Data Not Opinions: The Psychometrics of Team and Organizational Dynamics by Joseph Bellerin

Introduction

• Speaker: Joseph Bellerin, considered an expert on Agile methods.
• Topic: Using data rather than opinions in understanding team and organizational dynamics.
• Inspiration: Encouraged by a quote from Deming: "Without data, you're just another person with an opinion."
• Goal: Exploring how leaders can be data-driven regarding 'soft topics' without having advanced degrees in psychology.

Key Concepts

• Evidence-Based Practice: Justifying actions with statistics even when the audience dislikes statistics.
• Initial Problem: Measuring impact on human and organizational metrics like psychological safety and performance is difficult.

Assessments and Psychometrics

• Challenges: Assessments often tell more about the designer than the subject.
• Psychometrics: A branch of psychology focused on measuring latent constructs (e.g., IQ, age, depression). These constructs are not directly observable and any measurement is an estimate.
• Application: Better design of questions and advanced statistics to refine these estimates.

Team Dynamics Inventory

• Model Based On: MIT and Carnegie Mellon research on high-performing teams.
• Key Findings: Psychological safety and cognitive diversity are crucial for team performance, not just individual intelligence.
• Buzzwords: Psychological safety, cognitive diversity, empathy.

Psychological Safety

• Importance: A climate where people feel safe to be themselves; essential but alone not sufficient for high performance.

Cognitive Diversity

• Definition: Having diverse ways of thinking within the team; critical for creativity and innovation.

Empathy

• Definition: Ability to understand and respond to others' feelings. Unlike safety and diversity, more is not always better—empathy has a bell curve.

Three-Dimensional Mapping

• Three Factors: Safety, diversity, empathy.
• Synergy: Combination improves interaction quality, innovation, and performance.
• Balance: All three required to achieve optimal team performance; lack or imbalance leads to issues.

Assessing Team Dynamics

• Methods: Asking (surveying) and observing behaviors.
• Indicators: Generative behaviors (curiosity, flexibility) vs. non-generative behaviors (hierarchical, resistant to change).
• Reynolds and Lewis Framework: Mapping safety and diversity into four quadrants to track intervention success.

Case Studies

• Company A (Consulting): High safety, high diversity, but needing more empathic behavior.
• Company B (Software): Good safety and cognitive diversity but requires more appreciation and experimental behaviors.
• Inter-Class Correlation Coefficient: Used to identify clustering in teams and organizing teams for better performance.

Interventions

• Types: Include training on psychological safety, diversity (e.g., diverse clients), empathy, and emotional intelligence.
• Approach: Open to various interventions, bringing in specialists when necessary.

Closing Thoughts

• Data-Driven Leadership: Emphasis on demanding quantifiable evidence and data for claims on team performance and dynamics.
• Further Learning: Encouragement to attend workshops or contact for more detailed learning or collaboration.

Q&A Highlights

• Interventions Used: Varied interventions aimed at improving different metrics based on assessments.
• Magic Questions: Proprietary methods; suggested attendance at special workshops for in-depth understanding.
• Consulting vs. Software: Differentiation in metrics and characteristics between consulting and software companies.

Conclusion

• Key Quote: "In God we trust, all others bring data."