I am Julia Burggraaf, a passionate speaker, scientist and consultant with a deep love for the psychology behind human behavior, work processes and teamwork. With a PhD in psychology and Human Factors and a background in big data, I help organizations strengthen the human side of their operations.
Uniting science and practice
After studying Cognitive Psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands and working as a human factors consultant, I started my PhD at the Dutch Rail Infrastructure Manager to investigate human behavior with big data.
Here, on the one hand, the focus was on discovering factors influencing human behavior that organizations can work with. On the other hand, the focus was on communicating complex psychological concepts in a simple manner within a technically oriented industry.
This combination of science and practice, and of psychology and technology, forms the basis of my work as a speaker: I translate psychological concepts into understandable and applicable insights for companies and their employees.
What it’s all about
A lesson from tutoring
In my undergraduate days, I did a lot of tutoring of other psychology students, and later I taught statistics to freshmen. I found it remarkable how the students handled their mistakes. They hardly ever thought about why something went wrong. Their strategy was often just: “Next time I’ll try harder.”
They also often drew big conclusions based on their mistakes: “I’m no good at this,” or “I don’t understand any of this,” or even “I’m stupid.”
These conclusions were completely unjustified. I have seen countless times that mistakes had nothing to do with understanding or intelligence. Often it was about small, practical things.
For example, one student did almost all of her calculations by heart. She was better at that than most people, but still regularly made mistakes. When I taught her to use a calculator to check her calculations, the number of errors decreased dramatically. Not only did her grade improve, but the idea that she “just didn’t get it” disappeared. Her problem was not a lack of understanding – she was simply using an error-prone strategy.
My mission
I see this outside of education as well: with many human behaviors, from mistakes to miscommunications, we rarely look for the real cause. Instead, we shoot through to conclusions like, “stupid,” ‘clumsy’ or “won’t,” with the only solution being, “Next time, pay better attention.” This applies to our own behavior, as well as the behavior we see in others.
But when we find out what the nuanced cause of the behavior was, we gain insight into what is really going on – and find better solutions.
It is my mission to break the taboo around mistakes and other human behavior. To arouse curiosity. And to give people insight into the causes behind behavior. So that they gain more understanding and compassion for themselves and others. And can come up with more effective solutions where necessary.
Presentation for your organisation?
A list of my scientific publications can be found here.
Video’s of me while I am presentating, can be found on the Presentation page.