Masterclass with Mitch Wallis
The 12 Behaviours
Leaders Are Missing
A free masterclass for HR, People and Culture and WHS leaders on what connection capability looks like in a manager, how to spot it, and one move per behaviour to build it.
Led by Mitch Wallis
Monday 26 October, 1-2pm AEDT
Corporate Australia scores 68.6 out of 100 on connection capability. Managers can stay calm when someone gets upset. What they can't reliably do is notice it coming, say back what they heard, or go back and repair it when they get it wrong.
That's not a character problem. It's a skills gap, and until now nobody could measure it.
The Real Conversations Workplace Report 2026 (n=714, independent fieldwork by Pureprofile) surveyed 408 people managers and 306 employees across corporate Australia. 68.6% of managers are confident they could have a real conversation with a struggling team member. 43.5% of employees are confident their manager could. That 25-point distance is the Connection Gap, and it's sitting inside your leadership team right now.
Here's the part that should worry you. 61.4% of the confident managers have never had skills-based training. They're not lying on the survey. They just don't know what they don't know, and your psychosocial duty rests on them.
What we'll cover
In 60 minutes Mitch will walk you through the 12 domains of connection capability, the same 12 that make up the Real Conversations Capability Index. For each one you'll get 3 things:
What the behaviour looks like when a leader has it, and what it looks like when they don't
Where corporate Australia sits on it right now, so you can benchmark your own people
One practical move you can hand a manager this week to start building it
You'll leave able to look at your leadership team and answer, with some confidence, the question most HR leaders are currently guessing at: which of our managers can actually handle this, and which ones only think they can?
This masterclass is for you
You're in HR, People and Culture, L&D or WHS and the psychosocial duty has landed on your desk, but the conversations it depends on are happening (or not happening) in someone else's 1:1
You've rolled out awareness training and your managers can recite the script, but people are still walking out of conversations feeling unheard
You've got first-line and new managers who are one hard conversation away from a resignation, a complaint or a claim, and no way to see it coming
You want a way to assess leadership capability that isn't "we asked them and they said they were fine"
If you just read that and thought "not another wellbeing webinar", good. This isn't one. It's a capability framework with a national benchmark behind it, and you can take it straight back to your exec.
What you'll take away
The Connection Capability Playbook.
All 12 behaviours, what each looks like in practice, and the one move per domain. Built for HR and L&D leaders to embed in their leadership programs, onboarding and manager check-ins. Free to everyone who attends.
Plus a copy of Real Conversations to one attendee, drawn live in the session.
About Mitch
Mitch Wallis is a psychology thought leader, keynote speaker and author with a Masters in Psychology from Columbia University.
He spent seven years at Microsoft, founded the suicide prevention charity Heart On My Sleeve, and has taken Real Conversations to more than 10,000 people across 200+ organisations on four continents.
In September 2026, he published the Real Conversations Workplace Report, the national benchmark of connection capability in corporate Australia.
He looks like he should be in a band. He'd rather teach your managers what to say when someone on their team isn't OK.
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