Bert Fabry
Innovative Leadership & Agile Expertise | International Speaker & Empathy Advocate | Advocating Road Safety
Ekeren, Belgium
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As the Head of EMEA Operations at One Task, Bert leads the deployment of innovative camera systems designed to combat mobile phone usage while driving, combining his tech expertise with a strong commitment to road safety. He is also the founder of FabCore BV, where leadership, communication, and agile training and coaching are provided to organizations and individuals worldwide, fostering environments that emphasize empathy and efficiency.
An international speaker, he regularly shares his insights at conferences, engaging audiences with his deep knowledge in technology, leadership, and agile practices. With a background spanning the arts, technology, and international development, he draws on a diverse array of experiences to champion empathic leadership and continual learning. His journey through personal challenges has fueled his dedication to professional growth and making a meaningful impact.
Outside of work, he indulges in cooking and storytelling, enhancing life's flavor as a culinary enthusiast and a veteran tabletop roleplaying game master.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Unlearning Leadership: The Dangerous Skills That Got You Promoted
You were promoted because you were exceptional at your job. You solved problems faster than anyone else. You executed flawlessly. You had the right answers. And now those very strengths are sabotaging your effectiveness as a leader. This is the paradox nobody warns you about: the behaviors that made you successful as an individual contributor often become toxic liabilities when you step into leadership. Yet organizations promote people based on technical excellence, then expect them to magically transform into coaches, strategists, and enablers.
This talk identifies the specific skills and instincts that become dangerous at a leadership level. The compulsion to solve every problem yourself rather than coaching others through solutions. The focus on your own output rather than multiplying the output of others. These are hard patterns to break because they're tied to your identity and what you've been rewarded for your entire career.
You'll explore the uncomfortable emotional territory of unlearning—the grief of letting go of behaviors that defined your success, the vulnerability of being a beginner again, and the patience required to develop entirely new muscle memory. This session offers a practical roadmap for the transformation from doer to enabler, with strategies for identifying which behaviors to abandon, how to replace them, and how to navigate the messy middle where you're not yet good at the new way but can't go back to the old.
The Neuroscience of Motivation, Trust, and Performance
Everything you were taught about motivation is probably wrong. Bonuses don't work the way you think. Feedback often backfires. The strategies that should engage people leave them cold. This workshop cuts through leadership platitudes with neuroscience—teaching you how human brains actually respond to leadership, what truly drives motivation, how trust is built and destroyed at the neurological level, and why most performance management systems work against human psychology.
Day one explores the neuroscience of motivation, safety, and threat—understanding how your leadership behaviors trigger approach or avoidance responses in others. You'll learn why traditional incentive structures often fail and what actually drives sustained high performance. Day two focuses on trust and team dynamics, examining the neurochemistry of psychological safety, how belonging affects brain function, and practical techniques for creating environments where people do their best work. An optional third day applies these insights to organizational design.
Through interactive exercises, case studies from neuroscience research, and application to your real leadership challenges, you'll develop a new mental model for leading people as they actually are—not as management theory assumes they should be. You'll leave with science-backed practices and a deeper understanding of the human dynamics beneath organizational performance.
The Tyranny of Psychological Safety
Psychological safety has become the holy grail of modern team culture. Leaders everywhere are working to create environments where people feel safe to speak up, share ideas, and take risks. But what happens when this well-intentioned goal goes too far? This provocative talk challenges the conventional wisdom by exploring the dark side of psychological safety—when it becomes a shield against necessary friction, tough conversations, and the kind of productive conflict that drives breakthrough thinking.
You'll discover why some of the most innovative teams in history felt anything but "safe," how conflict avoidance masquerades as psychological safety, and why agreeable teams often produce mediocre results. Drawing on research from organizational psychology and real-world leadership experiences, this session reveals when leaders need to deliberately introduce tension, how to distinguish between destructive conflict that tears teams apart and generative conflict that makes them stronger, and practical techniques for calibrating the right level of discomfort for innovation.
