Episode 2: Roses with Renee 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.
Brooke
In this episode, we explore a leadership hack that promotes self-reflection and sharing, and also helps teams and individuals connect. Our guest Renee Scott is one of the first alumni from our interprofessional relationship-centered leadership workshop. She recently graduated with her Masters in Social Work, and is starting her career working with veterans.
Maya
Hi everyone, welcome to Learning to Lead in Healthcare. This morning, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into an idea we talked about a little bit in our first episode, which is the Rose, Bud, and Thorn exercise that we've all started using within our curriculum and in other places in the teams that we work with. Just to kind of talk a little bit more about what that is and then give you maybe another example of how it can be useful as a leadership hack in getting our teams and ourselves comfortable and talking and sharing with each other. So Rose, Bud, and Thorn came to us from Rahul's experience and reading of a Harvard Macy blog post around this exercise. And it's been something we've started doing with our students in our relationship-centered leadership curriculum and now I think probably all of us have used it in other settings as well. I've taken to using it at the start of meetings, sometimes with my social work team, just to get people kind of comfortable and sharing. I've used it in classes too, so it's just this idea of being able to share, being able to be vulnerable, and being able to listen to what's going on for other folks. And I say, Rose, Bud, and Thorn, like that makes sense to everybody of what that means, but we should probably talk about what it means in relationship to the exercise.
So you can picture rose, bud, thorns on the stems, and the idea is that if you're going to talk about a rose, you're going to talk about something that's positive, that's currently flowering, and hopefully positive in your life. A bud is something that is growing, developing, you're trying, you're hoping for, you're looking forward to. And then thorn being a challenge that you're going through where you want to share that to get some support, or maybe just to get some validation that yes, that really is difficult and prickly, is a struggle. We've used this exercise both really broadly as just in general. What's going on in your lives? Or occasionally we've… I feel like I've used it around specific topics like let's talk about Rose, Bud, and Thorn around a specific project that we're working on. So I am really delighted to introduce our relationship-centered leadership alumnus from our first cohort of students, Renee Scott, who is here with us this week, who I roped in a couple of days ago and who obligingly said yes, which is a great leadership hack right there, right, to say YES when you don't really want to!
Rahul
Welcome, Renee.
Renee
Thank you. Thank you.
Maya
So, Renee, do you want to tell us a little bit about your journey since you were in our leadership cohort and then we can maybe dive into sharing some Rose, Bud, and Thorns.
Renee
OK, so my journey since being a part of that cohort, I've definitely grown. I don't know. It was a really great experience. I learned to be more flexible with working with individuals from other professions. I definitely became aware that we approach caring for a patient differently. I felt like when the group that I was a part of, we did have a really, and this is the Rose, we communicated very well. We respected boundaries and really asked clarifying questions when it came to their input and understanding of the situation and whatever challenge it was that we had to discuss. The bud part of my experience. It is now, like we were in the context of the classroom and had mock exercises, but transitioning into the professional world as an established social worker, I feel like I'm ahead of the game, in a sense. I didn't get that same kind of experience in my undergrad studies.
So taking the time and stepping out and being a part of the program really puts me in the forefront to be able to bring that flexibility to the table when working with an interdisciplinary team. The thorn, I wouldn't necessarily say there was a thorn experience, but overall, I think transitioning out of school is somewhat nerve-wracking. I'm going out now, you know, and taking everything that I learned with me.
Pete
Yeah, those transitions could be a little scary and exciting all at the same time. You're like, I'm excited to get moving, but then I'm. What am I getting into?
Renee
Challenging, yeah. Right. And that's where I am, yeah.
Maya
Well, it's kind of Rose, Bud, and Thorn all at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rahul
Rose, Bud, and Thorn in one, yes.
Maya
Now it makes sense that like that same topic, that same thing, it has all of those aspects, but I think making us tease it apart is what makes that such a great exercise, right? Because you actually have to slow down and go like, all right, what part is really wonderful and exciting and then, OK, what part is creating the tension and stress?
Renee
Right.
Pete
Right.
