The President’s Message
Fred Oswald
The summer has afforded many of us some much-needed time for vacation and family (e.g., my niece and nephew, Ainsley and Spencer Powers, enjoy playing pinball at our house*). And fortunately, summer has also given SIOP members time to collaborate and engage in a number of creative and impactful initiatives on behalf of the society. Let me share my excitement with you by reporting a few of these activities in the limited space available here.
First, now less than 2 months away, let me remind you of the 13th Annual Leading Edge Consortium “Innovations in Executive Coaching: Deepening your Expertise in a Dynamic World” which will be held October 20-21 at the Hilton Minneapolis; to learn about it and register, see http://0-www-siop-org.library.alliant.edu/lec/2017/. Huge and sincere thanks to Sandra Davis (chair) and the LEC Committee for their collaboration and hard work. This exciting 2-day event comprises six keynote speakers and TED-style talks, and equally exciting are all the related events: MPPAW(the Minnesota I-O group) will hold a meeting on October 18; on October 19, there is a briefing for HR professionals in the morning, a graduate-student briefing on executive coaching by Michael Frisch and Rob Silzer in the evening, followed by a presentation by Vicky Vandaveer on executive coaching; concurrently on October 19, there are two preconsortium workshops (Neuroscience for Coaching Leaders with Robert Eichinger, Team Coaching with Krister Lowe) that are already nearly filled to capacity; there is a networking dinners on Friday, and there’s a postconference webinar on virtual coaching by Manuelle Charbonneau. LEC 2017 is not only an event for SIOP members but an experience!
Second, the Committee for Ethnic and Minority Affairs (CEMA) recently solicited SIOP member interest in volunteering for a new mentoring program. Mentors with I-O research and/or practice will meet once a month with graduate students, who through this relationship will gain expert knowledge, advice, and navigation skills in the world of I-O psychology. Mentors and mentees will meet at a reception event at the SIOP 2018 conference in Chicago. In addition to the graduate student benefits of the program, I strongly suspect those who mentor will gain and use new insights about what education, training, and diversity means for a younger generation of I-O psychologists (also known as “our future”). As of the time I write this – through the stalwart efforts of Enrica Ruggs (CEMA E&T liaison) and her subcommittee (Lawrence Houston III, Sabrina Valpone, Gary Giumetti), and Kisha Jones (CEMA chair) – there were over 70 students who signed up for the CEMA mentorship program, with more sign-ups coming in, and over 130 SIOP members willing to serve as mentors. In a word: Wow! There is a clear need and a desire to engage in these mentorship experiences, whether as a graduate student or as a mentor. Team SIOP is all about improving our profession and ourselves through initiatives like this.
Third, let me update you on another initiative that is going strong, and that is the Robust and Reliable Research (RRR) task force, headed by Steven Rogelberg. This task force of researchers and practitioners (Tammy Allen, James Grand, Ron Landis, Doug Reynolds, John Scott, and Scott Tonidandel) have generated their groundbreaking report “A Systems-Based Approach to Fostering Robust Science in Industrial-Organizational Psychology,” which can now be read in our IOP journal as a focal article (it was open until September 22 for public commentary). Whether you have submitted a commentary or not, I strongly encourage you to read the article for the many interesting and important points made about “open science” that are unique to stakeholders in I-O psychology (e.g., as an educator, practitioner, researcher, consumer, publisher, grant agency). For one, the article appreciates how I-O practitioners possess unique skills, experiences, and needs that inform the relevance of I-O psychology as a science, Furthermore, researcher–practitioner partnerships are invaluable to strengthening our profession and SIOP, given that practitioners are often at the forefront of creating, using, and scanning for those organizational innovations that our science and our research can inform, and those innovations can inform and test the relevance of our science. All of this makes me think of perhaps adopting the concept of “open practice” in tandem with “open science,” to ensure a that all SIOP members are involved in the movement toward improved research and practice (e.g., these days in “open practice,” many practitioners have been giving away their professional wisdom and tools for free on the Internet, for all to use and benefit from). Stay tuned for more terrific developments that the RRR Task Force has under way in the service of improving the standards and practices of our research.
Fourth, in the domain of SIOP’s scientific advocacy work, Jill Bradley-Geist has led the charge as chair of the SIOP Government Relations Advocacy Team (GREAT), working closely with Bill Ruch, Laura Uttley, Libby O’Hare, and colleagues at Lewis-Burke Associates to align a range of US government priorities relevant to all political parties with those areas that I-O psychologists can expertly address through their science and practice. The term “buckets” has been flying around this work, where the buckets refer not to delicious KFC meals but to the five substantive areas that are both federally relevant and where several SIOP members are already clearly engaged (examples in parentheses): national defense and security (Amy Grubb, chair of the SIOP policing task force), veterans affairs (Nathan Ainspan is reinvigorating these efforts), health and safety in the workplace (Cristina Banks in spearheading SIOP health registry initiative), technology-enabled workforce (Rick Guzzo, the LEC 2016 Talent Analytics event, and ongoing research and practice by SIOP members in the big data arena), I-O and social/behavioral education and training (where the SIOP E&T committee and the revised SIOP E&T guidelines, approved by APA just this past August, are clearly relevant). Where in the past we were connecting SIOP members more directly to federal initiatives, the hope is that these intermediary “buckets” will improve the alignment, marketing and visibility, engagement and footprint—and ultimately the impact—of SIOP and I-O psychology on federal agencies and initiatives.
Again, the collective talent of SIOP members is up to much more good than I can adequately relay here, so please take the time to enjoy the rest of TIP and read all that SIOP has to offer on a regular basis (IOP, SIOP NewsBriefs, the Professional Practice Update, social media, and more). You might think this message is impersonal, but truly, I would love to hear from YOU about how we are growing Team SIOP! If you have a moment, please e-mail me at foswald@rice.edu to let me know about the partnerships that you think reflect the best of Team SIOP in being important, useful, interesting, and inspiring. Not only will this be important learning for me; I’d like to share some of these special partnerships at the plenary session of the SIOP 2018 conference in Chicago (good luck with your conference submissions)!
* Thanks for humoring me here. I wanted Spencer and Ainsley to see their names in print (listed in reverse order here—they are both budding project leaders and first authors).
