ROUNDTABLE BREAKFAST: Facilitating Psychological Safety in Teams

ACR-GNY & CUNY Dispute Resolution Center at John Jay College present

Facilitating Psychological Safety in Teams

Ombuds often get requests from work teams experiencing destructive levels of conflict. In the past, people described these issues in different ways, group climate and trust being just the two most common. One common challenge Ombuds faced proposing appropriate processes to address these issues was skepticism from managers. It was not difficult for them to dismiss the issues out of hand, as just a problem of one or two disgruntled team members. This in fact, was sometimes the case. But only sometimes. The large majority of these situations were much more complex, and did not get better over time.

The concept of psychological safety, mostly developed through the pioneering work of Dr. Amy Edmonson, allows practitioners to conduct valid measurement of the levels of psychological safety in teams. This makes all the difference.

This presentation will introduce the process used by an organizational Ombuds to measure the level of psychological safety before and after team facilitations, and the results obtained.

Camilo Azcarate

Camilo Azcarate is an international dispute resolution expert with over 25 years of experience as ombuds, mediator, facilitator and trainer working for public, private and international organizations. He is the current Chief Ombuds for the International Committee of the Red Cross, previously he was Ombuds for the European Southern Observatory, manager of mediation services for the World Bank Group and Ombuds at Princeton University.

Camilo teaches graduate-level courses at Columbia University since 2005 and was recipient of the 2023 President's Award of the International Ombuds Association. He holds a Juris Doctor (JD) a Masters in Corporate Law (LLM) and a Masters in Dispute Resolution (MA), the latter from the University of Massachusetts as well as a Certificate in Equal Employment from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.