The Challenge

In fast-paced, diverse organisations, team success requires more than technical skill and expertise. Cultural differences, hierarchical structures, and rigid group norms can stifle open dialogue and collaboration. Without strong psychological safety, team members often hold back, hesitating to share insights or raise concerns—leading to missed opportunities and unresolved challenges. As a result, project outcomes may suffer, team performance declines, and the organisation’s bottom line is impacted.

The Solution

Active Presence is a one-day, in-person training program designed to address these challenges, equipping leaders and teams with the skills to cultivate psychological safety and authentic connections. Designed for up to twelve participants, this intensive program draws on proven techniques adapted from professional actor training to enhance non-verbal communication, emotional awareness, and essential behavioural skills for high-stakes collaboration. Our approach is unique: NO role-playing, theatre games, singing, or dancing—only practical, research-backed methods that apply directly to real-world corporate demands.

Experiential Learning for Real-World Impact

Led by Liza and Robbie, Active Presence follows a structured series of practical group and one-on-one exercises that build upon each other, enabling participants to:

• Make quick, purposeful, and effective authentic connections.

• Handle the power of vulnerability to cultivate psychological safety and build trust.

• Increase candour and accelerate creativity.

• Embrace uncertainty within a team.

A Case for Psychological Safety

Google’s Project Aristotle, an extensive study on team effectiveness, concluded that ‘psychological safety’ is the most important trait of high-performing teams. Harvard’s Amy Edmondson, a pioneer in psychological safety, defines it as an environment where team members feel safe to take interpersonal risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. In these settings, team members feel able to ask questions, share ideas, admit mistakes, and address challenges openly.

Cultivating psychological safety and trust requires authentic connections and embracing vulnerability. Strategies like learned verbal formulas, practiced body language, impression management, or personality profiling fall short when developing a high-performance team. As Professor Brené Brown notes, vulnerability is “the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

Why Professional Actors Offer Unique Insight into High-Performance Collaboration

Actors move from one film set to another, collaborating under tight deadlines with unfamiliar teams. Their success depends on their ability to quickly establish trust, adapt to diverse teams, and perform authentically under pressure. At the heart of this adaptability lies a powerful toolset: the ability to cultivate psychological safety and bring their authentic selves into every interaction, regardless of the situation or team dynamics. It’s this expertise that actors bring to high-stakes collaborations that all teams can learn from.