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The Be BRAVE Feel SAFE Masterclass
In 2027 we are hosting residential retreats across regional Victoria, and city masterclasses in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, for leaders who want braver and safer workplaces. Two and a half days with Shawn Andrews, Master Facilitator and creator of Be BRAVE Feel SAFE, who has practised Dhungai for more than twenty years. Not a briefing about the methodology: the methodology in practice, in the room, with your own leadership as the material.
Open to individuals, and to teams, divisions and departments. If you want to do this work with your team, contact us directly and we will organise a residential retreat or an in-house masterclass at your workplace.
What do you get from the Be BRAVE Feel SAFE Masterclass?
The Masterclass works on your skills, your bravery and your curiosity as a leader. It gives you practical, hands-on ways to lead teams inside a psychologically safe and culturally safe frame, and it does it with your own leadership as the material rather than someone else's case study.
- Two and a half days in a room of ten to fifteen leaders: a half day to arrive and build the room, a full day of the work, a half day to close and carry it home.
- A one-to-one with Shawn before the room opens, and a short reflection pack, so the work starts before you arrive.
- The conversation you have been avoiding, named on day one, rehearsed on day two, given a date on day three.
- A map of one real room you hold: who speaks, who decides, who carries the cost, and what happens after someone tells you the truth.
- A 90-day plan for that room, and a two-week check-in with the cohort to see how it went.
- Shawn as sole facilitator throughout. Meals and materials included. For the Victorian retreats, accommodation included.
- A way to keep going afterwards: one-to-one follow-up, coaching and mentoring, scoped to you.
A First Nations-led methodology, practised in the room.
Be BRAVE Feel SAFE is a First Nations-led methodology that builds the brave spaces where cultural and psychological safety actually emerge.
Psychologically safe environments are created by leaders who understand that they have to be able to hold a brave conversation. They also have to be able to look at the systems that sit around leaders and teams, and make sure those systems are minimising harm rather than producing it. Being a good person is not enough on its own. You have to be able to see the system, and the thinking inside it, that shapes whether a team functions well and enjoys its work.
Be BRAVE Feel SAFE brings modern leadership thinking together with First Nations leadership and excellence, through a practice called Dhungai: a Yugambeh word for deep listening, taught to Shawn by an uncle. What makes the Masterclass valuable is that you are working with a Master Facilitator whose expertise is in navigating difficult spaces and difficult conversations, and in seeing the systems that sit around them.
The room is held by Shawn Andrews, Mununjali and Migunberri, of the Yugambeh language group. He comes from an education and business background and has spent more than twenty years in the places where difficult conversations and systems change have to happen: government, community, education and business.
By the end of the Masterclass you will have taken a deep look at your own brave leadership, and you will understand how deficit framing and strengths-based thinking change the way you lead, and whether the spaces you hold are psychologically safe and culturally safe. We start with what is strong, not what is wrong, and we work from there.
Leaders who lead people.
Directors, executive directors, executives, and managers of every kind: anyone who holds a room and has the authority to change something in it on the Monday after.
This is not cultural training and it is not cultural education. It is not cultural sensitivity delivery of any kind. It is a masterclass in you. It uses a First Nations methodology to show you how to listen better, be a curious leader, understand yourself inside your team's dynamics, and question your own leadership honestly. The work is on your skills, and the skills are yours to keep.
It starts before you arrive, and it keeps going after you leave.
A few weeks out you receive a short reflection pack and a time for a one-to-one with Shawn. Three questions, honestly answered, and one conversation. By the time you walk into the room, the work has already begun.
Then two and a half days. Then a two-week check-in with your cohort, where nobody is in trouble for being in the same boat, only for going quiet. From there, if you want it, one-to-one follow-up, coaching and mentoring, shaped around the room you hold.
Across the two and a half days, you will practise:
- Asking before concluding.
- Curiosity before judgement, every time.
- Staying present in discomfort, without collapsing and without retaliating.
- Listening at eighty per cent, speaking at twenty.
- Judging actions, never people.
- Strengths-based by rule: naming the system, never the person.
- Building the brave space first, so that safety can follow.
- Closing the loop, so the room is still standing for the next conversation.
Three weeks in regional Victoria. Then Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.
Each week runs two Masterclasses. The first is two and a half days at the front of the week: Monday afternoon, all day Tuesday, Wednesday morning. The second is two and a half days at the back: Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday, Friday morning. Pick the half of the week that suits you.
Regional Victoria, residential retreats
Held in a regional setting in Nagambie, Castlemaine or Daylesford, with accommodation and all meals included. Venue confirmed on registration.
- Week of 15 February 2027: Monday 15 to Wednesday 17, or Wednesday 17 to Friday 19.
- Week of 15 March 2027: Monday 15 to Wednesday 17, or Wednesday 17 to Friday 19.
- Week of 10 May 2027: Monday 10 to Wednesday 12, or Wednesday 12 to Friday 14.
Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, city Masterclasses
Held in CBD locations, non-residential, same two and a half days and same two halves of the week.
- Sydney: week of 7 June 2027.
- Adelaide: week of 21 June 2027.
- Brisbane: week of 19 July 2027.
Seats are limited to fifteen in every room. Prices and what is included are on the dates page.
Register your interest here →All dates and prices →Lateral Strength Building
One day on lateral violence and what we do about it, using the Be BRAVE Feel SAFE method. Two rooms: one for First Nations staff, one for non-First Nations staff. Runs in Naarm the week before each Masterclass retreat, so a team can do both.
See Lateral Strength BuildingRegister your interest, or bring your team.
One form for a seat or a closed cohort. We come back to you within two working days, book a short one-to-one with Shawn before the room opens, and hold your seat once it is confirmed with you. Pay by card or by invoice.