Episode 1: This is US! Part 1 Transcript

Rahul 

Welcome to Learning to Lead, a podcast about leadership, teamwork, and reimagining healthcare. This podcast is for learners, educators, and healthcare professionals interested in building leadership skills in a supportive community.

We are your hosts Rahul Anand, Maya Doyle, Peter Longley, Amber Vargas, and Brooklynn Weber.

Together we bring you conversations with emerging and established leaders, deep dives and hacks to help you become the best leader you can be.

Pete

What does it mean to lead with both head and heart in healthcare? 

In this episode, we explore the origins of this podcast and the inspiration behind its focus on leadership in healthcare. You'll be introduced to a practical framework that can enhance your professional relationships—viewed through the lens of diverse interprofessional perspectives. Whether you're just starting your career or have decades of experience, there's something here for you. 

We’ll also share our personal stories—our leadership wins, the challenges we've faced, and the lessons we've learned along the way. You might even hear a few secrets we've uncovered about ourselves on this leadership journey. 

Stay tuned, because we are coming next! 

Pete 

Welcome everyone to healthcare relationships. Need a hug? A podcast about leadership, teamwork, and reimagining healthcare. My name is Peter Longley. I'm going to moderate for this episode, and we'll go into everyone introducing themselves, and we'll further go into our stories after that. 

So Maya first. 

Maya 

Hi everyone. How are you? I am Maya Doyle. I am a social worker and faculty in the social work program here at Quinnipiac. 

Rahul 

Hi everyone, I'm Rahul Anand. I'm an infectious disease physician and faculty at the Netter School of Medicine and I'm excited to co-host this podcast. 

Pete 

Amber. 

Amber 

Hi everyone. My name is Amber Vargas. I'm a medical student at Frank H Netter School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University. In my 4th year and going into emergency medicine. 

Pete 

Awesome. 

Very good. And I've just learned that you're in the ICU right now for your rotation. 

Amber

Yes. Oh yes, I I'm. I'm currently in the ICU learning how to, you know, learning more about critical care and management of really sick patients. 

Pete 

That was my old stomping grounds back in the SICU at Yale. 

Amber 

Oh yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, so we have a lot to talk about then, how did you like that? 

Pete 

Ohh, I loved it. Then I started having kids. 

Maya 

When I was in the I was in the PICU at Bellevue a long time ago too, so it's a fascinating environment. 

Amber 

Very intense I could imagine. 

Maya 

You can talk a lot about teamwork. And that ICU experience, I'm sure. 

Pete 

All right. Excellent. So I wanted to go a little bit deeper into our experiences so the listener understands where we're coming from because we're all coming from different points in our journey, our careers. So me, Peter, I'm a registered nurse with almost 30 years experience and I've had multiple roles, one of them being in the ICU. 

I've been a nurse manager. I've gone into data, into finance and now I'm, you know, a faculty member here at Quinnipiac and in school and nursing and my whole thing is what I'm trying to figure out, a solution to improve our healthcare situation here in America. I've always been interested in leadership ever since, I guess high school, since playing football and everyone wanted me to be the captain and I felt the pressure of that. I was like, I don't want to be captain. No. But then it happened again in the army and in nursing. And here today I'm just trying to understand all the theoretical framework behind it and how to share it so we can improve our healthcare system. 

Maya 

I've learned something new about Peter in football today, so thank you. It's exciting. So I've been also a social worker for around 30 years. I always worked in pediatric settings, mostly at large urban hospitals. I've always primarily been the boots on the ground, direct care person. I've had no formal leadership roles ever. But yet I've always thought of myself as an informal leader, helping get things done, helping my team get things done, helping recognize when things are going well or not going well with our team, or hey, we need to do something else on behalf of our our patients. And I think I bring that same vibe now to where I am in my department as a faculty member, but also where I am with our students. 

But thinking about also how as we all evolve, right, how do we make that leap from maybe informal being role models and being supporters to actually being folks who have a little bit more power than me change. So we've already been on a bit of a journey together and learning about this, so I'm excited to see where it goes. 

