About

Sarah J. Brazaitis is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she also serves as the MA Program Director in Organizational Psychology. She teaches courses on group dynamics and team performance to masters- and doctoral-level students, as well as in Executive Education programs. Her work includes running experiential group relations conferences based on the Tavistock model, which provide real-time learning about covert processes affecting leadership and power in groups and organizations. Dr. Brazaitis maintains a private organizational consulting practice, specializing in working with diverse teams, and has over 20 years of experience coaching, consulting, and training executives, leaders, and high potentials across various industries and educational institutions. Her scholarly interests include group dynamics, diversity and inclusion in teams, and high-performing teams. She has contributed to the field through publications on conflict resolution, global community challenges, race relations in multicultural organizations, and implicit workplace dynamics. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a counseling psychologist at the New York Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where she directed psychological services in primary care and developed behavioral healthcare programs for a large patient population.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Psychology
• Psychoanalysis
• History
• Pedagogy
• Management

Selected publications

• Organizational practices that champion people and performance: a case study of Speed Skating Canada

  Frontiers in Organizational Psychology · 2026-01-30 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Introduction This study examined the organizational factors contributing to the recent record-breaking success of Speed Skating Canada (SSC), Canada's most decorated Olympic sport. Drawing on the Burke–Litwin model of organizational change and performance, we explored how transformational variables, including external environment, mission and strategy, leadership and culture, influenced SSC's ability to prioritize athlete wellbeing while driving performance. In doing so, we aimed to identify practices that may inform healthier and more sustainable high-performance environments. Methods A qualitative case study design was used, collecting data through focus groups ( n = 4), and semi-structured interviews ( n = 9) with SSC athletes, coaches, staff and leadership. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results The results demonstrated that SSC is situated within an external environment where funding is contingent on performance. SSC's success in navigating this was its dual mission of performance and development and increased organizational professionalization. Leadership was characterized as agile, action-oriented, and distributed, with transparent and inclusive decision-making practices, which bolstered trust among membership. The organizational culture was described as psychologically safe, grounded in a strong learning orientation, balancing individuals and the collective, with values which extend beyond performance. Conclusion The findings demonstrate how mission and strategy, leadership and culture, can be aligned intentionally to create healthier, more human-centered high performance sport environments. This study contributes novel insight into how a national sport organization enacts the balance between people and performance in practice. The organizational practices at SSC provide a positive model for sport and other high performance work contexts, demonstrating that prioritizing people and performance can be mutually reinforcing.

  PublisherDOI

• Behind the Screen of Virtual Teamwork

  2023-07-07 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Virtual teams have exploded in popularity and necessity in organizations around the world across industry, sector and function. Once a novelty, used mainly in large, multinational organizations in the late 1990s, virtual teams are now ubiquitous. Digital transformation and the recent disruptive changes to how work is done due to COVID-19 have further transformed team arrangements in workspaces that are heavily dependent on virtual collaboration. Indeed, skilled virtual teamwork is a major building block of organizational effectiveness in the digital era. Research on virtual teams has proliferated since the start of the 21st century and numerous studies in the last decade have yielded some understanding of best practices in virtual teams including processes and procedures that make for effective virtual team performance. Yet, the bulk of the research in the last 20 years has focused on explicit virtual team processes—team dynamics that are overt and easily identifiable including staffing, size, roles, and communication, among others. It behooves management consultants to pay special attention to the particular team dynamics that arise in digital organizations. Virtual teams are difficult to get right even with a playbook of guidelines. Why? What accounts for the persistent challenge of creating, leading and managing virtual teams in the digital era especially given our increased knowledge and tools about how to do so? What’s missing from the literature on virtual teams is an understanding of their implicit, covert and hidden processes. Expertise and knowledge about both explicit and implicit team dynamics is essential for cracking the code on successful virtual teams. This chapter will address the systems psychodynamics of virtual teams and provide a new lens to management consultants into the dynamics that occur below the surface, but still have a major impact on virtual team performance. Issues such as formal versus informal leadership, hidden power struggles, tacit team boundaries, conflicting goals, geographic dispersion, cultural diversity and muddled communications and how these issues manifest in virtual teams will be discussed. The chapter will provide management consultants with practical solutions rooted in the latest theory regarding the combination of both overt and covert dynamics in teams in the digital organization.

  PublisherDOI

• Bion, Wilfred, and His Organization Change Legacy: “Without Memory or Desire”

  Springer eBooks · 2021 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Bion, Wilfred, and His Organization Change Legacy: “Without Memory or Desire”

  Springer eBooks · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Wilfred Bion’s Organization Change Legacy: “Without Memory or Desire”

  2017-01-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Wilfred Bion’s Organization Change Legacy: “Without Memory or Desire”

  2017-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• X-Ray Vision at Work: Seeing Inside Organizational Life

  Research in organizational change and development · 2017-06-28 · 21 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  The study of group dynamics was central to the field of organization development at its inception. More recently, there has been a move away from considering irrational and unconscious dynamics in organizational life and more attention focused on rational and observable behavior that can be measured and quantified. We introduce the tool, Beneath the Surface of the Burke-Litwin Model, that invites consideration of how the overt behavior of individuals, groups, and entire systems is linked to covert dynamics. This more comprehensive view of organizational life provides scholar-practitioners with a systemic perspective, a view of covert dynamics by organizational level, and support for the ongoing development of one’s capacity for using self-as-instrument when engaged in organization development and organization change efforts.

  PublisherDOI

• Developing a Global Community: A Social Psychological Perspective

  SpringerBriefs on pioneers in science and practice · 2015-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Developing a Global Community: A Social Psychological Perspective

  2014-11-11 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Framework for Thinking About Developing a Global Community

  2012-01-01 · 10 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Morton Deutsch

  Columbia University

  3 shared

• Eric C. Marcus

  University of New Haven

  3 shared

• George V. Gushue

  Columbia University

  1 shared

• Asha N. Gipson

  1 shared

• Christine M. St. John

  1 shared

• Debra A. Noumair

  1 shared

• Danielle L. Pfaff

  Columbia University

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the A.K. Rice Institute (2008)