Innovative Professional Development Across the Northern Territory
At the Institute of Hope, we deliver innovative, evidence-informed workforce and professional development across Darwin, Palmerston, Katherine, and beyond - including tailored programs available nationally.
Our mission is to build capacity and foster communities that feel safe and stand strong. Every program we design is grounded in strengths-based and trauma-informed and responsive practice - helping individuals and organisations develop the confidence, capability and connection needed to thrive.
We offer a comprehensive suite of professional development services, from executive coaching and one-off workshops to long-term capacity-building partnerships. Each is tailored to your unique context, goals, and workforce needs - empowering real, sustainable change.
Guided by our commitment to growth, safety and connection, our Workforce Development services are shaped around three core pillars:
Leadership & Strategic Growth | Culture, Safety & Wellbeing | Training & Capacity Building.
Leadership
and Strategic Growth
Development for senior leaders, decision-makers and change agents needing vision, direction, structure & leadership to guide their organisation or team through growth or transitions.
Trauma-Informed, Responsive
Deep Dive Executive Coaching
Conflict | Confidence | Culture Change
Our trauma-informed-responsive executive coaching helps leaders navigate conflict, build confidence, and drive positive culture change. By focusing on the emotional needs and experiences of individuals, this coaching approach equips leaders with the tools to manage conflict with empathy, foster collaboration, and create a culture of safety and respect.
Through tailored guidance, leaders build confidence, improve decision-making, and enhance their ability to inspire and lead teams effectively. By integrating trauma-informed-responsive practices, they can promote a more inclusive and psychosocially supportive workplace, improving team morale and overall productivity.
Leading Teams
Through Change
Change is an inevitable part of any organisation’s journey, and leading teams through it requires strong leadership, clear communication, and a collaborative approach. Our coaching and mentoring services focus on developing leadership skills that empower individuals to guide their teams through times of transformation with confidence and resilience.
We help leaders improve their communication and collaboration skills, enabling them to build trust and foster a positive, inclusive environment during periods of change. By creating clear strategies to manage transitions, leaders can help their teams embrace change rather than resist it, turning potential challenges into opportunities for growth.
Through our approach, we equip leaders with practical tools and frameworks to manage change effectively, ensuring their teams remain engaged, focused, and aligned with a shared vision. This leads to smoother transitions, less disruption, and a more motivated workforce, all of which contribute to long-term organisational success.
Whether your organisation is undergoing structural changes, implementing new systems, or shifting its strategic direction, we provide the guidance and support needed to navigate change with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Strategic Planning Workshops
for Agencies & Organisations
With years of experience, we have the capabilities and expertise to take your team to the next level. At The Institute of Hope, we combine our insights and skills to transform your processes and strategies, and in turn, your people. We’re proud to help shape and improve how our clients structure and strategically manage people and processes.
Looking forward requires the willingness to look back at lessons learned and map a clear way in the future, as well as actionable steps to take in the here and now.
We start this process with the leadership team/decision makers to ensure everyone is clear about anticipated change.
A coaching/mentoring approach guides the development of strategies for achieving Key Performance Indicators and organisational goals, including processes and agreements to set priorities and monitor progress. The focus is on strengthening strategic plans that lead to success.
Strategic Thought Leadership
Strategic thought leadership is essential for individuals and organisations aiming to stay competitive and forward-thinking in today’s fast-paced environment. Our training focuses on developing the skills needed to think strategically, identify emerging opportunities, and drive innovation across all levels of your organisation.
We work with individuals to cultivate a strategic mindset—one that goes beyond immediate tasks and looks at the bigger picture. This approach equips leaders with the ability to assess complex situations, anticipate challenges, and make informed, long-term decisions that align with organisational goals.
Through tailored coaching and mentoring, we provide guidance on the creation and execution of strategic plans, helping leaders not only design actionable strategies but also communicate them effectively to their teams. The ability to articulate a clear vision and rally others around it is key to driving innovation and ensuring that strategic initiatives gain traction.
By fostering strategic thought leadership, we empower organisations to stay ahead of market trends, adapt to shifting landscapes, and proactively shape their future. This results in stronger leadership, more cohesive teams, and a culture that values creativity, agility, and informed decision-making.
