How to become an Occupational Psychologist - Organisational Psychology

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Coming up in today's episode, we are looking at the field of occupational psychology. I am joined by a guest who is just coming to the very end of the process in qualifying in this fascinating career that bridges the gap between the workplace or human behaviour. Whether you are listening, because you are looking for a career change or maybe looking to dive in at an earlier stage of your career than you are in the right place, we look at the key aspects of this career, how to get started, how to get qualified, and so much more. Hope you find it so useful.

(: 00:40

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. One of the joys of creating this podcast is that I'm able to illuminate different facets of professional psychology careers, and I wanted to revisit in more detail something that we've spoke about with Dr. Mari Kovanen when we were looking at a variety of issues, including growing up in Finland and looking at dating in psychology and occupational psychology. But I wanted to dedicate a whole episode to occupational psychology, which is what we are doing today. It's going to be really useful for you whatever stage of career you are at, and whether you are interested in occupational psychology or not. I think there's something to be gained by listening to it or watching it. That said, if you are watching on YouTube, please do subscribe, like share the content, drop me a comment below.

(: 01:43

In the episode, we do talk about whether there is funding available for student finance, and my guest wasn't quite sure of the answer. I've had a little bit of a Google, and it looks like the best thing to do is to contact the student finance department in the country that you are living in. So I'm in England. For me it would be student Finance England, because it seems to be done on a case by case basis depending on what stage of career you are at and whether you've had previous funding. I would love to know what you think of this episode. I hope you find it so useful. I'll catch up with you on the other side. I just want to welcome along our guests for today. Hi, Joe. Hi Marianne. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, thank you so much for saying yes. So we got chatting on LinkedIn and I was like, would you fancy coming on and doing a podcast episode?

(: 02:30

And thankfully you said yes, I did and that's one of my, I like saying yes to lots of things. That's one of my potential pitfalls. But yes, I was really excited about this, so thank you. Probably. Oh, thank you for squeezing me in a time when, actually you are quite busy anyway, because you've just been telling me that you are coming to the end stages of getting everything sorted so that you can call yourself an occupational psychologist, which is very exciting. Yeah. Yes. So I've just spent this morning finishing off my amends to send my thesis, submit my thesis to the examiners so I can get that rubber stamped, and then that kind of closes that journey, which has been an amazing journey. I'm really obviously looking forward to sharing some of it with you today. Oh, congratulations in advance. And tell us a little bit about how did you come to doing this particular field in psychology?

(: 03:28

Yeah, I mean, I know everyone's got an interesting story, so I'm a little bit biassed in saying that. Mine's super interesting, but I guess it's interesting in that there was quite a significant career transition. So I spent the first almost 20 years of my career in sales and marketing and a very traditional career in terms of looking for promotions. It was that traditional kind of vertical, linear type career in sales and marketing and got to a point where I was marketing director and sales responsibility across Europe, big team, everything I'd always wanted, but something it wasn't. Evidently it wasn't really. So I got there and then went, oh, actually this isn't really what I want to do anymore. Also, at the time, from a contextual perspective, I had a small child. I was trying to be this great mom, trying to be this great boss, trying to be super woman in all domains, and that then started having some consequences for my wellbeing and I recognised that and decided to take charge and do something different.

(: 04:41

So I exited my corporate career, I said after almost 20 years and started off my own consultancy. And actually in those first couple of years it was a marketing consultancy. I just took, this is what I do, this is what I'm good at, and brought it into consulting. Then I started finding a lot of the work I was doing was using some of my leadership skills that I'd developed over my corporate career doing leadership work, doing management change projects, helping organisations going through change. And I started realising this is quite different, but this is what I really like. And that's when I started exploring opportunities to actually build my credentials through education. So that's when I started looking at courses that would enable me to be better at that, be more informed, use evidence-based practise as opposed to just going out on the whim. And that's when I came across the masters in organisational psychology at Beck.

(: 05:48

Amazing. So you decided to take the plunge? I took the plunge, went back to studying after 22 years. My undergraduate degree was in social science. I majored in economics and sociology, so I don't have a psychology degree, well kind of do now. So it was more of a social science. So I enrolled on the organisational psychology master's programme at Birkbeck I did it full time in a year. I was so desperate to learn it all really quickly. In hindsight, that might not have been the best idea, but that's the route I took. And then I got to near the end and I was just in a bit of a, I love this journey, I love this, I love it. I just find this so fascinating. I don't want it to stop. And obviously because chosen full time, it was coming to an end and I wasn't really ready for it to end.

