Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #psychologicalsafety, aggregated by home.social.
What the Duck? 🦆
We smile in meetings, ship features and celebrate wins. But under the surface? Sometimes we’re paddling like hell.
At #BaselOne26, @aichalaafia explores the “Duck Syndrome” in tech: the pressure to appear successful while hiding stress and burnout – and how vulnerability and psychological safety can help build teams.
🦆 Calm on the outside. Paddling underneath.
👉 Programme: https://baselone.org/#programm
🎟️ https://eventfrog.ch/baselone26
The AI safety paradox: how the threat of displacement erodes safety behavior and the buffering role of servant leadership
Can fear of being replaced by AI undermine workplace safety? Welcome to Artificial Intelligence-Induced Job Insecurity (AIJI).
This used a time-lagged structural equation modelling design with 365 South Korean employees, to understand how AIJI affects safety behaviours, and the role of Psychological Safety and Servant Leadership on the effects.
PS. Check out my YouTube: https://youtube.com/@safe_as_pod?si=V2dbdmW–WbnhzA9
Shout a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/benhutchinson
Extracts:
• When facing cognitive resource loss people “instinctively prioritize the preservation of their remaining resources”
• AIJI is a “threat signaling the potential obsolescence of professional skills and employment”, and if people perceive a AIJI threat their “limited cognitive resources are reallocated toward defensive coping activities that offer immediate protection”
• “effective safety behavior demands a surplus of cognitive energy to detect latent hazards and proactively support the safety of colleagues” and hence any resource threats or defensive coping behaviours may impact safety behaviours
• “ When AI systems are positioned as error-free alternatives to human labor, employees perceive that revealing a mistake or raising a difficult issue is not merely a learning opportunity but evidence of human inefficiency that justifies technological substitution”
• Hence, people “adopt a strategy of defensive silence, concealing errors and withholding questions to avoid being flagged by the machine logic of the organization”
• Job stress also accumulates with this shift and affects safety behaviours
• “The stressed brain restricts information processing to immediate, central tasks and filters out peripheral cues. However, effective safety behavior, such as scanning for potential hazards or strictly adhering to complex protocols, requires a broad attentional field”
• They found that “AI-induced job insecurity (AIJI) exerts a detrimental influence on safety behavior through both direct and indirect pathways”
• “the existential threat of AI directly constrains the cognitive resources required for high-cost safety behaviors”
• “we identified a sophisticated loss spiral in which the threat first destroys the social resource of psychological safety, subsequently accelerating the depletion of personal resources in the form of job stress”
• “However, this trajectory of resource loss is not inevitable … servant leadership functions as a critical boundary condition. By acting as a “human shield,” high levels of servant leadership buffer the initial impact of AIJI on psychological safety, thereby arresting the sequential loss spiral”
• “technological insecurity significantly degrades safety behavior, a construct functioning as a high-cost resource investment requiring continuous cognitive vigilance”
• “In modern socio-technical systems, human operators function as the final safeguard necessary to monitor automated processes and detect latent algorithmic anomalies. Effective safety behavior in these environments demands a continuous surplus of cognitive bandwidth”
• (Perceived) technological displacement depletes cognitive resources and “structurally induces a state of inattentional blindness, rendering the human-in-the-loop architecture highly vulnerable to systemic failures”
• AIJI acts as a “distal antecedent that triggers a defensive stance, leading to the collapse of psychological safety”
• “The destruction of the social safety net removes the primary organizational buffer, forcing employees to expend their remaining internal resources on defensive self-regulation to conceal vulnerabilities”
• “Our findings empirically confirm that servant leadership supplies the necessary emotional replenishment to validate human worth, directly neutralizing the psychological deficit triggered by the technological threat”
For practical takeaways:
• “for top management teams … it is recommended that executives consider broadening their risk assessment frameworks to include a psychological safety impact assessment alongside technical feasibility studies”
• “at the leadership level … the adoption of servant leadership principles can serve as an effective strategic approach in high-tech environments”
• “regarding intervention strategies, the sequential mediation mechanism identified in this study suggests that traditional stress management interventions may be insufficient if applied in isolation”
Limitations as always: correlational, South Korean data (so applicability in less collectivism domains isn’t clear, but they suspect it likely is applicable), AIJI was treated as a unified construct when it’s not, and more.
#AI #psychologicalsafety #servantleadership #leadership #workplacesafety #futureofwork
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2026.107454
#ai #artificialIntelligence #leadership #psychologicalSafety #safetyBehavior #servantLeadership
The #AI revolution fails without #PsychologicalSafety!
