Why Didn't I Say Something? Speaking Up When It Matters
Tash Koster-Thomas
Book a demo →from €2,250 for your whole company
Book a demo →from €2,250 for your whole company
This one runs as an interactive workshop: the hour includes exercises your colleagues do themselves, not only a talk.
Tash Koster-Thomas (she/her) is an Inclusion and Diversity Consultant, presenter, speaker, and LGBTQ+ Activist who stands at the forefront of transformative conversations. Leveraging her identity and lived experience as a Black queer woman, Tash champions the cause of diversity and inclusion in both society and the workplace. Tash understands that embracing diversity is not only a moral imperative but also a strategic advantage. She is committed to guiding organizations through transformative journeys that go beyond compliance, fostering cultures that champion diversity, equity, and inclusion at every level.
All sessions by Tash →Have you ever left a meeting wishing you'd spoken up? Witnessed a comment that didn't sit right but weren't sure whether to say something? Or worried that raising a concern might make things awkward or create conflict?
This session explores why speaking up can feel difficult, even in teams with good intentions, and what helps people find the confidence to act. Participants will examine the connection between respect, psychological safety, and bystander behaviour.
Using Tim Clark's four stages of psychological safety, we'll identify what helps people feel safe to contribute, challenge ideas, and raise concerns.
The session also explores the difference between intention and impact, helping participants recognise situations where action may be needed and how to respond constructively. It closes on shared accountability: maintaining a respectful, inclusive team culture is everyone's responsibility, not just leadership's.
During the expert session, Tash Koster-Thomas engages the audience through interactive exercises using the Mentimeter app, Q&A sessions, and live demonstrations.
Most organisations don't have a values problem. They have a gap between what people believe and what people say out loud, especially in the moment when it matters.
This session starts with an uncomfortable truth: the friendlier the culture, the harder it can be to speak up. In teams where everyone gets along, challenging a comment or raising a concern can feel like rocking the boat and so problems stay polite and unspoken. Silence starts to look like harmony.
The first part of the session builds the foundation. Using Amy Edmondson's research and Tim Clark's four stages of psychological safety, participants explore why speaking up feels risky, what the brain is actually doing in that moment and why "challenger safety”, the ability to disagree and still belong, is the hardest stage for any team to reach.
Live, anonymous polling runs throughout, so participants see honest data from their own colleagues in real time: how safe people really feel to challenge and what stops them.
The second part gets practical. Participants work through real workplace moments, the kind of comments people hear every week and examine the choice every witness faces: stay silent and the moment stands or speak and change how it ends for the person affected.
The session reframes intervention from fear ("what if I get it wrong?") to opportunity ("what could this moment become?"), then equips participants with concrete options: five ways to act, ranging from a quiet message after the meeting to naming the impact in the room, with exact phrases they can use. Because there is always more than one way to speak up and always at least one within reach.
It closes on the two questions most sessions avoid: what to do when you're the one who said it and how every individual response, over time, is what turns a nice culture into a safe one.
Delivered as an interactive virtual session, designed to work for international, multilingual audiences. No prior knowledge required.
No prior knowledge is assumed. It is built for a general working audience, and people who already know the subject get the research and the practical side rather than an introduction. What the hour itself covers: Have you ever left a meeting wishing you'd spoken up? Witnessed a comment that didn't sit right but weren't sure whether to say something?
A workshop. The description of this session says so itself: the hour includes exercises and activities that participants do, not only an expert speaking. It still runs live and online, for as many colleagues as you want to invite.
Tash Koster-Thomas is one of the experts we auditioned ourselves, and we produce every session so we see how each one lands. Participants rate this session 4.5 out of 5, across 193 responses, and rate Tash personally 4.8 out of 5.
It is interactive, and the block higher up on this page says exactly how for this session. Nobody has to speak up who does not want to: the chat and the polls carry most of it, and the questions can come in anonymously.
It runs 45 min / 15 min: the talk, then live questions. All you do is pick a date. We brief Tash, produce the session, host and moderate it, run the Q&A, and send you the report within an hour of the end.
A team, a department, an employee network or every single employee at once, with no cap and no per-seat price. It runs inside your own Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet, or on a branded page we build. No integration, no login, no company device or e-mail.
The session is delivered in English. You can add high accuracy live subtitles in 8, 16 or 24 languages, so everyone follows in their own. That is a paid option, priced by the number of languages you need.
No, and that is by design. There is nothing to install, nothing to integrate and no connection to your systems, so there is nothing for IT to validate: we join your own Teams, Zoom or Meet as a guest speaker, or we host a page and your people open a link. No software, no accounts, and no data of yours that we can reach. It is why hundreds of companies, among them some of the largest technology and financial firms in the world, were able to start within a day.
We never receive or hold personal data about your employees. Because the session runs in your own environment, attendance and identity stay with you, and what we report back is aggregated: numbers, ratings and survey answers, not people. That is also why IT approval usually takes minutes rather than weeks.
You keep the recording and can share it internally. You also get attendance over time, participant ratings for the content and the speaker, the survey answers, and the topics your people asked for next.
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