Pete 

Great. Whoever's next, Rahul. 

Rahul 

Alright, I'll go next. 

Yeah. So I share what Maya said about being boots on the ground. I think that's what connects the four of us that we're all frontline boots on the ground, very close to the patients in our careers and now very close to students and learners. So my journey started in India. I did my medical training there, connected my family's health journey to becoming a physician and wanted to make my own life. And of those around me better and of people I could take care of. I did a medicine residency in India and then came to the US after that. And had to do another medicine residency. So one of the happiest days was when I had to do no more night call of residency. 

And I felt that in all of the work done as a clinician educator, which I am at heart, there was. There were opportunities to lead at every step, whether it's interacting with the patient or family or with team members. And then when I took up infectious diseases, it's an it's a specialty where you're always either working with a patient or family with a very distressing situation. Or you're a consultant and you're negotiating and communicating and collaborating with multiple teams. Or you're working with the health system and looking at organizational or system issues to make an impact. So I felt and ended up in a specialty with an outsized impact of leadership and teamwork. And that's partly how I got interested in it. 

Pete 

Oh, great. Amber, what's your story? 

Amber 

So for me, leadership has been like this abstract idea where you just kind of formulate a framework based on experiences you have like positive and negative experiences and you know, strive to be the leader you think is a great one. And then when I came to medical school and Dr. Anand introduced this course of leadership for medical students, it was very intriguing. Like, what is this course about like, what is it focused on? And he was very passionate about it. So I took it as an elective and then when I was in the in the course, I was like, oh, wow, this is so meaningful, so impactful, so life changing. And it actually did have like a really big impact on my life and my career advancement and journey thus far. I feel like a lot of the things that I've gotten involved with throughout medical school and now the career that I'm pursuing post medical school is very intertwined with leadership and building that part of myself. So for example, some of the things I got involved with in medical school is the Latino Medical Student Association. I sit on the Executive Board and at the regional level and at the national level now. 

And not only have I, you know, made strides in my own leadership development, but being able to take that to the other people in my organization who are also invested in being leaders in their community and serving very vulnerable patient populations, it's just it's been incredible to see how the things we are learning in the classroom and this course can be translated to real time and helping patients in real time, so that's a little bit of my journey. 

Pete 

Yeah. And you're going to need leadership in the ED. 

Amber 

Oh yeah, yeah. In the ED, and then, yeah, like, you know, in EM there's further opportunities for learning more about administration and operations, which is something that I'm definitely interested in now that I have like this foundation. 

Pete 

Wow, excellent. 

So where did this all begin? Couple years ago, the three of us, Peter, Maya, and Rahul became my PE fellows at Quinnipiac and did a fellowship, and we ended up deciding to land on leadership and expand upon one of Rahul’s leadership courses and we took it and put some structure around it and put some students through the experience of being a little more vulnerable. Knowing when to speak up, putting some of those soft leadership skills to work. But it was funny on how all three of us came together and we all kind of had an itch or liking or an interest in in leadership. So it's wild how we kind of just landed there. 

Maya 

Well, and two things to say. 

First, you know IPE being interprofessional education, right? The idea of how folks from multiple professions can learn from and about and with each other, which is really unique. Interprofessionalism is actually why I came to Quinnipiac, because that's how I've always worked as a social worker. Like you know, we're multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, interprofessional was like a new term. But I was like, that's where I want to be. And so it's it's really delightful to be part of, lots of events here at the university that are, that are interprofessional.

But I think the other piece, that you bring up Pete, is sort of how we came together to get to that idea and Rahul, our design thinking expert can probably tell us a little bit more about that process, right. But coming up with all these different ideas we all came applied for that fellowship with different thoughts and then eventually we're able to like. This is what we're, this is what we can do and this is what we can do for students with the thought that that's going to help the system be better down the road, right, because we have a new generation of healthcare providers who can have maybe a different way of being with each other than even we've had in our own professional experiences. So. So yeah, that was a really great experience of coming together and making those decisions live. 