(: 06:43

And so I recall talking to our professor of our department at the time saying, how do I carry on this? And it was just very fortuitous at the time. Beck were bringing the professional doctorate in occupational psychology to fruition. And I was advised that might be a nice route because I kind of wanted to work in practise as a practitioner, independent practitioner. So I applied for that and managed to actually coerce one of my friends who's also on the MSC to do it so we could do it together. And we both got accepted. So we handed in our master's dissertations and a week later we were enrolled on the professional doctorate. And that was back in 2019. Gosh, that's amazing. Amazing. Excellent timing. But you're clearly the right candidates for those roles as well. Tell us a little bit about the professional doctorate. So how big are the cohorts?

(: 07:45

Do you get paid to train? Do you have to pay tuition fees? Yes. So you do have to pay, and it's something in the region of about five ish thousand pounds a year. So there's obviously a cost there. You are working while you are doing it because actually the part one, so if you don't already have the BPS Chartership, if you're going in from scratch as I was, the part one is you are working and you are then doing reflective learning logs based on the piece of work. And obviously if you're fortunate enough, you will be getting paid for that work because an independent practitioner, I did a little mixture. Some projects I was getting paid for other projects, I had to do pro bono simply because I had to do the piece of work. And it was during covid, so you had to kind of make some decisions around, okay, I'll have to do some stuff and not get paid for it in order to get the qualification. So there was a little bit of a mix.

(: 08:50

You cover five main areas, so selection and assessment, engagement and motivation, leadership change, and then learning and development. Those were the five topic areas. And so you do a meaty piece of work within that domain, and then you write up a sort of 5,000 word reflective log on the consultancy cycle as the kind of framework evidence-based practise to demonstrate that you have delivered work to the standard of doctoral student. Amazing. Thank you. So there's those five key areas, but one thing that I felt like I knew about occupational psychology wasn't there. Oh really? Yes. Or maybe I'm just not fitting it in. So I think the only teaching I've ever had on it was when we were doing a module or looking at sick building syndrome, which is when whole workforce became ill because of the way the building was set up and it just wasn't making people feel good and wasn't ergonomic or wasn't autonomous for human functioning. So I kind of thought that was partly the role of occupational psychology. But yeah, and in fact there is actually a sick area which is wellbeing. So there is a wellbeing area. So some of my peers did their focus on wellbeing initiatives. So that's my mistake. I should have said that. You said wellbeing is quite, in fact, I did my master's on that, so I should have known that.

(: 10:33

No worries at all. So do you have a favourite area? Do you have a dream piece of work that you like to do in occupational psychology? So my area of interest is motivation at work and my doctoral research, my thesis was in proactive behaviour at work, which is around self-initiated change oriented future focus, that challenging the status quo. It's that kind of behaviour that drives change. And I identify as having a proactive personality. So it was an area I was particularly interested in as a lot of doctoral students do the thing that they can relate to and want to understand a bit more about themselves. It's a bit of a sort of journey of discovery. And that's my area that I found really fascinating. I teach on the employee relations and motivation module at Beck now. So I teach on the master's programme now. So it's kind of gone full circle.

(: 11:36

And I am an accredited coach, so I particularly like doing work where I'm coaching clients who feel a bit stuck, they're procrastinating, can't see a way forward when someone comes to me with that as a coaching dilemma, I'm like, yes, this is the thing I love doing. So all things related to motivation I find very motivating. And so that's my sort of thing I'm super interested in. But I'm also really interested in leadership and the impact of leaders having experienced some great leadership, having experienced some not so great leadership and having been in a leadership role and wanting to be a really good leader. So that's also something that I'm fascinated by. And it links with motivation to a certain degree. I guess nothing working in business and seeing things done well or seeing things done really badly to inspire you to be the difference that makes the difference.

(: 12:40

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And so now you are pretty much almost qualified because 99% just waiting for the rubber stamping. Are you going to be working just in a self-employed capacity looking for contracts? Do people sometimes employ occupational psychologists in an employed capacity? How does it work? Yeah, so I'll share my personal experience, but mine is quite different to others. So I am as that independent practitioner. So I've got my own consultancy and I have what's called a portfolio career. So within that I have my independent consultancy work. So I do some coaching, I do leadership development. I pick up nice little strategic projects. I've done sort of stuff around change, engagement, culture stuff. So they tend to be kind of bespoke. It's a short project or it can be longer. So that's my kind of consultancy stuff. Coaching, as I said, I work directly with clients, coaching clients.

