Creating Psychological Capacity

Dr Martha Acosta

BALPA Flight Safety

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BALPA Flight Safety had the pleasure of interviewing Dr Martha Acosta on the subject of psychological safety and we hope you will find it as enlightening as we did.

This is a topic that, at first glance, can seem nebulous and somewhat distanced from all the new view safety material but we believe that after watching this interview it would be hard to hold that impression.

We hope, as it did for us, that this interview will create an understanding of how important this area of study is and how it fits into the foundations of complexity understanding and safety as a capacity that should form a large part of your safety planning. Hopefully this discussion will give you just one more piece of the puzzle to complete your approach to safety.

Dr Martha Acosta

Two decades ago, Martha led the Human Performance Improvement Team for Nuclear Materials Technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Her team was instrumental to standing-up facilities after an incident shut down the laboratory. This DOE-wide effort helped launch the Human and Organisational Performance movement.

Martha now moderates Harvard leadership programs and provides training to professionals around the world.

Moving Forward

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We hope that this interview, in concert with our other safety conferences, will give you the confidence to start seeking safety solutions beyond compliance, process safety, and risk management. Moving forward into the world of complex adaptive systems and safety as a capacity.

To support some of the ideas in this interview Martha has written an article for us which you can download here.

A suggested reading list to explore psychological safety concepts is below;

  • The Fearless Organization - Amy Edmondson

  • The Five Principles of Human Performance - Todd Conklin

  • Emotional Intelligence at Work - Hendrie Weisinger

There are other resources and details of the workshops that Martha runs on her website here.