Pete 

Yeah, Rahul, what do you remember about that, way back when? 

Rahul 

So I'll go back to the beginning. So this was 2018, when I joined Quinnipiac, stepping into the world of teaching medical students full time, and I remember it's a beautiful campus walking around, looking at students and they're there. But as a student, their core priority was survival. They're surviving these flash cards, these tests, these exams, scores on the STEP, if that goes well, getting into a residency so they're not queuing up to take a course on leadership. But what I see is that as both as students and as the academic leaders, the entire focus was on the what like how can we get this knowledge, this content, get our scores and residency. Or on the academic side, how can we run a successful school that it wasn't that we're thinking about how to create the next generation of leaders, the next generation of healthcare professionals, the next reimagined and better healthcare system. We were so busy with the “what,” that we were losing track of the “why” and the “how” and the “who” for whom it exists and we do it with. 

So I had a colleague at that time, Jennifer Drilling, a pathologist, who had cut her teeth in the Navy and we scoured around the world looking at the best leadership development programs. And we came up with a common theme in all of those programs about starting with the foundation leading oneself, then building up to teams, and then finally trying to understand and make an impact on the system. So we built our curriculum in the self, teams, and systems format and we bring it to life in 2019, somehow navigated through COVID in 2020 to keep it alive, even expand it a little bit. And then I went to Harvard Macy in 2021 in their educators program at the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators and came back in 2021 as a scholar with great dreams, and we're going to take it to the core curriculum, have lots of students in this, who will love it. And none of that happened. 

Our class size went down to 3. So it was like 3 students. My co-faculty left the institution, and it was a no go in the core curriculum. So while every healthcare professional is a leader, it's not that they're queuing up to learn leadership in their training because they're so busy surviving. 

So then came this fellowship, and I went back to Harvard Macy Institute in their Leading Innovations Program, where I learned design thinking and looking at things from an end user perspective. And the end user perspective here, which is the students, and the trainees, and you know, the early faculty perspective, is that we need to personalize this learning and we need to situate it in a way that works for us today, not ten years from now. And we need to do it in a community of like minded people who are going to support us and develop us and root for us when the chips are down or when the chips are up. 

And so that's how we went from, you know, this core curricular dream to really meeting reality, which was a community of practice model that this can exist in a co-curricular and interprofessional space with a community of like minded people. So I'm glad that I met the two of you, then. And one of the things we learn in infectious disease training is when you're negotiating with the surgeon, how to make them think it is their idea to go to the operating room for an exploration, to find the pus that could exist inside. And so I'm so grateful that when we talked about it, the common thread that we had was: How can we build better teams that have stronger relationships? That's where we began and then, you know, we expanded to the full self, teams, systems, even on the interprofessional side. And I think this podcast is an extension of that because our promise to our listeners is that we want to give you something that's useful to you today and we want to give you something that's going to help make your life and the life of your people around you better. So we want to give you tools that you can use today and that can make your life and the lives of people around you better. 

And then came Amber. So I'm going to pass the ball to Amber to tell us how we got involved and how we built this further. 

Pete 

Before we go there, could I clarify something? Were me and Maya the surgeon, and then you brought us in and made us go…

Rahul 

Absolutely. 

Pete 

To the OR?

Rahul 

Absolutely. As long as leadership is not the pus that we're looking for. 

Maya 

Exactly. 

Amber 

Oh my goodness. 

Pete 

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Amber. 

