WELCOME TO SAFE TO SPEAK

Safe to Speak

An illustration of a diverse group of people having a heated discussion around a table, with one woman gesturing expressively.

We are often told that when people don’t speak up, it’s because they lack courage or confidence. This explanation is incomplete. Silence is rarely just an individual failing. It is shaped by the actions and inactions of others, by power, by workplace cultures, and by deeply learned ideas about who is allowed to speak, to whom, and about what.

Many people who are silenced are left angry, guilty, and blamed – while the difficulty others have in listening can go unexamined. This website is organised around three handbooks and blogs. Each offer ideas, tools, and reflections to help you understand and reduce the risk of being silenced in everyday conversations – and to help create conditions where others can find and keep their voice.

Explore the handbooks
About

EXPLORE THE HANDBOOKS

Three pathways to understanding and change

Each handbook offers practical ideas and reflections to help you speak, listen, and create safer conversations.

Line drawing of three women engaged in a conversation around a laptop, with one woman using her hands to emphasize her point.

Handbook 1
Finding your voice

How upbringing, education and work culture and power shape our ability to speak – and how we can find and keep our voice. 

Start Handbook 1
Illustration of five medical professionals, four men and one woman, engaged in conversation, all dressed in white coats.

Handbook 2
Making it safer for others to speak

Understanding how leaders, colleagues, and cultures make it safer - or harder - for people to speak

Start Handbook 2
Line drawing of four people in formal attire, two men and two women, engaging in a discussion and exchanging documents.

Handbook 3
Investigating when talking goes wrong

Exploring what happens when people feel unable to speak or listen - and what this can teach us about making it safer to do both. 

Start Handbook 3

LATEST WRITING

Latest from the blog

Featured
For Rob - an introduction to Handbook 3
For Rob - an introduction to Handbook 3

When I was at school, studying for A levels, my brother died after a short illness. Returning to school I was greeted by a kindly teacher. He said he was glad to see me back; he was very sorry about Rob but it was time to focus and study for my exams – ‘to get back to normal.’ I knew he meant well but what I heard was - ‘shut up and be quiet’….

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Bad leadership and Workbook 2
Bad leadership and Workbook 2

Conversation is a tool, in the background, helping us to coordinate, collaborate, adapt and think together; to get the work done. We pay more attention when unsafe or unexpected things happen. Our investigations into why there has been a failure to communicate, usually focus on the acts and omissions of individual actors. Their failure to share what they knew and saw…

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Good advice?
Good advice?

Conversation is how we get things done and is something we can take for granted in the business of our work lives. Most of the time our conversations work; we collaborate and get the work done safely and efficiently. When things go wrong, it pays to examine how our conversations enable some and silence others…

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Investigating exhaustion
Investigating exhaustion

We are finally in a face to face leadership programme, six months after the pandemic. My colleague and I are with a  group of clinical leaders, from the same organisation. They have been quiet for most of the two days of their programme. Attentive, thoughtful but quiet. Their quiet feels like a communication and hard to decipher…

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Note: References to the English NHS should not be a limiting factor of the reach of this site. It is safer to assume the issues described here are familiar across sectors and professions.