We help people do safe, supported + inclusive work together.
From conflict to collaboration and coaching to systems change, we support people in teams and communities to do brilliant work together.
Our learning + development training, leadership and place-based projects all use Healing-Centred Design® and Human Skills to power positive change in organisations, public services, education and community sectors.
Work with us.
Human Skills at Work
Navigate change within teams while practising Human Skills
Train with us to to strengthen relationships, improve communication and create healthier team dynamics.
Action-learning to develop,
🟠Compassion: understanding, empathy and support
🟠Trust: listening skills, collaboration, inclusion
🟠Conflict navigation: respect, challenge and alignment
🟠Adaptability: innovation, flexibility, resourcefulness
🟠Creative thinking: decision making, problem solving
Facilitation School
Learn how to facilitate participation, collaboration and change.
Whether you’re a practitioner, coach or educator, learn practical approaches that help people participate, collaborate and create meaningful change.
🟠Trauma-informed approaches
🟠Creative coaching skills
🟠Collaboration tools
Trauma-Aware Teams
Develop trauma awareness to create safer, more supportive workplaces.
Interactive training that helps you recognise the impact of trauma, respond with confidence and build psychologically safer environments.
🟠The impact of trauma, support and safety
🟠Secondary trauma and healthy boundaries
Place-based Projects + Evaluation
Create and embed positive, lasting change across systems and communities.
Whether you’re leading change across a council, NHS team, local infrastructure organisation or community team, we help you turn ambition into practical action through Human Skills, Healing-Centred Design® and collaborative practice.
🟠Community Development
🟠Infrastructure + partnership development
🟠Codesign and coproduction
🟠Community Research and evaluation
🟠Stakeholder, Impact and Value Mapping.
Events
Join leadership and team events exploring Human Skills, Healing-Centred Design® and practical approaches to collaboration and change.
🟠Event highlights! 2026 Event | 2025 Event
🟠Monthly wellbeing socials and retreats for deep work. Retreats + Gatherings
Interested? Email us at faye@brilliantthing.co.uk
Network
Join a professional learning community to build relationships, develop Human Skills and strengthen your leadership so you can influence change.
🟠Learning Circles
🟠Speaker opportunities
🟠Transformation Toolkit
Team
Practical development that helps teams work well together, make progress and learn from what they do. Development sessions are delivered through full or half day workshops.
🟠Planning turn ideas and priorities into clear, practical plans and shared action.
🟠Facilitation build confidence to lead useful conversations, meetings and collaborative work.
🟠Reflection create space to learn from your experiences, share insight and support team wellbeing.
For more information email tess@brilliantthing.co.uk
Leadership
Development for leadership teams to set direction, understand impact and lead people through complexity and change.
Development sessions are delivered through full or half day workshops.
🟠Visioning & evaluation create a compelling direction, understand what success looks like and use learning to shape what happens next.
🟠Leading through change navigate uncertainty, complexity and competing pressures while keeping people connected to purpose.
🟠Influence build support, work effectively across departments or partnerships and bring people with you to create sustainability.
For more information email tess@brilliantthing.co.uk
Micro-Learning
Free learning, for real life.
When you are under pressure, our free micro-learning offers practical ideas you can use straight away to improve work.
🟠Support to navigate conflict, tackle overwhelm and get unstuck
🟠Bize-size reads, audio and tools to help you explore, learn and develop.
Products
Create positive change where you work.
Discover practical ideas, inspiring stories and tools to help you navigate and lead change with confidence.
🟠Book: Healing-Centred Transformation: Mend, Tend and Change the Future (Paperback) by Kerry Tottingham
🟠Coaching Cards: The Brilliant Box. A multipurpose development deck of cards, to create energy, inspiration, connection and possibility. Brilliant for people, groups, organisations and communities working to create change.
🟠Toolkit: Trauma Informed Communities: codesigned practices and processes, to support trauma informed practice, when working in and with communities.
Free micro-learning for busy people.
Need change quick? Our free micro-learning gives busy people practical ideas and tools they can use immediately to enable safe, supported + inclusive work.
