Beyond the Buzzword – A Psychologist’s Thoughts on Psychological Safety
With ca. 400 million search results on Google, psychological safety has become one of the biggest buzzwords in business in recent years. Unfortunately, most people who write and talk about psychological safety are not psychologists. Although they are, for the most part, well-meaning, this has led to misinformation about what psychological safety is and how it can be fostered in teams.
This talk addresses some misconceptions about psychological safety, presents techniques psychologists use to analyse it in teams, and asks whether psychological safety is all that’s needed for high-performing teams.
A quiet and reserved researcher and practitioner, Joseph Pelrine is considered by cognoscenti to be one of the pioneers and top experts on Agile methods. He has spent over 30 years defining and refining processes to help some of the world’s most well-known companies improve their ability to satisfy the needs of their customers.
As a psychologist, his focus on people and his experience in applying leading-edge techniques from social complexity and psychology to process optimisation go far beyond the domain of software development and extend to the whole organisation.
Although Joseph Pelrine still occasionally works as a consultant or interim manager, his preference is passing his knowledge on by counselling and advising individuals and organisations, often in the role of a CTO/CIO/CDO “whisperer”.
He conducts research in novel applications of psychology to teams and development processes, and he continues his original PhD research in forensic psychology and psycholinguistics.