Amber
No, I really like that. And just to add on to what you said about the exercise helping us tease apart which one is what. What is in our mind that goes into which of these categories? Right at the same time it's a really nice exercise for the listener too, because they're learning so much about you in terms of what you value as your roles, what you're working on, like what's meaningful to you as your bud. And then you're going like, what's what's what can you support with, you know, as a listener? That's what I'm thinking, you know, like I just learned so much through your Rose, Bud, and Thorn, so thank you for sharing.
Renee
You're welcome. I think it's important to share our experiences transparently. Like you said, it definitely can help the individual who's listening and let them know that you know what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking is not out of the ordinary and normalizes that. I've been here for 2 1/2 years and yes, I'm a graduate student, but I still have my own fears and doubts about certain things.
Amber
Yeah, it's a nice way to, like, share what you're feeling exactly.
Renee
Yeah.
Maya
I think the other thing. You know you two are talking about the transition towards, you know completing your programs and moving on to the next phase of your professional careers. And I think for Pete and Rahul and I, you know, established in our professional lives, but there are still always transitions and changes, right? So we're still having also that same what’s the Rose, Bud, and Thorn about the next the next step? The next phase, and ywhat that role change is like and taking different places maybe even in teams that we've been part of for a long time. But hey, our role is going to be different is an interesting one to kind of contemplate through that process, right. And it's always like the anxiety and the excitement and then the all right, what am I actually doing? What's actually happening? What's blooming so it's a really helpful tool.
Renee
That's good. It is.
Pete
And then something you said, Amber, about being able to share. I think it's as long as it's in safe space. Because I think when (I'll speak for myself) when I was younger, I was wide open. But people will take advantage of that. So being vulnerable again, I guess being secure in yourself and what you want to put out there, is also a big step in connecting with people.
So, let's see. Rose, Bud, and Thorn for me. I actually got an e-mail from a student, I think yesterday or the day before, where it was from my health policy class. And I actually have them take current policy that's being brought up and put their own version out there. And then send it to the congressman or congresswoman just to provide feedback, just to have them engage in policy. And she actually wrote back, and she's going down to DC. I think it was this week or next week, to support the same bill that she wrote about, to make changes to. So I was like. Oh wow, that was a win. You hope that's always going to happen when you're teaching, but sometimes you never hear, I guess, or get feedback on it.
Maya
You just turned my thorn from yesterday into a bud and into a rose in three seconds because yesterday I was up to here with advising, and the students were great. I was just like one after the other after the other. I was up to here and I had one student that I was trying to find courses for the summer. They can take non-clinical classes including nursing, and I saw oh, Peter Longley, that's that's, I know that's a great class. I'm going to suggest you take that class. And so literally, I just told the student to register for that class and you just told this wonderful story of this outcome, which now I can go back and sell to social work students, look what you can do.
Pete
Aye. That's it. And that's the course I'm going to be putting on Canvas this summer, so she'll be a great test subject.
Maya
Excellent. There you go. And take the course. See, you never. This is the great thing about Rose, Bud, and Thorn, and I think some of the other exercises that we use too, like people make connections across pieces that like I wouldn't have known that until right we start sharing and people find pieces to connect even across.
Renee
Right.
Maya
Like where we think there's, oh, professional differences. As you were talking about, Renee. But then, oh, wait, here's this piece of common ground now we've established that we can have a different conversation. So again, a useful piece of what makes that work. Rahul, do you want to share a Rose, Bud, and Thorn?
Rahul
Yeah, I'll share a Rose, Bud, and Thorn and maybe I'll share the story of Rose, Bud, and Thorn if you want.
Maya
Yes, please do.
Rahul
OK so my Rose in this moment is just being here with all of you. In the past we've talked about how I was really hoping that you're going to be interested in doing leadership, and we've been doing, we've been exploring leadership together for the past few years. The Rose for me in this moment is just being open and learning from all of you because it's a wonderful experience to just get to learn your perspectives and what you're sharing. I would never have been able to learn this on my own, so it's a very rich moment. I love learning and so it's a Rose for me. Bud and Thorn? So for me, a thorn is transitioning out of my current clinical role. And it's a thorn because there's always uncertainty about what lies ahead. And will it be better than the past one? How will it be? What will it look like? And so it's a bud and thorn mixed in one, some days it's a bud and there's exploring new possibilities. And some days it's a thorn worrying about what happens ahead. So that's my Rose, Bud, and Thorn in one. Hopefully it's going to be a Rose, Bud, and Thorn in one soon and then Rose.