(: 13:48

I also do quite a lot of teaching coaching basics to leaders. So enable organisations to have leaders as coach type programmes. So I do quite a lot in terms of very simplified coaching. And then I have some jobs where it's more paid for roles. So I'm a non-exec director for Southern Co-op, so that's a regional cooperative and I sit on that board, but I'm also the board ambassador for DEI and I chair the remuneration committee. So some of the strengths from what I do overlays there. And then as I mentioned, I teach at Birkbeck on the master's programme.

(: 14:31

Oh, a little bit of variety is definitely the spice of life, isn't it?

(: 14:34

Yes. Yes it is.

(: 14:36

Yeah. And you mentioned that you really like change, for many of our listeners or watchers, they might be thinking about the kind of stages of change model, which is that Prochaska, and Diclemente or have I imagined that?

(: 14:52

I dunno, I think there's quite a few. I mean, Kubler Ross is one that's cited often, which is the one that's associated to the grief model. I mean there's questionable evidence around it, but I know it's one that often gets used in a work context, talk around change that's from a kind of people experiencing change and navigating change. But then there's a whole tonne of change frameworks in terms of the most optimal model of implementing a change at work. And funny enough, one of my projects on my part one was looking at all the different change models and actually coming trying to get the best out of and come up with something that was the most helpful. So there's lots of different theories of change. So there's stuff that's a little bit more in depth than the, what is it, contemplation, pre-contemplation, action, maintenance, all of that.

(: 15:54

And I think the most effective kind of frameworks are those that actually recognise, going back to the context and the importance of participation and the importance of getting buy-in and involvement those and communication. Because one thing I've kind of learned over the years is that when change is done badly, normally at the root cause is the communication is poor. And so the communication is kind of at the heart of everything. Yeah, I think it's really interesting when you look at the way that staff teams function we'll have all worked in some that work really well and others that they just don't. Is that something that occupational psychologists could get in there and sort out to help teams to thrive? Yeah, absolutely. And again, depending on the pathway you choose to go down, I said it is quite interesting. I've got friends who a hundred percent work in selection and assessment. That's what they do. They do psychometrics, they, it's about recruitment, selection, assessment, finding the best people for roles, and that in itself is very specialised. And then I've got other peers who work fundamentally in change, whether that's change management, helping through change, navigating change, all the change type stuff. I've got other colleagues who do stuff that's more around wellbeing, wellbeing initiatives, wellbeing interventions. So it kind of depends which kind of pathway you decide to go down.

(: 17:31

Because I like, as you've probably realise, have my fingers in lots of pies. I kind of like, I'm more interested in someone comes and says what the challenge is and I kind of go, am I the right person? Have I got some knowledge in this? Do I understand it? Can I get to the bottom of it? And then I'll be like, yeah, that sounds like something I could get involved in. Yes. But are, I dunno if I've answered that very well, have I kind of felt like I've digressed a bit? No, absolutely fine. So it sounds, I dunno, it reminds me a little bit of forensic where you kind of have to hold yourself accountable, get everything done, and keep hoping to move through the process at the right time. Is there a pathway that you start on the doctorate and then three years later you are spat out if you've kind of met all the thresholds?

(: 18:25

Or is it a little bit more piecemeal than that? I think the interesting thing specifically with the professional doctorate at Burt Beck, most people on it have had quite a bit of work experience. So we're already in work or have me was on a second career. And because of the nature of the part one that you are doing work related projects, you have to have access to those work. As I said, some of my peers were employed within think what are just citing some of the individuals, but someone who they worked for in selection assessment, that's pretty much what they did. Someone else who is mainly doing wellbeing initiatives in NHS. So it depends on individuals, but that idea that it is more linked to their context in which you are operating, whether you are or an independent practitioner or whether you are employed. And then because it's quite a long journey, I've got obviously peers as well who've moved companies, they're doing different things because you're kind of doing it alongside working everyone's path is going to be different essentially.

(: 19:51

I see. Thank you. And obviously if the circumstances for the person are right and they've not had too much funding before, can they apply for student loan things to help with their fees and things? No, I was in a position to be able to self fund and because I was working for the duration, I was obviously earning whilst doing so it is classed as a part-time. So I was doing this and pretty much working at times full-time as well. And how old is your youngest child now? How many years has it taken from when you first thought, I'm sure this is working. Yeah, well she's just turned 13 actually. She, she's a teenager. She was about, yeah, she was four when I left my corporate role. And so for the last five and a half years I've been a student and working at the same time.

