# Personal and Organizational Change Through Group Methods: The Laboratory Approach

*Schein & Bennis · Origins, Culture & Context · John Wiley & Sons, New York · 1965 · Open access*

The foundational text on sensitivity training, T-groups, and laboratory education as a means of personal and organisational change. Schein and Bennis argue that genuine behavioural change — in individuals and organisations — requires a particular kind of learning environment: one characterised by psychological safety, honest feedback, and freedom from evaluative threat. This is one of the earliest explicit uses of the concept of psychological safety in the organisational literature, predating Edmondson by over three decades. The book develops the idea that people learn new behaviours only when they feel safe enough to experiment, make mistakes, and expose their uncertainty. The T-group method — unstructured small-group interaction with trained facilitation — was designed to create exactly these conditions. Directly cited by Kahn (1990) as a precursor to his own conceptualisation of psychological safety. A key text in the intellectual history of the field.

- **This page:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/schein-bennis-1965/
- **View the source paper:** https://archive.org/details/personalorganiza0000sche
- **Interactive map:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/?mode=papers&node=schein-bennis-1965

## Connected concepts (16)

- [Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/kahn-1990.md) (paper)
- [Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/edmondson-1999.md) (paper)
- [Towards a Theory of Creativity](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/rogers-1954.md) (paper)
- [Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/edmondson-bohmer-pisano-2001.md) (paper)
- [Managing the Risk of Learning: Psychological Safety in Work Teams](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/edmondson-2002.md) (paper)
- [Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/edmondson-bransby-2023.md) (paper)
- [Psychological Safety, Trust, and Learning in Organizations: A Group-Level Lens](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/edmondson-2004.md) (paper)
- [The Giving of Orders](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/follett-1926.md) (paper)
- [The Psychological Conditions of Meaningfulness, Safety and Availability and the Engagement of the Human Spirit at Work](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/may-gilson-harter-2004.md) (paper)
- [Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/schein-1984.md) (paper)
- [History of PS](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/the-history-of-psychological-safety.md)
- [Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/argyris-schon-1978.md) (paper)
- [Definition of PS](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/the-definition-of-psychological-safety.md)
- [How Can Organizations Learn Faster? The Problem of Entering the Green Room](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/schein-1992.md) (paper)
- [Psychological Safety: A Timeline](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psychological-safety-a-timeline.md)
- [PS in the Ancient World](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psychological-safety-and-the-ancient-world.md)