From one-minute emails to a 30-minute masterclass, start learning in a way that works in real life.
Feedback and Testimonials.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund Leadership team:
“Enabled us to recognise the complexity in teams and programmes, and choreograph processes and ways of working to change things.”
Dr Sula Windgassen PhD MSc, Health Psychologist
“A wonderfully accessible and reassuring framework that is truly inspiring, compassionate and much needed.”
Business Development Lead, 1Point Bolton
“I used your framework and it worked brilliantly in my coaching group supervision today, using this model worked far better than the dry unimaginative models taught.”
Zoe Porter, Associate Director: Live Well & Neighbourhoods, NHS Greater Manchester
For the past 18 months, we’ve been working on how to develop a new grant fund across Greater Manchester that brings in more resources for communities and ensures that funding reaches people most affected by inequality.
This work has been a collective effort, involving many people and organisations, including 10GM and associated infrastructure organisations, NHS GM and GMCA.
I’d particularly like to thank Kerry Tottingham for her calm and positive ongoing support. Alongside the GM Systems Changers, who carried out community research, she has helped produce a detailed and thoughtful evaluation of the first year, which you can read here.
‘Real People’ means seeing the humans behind roles + systems.
Behind every organisation, community and system are real people with different experiences, pressures, strengths and perspectives. We work with people leading change across:
- Health and care
- Education
- Local government
- Voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations
- Place-based partnerships
- Human Resources
Many are trying to create meaningful change while navigating increasing demand, limited time and resources, workforce pressures, competing priorities and unequal access to power and development.
We design transformation for this reality – helping people understand what matters, work through complexity and create practical ways forward together.
‘Real Change’ happens when people work differently.
Change becomes possible when people have the skills, support and space to collaborate and develop. We help people:
- Navigate pressure, complexity and changing demands
- Build trust across different perspectives
- Strengthen collaborative leadership
- Involve people meaningfully in designing services and solutions
Safe. Supported. Inclusive.
Real change is not measured by activity or outputs, but by whether people, organisations and systems have more time, energy and resources because the work happened.
Who we are.
Hi! We are the sisters behind A Brilliant Thing CIC. We care about the people delivering services, running the organisations and doing the community projects. Our joint focus on wellbeing and leadership means learning and development with us creates lasting impact and feels brilliant!
Together we bring a depth of skills in therapeutic counselling, coaching, organisational and community development, people management, design-thinking and experience across charity, NHS, public and private sectors. Inspiration and transforming potential into reality is what A Brilliant Thing means to us.
Kerry, Faye and Tess
Transformation doesn’t happen by accident.
.
Events
Learning happens best when people come together.
Throughout the year we host conferences, workshops, masterclasses and gatherings that connect people around shared challenges, fresh ideas and practical action.
From the Mend + Tend Conference to the Human Skills Network, our events create opportunities to learn, reflect, collaborate and build lasting relationships with others creating positive change.
Resources
Transformation doesn’t end when a project finishes.
We share our learning through podcasts, books, toolkits and practical resources that help people continue learning, adapting and creating change in their own organisations and communities.
Resources | Podcast on Spotify
The book, Healing-Centred Transformation: mend, tend and change the future, by Kerry Tottingham was nominated for the Peoples Book Prize 2026.
Book on Amazon
Micro-Learning
Change doesnt happen all at once.
We’ve designed a weekly ‘micro-learning’ email series so you can, learn how to use human skills to improve your work, team and organisation in real time.
+PLUS on week 3 you’ll get a discount code for our Human Skills Network.
Navigate Conflict is our free 30min masterclass for managers, to create team alignment.
Ready for change?
If you’re strengthening a team, leading organisational change, redesigning services or bringing partners together around a shared ambition, and you want to enable safe, supportive and inclusive work, we’d love to hear about your work.
Book an introduction call to explore your challenge, join our free Human Skills mini-series, or become part of our growing community of people designing healthier organisations, stronger communities and lasting social change.
Email faye@brilliantthing.co.uk or book a call with us.