Early Career Psychologists as leaders and advocates

Practice Leadership Conference (PLC) wrapped up a few weeks ago and, as usual, we had a wonderful group of early career psychologist (ECP) delegates from across the country. Much of the conversation over the weekend focused on how to position psychology for the future. A critical piece of this puzzle has to be inclusion and promotion of early career leaders.

ECPs bring several unique advantages to our field:

• Collaboration: ECPs are focused on collaboration and teamwork. We are generally not focused on the sorts of institutional and theoretical disagreements that have divided our field. As we move toward a unified psychological voice joined together by our science, ECPs are ready to lead.
• Representation and Membership: For SPTAs looking to boost their membership ECP leadership will help ensure value for your members. ECPs bring ideas and energy that will attract others in their cohort. To continue growing, you need to provide a positive value proposition for members and ECPs understand what that looks like.
• Technical Knowledge: ECPs have unique knowledge and skill sets that differ from other voices. ECPs have the most recent specialized training and knowledge to ensure your SPTA stays on the cutting edge of psychology.

Our ECP cohort at PLC spent the orientation discussing ideas for their SPTAs and developing leadership goals with Helen L. Coons, PhD. ECPs developed leadership goals for themselves and their SPTAs. In addition to our PLC programming I was excited to hear how many ECPs are taking advantage of leadership programming in their SPTAs, the APA Emerging Leaders Academy and other avenues. For those of you looking to develop your leadership pipeline, please check out some of the online resources available from the Committee on Early Career Psychologists.

As an ECP and president of the Kentucky Psychological Association, I am especially encouraged to see so many ECPs already in leadership roles - especially other presidents and president-elects of SPTAs. I hope that our SPTAs take advantage of the knowledge, skills, abilities and energy of their ECP leaders and recruit them for their presidential cycle and council representative positions!