THE STEADY WORK
The Official Internal Calms™ Practitioner Series
Business as usual is dead.
That’s not fearmongering. It’s the honest truth that the Institute of Internal Communication put at the top of its 2026 Future of Internal Communication report — and what any practitioner paying attention already knows.
The polycrisis is real. Employees are overwhelmed, uncertain, and processing information differently than they were five years ago. The frameworks we’ve been using — built for engaged, stable, trusting audiences — are failing the people they're supposed to reach.
The Steady Work is what comes next.
It’s a three-workshop practitioner series built on the Internal Calms framework — six principles drawn from neuroscience, public health, trauma-informed organizational practice, and two decades of communications experience. It doesn’t ask you to overhaul everything overnight. It asks you to take small, steady steps toward communications strategies that keep people grounded, even when the ground keeps moving.
You don’t need to be starting from scratch. You need a new lens.
THE THREE WORKSHOPS
The Arrival
The neuroscience of stress and communication — and how to design for the brains you actually have
Today’s employee experience begins with checking email at 6 a.m. and doomscrolling at 10 p.m. Your employees aren't ignoring your communications. Their brains are. This workshop is the neuroscience you weren't taught — and the redesign you've been needing.
The Anchor
Values, community, and honest communication when the future won't hold still
Business as usual is dead. So is the strategy of waiting until you have answers. This workshop teaches you how organizations can prepare for one crisis after the next — and how to communicate when you can't promise what comes next.
The Assembly
Building a communication ecosystem for humans who are already at capacity
More channels. More messages. More noise. This workshop helps you build a channel strategy that reduces cognitive load instead of adding to it — and gives your employees the clarity and choice they need to actually receive what you’re sending.
THE JOURNEY
Each workshop stands alone. Together, they build a complete practice.
The Arrival gives you the science — you understand the nervous system and start designing for it
The Anchor gives you the foundation — you build the values, community, and honest communication infrastructure that holds when everything else is uncertain
The Assembly gives you the system — you redesign your channels and information architecture for the audience you actually have
THE FORMAT
Full series bundle: $899 — a 15% discount
Individual practitioner cohorts: open enrollment, 10 seats per cohort
Team and organizations: contact Ellen for custom scheduling and group pricing
Cohorts begin in June; registration will open in April
The first three cohorts will receive exclusive resources and post-workshop 1:1 follow-up.
The ARRIVAL
The neuroscience of stress and communication — and how to design for the brains you actually have.
Your employees don’t want to ignore your communications.
Their brains can’t help it.
Chronic stress doesn’t just make people feel bad — it physically changes how they receive, process, and remember information. Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn. These aren’t personality traits or engagement problems. They’re nervous system responses. And they’re happening in your audience before your message ever lands.
Most employee communications were designed for a workforce that no longer exists. We’ve been optimizing subject lines and A/B testing send times while our audiences quietly rewired. This workshop is the recalibration.
THIS WORKSHOP COVERS
Drawing on the Internal Calms framework and research in neuroscience, cognitive load theory, and trauma-informed organizational practice, we examine what’s actually happening in the brains receiving your communications — and redesign from there.
The neuroscience of stress and what it does to information processing
Why current best practices are failing activated audiences
The Internal Calms six-principle framework applied to real communications
How to redesign high-stakes moments
Language for making the case for trauma-informed communications upward
YOU'LL LEAVE WITH
A working understanding of how stress responses show up as workplace behavior and communication patterns
A framework for auditing your own communications through a nervous system lens
Hands-on redesigns of at least two high-stakes communication types
Scripts and talking points for advocating this approach to leadership
THIS IS FOR YOU IF
Your communications are technically sound but something still isn’t landing. Your employees seem checked out, avoidant, or resistant. You’ve followed the playbook and the playbook keeps failing.
You suspect the problem isn’t your skills — it’s the framework you were handed.
The ANCHOR
Values, community, and honest communication when the future won't hold still.
Business as usual is dead.
That’s the opening line of the Institute of Internal Communication’s 2026 Future of Internal Communication report. Not buried in the footnotes. Right at the top.
And yet most of us are still operating as if the old playbook is going to hold. Waiting for clarity before we communicate. Staying positive and on-message while our employees are watching the world catch fire. Hoping that if we just get the next all-hands right, trust will come back.
It won’t. Not that way.
Research on how organizations survive genuine uncertainty — from 9/11 to economic collapse to the polycrisis we’re living through right now — points to something consistent: when you can't tell people what’s next, you remind them who they are. You anchor them in values. You build community. You listen.
That’s not the soft stuff. That’s the survival strategy.
This workshop is where you learn to build it.
THIS WORKSHOP COVERS
Why strategy fails in polycrisis — and what replaces it
The research on values-based communication
Community as a communication strategy: building the webs of interdependence that help people stay steady
Honest communication frameworks for moments when you have more questions than answers
Listening as infrastructure: the systems that make values work real
YOU'LL LEAVE WITH
A framework for values-based communication that works when strategy doesn’t
Practical tools for building community through your communications practice
Language for honest, trustworthy communication during ambiguity — including what to say when you genuinely don't know
A listening infrastructure map you can begin building without a big budget
Scripts for acknowledging uncertainty without undermining trust
THIS IS FOR YOU IF
You’re being asked to communicate through something your organization hasn’t figured out yet. You’re holding more than you’re allowed to share. You want to build trust but you don’t have the answers people are looking for.
You believe your employees deserve honesty more than they deserve polish.
You’re ready to stop waiting for clarity and start communicating with integrity.
The ASSEMBLY
Building a communication ecosystem for humans who are already at capacity.
You probably already know your channel strategy isn’t working.
Too many channels. Too many messages. Slack competing with email competing with the intranet competing with digital signage competing with the town hall no one watched because they were already in three other meetings.
The problem isn’t that your employees aren’t paying attention. It’s that you’re asking overloaded nervous systems to do sorting work, instead of giving people choice in how, when, and where to access information.
Every unnecessary message is a withdrawal from an account that’s already overdrawn. Every new channel added without intention is another source of ambient noise in a world that’s already too loud.
The Assembly is about building systems that give people back their capacity. Not simpler for its own sake — simpler because your audience is at their limit, and every design choice either honors that or ignores it.
THIS WORKSHOP COVERS
Cognitive load theory applied to channel strategy
The Internal Calms principle of Choice: why giving employees agency over how they receive information is a nervous system intervention, not a nice-to-have
How to audit your current channel ecosystem through a trauma-informed lens
Information architecture for stressed audiences: must-know, should-know, good-to-know
The business case for doing less — how to make it to leadership
YOU'LL LEAVE WITH
A channel audit framework you can apply immediately
An information architecture model mapped to the Internal Calms six principles
A draft channel strategy or FY communication calendar outline
A cognitive load assessment for your highest-volume communications
Language for making the case for consolidation and simplification upward
THIS IS FOR YOU IF
Your channel strategy has grown by addition rather than design. You’re sending more communications than ever and getting less engagement. You know something needs to change but you’re not sure where to start — or how to make the case for it.
You’re ready to do less, better, and with intention.