Amber 

No, no, that's great. Dr. Anand, you said something that really resonated with me about, you know, medical students surviving, right and like, not necessarily thinking that they need to take this leadership course or need to sit down and learn these things because they're too busy with, you know, thinking about all the things that they need to graduate and to move on to residency or whatever career goals, aspirations that they have. But you know, throughout this journey with leadership interacting with the course and students and throughout my medical school career, several students have trusted me with, you know, with their feelings about being placed in these situations where they're expected to be a leader but not necessarily feeling ready for those situations or knowing what to do or how to best go about it. You know where some examples include student government, student-led groups at the school, national, regional organizations that are student run. So there's all these things, free clinics, that we run like Bobcat health, right? Like there's there's so many things that students are expected to do, expected to run, they, but then they find themselves in a position and they're like, wait, what do I do? How do I do this? So that's why it's really important to have some of these tools in their pocket and to really be able to to have some kind of foundation to lean on when they're feeling that. So that's something that you know, we were able to do with the course. So right. 

Rahul 

Yeah, that's so true. And this can how one relates to these challenges, the tools that you may or may not possess to address these challenges, the people who you could gather with to tackle these challenges together and the sense of agency that you develop and in addressing these challenges can really define one's attitude when bigger challenges come up ahead. So I think having the tools to successfully address some of these challenges can make a student or a trainee, or someone early in their career really flourish rather than the other way around. 

Amber 

Yeah, I'm happy to talk about some of these tools as we get more, you know, sessions. 

Rahul 

Yeah, it's no different as a full-fledged healthcare professional because when we deal with systemic challenges and we're not able to come to terms with the system, that's a huge cause of burnout. 

Pete 

Yeah, very true. 

Maya 

And if I can just add too, just going back to our self, teams, system model, for me, teaching social workers and you know, Pete, you may have the same thing with nursing students and obviously we have lots of other professions within our schools too. But for me, I was teaching about, we teach about organizational theory to our MSW students. Most of them are going out to work in agencies in in Connecticut, either health or mental health agencies. And so we were teaching some basics about you know how organizations work and a little bit about leadership. But it wasn't really coming alive. And I think when we started talking about those relationship pieces, you know, which especially in social work like that's key to our ethics. But I hadn't completely made that connection until we kind of all started putting all those pieces together, so it's, I think it's changing if it's changing what I can bring to students, and I hope we're also changing what other faculty can bring to students and then also what right, what we can give you all to say, OK, I'm in this position. What the heck do I do? What the heck do I do with this now? Yeah, so. 

Amber 

So kind of a framework mindset. 

Maya 

Yeah, you need. You need that for sure. 

Amber

Yeah. 

Pete 

Great. And I want to create the mental model for our listeners. We all know what we're talking about when we say self, teams, and systems. 

So for the listener, if you have 3 concentric circles and you put yourself in the middle, you're building yourself personally and professionally. You bring in your best self to work or to school. The next circle is built up of, you know, working in teams. So that's interpersonal relationships. And then when you go to the 3rd circle, the outer circle it's impacting systems and belonging to a community that's larger than yourself and the teams. So I just wanted to create that so the listener can kind of visualize it the way they want to see it. Their own little circles. 

So let's see here, next topic. 

So Rahul. What does leadership mean to you? 

Rahul 

Yeah, I'll build on what you just said, Pete. So leadership, unlike what I had thought early in my career, it's not a title, it's not a position, it's if you look at the textbook definition, it's about influencing and working with others towards a goal that's greater than any one person themselves. When I think of it in healthcare, especially as a healthcare trainee or early career mid-career, I think leadership is about being one's best self personally and professionally first of all. Because that core domain in the middle, self, is really important. You cannot pour from an empty cup and connecting one's personal mission and values to the professional journey, and the projects and the causes we step up for is really important. It gives us the power to say hell yes to what we believe in and it gives us the power to say no to what doesn't matter as much to us. So that's the core circle, being one's best self personally and professionally. 

Outside that is building meaningful relationships and being a follower and leader in effective teams. And then, in the circle that's outermost, is impacting systems because that's where our life's work comes in. Touching patients, doing projects that make an impact on the organizational community. And we work in a system that's very resistant to change. 

And so, trying to impact systems by yourself is the road to burnout. And that's why the systems and community go hand in hand, because learning to embed oneself in a community of people that are working on the same cause and overtime, trying to build and contribute to that community, or communities, is a key piece of leadership. 

