Training

Build lasting resilience across your organization

Practical, evidence-informed training for teams that need more than awareness. Choose the right program for your people, then tailor the format around your goals.

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Programs

Choose the right training path

Start with the audience and outcome you care about most. Each program can be delivered as a focused workshop, a deeper series, or part of a larger learning pathway.

Not sure which program fits?

Half-day (3-4 hours), Full-day intensive (6-8 hours), or Multi-session series

Leadership Development

Equip leaders to create psychologically safe, high-performing teams

Leadership today demands more than strategy and results: it requires the emotional intelligence to recognize when people are struggling, the skills to have difficult conversations, and the courage to model vulnerability without losing authority. This program equips managers, executives, and team leads with evidence-based frameworks and practical tools to support their teams' mental health and build the psychological safety that drives performance. Drawing on Mark's work with leading organizations across Canada and internationally, this training transforms how leaders show up in the moments that matter most.

Best for

People managers, executives, team leads, HR partners, and leaders responsible for the conditions in which others work.

Half-day workshop, 3-4 hours, focused on check-ins, boundaries, and a team actionFull-day intensive, 6-8 hours, adding practice, feedback, and work-design discussionMulti-session series, with practice between sessions and review of a team commitment

Why this matters

A leader can care about mental health and still be unsure what to say, what is private, and what actually falls within their role. Staff also need more than encouragement to cope when workload, unclear expectations, or fear of speaking up are part of the problem.

Recommended for

Organizations preparing managers to support people within clear boundaries and follow through on a specific team-level improvement. No clinical background is required; local escalation and accommodation pathways should be confirmed with the host.

What they practice

Compare an ordinary performance concern with a support conversation and identify the appropriate next step for each

Practise an observation-based, private check-in in pairs; an observer uses a listening-and-boundaries checklist

Map a concern through the host's HR, occupational health, accommodation, and urgent-help routes without using real employee cases

Review one team demand through workload, clarity, respect, or influence and propose a feasible change

Write a 30-day commitment with an owner, a follow-up date, and a way to ask staff whether the change helped

What they take back

Participant-created check-in language and a record of boundaries to explain

A host-specific support and escalation map completed during the workshop

A team working-agreement draft on one identified pressure or communication issue

A 30-day leadership action plan and peer-feedback notes

Participant outcomes

Identify early warning signs of distress, burnout, and disengagement in team members

Apply the HEAR framework to hold space for difficult emotions without overstepping professional boundaries

Conduct supportive mental health conversations that feel natural, not scripted

Build the conditions for psychological safety: where people speak up, take risks, and ask for help

Develop personal mental health leadership practices that model what you want your culture to be

Navigate crisis situations: what to say, what not to say, and when to escalate

Create team agreements and accountability structures that sustain culture change

Understand the business case: how psychological safety drives retention, innovation, and engagement

Sample modules

1The Neuroscience of Psychological Safety: Why brains shut down under threat: and how leaders change that
2The HEAR Framework for Leaders: Hold, Examine, Accept, Release in practice
3Signals & Patterns: Reading the early signs of stress, burnout, and crisis
4The Art of the Difficult Conversation: A step-by-step approach to mental health check-ins
5Boundaries Without Walls: Supporting without rescuing or overstepping
6Modeling Vulnerability: How leaders share authentically without undermining authority
7Crisis Response Protocol: What to do when a team member is in acute distress
8Building Lasting Culture: Accountability structures, team agreements, and sustainable change

"Builds on Mark's documented management of Mental Health Works at CMHA Ontario and national CMHA work. The design reflects WHO guidance on manager training alongside organizational action; it is not clinical qualification or a psychological health and safety certification."

How training works

Choose the format that fits the work.

Programs can be shaped as a focused session, a deeper skill-building sequence, or a blended pathway with resources that keep the learning alive, relevant before it starts and usable long after people return to work.

Single Session

A focused half-day or full-day workshop that gives people a shared framework and practical tools quickly.

Best for Professional development days, leadership retreats, conference add-ons, and kickoff events

Multi-Session Program

A deeper sequence over weeks or months, with practice, reflection, and implementation between sessions.

Best for Leadership cohorts, culture change initiatives, certification-style programs, and sustained skill building

Online, Hybrid, or Academy-Supported

Live virtual training, blended learning, and future Academy follow-up can help distributed teams keep learning alive.

Best for National teams, shift-based workforces, reinforcement after a keynote, and scalable rollout

Testimonials

What Participants Are Saying

Keynote plus training

Open the conversation, then build the skills.

A keynote can create energy and shared meaning. Training turns that momentum into practice, language, and a clearer plan for what people do next.

A stronger learning arc

Useful when inspiration needs to become sustained action.

Set shared context

Use a keynote to give the audience a common language, emotional entry point, and reason to care.

Practice the skills

Follow with training that lets people rehearse conversations, apply frameworks, and make the ideas usable.

Support the follow-through

Extend the work with tools, manager resources, or Academy pathways so the learning continues after the event.

Especially useful for annual conferences, leadership off-sites, organization-wide mental health weeks, and teams preparing for deeper culture work.

FAQ

Training FAQs

Everything you need to know about Mark's organizational training programs.

Mark offers a range of training formats including half-day and full-day workshops, multi-session series, and organizational development programs. Core topics include the HEAR framework for processing difficult emotions, the NICE framework for building positive experiences, suicide prevention and crisis response, manager training for mental health conversations, and building psychologically safe teams. All programs include evidence-based content, experiential exercises, and practical tools participants can use immediately.

HEAR is a four-step framework for processing difficult emotions: Hold (create space for the emotion without immediately fixing it), Examine (explore it with curiosity, not judgment), Accept (acknowledge this is your experience right now — not forever), and Release (let the emotion move through naturally). It's designed to interrupt the cycle of emotional suppression and build genuine psychological flexibility.

NICE is a framework for strengthening positive psychological experiences so they become part of long-term wellbeing. It stands for: Notice (actively recognize a positive experience as it's happening), Intensify (enrich the experience through sensory awareness), Connect (link it to your values and what matters to you), and Embed (let the experience sink into memory). It's grounded in positive neuroplasticity research.

Mark's workshops are designed for groups of 15–150 participants for optimal engagement. Larger audiences (150–500+) can be accommodated with adjusted facilitation formats. For very large organizations, Mark can train internal facilitators to scale programs organization-wide.

Yes. Depending on the program, Mark's team can provide pre-event participant guides to prepare attendees, post-event reinforcement resources to sustain learning, digital toolkits including the HEAR and NICE worksheets, and manager guides for follow-up conversations. These are customized to your organization's branding and context upon request.

Training Inquiry

Ready to invest in your people?

Let's discuss how Mark's training programs can address your specific organizational challenges and goals.

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