Dr Chrysavgi Sklaveniti
Organisational Psychologist
How do people come together to create movement in the world of work?
Work takes shape in relation, through the ways people meet, respond, and act together. Structures and strategies are part of this, but so are the everyday interactions through which people make sense of what matters, find direction, and create possibilities for collaboration and collective action.
The individual is never separate from this movement. We bring into each encounter our experiences, histories, intentions and desires, some known to us and others less so. These enter the moment, become part of how we relate, and travel through the wider patterns and dynamics of organisational life. Meaning is formed across these movements, direction emerges, and leadership can begin to take shape.
It is within this relational life of organisations that my work sits. Through organisational ethnography and close engagement with lived experience, I stay close to how organisational life unfolds. I follow the practices, interactions, and living stories through which people coordinate and make sense together. From there emerge spaces in which moments of concern can become moments of shared inquiry and action.
Professional Focus
My work brings together the analytical depth of organisational psychology and the practical insight of real-world experience. Research and practice come together in how I understand organisational life, and in how I work with people and organisations to create meaningful movement.
Across consulting, academia, and coaching, this takes different forms. Each brings a different lens and a different way of engaging with organisational life, while remaining connected by the same interest in how people relate, make sense of what matters, and find ways of moving and acting together.
Consulting
Organisations are living systems. Psychological dynamics meet structures, roles, practices, and the everyday realities of working together. Strategy may give direction, but how that direction travels through an organisation depends on how people make sense of it, take responsibility, make decisions, and coordinate across roles and boundaries.
My consulting work sits within this interplay. I work alongside organisations as they navigate complexity, transition, and emerging direction, bringing together strategy, organisational design, and people practices. Structures give shape to how work comes together, while shared practices allow collaboration, dialogue, and learning to find their place in everyday organisational life. Organisational design connects how an organisation is shaped with how people within it are able to work and act together.
Academic
Organisational life is full of stories. Stories of people coming together, even when apart; of concerns finding expression; of meanings being negotiated; of relationships shifting and new directions beginning to form.
My academic work stays close to these living stories. Through organisational ethnography, I follow organisational life as it unfolds, paying attention to moments of connection and sensemaking, and to the turning points where voices meet and possibilities for leadership, collaboration, and learning begin to appear.
Research naturally meets teaching here. Knowledge becomes something we inquire into together, staying close to lived experience while creating room to question, reflect, and see organisational life anew.
Coaching
We do not enter our working lives as separate from who we are. We bring our histories, relationships, experiences, hopes, and anxieties with us, some known to us and others less so. They shape how we meet the present, how we understand what is happening, and what we imagine might be possible.
Coaching creates a space to stay with this experience for a while. In my work with individuals, teams, and systems, attention is given to what is visible and what may sit beneath it; to the individual and to the relationships and wider dynamics of which they are part.
Reflection can open the way to movement. Seeing a situation from a different line of sight can reveal possibilities that were not visible before. From there, different ways of acting can emerge, allowing us to meet what comes next with greater awareness and purpose.
