Autumn Institute Helps Human Services Professionals Unlock Personal Strengths to Soar Above the Line
Celebrating the 2023 Autumn Institute
From Oct. 17-19, 2023, Human Services professionals enrolled in the 2023 Autumn Institute for Public Assistance Professionals started their workdays a bit differently. Whether from the physical office, home office, quiet café or couch, more than 100 managers, supervisors, and social workers from across California converged upon the live virtual institute to examine key issues, share and assess best practices and learn new techniques for efficient, effective and sensitive delivery of services.
Hosted by UC Davis Human Services, the theme for the event, Leading from the Line, alluded to “above the line” and “below the line” thinking, with the entire institute centered on providing insightful strategies and concrete tools to move public assistance professionals toward openness and curiosity: two behaviors which soar well above the line.
Using Zoom as the virtual institute’s interactive platform, the event’s unique triad of morning sessions allowed for concentrated doses of engagement and growth through three distinct workshop tracks: Workforce Development; Family Engagement; and Frontline Leadership Development. Topics ranged from general program updates to deep dives into concepts as personal and complex as psychological safety.
Meet Misty Kerrigan
Misty Kerrigan is a business psychologist, author, international speaker and podcaster who presented a Frontline Leadership Track workshop on cultivating psychological safety with peers in the workplace.
“There’s a way to build psychological safety within your team members even in something as small as how you run meetings,” she shared in a brief introduction to the workshop. “Even the layout and the agenda of the meeting—how you start it and how you end it—can help you facilitate that building of your team [in] having that cohesiveness that we want.”
According to one of the institute’s participants, “Misty was dynamic and presented us with a *lot* of great tips and ideas for how to build a more trusting and engaged team. I will be requesting the longer training for our county as I think this is such an important topic for all staff to have an opportunity to learn about and think on."
Workshops such as Adapting State Policy into County Practice were packed with practical information, and after attending that particular session, one participant commented, “I would recommend this to a new policy specialist for an introduction to policy writing!”
The workshop sessions were bookended by opening and keynote sessions from Nic Bryant and Kristen Bennett, respectively. Bryant’s opening workshop, The Public Athlete: Finding Your “Personal Best” Stats, addressed the challenging and even conflicting realities post-pandemic Human Services professionals now face.
To help participants develop a framework to search within themselves and discover (or in some cases rediscover) their affirming core strengths, Bryant deployed his dynamic range of experience, research, and statistical aptitude to connect participants with their “personal best stats.”
Program manager, ICF-trained coach and organizational effectiveness consultant Kristen Bennett closed the institute by bringing the event’s Leading from the Line theme into full focus with the titular keynote address. After further defining, “the line” and what it means to be below (protective or passive) and above (open, honest and curious) the line, Bennett taught participants how to locate themselves on the line and shift themselves to a place where they would have power to take actions and lead themselves and others toward positive outcomes.
"I will be working with our UC Davis rep to bring something like this in county for our management team. Thank you for this!” commented one participant after the closing keynote presentation.
The Human Services team at UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education would like to express our profound gratitude to all of the speakers, workshop presenters, participants and staff who came together to make the 2023 Autumn Institute for Public Assistance Professionals an engaging, affirming and outstanding collaborative success.
Grab a Virtual Goody Bag!
Virtual participants were gifted with the virtual version of conference swag. If you'd like one, we have infinite extra.