So to sum up, for me, leadership is not a title or position. It's about being one's best self personally and professionally, building meaningful relationships and effective teams, and making an impact on the system while being embedded in a community of like-minded people. 

Pete 

Oh, that's great. And I have something in my story. You triggered it. I'll bring it back later. 

Rahul 

Let's hear it. 

Maya 

No, let's hear it now. 

Pete 

When I was a nurse manager, young, eager, I thought I was persistent and persuasive enough, and I was going to try to do it and fix it all myself. And I burned out. I actually got out of healthcare for a little while. And found myself coming back because I missed that connection. But, it did happen. You know, I put on a lot of weight. My blood pressure went up. I was trying to move the mountain, but I was all by myself. I thought everybody, you know, in healthcare was idealistic, like myself. I found out I was wrong. 

Rahul 

That's rough. And some lessons come by hearing others and their challenges, like we're trying to share, and some, these deep insights, come because we've experienced it. And then it becomes crystal clear that there is a different path which could get us there and you know, same here. 

Pete 

Yeah. 

Rahul 

I've had my journey as well, journeys at this point, so we can I think we can call ourselves mutually, we can call ourselves recovering frontline healthcare providers. 

Maya 

For sure. Yeah. I'm definitely also with someone who's like, I'm just going to get these things done. It'll get done more efficiently if I just do it myself. And so I would take all of that on. And actually the experience of having what you were sharing about your family's journey, like going through some serious caregiving with my family members, made me go, oh, you know what A) I can't do this myself, but also nobody's doing it themselves and taking care of these folks, either they're all working in teams. I got to work with those teams, plus my own teams. And yeah, you can't. You just can't do it. You can't do it all alone, no matter how sunny our dispositions may be. 

Pete 

I used to be a lot sunnier. 

So leadership for me is grabbing into that vision and mission. I'm wondering if one, it's part of my personality, idealism, but also I went to the army right out of high school and it was all about the mission, and vision, and getting everybody on board. And I have, I guess, compassion and empathy for the team and I think I did that when I was a nurse manager and everyone just kept saying, oh, yeah, there you go, there's more work. 

So you know, some of the lessons are tough to learn. Leadership also means having integrity and being honest. And sometimes I was, challenged, or my integrity was challenged. That's probably a better way to say it. And I’d become resistant at that time. So trying to learn how to navigate those roads and with communication, so I've been working on my communication skills ever since, to try to articulate exactly what I mean so other people can hear it. 

But Amber, I would love to hear what you think leadership is. Or what it means to you? 

Amber 

Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of my real framework of leadership came from taking the course with Dr. Anand. So part of my answer coincides with his answer. But I'll frame it a little differently, but it has the same core meaning. You know, I think leadership is very multifaceted. There's a lot of things that go into the definition of like a strong leader, a good leader, right. But I think one thing to focus on or zero in on could be the team. I think a team tells you a lot about a leader. You know how that team is functioning. You know, there's this phrase: “Show me a team, I'll show you the leader.” Right. So how are they working together? How motivated are, motivated are they by the mission that they're working towards? How is the community? Do they do they feel like they belong there? Do they want to be there? And I think that that's a reflection of the leader who's leading that team. And then if you want to take it a a step further and think about like the self and the system based part of it, like you need to bring your best self to leading a team because I feel like, you, that's the only way to effectively like communicate, to effectively listen, to effectively delegate, to do anything you need to be able to be taking care of yourself and bring your best self forward. And then systems wise, like you can't, not one person can make an impact by themselves. You need to have a good team in order to see the change that you want to see, so I think it's all very, very intertwined. So that's my take.

Pete 

I agree. All right, so I want, I'm curious. So we'll go back around, what's your secret to being a good leader? 

Amber 

My secret, my secret to being a good leader. 

Pete 

Well, it's not going to be a secret anymore but go ahead. 

