership development looks like, and why design matters more than content in producing lasting behavioural change The research basis for understanding why leadership development programmes frequently fail to change the behaviours they are designed to change

Why organisations work with Sylvia Marusyk A practising occupational therapist, not a wellness coach, which gives wellbeing content credibility with EHS, operations and unionised audiences who routinely dismiss soft programming. 30 years of clinical work translated into language that holds a room of utility engineers, nurses, municipal workers and aerospace technicians, not only an HR audience. A repeatable session catalogue covering stress, engagement, respectful conduct and self-health, with named talks that buyers can match to a specific workforce problem. Author of Testing Positive: 365 Days of Calm Through Chaos, written through her own cancer diagnosis, which gives the wellbeing material lived authority rather than borrowed theory. Track record across Manitoba Hydro, Great-West Life, City of Winnipeg, Transport Canada, Health Canada, StandardAero and the Manitoba Nurses Union, so buyers can see the work has held up across regulated, industrial and public sector environments. Biography highlights Founder and owner of MindBody Works Inc., a Canadian workplace health and wellness consultancy. Registered occupational therapist with more than 30 years of practice in health, safety and workplace wellbeing. Author of Testing Positive: 365 Days of Calm Through Chaos, a daily guide written after her cancer diagnosis during the pandemic. Former host of the Happy Hour with Sylvia! radio programme and a regular podcast guest on workplace health and safety. Speaking and training clients include Manitoba Hydro, Great-West Life, Transport Canada, Health Canada, City of Winnipeg, StandardAero, Reynolds Consumer Products, the Manitoba Nurses Union, and CAPPA. Signature programmes include Surviving to Thriving, Stressed to Kill, Happy Hour Begins at 9am, Respectfully, Up Yours and Rules of Engagement. Biography Wellbeing budgets have grown for a decade, yet absence, burnout and turnover keep rising. The problem is not awareness. It is that most workplace health content sits a long way from the physical and cognitive reality of the people actually doing the work, which is precisely the gap Sylvia Marusyk has spent her career closing. She trained as an occupational therapist and has practised in the field for more than 30 years. That clinical grounding shapes everything she does on stage: the body and the brain treated as a single working system, stress described in biochemical and behavioural terms, prevention framed as an operational discipline rather than a lifestyle choice. As founder of MindBody Works Inc., she has built a Canadian workplace health consultancy around that approach. Her session catalogue is unusually concrete for the wellbeing category. Stressed to Kill unpacks the physical, cognitive, emotional and environmental components of stress. Surviving to Thriving offers self-health tools that hold up under pressure. Respectfully, Up Yours turns psychological safety into a behavioural conversation, and Rules of Engagement tackles retention and engagement. Beyond keynotes, her S.H.O.P (Safety and Health for Organizations and People) programme takes leadership teams through a structured diagnostic and planning engagement, with a follow-up review some months later to test whether anything actually changed. The book Testing Positive: 365 Days of Calm Through Chaos, written through her own cancer diagnosis, supplies the personal spine to the clinical content. The credibility shows up in who books her. Manitoba Hydro, Great-West Life, Transport Canada, Health Canada, the City of Winnipeg, StandardAero, Reynolds Consumer Products and the Manitoba Nurses Union have all put her in front of audiences that are unforgiving of generic wellness talk: engineers, nurses, municipal staff, aerospace technicians. That is the market she has built her work for. Key speaking topics Workplace stress and burnout prevention Employee wellbeing and mental health at work Occupational health and injury prevention Respectful workplace culture and psychological safety Employee engagement and retention Resilience and self-health practices Workplace happiness and work-life conflict Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing and EHS leaders rebuilding stress, absence and injury programmes Operations and safety leaders in utilities, healthcare, aerospace, manufacturing and municipal services Union and member organisations commissioning content for frontline and clinical workforces HR and culture leads addressing respectful conduct, engagement and retention in fatigued teams Audience outcomes A clinical understanding of how stress affects the body, brain and behaviour at work Specific self-health practices audiences can apply during and after the working day Language for naming and addressing disrespectful conduct without escalating it A sharper sense of where wellbeing programmes are working and where they are theatre Renewed energy and humour in rooms that often arrive defensive about wellbeing content