Across the many settings in which we work, psychologists face a challenging job landscape. Emerging into the workforce following our training, we are equipped with many of the skills needed to be effective healthcare and industry leaders. Among many other skills, we have strong analytic ability, the skill to navigate emotionally challenging situations, the ability to integrate feedback and understand systems. What most of us lack is a formal leadership training and a framework or philosophy. Often we’re put in leadership roles early in our career without much experience managing a team or working across teams. To address this gap, several leadership academies have emerged across APA including in several state, provincial or territorial psychological associations (SPTAs).
Offering leadership academies offer a wonderful opportunity for SPTAs to grow their associations. First, it is an excellent member benefit to engage newly licensed psychologist in the association. Second, it offers a way to grow your leadership pipeline in the association. Having SPTA leaders mentor emerging leaders and help them understand the value of your SPTA can encourage them to take on leadership roles in your association. Third, making diversity and inclusion an explicit part of your leadership academy can help ensure diverse and inclusive leadership in your association. Fourth, you develop a cohort of psychology advocates to enhance the effectiveness of your legislative and public interest work.
Several SPTAs have already developed leadership academies and can serve as resources to develop your own:
- California Psychological Association’s Leadership and Advocacy Conferenceopens in new window
- New York State Psychological Association Leadership Instituteopens in new window
- Ohio Leadership Development Academyopens in new window
- Pennsylvania Emerging Leaders Programopens in new window
In Kentucky, we are working to develop our own leadership academy, and I’ve put a few key questions below for those of you who are interested in your own SPTA program:
Who is eligible?
Is the academy for all psychologists? Just early career psychologists? Do you want to include students? If you have a mentor model, who do you want your mentors to be and how will you recruit them? How are you going to ensure goals of diversity and inclusion are met?
What is your leadership orientation?
Are you training leaders just for your SPTA or psychology leaders more broadly? If you look at training psychologists more broadly, you should consider adopting a leadership approach to anchor your trainees and mentors.
How will you assess your program?
How are you going to measure outcome for your trainees? It is important to have clear metrics to know what your trainees are learning during the experience. This may be tied to the leadership model you adopt in addition to other metrics you may want to track.
If you are interested in building an academy for your SPTA, feel free to get in touch with me via email to get additional resources.