Amber 

I think finding a good team. I think that it's really the team that makes it, you know, like I think. What is it that relate? Why is it that I need to be a leader in this situation or in this project, right? What's the core goal? And then finding a team who's also passionate about that goal, is also very invested in that mission. And then just working together towards that. So I think that that's the secret, not forcing anyone to be somewhere where they don't want to be is part is is a big part of it. 

Pete 

So what I'm hearing is culture and environment. 

Amber 

Yeah. 

Pete 

Have a lot to do with leadership and teamwork. 

Amber 

Absolutely. 

Pete 

Excellent. Very nice. Well, I guess you can kind of guess what my leadership secret is, and it's using humor. Try to bring levity to the situation, bring the stress down. Let people just get those endorphins moving. 

Because it just tweaks the mindset just a little bit differently to get them to hear you, hopefully better. So then you can give the message. That's what I've learned. Some of the negatives of that, I think is sometimes you know I can overuse it and I've learned that humor, you can correct me if you think differently, that it is an indirect way of communicating your message. And I didn't, it never came to me, like I it didn’t come to you for a while. I was like, oh, maybe that's why I'm a little sarcastic too. That's my communication style. And it all stems, you know, back from childhood, you can have direct conflict, but it was, uh. So I use this as my tool to communicate and lead myself and around my family now. 

So Maya. What's your secret? 

Maya 

I think there's a combination of initiative, like I'm going to be, but in a vulnerable way. Like I'm going to be the one to be brave and say, hey, I think this is the way we should go. And you might disagree with me, and you might say no, that let's no, here wait, there's something else to add, but being sometimes the one to be able to kind of open that conversation and say, OK, we got to get, we got to get something done. And I'm definitely of this group, like, I am the most impatient one. I'm always like, OK, come on, let's do this. Right. I know it. I know it about me. I'm known at home for, like, not letting people finish conversations because I'm like, wait, you're going to say this right? It's just who I am. You know, Mia culpa. But I think doing that in a way that A) is my own vulnerability, right? Because I'm actually not all that self confident. But I have, right? But you have to be. You have to be able to put yourself out there. And on the flip side, I think hearing from your team members and listening to your team members about where they're vulnerable, about where they're struggling because you don't know always, you can't always, just find a great team. Like I'm totally down with what you said, Amber, but half the time, you don't necessarily find the great team. You find a team who's struggling with each other, and then you have to build different relationships with each member of that team, a nd kind of figure out like all right, what motivates this person might be different than what motivates that person. So I need those individual relationships.And the team relationship.

I think that's where it gets. Tricky, right? Because you're not just managing. I'm like, it's not like I just have a connection with Peter and I just have a connection with Amber I just have a connection with Rahul. It's got to be all of us together, which is next. Right? That's that next circle of the, of our ecological model. If I can be social working. So, you know, moving outward to that. But I think there's some, that vulnerability piece becomes, I think really important. Which sounds contrary, don't have the right word, contrary to what you'd expect, right? You would expect someone to be like, “This is the way we should do things.” And it's much more like, “Hey, is this the way we should do things?” So I think that's a piece. 

Pete 

Thank you. Rahul, what's your secret? 

Rahul 

I'm building on what Maya said, because questioning those assumptions is what leads us to the secrets that we discover from our mistakes. And so I've certainly discovered from my mistakes. 

Maya 

Mhm. 

Rahul 

For me, the secret sauce of leadership is relationships. And again, I'd break it to the three domains. So with oneself, the biggest thing is connecting your personal mission and values to the professional causes and projects because it gives us the power to say hell yes and it's so rewarding that we believe in those causes that now we're not chasing titles or external rewards, we're really into the cause. 

In the teams domain, we’re really task focused a lot of the time and I was very much like that, still am. You have more awareness than I do, Maya. But it's been that it's not going. You feel like you're pushing to get the tasks done, but being relationship center rather than task focused, is a much easier and more effective way of getting things done. Where you understand the people you work with and you can build trust and then things get done so much easier and better. 

