Active Bystander training

Workplace Culture

Active Bystander training

Our active bystander training enables participants to learn practical communication tools to address harmful behaviours without using shame and guilt as the primary driver of behaviour change. We support participants to grow their skill and confidence in challenging stereotypes and disrupting discrimination. We help you ‘call people in’ and ‘call the behaviour out’ while maintaining working relationships along the way. Being an active bystander requires reflectivity, emotional intelligence and courage. Making a difference is all of our business.

Key Outcomes

Gain awareness of the barriers to bystander action
Learn approaches to support colleagues
Be able to engage in ‘difficult conversations’ with greater effectiveness
Recognise the potential for distributed leadership to create inclusive social norms

Featured project

Monash University

Upskilling staff and students to have difficult conversations

Universities are the site of intellectual pursuits. They are also critical for the development of cultural norms in society. Monash University recognised the benefit of giving its staff and students the opportunity to improve their skills in engaging in difficult…

Our Approach

Polykala’s Active Bystander training enables participants to take safe and constructive action against discriminatory and harmful behaviour in the workplace and beyond. Our training promotes workplace cultures of decentralised social leadership. That means staff (irrespective of position) are supported to stand up for a just, diverse, fair and inclusive workplace and community. The training begins by exploring diversity more broadly as an expression of human variation subject to the intersecting dynamics of power and privilege. We reflect on what behaviours participants perceive as ‘okay’ and ‘not okay’ within the organisation with a view to exploring viewpoint diversity and building empathy. Key barriers to active engagement are then explored. We finally offer a set of communication principles to engage in necessary conversation and thus shift workplace norms. We do this using small group work and dynamic role play where participants practise the tools with supported coaching and constructive feedback.