Hello, and welcome to everyone.
This is the Master's in Psychology webinar with Divine Mercy University, and we're very pleased to have so many of you join us for this informational session today.
Allow me to introduce your hosts for the webinar.
My name is Nicole Bickford, and with me is my colleague, Michelle Drennan, and we are the admissions representatives for the Master of Science in Psychology program, otherwise known as MSP, here at Divine Mercy.
And today, the goal is to share and give insight on a variety of topics.
We would like to trigger your thoughts, on how you can become a better leader in all that you do.
Some of you have joined us today because you are currently in a leadership position and would like to reflect on how you can be even better in that role and for those around you.
And some of you are here today to perhaps choose a path where you can take on more of a leadership role in both your professional and personal lives.
So we have several videos to share with you, and we will also be providing some information on Divine Mercy and the Master of Science in Psychology program, as this program will truly impact you and your goal in becoming the most effective leader possible.
We would also like to make this webinar as interactive as possible, so please feel free to utilize the chat box feature should you have any questions.
We will try our very best to answer them all throughout the next twenty five to thirty minutes.
And we truly respect everyone's time, so we do ask that you be sure to stay with us for the duration of the session.
We will be discussing an application fee waiver and also some next steps.
So now I will turn it over to Michelle for an intro on Divine Mercy.
Thank you very much, Nicole, for that great start to our webinar.
Just a quick overview of who Divine Mercy University is.
We are a Catholic graduate university that actually is comprised of two schools as you can see on the slide.
We are dedicated to the scientific study of psychology and counseling with a Catholic Christian understanding of the person, marriage, and family, and had a name change, actually in, 2015 and renamed ourselves Divine Mercy University when we added the school of counseling.
Previous to that, we were the Institute for the Psychological Sciences.
We are accredited, for those of you who might look down the future as far as going back to college for a master's, by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, one of the most recognized accrediting bodies in The United States and abroad.
And we were formed, chartered, and established in the Commonwealth Of Virginia in '98 and are accredited by a US Department of Education recognized accrediting agency as you can see.
We offer courses and programs for degrees.
We enroll students in courses or programs.
We confer and award degrees.
We initiate other programs for degree credit at a new or additional level, and we offer instruction at additional or new locations.
So today, as we discuss how we are gonna go forward, we're gonna start out by giving you all, how to become a better leader, and my colleague, Nicole, is gonna take over here.
Thanks, Michelle.
So one of the 12 MSP courses is course five ninety, and it is leading people and programs.
And in doing so, how to be the most effective leader you can be.
In this particular course, it covers two very key areas.
The first being a leader in a service delivery setting, and the second is program planning for the helping professions.
In addition, the course also provides content around what makes a leader effective.
So what does make a leader effective?
Leadership is a personal quality referring to an integrated constellation of cognitive and temperament attributes that foster an orientation toward influence in helping others, directing and motivating their actions towards collective success.
So most of what you see here on the screen will be heavily discussed throughout this particular course at Divine Mercy, centered all around leadership, and that could be at a professional level and also a personal level.
So, individuals with this predisposition aspire to dominant roles in relationship and also social situations, and these individuals are able to manage their own activities and the activities of others.
So to demonstrate and apply traits, not only to individuals you are leading, but also teams or groups of people.
Personality attributes that correspond to leadership and have often been treated as synonymous include socialized power, authority and dominance, charisma your personality, occupation of a position of dominant power or influence, and also social assertiveness.
Measures of leader attributes focus on the assessment of personal qualities that predict leader effectiveness.
So, what's inside?
What do you possess?
That will determine how effective of a leader you will be or you could be.
So that's cognitive capabilities, social capabilities, the need for dominance, the need for power, and also your self confidence.
The outcomes of leadership can be examined at multiple levels.
So, this could be organizational, you could be a member of a board, you could be in a high level company or organization, CEO, president, or even in a vocational leadership position within a church parish ministry.
You can be on a team or a head of a team, so maybe a VP, a director, or a manager at any level.
And this can also be individual, so working one on one with your team, with your people, with individuals that work for you, with specific people in specific roles.
And many leadership interventions have been developed to foster leader attributes.
Interventions occur in a formal instruction, it could be developmental work experiences, and it also could be self help programs.
So, on the next few slides, we have several videos that we're going to present to you, and it will not only discuss effective leadership, and also leadership qualities, but it will very much tie together all that we just walked through in addition to, the program that we offer here at Divine Mercy.
So, Michelle?
Yes.
