The BEHAVES Academy
The hardest part of your job isn’t having brilliant ideas—it’s getting others to embrace them. Behavioural science holds the key, and no, you don’t need a psychology degree to crack it.
Think of BEHAVES like having a user manual for how people think and act. In just 3 hours, you’ll learn simple tricks that make a big difference at work.
Think of BEHAVES Academy as the user manual for understanding how people think, decide, and act. In just 3-4 hours, you’ll learn:
✔ Why habits stick—or fail—and how to work with the brain’s natural resistance to change.
✔ Simple nudges to make people say “yes” (without endless pushing and persuading).
✔ A clear framework for making better decisions with confidence.
No fluff. No jargon. These are just practical tools that you can start using right away.
Most training programs fail because they focus on what to change but ignore how the brain actually works. Traditional methods fight against the brain’s natural tendencies, making change feel unnatural, forced, or downright exhausting.
But here’s what the science shows:
❌ When people resist change, it’s not stubbornness—it’s how the brain protects against uncertainty.
❌ Poor decisions often happen because of outdated “mental shortcuts” designed to avoid risks.
BEHAVES Academy teaches you to work with these patterns instead of fighting against them, so change feels effortless—and lasting.
This course is designed for curious, driven professionals who want to understand what makes people tick. Are you:
✔ A team leader struggling to get buy-in for new initiatives?
✔ A communicator, marketer, or HR professional seeking practical ways to influence others?
✔ A purpose-driven professional who’s tired of watching good ideas fall flat?
✔ Someone who cares about growth but faces resistance from colleagues?
If you’re passionate about making a difference and ready for tools that work, this course was made for you.
In this course, you’ll learn our proven BEHAVES framework, a simple, step-by-step process for making change feel natural. Instead of pushing ideas or hoping people listen, you’ll:
And the best part?
You’ll complete it all in just 3-4 hours—perfect for busy professionals who don’t have weeks to spend on lengthy training.
Applied behavioural science could be the missing link in your communications.
Think of your brain like a smartphone running on old software.
Even when you try to make smart choices, these outdated “thinking shortcuts” keep messing things up.
Why learn Behavioral Science?
It improves your decision-making and problem-solving skills.
Once you understand these brain patterns, you can work with them instead of against them.
No psychology degree needed – just practical ways to work with
how people’s brains actually make decisions.
Your Natural Leadership Compass….
Our CPD-accredited course explains why people say “yes” or “no” and gives you practical tools to help your team embrace change using applied behavioral science.
Let me show you an active learning method that works right away.
Instead of pushing your ideas and hoping people listen, we teach a simple framework to engage and inspire.
It’s like having a buddy who tells you what to say to get everyone nodding.
Most people make the mistake of jumping straight to answers.
Our BEHAVES process makes change feel natural and welcoming.
In our course, you won’t just watch videos – you’ll practice real work situations and get tools you can use right after lunch.
The best news?
It takes just 3 hours (yes, really!).
No boring lectures or confusing theories – just simple ways to make work better.
Learn at your own pace, with content designed to fit into your schedule.
Gain recognised credentials as you master applied behavioural science.
Return to the material anytime you need a refresher.
Use our companion workbook, handbook, and action plan template to implement your learning immediately
With BEHAVES Academy, you can learn brain science through simple 20-minute modules.
By tomorrow, you might hear “yes” rather than “maybe later.”
Your Change-Made-Easy Bundle
Explore the research behind the training and dive deeper into behavioural science.
Facilitate discussions and solve problems collaboratively in your own team.
Design your own action plans to implement change effectively.
No hidden fees, instant access
Unlike traditional training that’s either too academic or too simplistic, BEHAVES Academy strikes the perfect balance.
Understand the research behind behaviour, explained in a way that’s accessible and practical.
Get actionable tools
you can apply immediately.
Learn how to turn intuition into influence and use behavioural insights to lead with confidence.
We think we’ve done a good job in creating practical, self-directed applied Behavioural Science training.
But don’t take our word for it, take a look at our client reviews.
ATTENTION: If you have a question about BEHAVES, check if the answer is covered here. If not, don’t hesitate to contact us.
No, but we would recommend leaving no more than a week between the modules so that the learning stays fresh. However, since it’s all self-directed, you have as long or as little as you like to complete the course, but your license fee covers access for 1 year.
If you are purchasing BEHAVES directly from this site, the purchaser will become the admin and you will then be asked to assign the licenses to your team. It’s a very simple process but we have reference guides to help you if you get stuck. Your learners will then each be sent a login link to set up their own account and they can get going immediately!
However, if you want BEHAVES to be linked to your own LMS for large groups of learners , please contact us as we can arrange this for you.
1 year and you are welcome to renew after!
We currently charge £180 per user per year, but are open to price reductions for large groups of 50 and over. Contact us to discuss.
Yes, learners who complete the course will be issued a certificate marking their achievement
BEHAVES has been developed to be relevant to the world of work, especially those responsible for organisational transformation or change, but it is job agnostic – so, regardless of whether you are in change, communications, compliance, finance, IT, HR, manufacturing or research and development, BEHAVES will still be beneficial to you.