Maya
I feel I have a similar story with things starting to change and shift in my role down the road. And it's exciting. So there's a rose and I think doing this activity and thinking about leadership and because I'm talking about leadership all the time, my department has started to listen and is like sort of nudging me along that path, which in many ways I've avoided. I've always been like, I think we talked about this, I'm the boots on the ground, like, get stuff done. Maybe work in the background to get things done but not be the forward-facing leader in any way. So that's starting to move forward and I'm getting some opportunities. That's exciting. It also means leaving maybe some other pieces behind or to the side for a little while. So like that's a shift, of new buds.
Rahul
Yeah, new buds. And you gotta you gotta prune the plant then, for new buds to come. Oh, a new one.
Maya
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a great, yeah, that's excellent.
Rahul
So my experience with Rose, Bud, and Thorn, this was coming out of COVID where I am, I'm seeing I'm running courses and I'm seeing how disconnected everyone is and really looking for connection. And seeing that the value of education and what we do is not really in the content by itself, but it's really how we make the content come alive and we build this space and community for people to connect and support each other. So being really curious about the social learning aspect, I saw this blog post on Harvard-Macy Institute’s blog about someone using Rose, Bud, and Thorn in their classroom, and so I try. I start to try it out with my leadership course students. This was the first in-person course we ran after 2020, and we tested it out, and it starts with me sharing my Rose, Bud, and Thorn to give them an example of what it looks like. And then another student shares and goes a little bit more into sharing, a bit more vulnerable. And then the next one dives in and shares something even deeper, and suddenly the flavor of this room changes. There's some safety in that space. There's some risk taking, and so we go around this room. And it's a very different level of connection beyond the initial rituals. “Hi. Hello. How are you doing?” And people are seeing each other as real now, because they're not just sharing their highs, but they're sharing things they're scared about or things that are bothering them. So we come back the next week and the students ask me, can we start with that again? Then the interpersonal aspect kicks in because there's connections starting to be built. There's some trust with others who are listening to you when you're vulnerable and actually supporting that by not sharing that outside the room and maybe supporting you inside and outside the room like I've got your back even when we're outside this room. And in this whole course or community of students, then out of the many stories that are being shared, a bond and a community starts to build that just strengthens every time we meet and we do this together. So one of my roses with the Rose, Bud, and Thorn has been when I run into a student alumni in the cafeteria or somewhere and the first thing they'll ask me is do you want to share Rose, Bud, and Thorns. And immediately we're connected at a very different level than we would otherwise.
Pete
Yeah, that's nice. Well, they took that lesson away, right.
Rahul
And the lesson of growth mindset, I should say, because as you've said, the, you know, the buds, they emerge from the thorns, sometimes the buds become roses. Sometimes it's a rose, bud, and torn in one. And so there is a lesson of growth mindset that what is a thorn today, might become a bud or a rose down the line.
Pete
Great.
Maya
I think it's also, the way you describe it Rahul, it's also developing a ritual or a sort of tradition of doing that. Which then becomes part of like the culture of the classroom or the culture of a team, right? So thinking about how we use something like this, not just in our classroom, but right, how do we translate it? And we all take it out into, you know, the different teams that we work with. And like, I think I've just now already like internalized it enough that I just kind of throw it out there as a as a question, or someone will be telling a story and I'll be like, oh, that sounds like that's really budding for you and it just becomes a vocabulary that I guess ties back to the that idea of a growth mindset that we're always learning, that we're always kind of going through cycles of things are blooming. Maybe things are wilting.
Renee
I like that idea to use it in the conversation or feedback that you are giving to the other person, like you know. Ohh it looks like you got some roses going on right now, you know or however you want to frame it. Yeah, I think taking that concept and using it to generalize it into other parts of, other areas in our lives. And be able to plant those seeds for those to develop, you know that whole Rose, Bud and Thorn concept with other people. I think it's great. I feel like I've been experiencing that though with the social work department. It just hasn't been framed as Rose, Bud and Thorn, you know. It definitely creates community and it creates a safe space to be transparent and vulnerable to discuss your life experiences, but then also offers the space to be able to be guided to kind of like take a different perspective on what you think you may be experiencing. And then as you said, your thorns can turn into a bud, that turns into a rose.
