Health Care UST MBA

Personalized Assessments and Leadership Development

Dr. Mick Sheppeck

A Message from Mick Sheppeck, Ph.D.

Organizations are in need of strong, ethical leaders with exceptional skills in critical thinking and decision making.  To this end, the UST MBA programs are guided by four learning goals:

1. Business Acumen
2. Ethical Decision Making
3. Critical Thinking
4. Leadership

These goals are woven into the curriculum of all courses in the Health Care UST MBA program. We recognize, however, that students come to the program with widely varying degrees of leadership and critical thinking skills and experience. For all students, we find that those with specific learning and development objectives for the program — and for each course in the program — are ultimately more successful in achieving the professional growth they seek.

To further support our goals, the Health Care UST MBA has launched a program of personalized leadership assessments for our incoming students. This assessment process focuses on leadership style and skills. It will provide input to each student’s specific development priorities and help inform team dynamics and opportunities to use the cohort as a true "leadership lab" for testing and developing leadership skills.

Students will complete two widely-used assessment instruments, the Firo-B and Myers-Briggs tests, prior to the start of the program. I am a professor of human resources and an industrial/organizational psychologist. My colleague, Pat Hedberg, Ph.D., and I will share the resulting “leadership reports” with each student to provide them with a broad, baseline understanding of their leadership style as well as their managerial behavior and how they may be perceived by others. These reports will be utilized during the Organizational Behavior course and in on-going team development discussions.  

All professors in the program should be considered coaches in this development process. It is up to the student to share his/her development objectives with faculty and cohort colleagues and to ask for additional support and resources as appropriate. 

My colleagues and I are looking forward to working with you throughout the program and believe that a thoughtful, purposeful approach to leadership development will help you make the most of this educational experience.

Best,

Mick Sheppeck, Ph.D.
Professor of Human Resources