Successful AI adoption requires more than just tech - it requires team alignment, clear goals, and a culture where developers can share failures, ask for help, and express skepticism without fear of judgment.
🎧 Listen to the #InfoQ podcast with Erin Doyle for deep insights into modern DevEx & AI workflows: https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/ai-revolution-psychological-safety/
What can neuroscience teach us about creating workplaces where people can actually think, connect, learn, and thrive? After six weeks of studying brain science, my biggest takeaway is that supporting employees requires both building individual capacity AND creating healthier systems.
#BrainScience #WorkplaceWellbeing #PsychologicalSafety #Leadership
The case for a dedicated “Ways of Working“ role.
#WaysOfWorking
#PsychologicalSafety
#LearningOrganisation
#ContinuousImprovement
https://akikoo.medium.com/why-not-just-the-manager-aaff54f63c92
AI is completely reshaping engineering teams, developer roles & engineering culture!
The #InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report 2026 explores:
• AI adoption maturity & risk
• The evolving engineering organization
• The human element of software development
🔗 Dive into the full #TrendsReport to keep your team ahead of the curve: https://bit.ly/4z85o9a
#AI #Agile #Leadership #TeamCollaboration #PsychologicalSafety #Ethics #InfoQ
Employment lawyer reveals the four text messages you should never send to a coworker
From the Leanpub Blog: The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Denniz Dönmez, PhD, Author of Micro Habits for better Teamwork: Psychological Hacks with Great Impact
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #Teamwork #Leadership #Psychology #MicroHabits #PsychologicalSafety #OrganizationalCulture #Productivity #Collaboration #EngineeringLeadership #Leanpub
NEW! The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Denniz Dönmez, PhD, Author of Micro Habits for better Teamwork: Psychological Hacks with Great Impact
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #Teamwork #Leadership #Psychology #MicroHabits #PsychologicalSafety #OrganizationalCulture #Productivity #Collaboration #EngineeringLeadership #Leanpub
That Time I Thought All Would Be Right With The World
It is common knowledge that I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. I write about the diagnosis a lot. I write about my history of, at times, crippling depression. I wrote ad nauseam about various traumas (though not all), mostly romantic in nature. So most people know I can get and have spent significant time depressed. And if we’ve known each other well for any length of time, you might know that the bipolar includes a sometimes difficult to control or mask variety of anger that I am ashamed […]https://carolineprice.com/2026/06/25/that-time-i-thought-all-would-be-right-with-the-world/
Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is remember that everyone is paddling.
#DuckSyndrome #Neuroscience #PsychologicalSafety #ChooseGrace #EverydayMagic
The engineer looks at that and goes:
"What the fuck am I supposed to do with a class of academics that refuse to emotionally grow up?"
Then they pause. And they realize: these people aren't malicious. They're local actors that act in locally coherent ways that reproduce globally incoherent systemic outcomes.
The engineer looks at **that** and goes:
"How do we fix that?"
And the answer the engineer arrives at is simple. They write a story in anger at 3am, and close with an open invitation:
If you're so certain you're right about AI, hard skills, and "touchy feely" soft skills, then why not invite the neuroqueer systemic engineer that builds a sub-Turing compiler that solves the Alignment Problem for structured inference onto your show. I double dare you. (Hand me your delicious unintegrated projections. I'll mirror them right back.)
Let's see which pitch the wine glass produces now. (Prediction: Dismissal and emotionally detached engagement trying to steelman me.) 🍷
(Fun fact: this whole thread is a paradoxical second-order cybernetic intervention. The fun thing about those: they work, even when you know the mechanism. 😉)
Cheers
[email protected] 🌈
https://systemic.engineering/the-shape-of-the-thing
#MentalHealth #PsychologicalSafety #QueerTech #FeministTech #TransTech #AuDHD #Neurodivergent #Podcast #Cybernetics #AI #AIAlignment
I can't sleep. I can write. So I'm writing..
Let me tell you a story. About an engineer that's been in tech for 15 years, burned out three times, left the industry, started systemic training, and then realized what they had been taught in school was not only incomplete, it was actively misleading.
Not because of bad actors (although these exists, newsflash, I know). But from the geometry of composition. The structure of who talks to whom, when, in which order, produced properties that none of the individual parts had — the composed system's complexity exceeded the regulatory variety any single actor had been built to handle. Ashby's law, applied to alignment: a regulator must match the variety of the system it regulates. The parts were sized for themselves. The composition exceeded their variety.