Rahul
I'm curious what it looks like from a student or training perspective, either just within the same profession or across professions when this exercise plays out.
Amber
I mean, I've made it a point to always do some kind of check-in with my teams before we dive into whatever work we have to do and most frequently it is this Rose, Bud and Thorn exercise. But I think it's really important to have, like this check-in period because it's an outlet I think for students to speak to their peers or whoever might be in this space, to voice whatever is going on on their side of things. And also a chance to get to know everyone who's in the room. Right. Like teams work better when you know who you're working with. So I think it's such a vital, vital thing to have an exercise. And I mean Rose, Bud, and Thorn is an excellent exercise, but some kind of like thing that's getting people together and ready to work.
Renee
Mhm, collaborate.
Amber
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Pete
And I think it helped break down some of the mental models like you might say, “Oh my God, Rahul's a doctor. I'm sure everything's perfect in his life.” And when he shares, “Hey, I'm struggling here, here and here.” All of a sudden it kind of normalizes that, oh, he’s human.
Renee
Yes. Mhm. He's human too. Right. And he still shows up.
Amber
Yes, exactly.
Pete
Right. But it's having the courage to not lean on the hierarchy. And be like, you know, I'm just a person, and this is what I'm struggling with. This is what's blooming in my life right now and allowing others to see that, but also join in. And I think that's where everyone starts to build that community.
Rahul
Wow, well said. So it just connects us as humans rather than the hierarchies, titles, that we're all hiding behind.
Pete
Right, your roles, all that.
Renee
Right.
Maya
I think also, you know, Rose, Bud and Thorn, sort of, you know, in some ways you're talking about positives, and you're talking about negatives, and you're talking about the in-betweens, and the blooms, right. But it means that you don't get stuck on either side. It's not, “Oh, I'm bragging about all the wonderful things that are happening.” And it's not that I'm just venting and complaining about the challenges, right? It sort of forces you to structure and almost kind of pulls in almost the gratitude piece of like there are positive things happening. It's a maybe, and probably, an outgrowth of work and tending. It's not oh, it's just magically happened. I just got lucky, but ohh no, I've been helping something develop or working to build something along the way. Because I think you can kind of go in either direction, right? It can just become, you know, in a team setting, everyone's complaining, everything's difficult. And not also having weight, but there's some positive thing that happens, you know. So we did something great for one particular patient and our team can come together around that even if we're having a bad week with other issues.
Amber
Yeah. It also allows a time for those issues to be brought up too. Like you may not have otherwise known that someone on your team is struggling with something if they didn't bring up their thorn during that meeting. Now you know how you can handle that moving forward or how you'll support that person, or everyone who and and their particular thorn.
Rahul
Yeah, I'm also looking at it from habit design or a reflection perspective. And how would it look like if I just kept repeating the same thorn week after week after week. So it is prompting some agency, some call to action, if the same things are showing up again and again.
Renee
I feel like it's a, the word that came to me was adaptability, right? And if you're reflecting on if you're looking at something week to week and it's a thorn, thorn, thorn. It's just how adaptable, how flexible am I being? Thinking of the growth mindset, in my thinking and how am I contributing to the team that I'm a part of, right. You have to be able to be adaptable, things change as we all know, in healthcare patients could be good one day and then the next and you need to be able to adjust and to change with the changes. And if you have a coworker, a superior, whoever, and they're not showing up as their best selves for that moment as they did the week prior, I need to be able to adapt, and then to maybe even reflect on why you're showing up in this, you know in this way that you that's not what I'm used to experiencing you in that you know and how am I responding to the way you're showing up.
Pete
Right.
Maya
So I just want to thank everyone for sharing their Rose, Bud and Thorn experience and their actual Rose, Buds and Thorns. I feel like the whole, for those of you who aren't in the room with us at the moment, the whole temperature of the room changed. And Renee, who got voluntold to do this like, 3 days ago, totally relaxed and had so much to say.
Renee
I did.
Rahul
She's blooming. She's blooming.
Maya
Right. So we like, so you see it, we've got to, we've got to see it in action. So thank you for everyone in participating with us today.
Renee
Yeah.
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.