S2E13: Leadership Hacks from The Towers Team (feat. Jesse Wescott, Tim Smith, and Karisma Quintas)
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.
Maya
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Towers edition of Learning to Lead. The Towers is an innovative senior living community in New Haven. We are thrilled to welcome Jesse, Tim, and Karisma, the leadership team from The Towers.
Brooke
So, Tim, what is a tool or hack that you use to become a better leader?
Tim
So, I'm not sure if it's necessarily a hack, but teaching. Always taking the opportunity to teach those that you're leading, whatever that may be. Because leadership's not about being the best. It's about making everyone else better. I'm only going to be as good as the team that I'm leading. And if I have weak links or holes in the dam, then that's on me. If somebody doesn't know how to do something, it's because I haven't followed up with them. So always taking the time to teach people to make sure that they understand their roles and understand what the expectations are and then me as the leader to go back and inspect what I expect.
Maya
Fantastic.
Brooke
Yes, I think that is such a great hack. That's something that Dr. Anand has taught lots of my fellow classmates in our leadership class in medical school is that the leader is like setting the tone. So if you are trying to support your team, then they'll do better for you. So I think teaching them those tools is really great.
Jesse
So this is Jesse, and I will say that one of the hacks that I have tried to live by is to continually invest in yourself and be mindful of yourself. It's very easy in the field that we're in when you're a human caring for other humans to get burnt out. And I think you hear this over and over again about caregiver burnout or about doctor burnout. And so one of the things that I think is so important is understanding that the same way that we reference the towers as the envelope, your body is also the envelope. So when you think about your profession and you think about your career growth, you're only going to go as far as your machine is going to take you. So be mindful about what you're putting in your machine. And that comes in the form of nourishment, that comes in the form of learning, that comes in the form of your circle of peers. that comes in the form of finding a professional mentor and being courageous and loyal and asking those questions. And then once you've filled that cup, overfill it and find people who you can also mentor. And if you surround yourself with the right circle of folks in your personal and professional life, and you can give yourself the grace to know that you're not always going to get it right, but if you continually show up every day and just show up, be ready, you're going to find that you're going to be successful in your career, and you're going to find that you create this gravity where it's the universe or it's some other worldly power that bring people into your sphere that are going to make you better.
Karisma
This is Karisma. I'm not sure if it's a hack, but the way that I lead is I was reading up on the concepts, and I came across operationalized empathy. And it says it takes something emotionally heavy and turn it into structure, stable system that reduces chaos to build trust, both with the residents and the staff. And that went back, when I thought about that, I said, yeah, that sounds about right. And it kind of aligns with the quiet competence, right? Where you would lead steadily, stay grounded, bring calm. My belief is that you can't pour from an empty cup, so you have to fill yourself up with things that are good and zen-like, I guess, if you want to say that, so that you can pour that out and people will fall into place or emulate you. I don't know, that's the way that I run through my day. I come in and I put everything into its place. so that when things are thrown at me, I'm like, yeah, I can, let me break that down. In my head, I break it down quickly. And then done. Okay, yeah, it's not that serious. We're going to do this, and that. So I don't know if it's a hack, but that's how I work.
Maya
But leading with empathy, right? That's that value. That's the first line of what you think about. And then next you decide, okay, then what step do we take. But that empathy and calm is at the beginning. Well, thank you all for spending time with us here on Learning to Lead. We look forward to talking to you all again soon.
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.