How do You Get Your Employees to Speak Up?

Promoting Collaboration in the Workplace

Fight, Flight, Freeze…For Real?

Interpersonal fear directly impacts the way people speak and communicate.

Fear shows up in all sorts of ways in workplace communication.

It can look like sarcasm.

It can look like too many ‘ums’, or like that person who never speaks up.

It can look like someone saying ‘yes’ when they need to say ‘no’, or like speaking to the data just fine but wanting to throw up when asked to publicly brainstorm.

Fear is sometimes that general sense that everyone else is somehow smarter, better or has a more positive outlook than you…and that if you speak up, they’ll all realize it, too, so you keep your mouth shut.

Fear of speaking up can be difficult to notice because the symptom is often mistaken for the root problem.

“The free exchange of concerns or questions is routinely hindered by interpersonal fear far more often than most managers realize. This kind of fear cannot be directly seen.” Amy Edmonson, The Fearless Organization

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Improving Engagement and Collaboration

Where Psychological Safety Meets Communication

Create a culture of info sharing.

So, how do you help your team members feel safe to speak up?

While it’s up to management to set the tone and direction of the organization, the truth is that culture cannot simply be imposed from the top-down, nor can it be built from the bottom-up.

Culture is created from the inside-out and the outside-in by…
  • Investing in developing your individual team members’ emotional resilience.
  • Ensuring they have the tools to let their voices out.
  • Infusing them with effective communication skills and norms.

Emotionally resilient and communicative individuals create psychologically safe teams. Psychological safe teams allow individuals to become even more resilient and communicative.

A feedback loop is created.

“As long as employees remain silent, companies will lose money on flawed projects, innovations that never happen, and subpar customer service.”

Karin Hurt + David Dye, Courageous Cultures

Ready to Help Your Team Build that Loop?

Training and Team Building Events

Our Workshops Do Just That.

Our interactive and experiential workshops teach team members how to manage their internal fears and communicate effectively. They will feel more confident and collaborative in any situation.

These workshops make a great post-COVID return-to-work integration event, a fun and educational offsite, or simply a nice way to build skills while breaking up the everyday flow of work life. They pack in a lot of personal and group transformation, all while having a lot of fun, too!

Workshops are built around three main pillars:
1. Voice + Speech

1. Voice + Speech

Vocal techniques for a strong sound and fluid speech.


Develop clarity, power, control, and stamina to sound confident and emotive.

Understand how the voice works and craft an authentic sound.

2. Self-Confidence

2. Self-Confidence

Mindset work and strategies for deeper emotional intelligence and self-trust.


Cultivate presence and have permission to take up space.

Release limiting beliefs and replace old habits with confident new behaviors.

3. Communication Skills

3. Communication Skills

Tools and skills for sharing information and building influence.


Clearly communicate and present ideas in any situation.

Foster relationships and collaboration to move the agenda forward.

Measurable Impact

strategic benefits across your entire organization

Can Soft Skills Really Be Measured?

They can absolutely be measured!

The impact of increased psychological safety and communication will be seen across your entire org. In addition to the facts and stats you see here, areas in which you will see measurable improvements include:

Individual Level:

  • Resilience
  • Contribution
  • Engagement
  • Purpose
  • Loyalty

Team Level:

  • Productive disagreements
  • Information sharing
  • Collaboration
  • Belonging
  • Trust

Project Level:

  • Planning
  • Agility
  • Creep
  • Innovation
  • Quality

Organization

  • ROI
  • Efficiency
  • Growth
  • Stability
  • Speed

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Questions?

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What are the Options?

Our Workshops Menu

Half-Day Foundations
  • In-person
  • 3 - 4 hours
  • Participant workbook and practice plan
  • 30-minute leader prep call
  • 30-minute leader debrief call (opt)
  • 30-min discovery call for participants
Full- Day Custom
  • In-person
  • 7 - 8 hours
  • Foundations + additional custom topics
  • Pre-workshop participant survey
  • Participant workbook and practice plan
  • 30-minute leader prep call
  • 30-minute leader debrief call (opt)
  • 30-minute 30-day leader follow up call (opt)
  • 30-min discovery call for participants
90-Minute Talk
  • "Why Won't My Voice Come Out? Getting Out of Your Own Way to Speak with Impact."
  • Online
  • Participant workbook
  • 30-min discovery call for participants

 

 

Not Ready for a Call, But Have More Questions?

Email Sam Directly

Connect

Head of Analytics, Google

Sam coaches with the perfect combination of empathy, intelligence, curiosity and pragmatism.
She handles big and small: from communication in meetings and presentations to rethinking your career.
Sam highlights what matters. She'll prompt you to think about big changes in achievable steps. If things get tough or you start to fall back into old patterns she'll help you recognize the pattern and move past it.  She genuinely cares about the people she works with and it shows.

Director of Site Operations, Sam's Club

Sam is an amazing coach and just an overall wonderful person. She goes above and beyond to help me understand and unlock my potential as a business leader, acknowledge and appreciate my fears, and helped me navigate through my insecurities. I have learned so much about myself in the time we've worked together.
She successfully guided me through managing tough conversations, how to listen to my intuitions and trust in myself, and to be confident in my voice.
I feel empowered every time I talk to her and even after our sessions when I apply my learnings in the workplace. I am forever grateful for her wisdom, her passion, and her infectious positive energy. Thank you, Sam!

Vice President of Engineering, Fintech Startup

I worked with Sam for voice training to help me speak and in particular leading up to an event where I was speaking with a large audience. Working with her has been great. She really helped me work through things that she identified as being key for me and I found working with her to be a huge step towards me feeling confident and actually delivering a talk that was well received. She really takes the time to get to know you and tailors her approach to you and that is such a key thing she offers from other coaches.

ABP, Google

Sam is a truly incredible coach - I came to her to help me practice saying words in front of people (aka public speaking), and she's gone above and beyond in helping me find tools and tricks to overcome this fear, as well as teaching me to be a better communicator in both personal and professional capacities. I'm SO glad I found Sam, and I know I'll continue working with her as long as I can.

PhD Candidate, Organizational Behavior

There are not enough good things I can say about Sam and her work. Sam's mission to help others use, own, and amplify their voices is something that will positively influence everything from your ability to convey what you want in relationships, to your leadership presence, to how you show up in the world (and even your singing!). She embodies her mission by continually providing opportunities for others to step into their power by questioning their assumptions, getting to the root of their symptoms, and by practicing asking for what they want and need. Her ability to draw out emotions and learnings in others, combined with her direct yet loving ability to give feedback, allows others to step into their power and feel supported along the way. I would absolutely recommend Sam if you are ready to live more fully and intentionally, with more confidence so that you can increase your positive impact in the world.