Our first video is very short, the first two and we'll watch most of the third one, but there's no greater leadership hopefully in all of our country than out of the, military.
And commander Kevin Haney, who is retired US Navy, is going to give us some leader competencies and other factors that contribute to effective leadership.
So enjoy this video.
Leader who's competent obviously is knowledgeable about the area that he or she is working in, has a particular skill set that can fulfill requirements, high levels of expertise.
And I would say communication is more important than all three of those only to the extent that the leader is willing to have face to face discussions with his or her subordinates.
All too often, we find ourselves behind our desks and we're sending emails and now we're sending texts, and we need to get up from behind our desks.
We need to go out and see people and have what we call the human moment.
We have to see what people are doing.
And then we've used email too often to not tell people the truth.
We have to learn how to have difficult conversations.
I think one of the beauties of how the military handles people and personnel is that they're not afraid to tell people when they're not measuring up.
I think leaders fail because they confuse their own good to be that of the good of the organization.
We have that confusion, we start to put ourselves first, and we convince ourselves that it's really for the good of the company.
So an example of that would be a boss who makes excuses for his or her behaviors has been for the good of the firm, when in fact, the behaviors are really for personal gain.
Leaders also have to accept the realities as they exist on the ground, not what they want them to be.
And finally, I would say, legals fail because they don't listen to the experts that they have, but they allow their egos to get in the way and to impair their judgments, and they have ethical biases.
One of the great sayings, I think, from the Navy is you can only expect what you inspect, meaning you have to get up and go out and look at things, ask tough questions, and then listen to the answers.
Definitely good advice.
Our next, video is actually, with Louanna Zirlo, and Louanna is actually a professor at a Catholic University.
She's gonna provide some insights to what makes an effective leader and indeed why some leaders fail.
At its heart, a leader has to set strategy or be the driver of the process of setting strategy and has to be able to implement that strategy.
Ultimately, that's what it means to lead, to set a goal or strategy and to be able to implement or achieve that goal.
A leader has his team or her team to be able to then implement.
Where I've seen good leaders fail is often on the human side of trying to implement a strategy.
They're not able to bring the team together in a way in which they can most effectively achieve a goal.
Specifically speaking, what a leader has to be able to do is break down strategy into its discrete component parts and be able to get various people on the team to achieve those component parts in a harmonious fashion.
In order to do that, one has to know their teammates fairly well and has to be able to typically walk in their shoes to understand what motivates one versus another.
Often, where I've seen good leaders fail is not because they're not smart enough, not because they haven't set a good strategy, but primarily because they haven't been able to implement that strategy well.
And one of the key reasons often good leaders may fail in implementing a strategy well is they haven't been able to lead or guide the team members in an effective fashion.
And one of the reasons this is is a poor understanding of what makes their team leaders tick, a lack of ability to walk in the shoes of their team members.
Everyone is driven by different motivations, has different skill sets, and it's incumbent upon a good leader to be able to understand that and use that well to be able to bring that person to the project in the best way possible.
You know, one particular example is I ran a not for profit organization that worked with Brazilians, Mexicans, and Americans.
Often, I would have to craft emails and craft messages very different for some of our mexican teammates than I did for the American or brazilian teammates because I knew they would think of things in a different way and respond differently to the way I would express a challenge or a direction we were headed.
Another where place I've seen good leaders fail is that even though they may have the power and the authority, they think the authority and power of their position is able to get team members to do something rather than through the more authentic authority of people wanting to follow them for nonauthoritarian reasons because they were able to convince them or rally them in a way.
Leaders that try to use their title authority or their position authority to get people to do something over the long term are less effective than leaders who can inspire their team members for nonauthoritative reasons to go in a particular direction.
Good job, professor Luann.
Nicole, I wanted to see before I go to the next slide, if we have any questions out on the chat.
You know what?
We do.
We have one, regarding the program, which we're gonna talk a little bit more about here, in a few moments.
But a great question came across, will I interact with my professors and teachers, in the online learning environment?
The answer is absolutely yes.
So, your professors and instructors will be posting assignments, papers, quizzes, reading materials, to all of the students as part of the program.
However, there will be, group interaction, virtual, and you will not only be interacting with your professors but also fellow students.
So you're not, you know, on an island all by yourself which sometimes you can feel like that when you are participating in an online program.
But if you would like one on one interaction with your professors, perhaps it's to ask, you know, some questions, get some tutoring or mentoring, they are always available for our students.
So, yes, yes, and yes.
Great question.
Thank you, Nicole.
The last two speakers have actually given us, kind of a format of what makes leaders fail.
