EPITA Trains Charismatic Leaders
Interview with Marie-Laure Doucet, lecturer at EPITA specializing in Personal Development.
Can you introduce yourself?
Specialize
d in the field of Communication and in the field of Personal
Efficacy (self-confidence, time management, stress management,
organization, motivation), I specialize in training institutes or prestigious
schools like Centrale or EPITA, for seven the past years.
At EPITA, I teach 1st year students Management & Personal Team Management as well as public speaking. My passion to convey these concepts is not limited to teaching, I also wrote two small books of popular history and created the Association Land Com whose mission is to improve speaking skills and develop charisma.
What prompted you and keeps you in the way of teaching?
My sources of development merge with my educational goals: to raise curiosity and interest vis-à-vis personal development, to advance my students in the field of communication, whether oral, written or relational, to see or review the ground rules for win-win relationships, to suggest ways to improve personal organization …
Also, I like to face a demanding audience, who learns quickly and who is quite demanding. I need to feel useful and I reach this goal as my work allows people to better deploy their potential. In short, I feel that in a small way, I have a positive influence on my students, I participate in their educational mission, and I help train young managers to be more operational, more human and happier!
What is your greatest teaching achievement?
My greatest achievement is to have appropriately adapted for schools the ‘Terre de Com’ method to train and master public speaking. Structured and fun, these workshops offer a variety of exercises and are based on the distribution of appropriate roles to target all participants. From assessments, resolutely encouraging, emerge strengths and areas for improvement adapted to each.
Last year in EPITA, I had to supervise a class of students who all had difficulties with oral communication. Despite their misgivings and fears, they lent themselves to the game. Through the step by step method, encouragement and advice, they could become aware of impaired them, expressive behaviors, and practice until results that were satisfactory.
Their perseverance has enabled them to take a step, that of feeling a certain pleasure in speaking to an audience. The results were more than satisfactory, they all scored between 10 and 15 on a scale of 20.
What is your wildest dream terms in pedagogy?
My wildest dream is to organize courses in positive psychology and to ensure follow-up in small groups. Initiated in the United States around 1988 by Martin Seligman, the scientific discipline defines the individual conditions that determine societal and collective happiness. The course on positive psychology has become the most popular on Harvard’s campus! Positive psychology is revealed as an art of living with oneself and with others while being an instrument of social change.
At the individual level, it develops the welfare and happiness, creativity, self-esteem, humor, and optimism. At the interpersonal level, it has a great influence on altruism, cooperation, empathy … Finally, at the social level, it facilitates courage, militancy, mediations …
Happy students are more motivated, they learn better, fit better and works better, both with his colleagues with the administration than unhappy ones. This training of the future will generate extra performance for students and an additional recognition for schools.
In your teaching, what are you passionate about?
What interests me is to pass on what I learn from my experiences, reading and observations. See my students progress gives me a sense of satisfaction because that is where I tell myself that I serve a good cause! Seeing smiling faces, cause clicks, to give practical assistance useful in everyday life is also very rewarding.
What’s exciting, too, is to refine my classes, adapt to the public that I have in front of me. Finally, I am very motivated by training myself, that is to say to get rich from interacting with others to learn new things before transmitting then! I am fortunate to do this job that I love in every aspect!