(Are we talking about AI or are we talking about humans? Yes.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)
#TechIndustry #SoftwareEngineering #Burnout #TechBurnout #QueerTech #FeministTech #TransTech #AuDHD #Neurodivergent #MentalHealth #PsychologicalSafety #Cybernetics
Our knowledge is limited by life
yet we shrink it further by denying people space to breath and to think.
Instead of addressing the root cause, we keep polishing broken processes, reinventing the same problems, and proudly attaching square wheels to a cart that was meant to move forward. Progress does not come from pushing harder, it begins when we stop pretending the wheel was designed correctly.
#SoftwareEngineering #EngineeringLeadership #TechLeadership #Innovation #DeveloperExperience #PsychologicalSafety #FailureCulture #CriticalThinking #AI #Architecture #Leadership #TeamCulture #PragmaticEngineering
Warum scheitern Teams daran, wirklich innovativ zu sein – obwohl alle es wollen? 💡
// Josephine Brinckmann – Team- und Business Coach
Weiß, was Teams brauchen, um wirklich zu performen. Feldforschung auf vier Kontinenten – heute Coach mit Fokus auf die menschliche Seite von Innovation.
// Bei #Waterkant26: Fail fast? Nur wenn dein Team sich traut.
18 – 19 June 2026 // MFG5 Kiel // JETZT Tickets sichern: https://www.talque.com/go/ticket/acLVSX2j1VHLqMuRtTn0/shop
We are delighted to welcome Noor Alteneiji as the guest facilitator for the next 'Unscripted' session.
Join Noor as she leads the conversation on '𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆', exploring how we navigate influence, trust, communication, and safety in the workplace.
Register now to join the discussion 👉 bit.ly/4uHYKDq
📆 Thursday, May 28
⏰ 15:00 (Dublin) | 10:00 (NYC) | 16:00 (Berlin/Paris) | 18:00 (Dubai) | 19:30 (Delhi)
What I’ve been reading this week ending 19 April 2026 https://jchyip.medium.com/what-ive-been-reading-this-week-ending-19-april-2026-dee3a9d414b0 #economics #ai #PsychologicalSafety #cybersecurity #SafetyCulture
We can navigate our relationships at work authentically & compassionately with mindsets & practices from Creative Empathy for Leadership.
This is the basis for the Beyond Design round table session that just wrapped up at Hike One, hosted by Sanne and facilitated by yours truly 😃
We discussed how the most crucial of our work relationships are with ourself, our team, and our stakeholders.
We talked about how regulating the nervous system is the quickest & simplest way to navigate the relationship with ourselves. And we practiced some conscious breathing techniques to stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system via the vagus nerve.
We shared thoughts about how creating psychological space allows us to bring #empathy into the relationship with our team. And we swapped stories of how nonviolent communication shifts our relationships with stakeholders from heavy to human.
As preparation for the session, I wrote a blog post outlining the specific mindsets and practical techniques involved. So here it is.
Enjoy!
Thanks for your hospitality, Sanne! And thanks to everyone in the session for your engagement, vulnerability, and courage.
May all your relationships be happy, peaceful, free, and unconditionally loving 🙏🏼
#CreativeEmpathy #Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #NonViolentCommunication #Teamwork #BeyondDesign
Three that work:
1) Normalize questions.
"Great question" isn't fluff. It's a signal.
2) Model your own mistakes.
"I missed that" gives everyone permission to be human.
3) Reward early flags.
When someone says "I'm worried about this," treat it like leadership. Not disruption.
Safety isn't only about comfort. It's about being able to tell the truth without getting punished.
What's one behavior you've seen that made it easier to speak up?
Collective adaptive goes virtuous circle:
- sharing information,
- creating opportunities for people to share the "messy details" of their experience,
- inquiring into team member’s ways "to expand what goes well",
- drawing from the capacity across the work collective.
https://www.infoq.com/articles/adapt-surprises-software-reliant-businesses/
#collectives #teamWork #workCulture #facilitation #management #IT #DevOps #resilience #engineering #fallBack #recovery #psychologicalSafety #personalSafety #safety #feedback #joy #curiosity
@tom_geraghty You have to see this, especially the last part about the company culture.
Silence hides risk. Leaders must create environments where people can speak up without fear and contribute fully.
#PsychologicalSafety #InclusiveTeams #DEI #TechCulture #Leadership
Discomfort is not the enemy of growth — avoidance is.