(: 20:50

So yes, I'm now a mom of a teenager, which is a bit scary. Amazing. I'm sort of hovering at the preteen. I've got a 10 and a half year old that like, oh, it's a whole different ball game. But gosh, oh my gosh. That sense of you almost on this precipice of like, oh, I think I'm going, I think I'm going, yep, I'm going to jump off. I'm quitting this corporate life and I'm going to do something different. Which is exhilarating but also terrifying. Yeah. Although I do remember at the time, I mean as I kind of alluded to, I was absolutely going down a pathway to burnout. That's where I was headed. I was overworking, I was working as said, big role European responsibility, large team and working in three different time zones and with a propensity to say yes to too much. Now that I know that that was a pathway I was heading down.

(: 21:54

So actually when I got off the conveyor belt, it was such a relief because I think I knew where I was headed had I not. So it was a much needed, I remember at the time having this kind of feeling, just the weight lifted and being able to suddenly be creative because I'd come out of this kind of hamster wheel of busyness, which was not serving me well. Yeah, I think it's amazing what difference it can make to us physically and in terms of our mental load as well. When we make a decision and we take action and it seems like we're doing a purposeful, purposeful goal, then I remember when I was trying to decide whether or not to stop working for the NHS and the mental load was so heavy, anytime I had a spare couple of minutes, I'd be trying to weigh it up, should I stay?

(: 22:54

Should I go? Literally every time I went to boil the kettle, that's what I found myself thinking about. I think it's just really hard. And once I'd made that decision, I did just feel so liberated and free and excited. Not because the NHS is a bad place to work for, but for me, I'd made my decision and there's really empowering. Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like taking control is one of your key tips for reducing burnouts in the psychology sphere, but it might not be your only one. Have you got any other kind of ideas for how that can be prevented? Yes, yes. And I appreciated you mentioning that this might be a question. I really did reflect on this because I think it was this almost heading down that pathway.

(: 23:49

That was, I think one of the reasons this interest in organisational psychology, knowing that work intensification is a real thing and knowing that actually I can make a difference to workplaces by bringing some of my experience and then newly acquired knowledge to help educate and help people think differently about how they approach work. As I said, I am naturally someone who has a propensity to do too much to say yes to too many things. If something sounds really exciting, I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I could do that. And it's been a real challenge and learning experience to try and recognise that actually I need to be better at being more boundaried. And I think that's probably the biggest thing is that I absolutely, during my corporate career did not operate with boundaries. Someone sends me an email in an evening and I'm sitting my phone's there, so I might as well reply, why not?

(: 24:56

And so that idea of not having any kind of thought around, well one, what am I doing? Why am I replying to an email at 10 o'clock at night? And two, what message is that sending out as well? I think that this is okay. So I think that idea of being boundaried around when we communicate, and lots of people say, oh, but that's the time that suits me. It's like, that's great, but actually what message are you sending out? So I think that whole thing around being boundaried around when we should and shouldn't be working and communicating the digital switch off, being more boundaried around going with my family, this is not time to have my phone attached to my waiting for the next message. So I think there's lots around that kind of, and it does actually help, I dunno if you find the same as being a parent, it does kind of help when you've got dependence because you kind of say, actually no, I want to be a really good mom, so I am going to switch this off at this time.

(: 26:00

I think having my daughter has enabled me to be a bit more boundaried that I wasn't before. So I think there's definitely something around that. My top tip, I've only just started implementing it, but I felt quite empowered when I did it recently. So as I said, when people come to me with opportunities, I always think, oh, that sounds really exciting. I think I'd really enjoy that. Yes. And then kind of look at my diary and go, oh my gosh, why did I say that? So I've got a new thing, which is I say, can I get back to you on that or, let me think about that. And I benefit from having a husband who's well boundaried, who I then have the kind of come back to you on it. I'll say to him, he's like, of course why you say yes to that?

(: 26:47

You've got tonnes of things on. So I have a kind of voice of reason shouting at me, but also just having that time to then go, right, I know this is really exciting, this sounds really great, but what else have you got going on? What is going to be the impact if you do that? And then going back and then saying, actually thank you so much for the offer, but based on what else I've got on right now, I can't do it. Or saying, actually, yeah, I'm going to do it. But it comes with these caveats. So that is quite new. It's quite new. Well, I feel like I am one of the first people to have experienced that because you did that to me. You were like a look, let have a look, have a research, let me think about it and come back to you.

(: 27:28

And I really appreciated that. I want you to feel like you're choosing to do this and that you feel like it's a worthwhile thing to do, but it's absolutely okay to ask for more information, to ask for some time to think, to kind of look at the diary to plan when you might be able to do that. And I think it's really common, especially in aspiring psychologist, you want to be keen, you want to get things done, you want to say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But then if it means that you are over full, you've got too much in your diary, you can't do it all. And that will be a puff to burnout. So learning to say no or if you don't necessarily want to say no to your supervisor to say, could you help me look at my diary to think about the things that are most pressing in terms of priority so that we can make sure that everything gets done in a way that meets your needs and mine.

