Navigating diversity and difference in the workplace: The next frontier of leadership, communication, and team culture.
PRESENTED BY PSYCHOLOGISTS WHO ARE EXPERTS IN RELATIONSHIPS AND WORKPLACE DYNAMICS, WITH EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE ACROSS CLINICAL, LEGAL, AND ORGANISATIONAL SETTINGS.
Common challenges we hear from teams
A leader whose interpersonal style leaves others walking on eggshells.
Highly skilled colleagues who clash because their communication styles don’t align.
Team members misinterpreting tone, timing, or intensity as personal—when it’s often stress- or neurotype-related.
Groups drained by emotional reactivity, miscommunication, or unspoken tension.
In high-pressure environments, relational strain doesn’t just impact morale—it impacts performance, collaboration, and wellbeing.
This workshop helps teams recognise when conflict stems from personality patterns, communication mismatches, or neurotype differences—and provides tools to bridge those gaps with skillfulness, clarity, and respect.
Why It Matters
Thriving teams combine relational intelligence with professional expertise and skill.
By shifting from judgment (“difficult”) to understanding (“different”), organisations can create psychologically safe and neuroaffirming workplaces that strengthen culture, reduce burnout, and improve outcomes for staff, clients, and communities.
Format
2-hour training or half-day workshop
In-person or virtual delivery
Optional follow-up sessions for leadership or multidisciplinary teams
Bespoke training packages by request
The Workshop Facilitators
AOIFE DURCAN
Dr. Aoife Durcan is a Chartered Senior Counselling Psychologist, supervisor-trainer, and specialist on high sensitivity in children, teenagers, and adults. She has dedicated her career to supporting individuals and families to navigate the deep feelings, empathy, and emotional intensity that come with sensitivity, helping them harness its unique strengths.
Aoife works with children, adolescents, and adults in both clinical and educational settings. She is Clinical Lead for a psychology group within a mental health hospital, where she works as part of a wider multidisciplinary team supporting people through complex emotional and psychological challenges. She also provides training to medical and psychology practitioners internationally.
Author of Your Highly Sensitive Child (Gill Books), Aoife combines her clinical expertise with lived insight as a highly sensitive person herself. She is known for her warm, family-centred approach and is a sought-after international speaker on sensitivity, parenting, and mental health, frequently appearing in the media.
RACHEL SAMSON
Rachel Samson, M.Psych (Clin), is an Australian clinical psychologist, author, lecturer, and speaker known for relationships and parenting expertise. With 15 years’ clinical experience, she supports highly sensitive children, adults, and families, and shares evidence-based guidance as @australianpsychologist.
Her practice is neurodiversity-affirming, developmental, and relationship-focused, applying attachment and temperament science. She trained in attachment assessment with Alan Sroufe and Elizabeth Carlson (Minnesota), in maternal sensitivity with Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg (Cambridge), and in the NDC “Possums” approach to infant sleep and cry-fuss.
Rachel holds advanced international certification in Schema Therapy (trainer-supervisor; ISST) and co-developed an expanded Schema Therapy model for highly sensitive people with Dr Jeffrey Young and Dr George Lockwood. She is co-author of Beyond Difficult with Dr Jessie Stern (Affirm Press/Simon & Schuster).