This isn't about abandoning psychological safety—it's about understanding its limits and knowing when your team needs something different. You'll leave with a more nuanced view of what healthy team culture actually means and the courage to push back when "being nice" becomes the enemy of being excellent.
The Courage Lab: Building Leadership Presence Through Difficult Conversations
Most leadership training teaches theory. This intensive workshop throws you into the arena. Over two to three days, participants practice the conversations they've been avoiding—giving hard feedback, challenging senior leaders, navigating conflict, saying no, and admitting mistakes. Through a combination of psychological frameworks, live practice, peer coaching, and real-time feedback, you'll develop the muscle memory needed for leadership moments that matter.
Day one focuses on understanding your personal conflict patterns, triggers, and avoidance strategies. Day two immerses you in progressively challenging scenarios, from routine feedback to crisis conversations. The optional third day takes you deeper into power dynamics, leading through organizational politics, and having courageous conversations when the stakes are highest. You'll leave with deeper insights in your own subconscious reactions, a personal courage roadmap, and a cohort who've seen you at your most vulnerable—and helped you grow stronger.
This isn't role-playing—it's deliberate practice for leadership courage. Expect to be uncomfortable, supported, and transformed.
Leading with the Heart: The Transformative Power of Empathetic Leadership
You enter a meeting room, greeted by an atmosphere of apprehension. You're here to discuss the future of an initiative with your agile team. At this moment, traditional leadership methods fail. What's needed? Empathy.
"Leading with the Heart: The Transformative Power of Empathetic Leadership" shifts the lens from managing to leading people. This isn't a typical leadership talk—it's a transformative journey. Step into a room filled with energy, role-playing, and dynamic dialogues. Participate in empathy circles where we tackle real-life scenarios that challenge us emotionally and ethically.
Through interactive exercises, you'll experience leadership from both the leader's and the team's perspectives. These experiences will illuminate how an empathetic approach to leadership can dismantle barriers, foster open communication, and create a thriving, psychologically safe work environment.
Leave this session armed with the tangible skills to become not just a manager but an empathetic leader, capable of navigating the complexities of human emotions to elevate your teams to new heights.
The Psychology of Change
Change is the only thing that stays the same in today's fast-changing corporate world. But why do some efforts to change work and others don't? We might be able to find the answer by studying how people think and feel.
In this informative session, we'll look closely at how the brain works to find the hidden reasons why people resist change. We'll talk about the "righting reflex," which is an instinctual need to correct other people's behavior, and how it might make change management harder. We'll accomplish this by using stories and examples from real life. Then, we'll talk about Motivational Interviewing (MI), a breakthrough method that started out as a clinical psychology practice and is now a strong way to lead change efforts. Participants will learn the useful skill of "reflective listening," which is part of MI, to help people connect with each other and make changes. This session will give you the tools you need to not just deal with change, but also to support it, through a mix of neuroscience, psychology, and our own experiences.
Agile Testing Days 2024
Featured my workshop: Leading with the Heart (120 mins) with co-facilitator Claire van der Meulen
Newcrafts Paris 2024 Sessionize Event
srvision24 Sessionize Event
ScanAgile24 Sessionize Event
Agile Testing Days 2023
Featured my talk: The Psychology of Change as a Conf-in-Conf talk
Agile Prague 2023
Featured my workshop on The Psychology of Change
Agile Consortium Belgium
Featured my talk: The Psychology of Change as a Keynote
Agile Prague 2022
Featured my talk: Psychology of Change
MoveIT 2022
Featured my talk: How to Pilot a Pirate Ship: A tale of Agile Software Development spanning half the globe
MoveIT 2019
Featured my workshop: The Hollow Square
MoveIT 2018
Featured my talk: Agile Adoption: How to avoid failure?
MoveIT 2017
Featured my talk: Design and Build Better, Faster, Together.
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