And then I think with the system, we come across these challenges, alerts, news, so many things are thrown at us. And so my secret of dealing with that is to stay within my locus of control. What is it that's in my locus of control? What's the next step I can take to address what matters most to me, and that's where I will focus my energy. 

Pete 

Yes, one thing I keep learning as I mature, not getting older, is the energy. Where do I want to spend my energy? Is this situation that I'm in, is it giving me energy or is it draining my energy? So I've been paying attention to that a lot more lately. 

All right, so now on the flip side, I'll start, but an example of when leadership didn't turn out the way we anticipated or hoped for. 

So I'll go back to my nurse manager example, so of course I wanted to change the world. I thought I could do it. Finding out that changing culture and mindsets is very, very difficult. Even if you have a good argument. Gaining trust is challenging, and it's a day in day out, kind of endeavor and you can lose that trust very quickly. 

I had a lot of personal wear and tear, so my vision of what I could do, and what was, you know, me, keep trying to go in every day and working. You know, 12 to 16 hours a day, six days a week, when I was a manager and still nobody was happy, including myself, it wasn't worth it. It wasn't bringing my long term vision of being healthy, being there for the family and the kids, and enjoying life. It wasn't there, so I had to sidestep that that piece. 

Let's see, Maya. What about something when leadership didn't go the way you had hoped? 

Maya 

Well, I'm going to take this back to the story that I think I told when we all met each other the first time. Which is that in my last hospital role, I was part of a phenomenal interprofessional, multidisciplinary team. We did amazing things for our patients. Everybody was smart. Everybody had strong personalities like you know, we got a lot done. But there were also things under the surface where there were some things that were really toxic. There were some relationships that really undermined our effectiveness and our effectiveness and our relationships with patients. And the folks who were titled to be leaders, never wanted to address it. 

And so, I worked with this team directly for many years, and then I still work peripherally, peripherally with the program, so I'm in touch with the same folks. And after all this time, I hadn't seen a lot of change. And what stood out to me, and I think it ties back to what I said about sort of vulnerability and maybe courage, is the flip side of that, that when you're in a leadership role, you have to also be courageous enough to say to your team, whether you're a coworker or a manager, right? Something's not working here, something we need to talk about this and address this. We can't ignore whatever that whatever that problem is, because you're not working together, you know, as colleagues and within your team, you're not going to have success at getting the patients what they need. And in fact, you're going to have dissatisfaction from the patients and you're going to have, like, “I don't know if I want to get care here anymore,” kind of situations. 

So you know, so I think that that remains a lesson and it's not that any, it's not like I would say, oh, there was a person who was responsible for that, or a person who was doing that. But you know, that dynamic was not changing, over a very long period of time. And so I think that's, you know, and I also I want to be empathetic to folks who are on the management and administration side, that there is a lot of, those are hard conversations to have, and we'd rather probably avoid them so. 

Pete 

Right, and I have struggles, like you know it, and what's that like first step, first approach? How do you how do you approach it? Because I don't want to aggravate them, I want to address it. I'm not looking for a conflict, but I know this is not the best way to get about this. 

And I've learned that over the years I've got, well, all right. Amber's just having a bad day, and I'll see it, but I'll like I won't address it. You know Rahul’s a good guy, he never, he probably didn't mean it. That kind of stuff. And I would just let it go. So what I've learned over the years is as soon as you see it, just kind of say something, and keep it small, or it blows up. 

Brooke

Thank you for listening to the first part of this episode. Stay tuned for the second part where we will continue sharing our stories, starting with some of our leadership failures.

Brooke

Thank you for listening to our show. Learning to Lead is a production of the Quinnipiac University podcast studio, in partnership with the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. 

Creators of this show are Rahul Anand, Maya Doyle, Peter Longley, Amber Vargas and Brooklynn Weber.

 The student producer is Brooklynn Weber, and the executive producer is David DesRoches.

 Connect with us on social media @LearningToLeadPod or email us at LearningToLeadPod@quinnipiac.edu.