Creating Harmony: Personality Disorders in the Workplace
A clinician meets a difficult personality pattern with options. There is a treatment plan, there are modalities, there is the possibility of referring on. A manager has none of that. You cannot treat a colleague, you usually cannot move them, and you will be in the same meeting with them next week.
Hanna Nowicki takes the ten-session structure she uses to teach clinicians and points it at that situation instead. One session per pattern, but the question in each is different: not how do I treat this, but how do I recognise it early, respond to it without making it worse, and keep a team functioning around it.
Six hours, and she is realistic in both directions. Not every difficult workplace situation involves a personality disorder, and assuming otherwise creates its own problems. At the same time, these patterns turn up in organisations more often than most people running them realise, and when nobody recognises what they are looking at the result is a cycle of grievances, harassment complaints, turnover and management time that never resolves anything. There is also a section most courses on this subject leave out entirely, which is what these employees are genuinely good at and how to allocate work accordingly.
You’ll walk away with
- How to recognise a toxic workplace, and what distinguishes one from a stressful one
- A session on each pattern you are likely to encounter, including passive-aggressive behaviour, which the clinical version of this course does not cover
- Working with narcissistic and psychopathic presentations at work, and strategies for defusing rather than escalating
- Supporting employees with borderline, dependent and avoidant patterns, with protections in place for the organisation as well as the person
- Responding to histrionic, schizoid, obsessive-compulsive and paranoid patterns that obstruct other people’s work
- Recognising traits early, including during recruitment
- What people with these patterns are genuinely good at, and how to allocate work to it
- Supervising someone with these traits without the relationship consuming your week
- Practical strategies you can use rather than theory about why the situation exists
Watch the course trailer
CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. This course is included with your Tatra Training membership, along with every other course in the library.
Please note: this course is about colleagues and workplaces rather than clients, and contains no treatment content. It suits anyone who manages, supervises or works alongside someone difficult. A separate twelve-hour course covers the same disorder types clinically.
Course Duration: 6 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records. Your certificates are yours to keep.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Revisit Anytime: Come back to the course as often as you like while your membership is active, whenever you want a refresher for practice.
CPD Eligibility: This program may be suitable for CPD for professionals such as:
- Psychologists
- Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Social Workers
- Community Workers
- Mental Health Nurses
- General Practitioners (GPs)
- Occupational Therapists
CPD requirements vary between professional bodies, so please check with your association or credentialing body to confirm you can claim CPD hours/OPD points for this program and what evidence they require.
Course Content
Meet Your Instructor
Frontline mental health professionals struggling with complex cases - from suicidal clients to challenging personality disorders - need more than theoretical knowledge to make real-world impact. Hanna Nowicki has spent over 30 years bridging the gap between academic concepts and practical application, becoming one of Australia's leading mental health trainers and helping over 20,000 professionals develop confidence with their most difficult cases.
As Founder of TATRA, Nowicki brings a unique combination of legal expertise, psychology training, and extensive frontline experience to her teaching. Her remarkable career journey - from District Court Judge in Poland dealing with family law to Senior Practitioner in South Australia's Statewide Suicide Intervention Program - gives her unparalleled insight into both systemic and individual approaches to mental health crisis intervention. Her multilingual abilities and multicultural practice experience add crucial cultural competency to her training programs.
Nowicki's expertise spans suicide risk assessment, personality disorders, self-injury, depression, anxiety disorders, client engagement techniques, workplace debriefing, and multicultural mental health practice. Her approach focuses on practical "know-how" rather than abstract theory, showing professionals exactly what to do and say in challenging situations. She specialises in training professionals who work with high-risk populations, including those in child protection, correctional services, and community mental health settings.
What sets her training apart is real-world credibility. Nowicki doesn't just teach from textbooks - she draws from decades of direct practice in suicide prevention, child protection, and mental health services. Her work with government organisations like Centrelink, Correctional Services, and Housing SA demonstrates her ability to translate clinical knowledge into practical strategies that work in diverse professional settings.
For your practice, expect to gain specific techniques for engaging resistant clients, practical tools for suicide risk assessment, and frameworks for working effectively with personality disorders. Her interactive, high-energy teaching style particularly benefits practitioners who need confidence-building alongside skill development.
Quick Win: Nowicki's "engagement hierarchy" technique helps professionals quickly establish rapport with defensive or hostile clients by matching their communication approach to the client's presenting style - often creating breakthrough connections in the first encounter.
Qualifications
- LLM, Law, University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poznan, Poland, 1979–1983
- Postgraduate studies: Social Psychology, Psychology of Crime, Pathological Psychology, Criminology, University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland, 1984–1985
- BA, Psychology, Flinders University, Australia
- Postgraduate Degree, Social Administration, Flinders University, Adelaide, 1992–1994
- Certificate IV in Training & Workplace Assessment
- Accredited De-briefer and Workplace Trainer
- Multilingual (speaks four languages)
Career & Leadership
- Founder, TATRA Corporate and Allied Health Training Services
- Professional Trainer & Speaker, Mental Health Education, Australia-wide, 1996–present
- State Manager, SA Mental Health Training Centre, NSW Institute of Psychiatry, 2005–2008
- Senior Practitioner, Statewide Suicide Intervention Program, South Australia, 1996–2005
Professional Background
- District Court Judge (Family Law), Poland, 1985–1989
- Legal Practitioner, Poland, early 1980s
- Social Worker, South Australian Mental Health Services, Adelaide, 1993–1996
- Child Protection Worker
- University Lecturer, Social Policy
Specialised Expertise
- Suicide risk assessment and intervention
- Personality disorders diagnosis and management
- Self-injury and self-harming behavior
- Depression and anxiety disorders
- Client engagement techniques for difficult cases
- Workplace debriefing and crisis response
- Multicultural mental health practice
Ready to transform your confidence with challenging mental health cases? Discover how Hanna Nowicki's practice-based approach can give you the real-world skills and cultural competency needed to make a genuine difference with your most difficult clients.
Feedback & Reviews
This course includes:
- Lessons 11
- Topics 0
- Duration 6 hours
- Quizzes 1
- Language English