Our client:

Newcastle University is a prestigious, research-intensive Russell Group university, and rated as global top 150 academic institution.

What our client needed:

Our client, leading the university’s Organisational Development team, was reflecting on how the term psychological safety was being received by colleagues across the organisation and whether there was a risk of over-familiarity with the term.

To check assumptions, our client decided to set up a series of focus groups across the organisation to understand their views on this topic, using a definition of psychological safety offered by Professor Amy Edmonson. Two in-person focus groups, and one online focus group were run across December 2025 and January 2026, open to all colleagues.

Inky Thinking was asked to graphically capture each of the focus groups, providing an engaging visual summary which highlighted both the common themes and where contributions diverged.

How we worked with the client:

Jenn collaborated closely with our client to understand and align with the focus group process, and to ensure the graphic recording technique did not negatively impact upon the critical dialogue. Once all three focus groups had been held, Jenn created a final, digital summary graphic drawing upon the client’s synthesis and summary of themes from across the three focus groups.

The result:

A set of four bespoke graphics, one for each focus group, plus an overall digital graphic that since has been used to sustain the conversation on psychological safety within Newcastle University.

You can find this project described on Newcastle University's website as a case study on Reimagining Leadership here.