Our next speaker, who is Katie Lundstrom, the CEO and president of FIRM Foundation, is gonna examine some factors that really contribute to effective leadership.
She's gonna outline five ways to nurture leaders.
When we talk about leadership effectiveness, we're talking about the results that leaders are put in a position, to achieve, let's say that, right, let's start with that premise: leaders are People are put in a position of leadership to get a particular result or if they're not put in there specifically, they may be put in there, just from a popular perspective, let's say just people in the playground, they're put in there for a particular reason to get some particular results.
So what are those results that we're looking for, that would deem an effective leader?
One would be around building relationships, a leader has got to be confident in building, strong trustworthy relationships and to continue to, build cohesion, individually and on a team across the organization.
Part of that has to do with modeling the way, but also has to do with just the ability to nurture and care and connect with people.
The second element around effectiveness or getting the results that a leader would wanna get is around then building the culture, right, building the culture has to do with somewhat of setting the tone or the mood of an organization, it also has to do with, managing the conversations that are happening or not happening in a conversation or in an organization, so in many organizations, just like families, there are conversations that are, possible to have and some that are not possible to have, some that are welcome, some that are not welcome, and an effective leader is able to build a culture that has the conversations in play that can coordinate the people, the the actions in the organization to get the results that they actually wanna get.
And then the last thing, as a leader, it would be effective if they're able to then execute on any particular plan.
It assumes they have a plan, it assumes that they know how to do some planning, but that's a little bit more of a managerial skill, but if they can then execute to that plan, execution, again, has everything to do with the first points around building the relationships and then creating the culture that get, goes after, the results that you wanna get through the execution plan that you wanna achieve.
So I think the the first thing to keep in mind when you're identifying and nurturing future leaders is to realize that everybody has the potential to be a leader, and so, there's some great work done by, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, it's thirty to forty years worth of research, they've written the book called the leadership challenge, they've got multiple volumes after that, but they identify well, the research that they did, that has about 600 independent dissertations behind it, talks about the fact that leaders are made and not born, and so we often think about leaders as having charisma and some do, but those who are actually trying to be capable of leading people and those who've been most successful, those where other people have noted have identified them as being the most successful types of leaders have five different characteristics that we can nurture.
One is about modeling the way and we teach people just by being models, and by understanding what our core values are, and by doing what we say we're gonna do, we teach them how to model the way and we affirm them for who they are as individuals and what their personality type and what their interests are and whatnot, we give people a lot of freedom to be the person that they were meant to be.
The other element around that is to, to teach people how to have vision, how to see vision, how to create vision, how to, see visions within visions, and, and then how to help other people, catch the vision, right, help to lead people along down the road to the vision that you're trying to achieve.
Another element around nurturing them, nurturing within them is a sense of challenge, right, how do we how do we challenge somebody else, on our team that we're leading, to do their very best, to be creative, to think out of the box, and we can teach that, we can nurture that in another person and they can then develop that muscle and, continue to do it themselves.
The other one is about enabling people to, to act, that's about team building and, and developing a high level of trust and a high level of feedback so people know how they're doing and they know what their position is and why they're valued, and then the last area around our train is just appreciation, celebrating people's individual and team success, recognizing it and appreciating it and being thankful for it.
So those are five practices around modeling, inspiring, challenging, enabling others and then celebrating the successes of others that we can, nurture in other people, first and foremost model and practice every day and then and then nurture in other people and set a certain standard in our organizations, but the real takeaway to that is, everybody has leadership potential, everyone has the ability to do those five things and, and we have this idea, that there are leaders and then there are not leaders, but they just look different, they can be in situations where they are able to lead the way for people, set the example for people, encourage people and, or have vision, for group people, so I think we can never, never underestimate that.
When it comes to positional leadership though, specifically about nurturing people who are gonna be in an organizational position of leadership, I think we look for those, I often been told, the PhDs, which are the poor, hungry and determined, and so when we can find those that are, that are determined and, but hopefully so, right, because we've talked about, servant leadership in the past, when they're, when they're humbly determined, and they're hungry for it, I think that's one way to really spot those that might be, great potentials or positional leadership.
So when we're talking about healthy culture, what are we talking about?
Right, we're talking about an environment where there's a high level of trust, for for the different positions, right, between, the leader and, the direct reports of the team.
There's a high level trust, horizontally among the team players and, there's a high level of respect, right, So trust and respect kinda go together.
Good information.
And Nicole is now going to introduce you to a few of our psychology professors and also a wonderful quote from our leader, Doctor.