(: 28:16

Yeah, I think, and generally, because I do a lot of work with leaders and I'm really picking up this kind of propensity to say yes, propensity to not question deadlines, to propensity, to assume everything's urgent when it's not propensity to assume everything's important, when it's sometimes not. And this idea of saying not yet or no or can I think about it, it is empowering. And I think initially people kind of think, oh, what might others think of me if I say that? And I think this, it's this kind of notion of fearing social judgement of what are people going to think? Are they going to think I'm not coping very well? Are they going to think I'm not very good at prioritising? Honestly, from my experience, I find you get actually more kudos and respect when you are actually demonstrating I'm in control and I'm telling you what my capacity is. So I think it is something that a lot of employees and leaders in organisations can learn from. Absolutely. So important. Thanks for sharing that with us. So people are listening to this podcast or watching it at all stages of their life, all stages of their career. If they're listening to us thinking, oh, that sounds like a bit of me, what's the best thing that they should do in terms of trying to move their career forward?

(: 29:44

So I think first and foremost, it depends obviously on your and stage. But if you've not already got a master's in organisational psychology that is really, or occupational psychology, that is really the first step. I guess for those who have a psychology background, that's an easier routine. But you can get on an MSC occupational organisational psychology without having an undergraduate degree in psychology. That's good news. If there's aspiring psychologists who haven't got the undergrad, I didn't, it might mean it's a slightly steeper learning curve, but that's okay. So the MSC is kind of the pathway in because that then gives you organisational psychologist kind of credentials. And then as to how you want to say that, I know lots of my students who have done their own masters and are, that's that's where they want to end the education, but are doing really thriving in various different jobs.

(: 30:57

As I said, it is so interesting because you can have someone who's working for a management consultancy doing change stuff. You've got someone over here is working for a recruitment in psychometrics and selection. You've got someone over here who's working for a consultancy who do wellbeing initiatives. It's so varied. I think that's the part. And if you're interested in work, if you're interested in the world of work, you can kind of find your passion and interest in many different kind of domains and they require very different skills. So I think that's why it, it's quite a broad kind of domain. Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your knowledge and expertise with us today. Where should people come and follow you? Is LinkedIn the best place to contact you or reach out or just be inspired by your wonderful work and posts?

(: 31:51

Oh yes, probably LinkedIn's a good place. I try to share content on there. I will do a quick plug. I'm actually writing a book now, but it's quite early doors. But hopefully this time next year, my book will soon be published. So my research interest in proactive behaviour at work has led to an opportunity to write in that area. So I'm working on a business book that's around how leaders can create the right conditions for proactive behaviour at work to flourish. So that's what I'm going to be writing over the coming weeks and months. My LinkedIn posts are going to be sharing more around my own research in proactive behaviour. So if you're interested in proactive behaviour motivation, then I'll be feeding more insights over the coming weeks, months, mainly on LinkedIn. So you are Joe Grey on LinkedIn, doctor in occupational psychology, it says there.

(: 32:53

Yeah. And I will look forward to learning more about you and your book and if you wanted to come back on and talk to us about that at any stage when the time is right, please let us know. But yeah, I was thinking when you were saying people decide when they get to MSE that they're just going to stop, and I was thinking often we think we're done and we're not. I was thinking whenever I finish a book, I'm think I'm done. I'm never doing that again. We finish some education, I'm never doing that again. And you're like, I might just do this thing that you've already got a thing. Yes, I know. Do you know what? I was mindful that because lots of people said that when you come to the end of a PhD or doctorate, you almost like that. Oh, and that's it.

(: 33:33

I've reached it and I ran a few marathons in the past and I have had post marathon blues. We were a bit like what now? So actually the book was a really nice little next thing so that I didn't have that big dip of what next. So I proactively set that up. Oh, well, I hope that it goes really well for you and I hope that your amendments get signed off with no problem and you enjoy your career as an occupational psychologist. Thank you. Thanks so much and thanks to everyone for listening. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. What a lovely conversation it was with Joe. Please do go and follow her on LinkedIn. She's Joe Grey over there. There will be details in the show notes whilst you at it. Come and connect with me as well. I am Dr. Marianne Trent on all of my socials. And you can also come and join the Aspiring Psychologist Community Free Facebook group. And you can also, if you would like to consider joining the Aspiring Psychologist membership so that I can help you with your next rung on your ladder. Thank you so much for being part of my world. I'll look forward to catching up with you for the next episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, which will be along to you very soon.

Joe Gray (: 34:54

Take care if you're looking to become a psychologist.