What might become possible if we normalized hard conversations instead of fearing them?
https://youtu.be/-kTYVOa7cIY
#PsychologicalSafety #LeadershipGrowth #BraveConversations #GrowthMindset #AuthenticLeadership #EmberhartJourney #BreneBrown
Silence isn't a lack of ideas. It is often deep processing. 🧠
Based on Dr. Amy Edmondson’s research, high-performing teams require Psychological Safety to thrive. 🤝
Be an amplifier for the quiet ones.
Full article here: https://zurl.co/TerdT
Is Communication Training Outdated? Rethinking “Professional Communication” in Neurodiverse and Multicultural Workplaces— Communication training wasn’t designed for neurodiverse and multicultural workplaces—but it can evolve.
It’s time to shift from “polished” communication to accessible communication.
#Neurodiversity #InclusiveWorkplace #CommunicationSkills #PsychologicalSafety #CulturalIntelligence #WorkplaceLearning #SystemsThinking #NotQuiteSuperhuman
Building Software Organisations Where People Can Thrive
Continuous learning, adaptability, and strong support networks are the foundations for thriving teams, Matthew Card …
#NewsBeep #News #Artsanddesign #Arts #ArtsAndDesign #AU #Australia #collaboration #Culture&Methods #Design #Entertainment #Leadership #learning #organisationspeoplethrive #organization #psychologicalsafety #QConLondon2025 #QConSoftwareDevelopmentConference #resilience #socialskills #trust
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/446931/
https://www.europesays.com/ie/310781/ Building Software Organisations Where People Can Thrive #Arts #ArtsAndDesign #ArtsAndDesign #ArtsDesign #collaboration #Culture&Methods #Design #Éire #Entertainment #IE #Ireland #leadership #Learning #OrganisationsPeopleThrive #organization #PsychologicalSafety #QConLondon2025 #QConSoftwareDevelopmentConference #resilience #SocialSkills #trust
In the pursuit of High-Performing Engineering Teams, we often focus on code commits & metrics.
But what if the most important signals live in the relationships between teammates?
In this #InfoQ talk, Lizzie Matusov explores how trust and psychological safety are critical indicators of team success.
🎥 Watch the video 👉 https://bit.ly/4iE0Vlk
📄 #transcript included
Think Leaders Don’t Need #PsychologicalSafety? Think Again https://cruciallearning.com/blog/think-people-in-power-dont-need-psychological-safety-think-again/
Daily stand-ups: Are they truly effective? This research highlights they significantly boost psychological safety, leading to improved team performance and satisfaction. It's not just about updates, but creating an environment where speaking up is safe. Crucial insights for any agile leader! https://rdel.substack.com/p/rdel-122-how-do-daily-stand-ups-boost #AgileTeams #PsychologicalSafety
https://www.europesays.com/2637382/ Infosys and MIT Technology Review Insights Report Reveals the Critical Role of Psychological Safety in Driving AI Initiatives — with 83% of Business Leaders Reporting a Measurable Impact #america #enterprises #FearOfFailure #Infosys #MITTechnologyReview #PsychologicalSafety #science #technology #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #US #USA
Creating Moments of Psychological Safety During Crisis: What the Neuroscience Says— In a crisis, the brain shifts into survival mode—unless leaders create small moments of psychological safety that bring us back to clarity, calm, and connection. These micro-interventions aren’t soft; they’re neuroscience.
#NeuroLeadership #PsychologicalSafety #BrainScience #LeadershipDevelopment #WellBeingAtWork #TraumaInformedLeadership #HumanCenteredLeadership
#medsky #psychsky #chronichealth #livedexperience #wellbeing #healthcare #longtermcondition #trauma #traumainformed #psychology #medicine #nursing #hospital #advocacy #empowerment #neuroaffirmative #psychologicalsafety #polyvagal #resilience #burnout #compassion #compassionfatigue #vicarioustrauma
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uyil74czwatqpayo3v3ud2sq/post/3m6x7qfkaoo2x
Leaders go first with vulnerability:
"I don't know"
is more powerful than pretending to have all the answers.
Psychological safety starts with leaders admitting their own learning edges.
If you want to foster a culture of openness, consider the importance of vulnerability in your own leadership.
5 Workplace Culture Trends That Will Shape 2026
Five major forces will define workplace culture in 2026 and influence how organizations operate next year. getty 2025…
#NewsBeep #News #Mentalhealth #AI #Boycott #CA #Canada #ChatGPT #DEI #Health #masslayoffs #MentalHealth #psychologicalsafety #target #workplaceAI #WorkplaceCulture #workplacetrust
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/289748/