Whether you’re looking to innovate, grow, or improve operational efficiency, developing strategic thought leadership within your organisation is key to ensuring long-term success.
Culture, Safety & Wellbeing
Cultivating environments where people feel safe, resilient, connected, and able to contribute authentically.
Psychological Safety
Creating safer, stronger & more connected workplaces
90-Minute Introductory Workshop
Psychosocial risk is now embedded in Australia’s WHS legislation. Yet many organisations respond with checklists and compliance measures that miss what truly matters - people and culture.
At The Institute of Hope, we approach things differently.
We believe checklists don’t create safety. Culture does.
This collaboration with Jude Ellen, strengthens how we help clients navigate volatility, pressure and transformation, with clarity and intent.
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This new workshop-based program - a collaboration between Jude Ellen (Rust490) and The Institute of Hope - helps organisations build understanding and capability around psychosocial safety, one workshop at a time.
We are educators, strategists, facilitators, and consultants who have led teams through complexity, performance pressure, and change.
We’ve seen what happens when compliance, care, and culture collide, and we know that real safety starts with trust, clarity and connection.
These workshops live at that intersection: relational, strategic and grounded.
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This workshop is designed for people who carry responsibility for others, including:
HR, WHS and cultural leads
team leaders, advisors, and managers
business owners who care about their people
Whether you’re designing policy or absorbing its effects, this is for you.
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A sharp, practical 90-minute session that helps you:
Understand psychosocial risk without the fluff
Navigate the 14 Model Code of Practice hazards with real-world context
Build trust and clarity in your team
Start the conversations that shift culture
Act with confidence, not just compliance
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We bring a unique and powerful tool called The Language of Safety, with has deep roots in Psychological safety, and is the core component of Universal Protective Behaviours Psychosocial Framework. The Language of Safety has extensive application both personally and professionally, generating positive outcomes for team and organisational well being. This unique approach is used as the guiding principle for team workshops and strategic implementation.
Psychological Safety Bespoke Half-Day Workshop for Decision Makers
Mastering Psychological Safety: A Deep Dive into how you and your people can get the most out of this Legislation.
This comprehensive half-day workshop is tailored for decision-makers who are responsible for psychological safety within their organisations. Emphasising the critical role of psychosocial hazards, this session will equip you with knowledge and strategies for safer workplaces.
Universal Protective Behaviours
Protective Behaviours is committed to two core themes:
Theme One: We all have the right to feel safe at all times
Theme Two: We can talk with someone about anything no matter what it is.
Personal safety is a fundamental right we all have along with a responsibility to respect other people's right to feel safe. Quite often, when conflict and tension arrises it's due to someone not feeling safe nor knowing how or who to talk about it with. We believe that when people feel safe they are far more willing to participate in living an adventurous life without feeling fearful.
As the founder of Protective Behaviours, Peg West once said: You can't be scared into feeling safe.
Let’s Talk Safely: Communication that Builds Trust, Not Tension
What exactly is The Language of Safety?
LOS is a relational communication model that supports emotional regulation, connection, and psychosocial and psychological safety. It is built around four core elements: Quality, Clarity, Shared Meaning, and Ownership, which guide how we communicate and interpret safety in relationships. This model strengthens the psychosocial framework of Universal Protective Behaviours by helping people identify, express, and respond to feelings of safety or discomfort in themselves and others.
It provides a shared language for early intervention, boundary setting, and inclusive dialogue - especially useful in trauma-aware, education, and team environments.
The Language of Safety fosters safer conversations and builds stronger trust, one safe conversation at a time.
Our interactive online workshops and face-to-face events are designed for professionals who want to improve communication, build psychological safety, and better navigate difficult conversations. Whether you're in HR, education, community support, leadership or team development, these sessions offer practical tools and a trauma-aware approach to safer, clearer, and more relational communications.
Language of Safety Essentials: 90 min Online Workshop
A practical workshop for stronger workplace conversations.
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Tension, confusion, and miscommunication are common, but they don’t have to be the norm.