Anna.
Yes, so Divine Mercy University is very very proud of our highly qualified faculty and these folks, just a few here on the screen there are, quite a few more, they definitely know leadership and they demonstrate that, in the virtual classroom, but also by bringing solid practical experience in those credentials to the table and into the program.
So, Suzanne Holman is our academic dean and director, the MSP program also has assistant professors and adjunct faculty, And Anna Pecoraro is our director of the Master of Science in Psychology program, and she definitely said it best, quote, our program is unique in that we teach scientific psychology integrated with the Catholic Christian vision of the human person.
We have had students from all walks of life and from across the world join our program, including stay at home mothers, business executives, nonprofit leaders, missionaries and parish lay leaders, entrepreneurs, first responders, as well as priests, deacons and religious, and retirees.
So many of you probably fit into these categories, but there are certainly many more, as people from all over the world continue to walk this path in the MSP program at Divine Mercy.
So now, I would like you to reflect on a few questions, and, you know, ask yourself, some of these.
So, the big question, the overarching question, if you will, is do you have what it takes?
So do you have what it takes to excel at your job, address situations in the best way possible, to help and nurture individuals to succeed in their daily duties?
Do you have what it takes to lead people that may look up to you in leadership and advancing in their career goals?
To be an effective leader that promotes self betterment?
Do you have what it takes to go the extra step in your career and gather the right knowledge to become a better leader?
So, if you answer yes to that last question, this may definitely be the time for you to take that extra step, to further your education, to acquire more knowledge and skills, and to prepare you for a leadership role, or perhaps enhance a current leadership position.
So now we're going to take a look at some of the nuts and bolts of the online Master's in Psychology program.
It is a thirty six semester credit hour course.
Thirty hours are in psychology.
Six hours are in philosophy and theology.
You will take one course every eight week term, and you need to estimate about fifteen hours a week for your study time.
And how would you feel about having no classes or work to do in the months of July and December?
You will have no classes in those two months, and it's truly a benefit for our students and our professors as well.
The total, length of the program is two years and four months to graduation.
It is fully online from start to finish, 100% online, and this is not a licensure track degree for aspiring mental health clinicians, but rather, the MSP program focuses on educating already working professionals from all backgrounds by giving you those solid practical tools needed in psychology.
And I do have, two quick questions here, Michelle, before, you take over the next slide.
So the first question is, do I have to buy books and materials?
The answer is no.
So everything is housed online for you.
We use a system, called Canvas and all of your, reading materials and videos and lectures and anything you need regarding your work and the program and your assignments are all housed online.
There are no other books or materials or fees associated with books or materials.
And the next question is, will my professors expect me online on certain days and at certain times?
Excellent question.
The answer to that is no.
So the MSP program is, taught in what is referred to as an asynchronous format.
So you're never obligated or mandated to be online at a particular time, but rather you're truly able to work it into your schedule and study and devote time to your studies when the timing is right for you as long as you're completing, those assignments, and reaching those deadlines that are given.
Thank you for those questions.
Michelle?
Yes.
So as we get near the end of our, webinar today, obviously, the leadership portion was very important for you who are looking for that.
But the questions is you also have to ask yourself, is this a master's in psychology really the right path for you?
If you like reading and talking to people through psychology, you could a master's in psychology really benefit you?
Could more knowledge about psychology and how to handle crisis help you succeed in your profession?
Do people already come to you for advice or help on how to handle day to day issues?
And would the possibility of perusing a master's in psychology interest you at this time or sometime in the near future or anyone that you know in your life that would most possibly benefit from this, degree?
So in closing, I think it's important to thank each of you for your gift of time for watching the webinar this evening.
You heard from both Nicole and I and several very respected people in the world of business.
We know that many of you are thinking about a degree in psychology, and some just attended because they wanted to know about leadership.
But we'd like to thank our folks who are out there listening to the webinar and let you know that before listening to the webinar, if you would decide to apply, we are not going to charge you an application fee.
And we also like to emphasize for individuals who are thinking of going through a master's, last year alone, we gave out 604 6 excuse me, $614,000 worth of scholarships and grants to help students lower tuition.
And you can ask us how you can be a part of that great financial opportunity.
Some of you on the webinar have already talked to Nicole and I or received emails.
But if you would, if you've got a piece of paper, you can jot down our names and have our emails as well as our extensions.
And that's what we do is, talk to people on a daily basis that are trying to change their lives and the lives of others.
And once again, we thank you so much for being part of our webinar this evening.
Thank you, everyone.