After long discussions about the need for a categorisation system that makes the wide range of behavioural insights easier to apply, we looked at some existing ways of doing this and felt there was something missing from what was available.
Using the gaps we’d noticed in the existing approaches to guide us, we developed our own system that would focus on how practitioners should apply an insight to drive change. So, we focused less on the ‘what’ – i.e., what an insight is – and more on the ‘how’ – i.e., how an insight would be used.
We gathered the most ubiquitous behavioural insights that we knew of – about 80 or so – and assigned a label to each one according to how it influences our behaviour.
So, for example, we labelled Anchoring as ‘Informational’ because it pertains to how the presentation of information can nudge our decisions, and labelled Autonomy as ‘Feelings’ because it relates to how an internal feeling drives behaviour.
We then sorted all the insights according to their labels, which yielded seven broad categories, and gave them simple one-word names.
To be sure that we had a robust way of categorising insights, we cross checked with all the other models and frameworks that we were aware of. We found that our system was compatible with all of them – and, since then, we have not found an insight that doesn’t fit into one of our categories.
It’s important not to overwhelm people when they are learning something new.
We therefore restricted the insights to just two per category, because we felt that one per category wasn’t enough variety to get a sense of the category itself, and that three was information overload; in face-to-face workshops we had trialled 21 insights and found that it was too many.
To select which insights to teach first, each one had to satisfy the following three criteria:
The specific 14 insights were selected based on feedback from our workshops.
Having worked in applied behavioural science for a long time, we know how important it is to have a framework for applying knowledge and guiding problem solving. In our experience, the existing models were either too simple or too complicated. We wanted to create something more user-friendly, that guided practitioners from start to finish through a step-by-step process.
We started to generate some ideas on our whiteboard. All behavioural science projects begin with the identification of the specific behaviour that needs to change, so we wrote down “B”. Then we wrote down “E” because we believe that behaviour change should be accompanied by positive emotions. Our collective experience led us next to “H” for hurdles, because in any behaviour change process there will be barriers that need to be overcome.
Once we had B-E-H on the board, the rest of the process clicked into place.*
Actually, it was just BEHAVE at first, until we added the S. Feedback from client workshops had shown that the six-step framework was robust and practical, but that it lacked the consideration of the wider effects of behaviour change in organisations, so we improved it by adding the ‘systems’ step.
*In truth, we were amazed that behavioural scientists hadn’t used this acronym before, and couldn’t believe our luck when the order of steps needed to be taken in the design of a behavioural strategy spelled out BEHAVES. It’s like the universe meant it to be so.
“All models are wrong, but some are useful,” so said British statistician George Box. Our primary goal in designing BEHAVES was to create something useful.
In our opinion, all the well-known behavioural science models and frameworks offer something useful, but none are perfect. This goes for BEHAVES as well. But we have tried to create something that is – we believe – more comprehensive and wider ranging than other existing models. We also think it’s easier to use.
The BEHAVES model is unique in that it combines both a strategic process and an organisational system for behavioural insights – as far as we are aware, no other framework does that; we have explained above how our process and the insights categories are different from other available systems.
BEHAVES is also unique in that it has been designed specifically for applying behavioural science in organisations and organisational change.
Yes. Both the e-learning modules and our handbook contain advice on how to use behavioural science ethically and point to the GAABS-approved FORGOOD model for more detailed information. We are members of GAABS, which is the Global Association for Applied Behavioural Scientists, the independent body which represents the field and its practitioners. We have written a blog about ethics and behavioural science, you can read it here.
Each module is different, and the seat time is displayed at the start of each one. We estimate the rough time seat time for BEHAVES in total is between 3 to 4 hours, depending on the speed of the learner.
Of course! We’d love to work with you to create something bespoke , although this would be at an additional charge. Please email us via the contact us button below and we’ll set up a call to hear more about what you are looking for.
Yes, we can deliver a follow-up F2F or live online workshop for those who have completed the foundational e-learning.
The benefit of the e-learning course is that it can be rolled out to large groups and each learner can work at their own pace. Once your team has completed the online modules, we can use the F2F or live session to jump straight into a more in-depth problem-solving session in which we apply the tools to a problem together.
Contact us to find out more.
There is not a formal qualification linked to BEHAVES, however we are CPD accredited. You can read more about what this means here.
Company Founder, Behavioural Scientist & Change Expert
“Making Workplace Change Simple”
For 23 years, Shelley has helped teams work better together by making behavioral science easy to use. As both a scientist and business leader, she understands what really works when you need people to embrace change.
After building her successful agency and leading teams through countless changes, she noticed a problem: most training courses on this subject were either too complex or too simple to actually work.
That’s why she created the BEHAVES Academy – turning brain science into tools you can use tomorrow.
Today, Shelley helps teams understand why people say “no” to good ideas and shows them gentle ways to get to “yes.” Her approach is built on real experience, not just theory, which is why she’s successfully worked with both big brands and small teams, training over 200 learners so far.
The results speak for themselves: 9 out of 10 learners report that they enjoy using the tools in their everyday life right away, gaining new influencing skills that visibly improve their impact at work.
© 2024 BEHAVES. All Rights Reserved | Terms | Contact us