In this Language of Safety workshop, you’ll explore communication habits that foster understanding, reduce stress, and support psychosocial safety. Through plain-language tools and real examples, we’ll show you how you can say what you mean in ways that build connection and confidence.
This is for anyone who leads, listens, or supports others at work and or at home.
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How the 4 Elements of the Language of Safety (Quality, Clarity, Shared Meaning, Ownership) show up in everyday communication, and shape our internal and external dynamics and environments.
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Live on Zoom (no recordings)
90-minute session
Includes take-home worksheet
Designed for individuals and workplace teams
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Anyone curious about communication, safety, and personal agency
HR, P&C and wellbeing professionals
Educators and school leaders
Support workers and peer mentors
"The Language of Safety (LOS) is the glue that holds Protective Behaviours (PB) together. Our language, both verbal and non-verbal, is the means by which we interact and communicate with others. Over the years, it has been clearly demonstrated that PB is a dynamic, evolving process.
When considering the Language of Safety,ooooo it is important to keep in mind both the content (what we say or do) and the process ie how we say or do something. There are four elements to this Model. When all four elements are taken into account, then we can say we are observing a Language of Safety, and are putting into practice our right to feel safe and the responsibility that goes with that right."
— Di Margetts, Author of The Language of Safety
Emotional Fitness
Develop an understanding of emotional fitness, including effectively recognising and managing personal triggers. By embracing the fundamental principle that individuals have the inherent right to experience emotional safety, course participants not only cultivate greater self-confidence but also gain the capacity to effectively employ the practical strategies learned throughout the course for enhancing emotional resilience and overall well-being.
Restorative Practices;
Working Through Tough Topics
Restorative Practices are all about helping people resolve internal and external conflict and tension and repair relationships. Essentially it involves facilitated safe space for what can often be tough conversations. Restorative Practices are trauma-informed and require voluntary participation. Born out of the Restorative Justice movement Restorative Practices are more likely to involve informal processes rather than a formal victim-offender conference. Restorative Practices takes the approach of looking back at what's happened, developing shared understanding about the impact of that in the here and now, and scoping out what a different future could look like. Shared agreements are reached based on shared meaning allowing a transparent framework for all involved to be able to feel safe enough to move forward.
Develop skills to navigate difficult conversations and enhance resilience. Through a coaching mentoring approach, participants receive guidance in managing stress, building self-confidence and improving communication skills for challenging situations.
Training & Capacity Building
Tailored training, restorative practice, and capacity-building solutions designed to strengthen skills, relationships and organisational effectiveness.
Bespoke Training and Development
Our bespoke training and development services are tailored to the unique needs of your organisation, department, or agency. Whether you're looking to upskill staff, enhance psychosocial workplace culture, or support vulnerable individuals, we design and deliver programs that meet your specific goals.
Our training is grounded in the principles of Universal Protective Behaviours and Restorative Practices, ensuring a trauma-informed, responsive, and strengths-based approach that promotes safer, more inclusive environments. We collaborate closely with you to develop practical, real-world strategies that enable individuals and teams to thrive.
From early intervention programs to leadership development, we offer a flexible and holistic approach to professional growth and wellbeing.
Capacity Building
Our capacity-building services focus on empowering individuals and organisations to enhance their psychosocial skills, knowledge, and processes. We help teams perform tasks, solve problems, and achieve objectives more effectively and sustainably.
By developing expertise in areas such as leadership, communication, and conflict resolution, we enhance overall capabilities and cultivate a resilient, adaptable workforce. Our approach promotes continuous learning and improvement, fostering a strong organisational culture that encourages collaboration, innovation, and long-term success.
With tailored solutions, we ensure your organisation is equipped to navigate psychosocial challenges and seize growth opportunities, creating sustainable impact at every level.
Protective Behaviours International
This work rests on Two Core Pillars:
The Central Theme: "We all have the right to feel safe",
And the Universal Protective Behaviours Psychosocial Framework that guides how those rights are practised.
PBI is committed to establishing and maintaining a consistent professional training and development framework. This framework is to support individuals, groups, agencies and organisations with appropriate and unrestricted standing* who are applying aspects or the entirety of The Universal Protective Behaviours Empowerment Program.
Empowering Safeness through Connection, Communication and Community