S3E2: From Fixed to Growth: Reimagining Mindset in Leadership (feat. Erin Barry, PhD and Elizabeth Koltz, EdM)
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.
Rahul:
Welcome listeners. I'm your host, Rahul Anand, and with me today are Maya.
Maya:
Hello.
Rahul:
Pete.
Pete:
Hello everyone.
Rahul:
And Brooke.
Brooke:
Hello.
Rahul:
Today's the day we've been really excited and looking forward to sharing with you this entire season. Imagine a world in which the best leadership experts come together to share their insights and reflections from a life-changing book or article so that you can use it right away to become a better leader. Well, today we're excited to share our platform with Erin Barry and Elizabeth Koltz, who are taking this concept to the next level. Erin and Beth, welcome. Allow me the honor of introducing you to our listeners. Dr. Erin Barry is an associate professor in the Department of Health Professions Education at the Uniform Services University. She's a health professions education researcher who designs curriculum, develops assessments and studies, leadership, followership and teamwork in healthcare. Erin is an ICF certified leadership coach and co-founder of the International Leadership Association's Healthcare Leadership Community. She has co-authored more than 80 papers in book chapters as well as three books including Leading Self and Others with Emotional Intelligence. Erin earned her PhD in Health Professions Education from Marick University, focusing on leadership and followership within healthcare teams, and she's been with USC since 2010. Erin is passionate about helping healthcare teams lead and learn more effectively. Erin, welcome to Learning to Lead.
Erin:
Thank you, appreciate it. Looking forward to talking more with everyone.
Rahul:
Elizabeth Koltz is the Senior Director of Instructional and curriculum design and an assistant professor at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Beth works with course and clerkship directors, faculty, and even students so that they can use engaging, effective strategies including technology and active learning strategies to help learners achieve desired outcomes. Beth also leads the development of the School of Medicine internal electives and teaches both curriculum development and introductory medical education research electives. She also teaches and conducts research on feedback, metacognition team dynamics and leadership skills, and teaches faculty development in these areas. She has presented in numerous regional, national and international conferences. Beth received both her BA in English literature and EdM in adult learning and educational technology at Boston University. I've personally known Beth for seven years now, and believe me, she has the power to turn any team into a highly functioning team with her exceptional leadership skills. Beth, welcome.
Beth:
Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here.
Rahul:
So listeners, we hope this is the first in a recurring theme where Erin and Beth can help us translate the evidence from articles and books that everyone should know about into meaningful bite-sized pieces that can help everyone become a better leader. Erin and Beth, we'll hand over the platform to you so that you can guide our listeners through this episode. Let's start with your story. So how did you get into the field of leadership?
Erin:
So I think leadership itself, how we got into it, long journey for me. I started as a biomedical engineer, got my undergrad and master's in there and had been working managing a lab. And in working with my PI, he was very into leadership, and we shifted departments and started building out a leadership program for our medical students here at the university. And so from there it just kind of started spiraling, lots of different ideas, lots of things to talk about, and it just kept going. And for me, the followership part really was a big part of what got me into the leadership world.
Beth:
And for me, I had started out working in the corporate world and had done a lot of instructional and curricular design with corporations for managers, leaders, and using my education skills, but I picked up on everything that was being taught to the managers and leaders and started applying it to my own life and did this for many years. And then when I moved into medical education and healthcare, I just decided to continue with it because I could see that there was a need and a benefit for year two.
Rahul:
Well, we're grateful that your paths crossed this way into the path of leadership and teaching leadership as well. So tell us what do you have for our listeners today?
Erin:
Yeah, so as we've kind of been talking about different ideas, we've thrown out so many ideas because I think leadership, there's so many directions you can go in so many ways to apply it, but when we kept talking more and more, the growth mindset really came out as such a theme. And so we figured we'd start there because I think it is a thread that's gone through a lot of the episodes that you guys have done already and it just really felt like a great way to start and really dig into that topic. So we wanted to start with a bit of a story, and so I'll share that when I was in college, again, I majored in biomedical engineering, which is not known to be a very easy major, turned out to be more electrical engineering as I found out the hard way. And so during my sophomore year when you're really getting into those engineering classes, I hit what felt like a wall and I failed four out of the five midterms and I mean I failed those midterms.
And so it was one of those moments that really shakes your confidence. It's the first time that failure really hits in a place that it hurts. And so I remember sitting in my dorm room thinking, I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I should change majors, all the spirals going through your head. So I really got stuck in this loop of shame and self-doubt replaying all my mistakes, convinced that I was an imposter, I shouldn't be here, I'm not smart enough. And so what I didn't realize at the time is that I was really operating in a very fixed mindset. I thought that that failure meant it was a very permanent thing about me rather than it's just feedback on my approach. What I had been doing had not been working. And so eventually once I clawed my way back out of that spiral, I decided to try again.
So I started asking for more help, doing more study groups, changing my study habits, and little by little things changed and I graduated with my engineering degree. But looking back, I wish I had gotten out of that spiral sooner. I think that that was what really stuck with me is that if I'd asked for help sooner, I wouldn't have been in such a deep hole that I had dug myself into. So going back, if I could go back and tell my younger self, you're not alone. Everyone's going to struggle through all of these things and it's okay to reach out for help. And I think with failure, what matters most is what you do next. And so I think that was what really when we were talking through different things, that was what really inspired our thought of starting with the growth mindset there.
Beth:
We started looking at different literature that would support this growth mindset. The first thing we found was a Harvard Business online blog, and it was called Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset: What’s the Difference? The article is based on Carol Dweck's book, which is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Dr. Dweck studied many individuals for a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. She used electronics and was able to monitor brain activity. And through that brain activity she saw with those folks that had a growth mindset, their brain was signaled When they were presented with an opportunity, they actually were able to see it as something they could do that they were able to do. And there were a lot of lights going off, but with the fixed mindset folks, if they were presented with the same opportunity and maybe these folks did not have any type of training or were not aware, those folks were like, I can't do that.
That's not something I'm able to do. And so what she studied was those that were able to have a growth mindset, they were more resilient. They were able to go forward with believing even if they didn't have the training, believing that they could achieve things that they hadn't really thought about before. And the static mindset or the fixed mindset, those folks were not able to do it. And she did a lot with parents and helping teach children and helping them instill a growth mindset in their children. So this is an important skill to learn for individuals and for leaders, particularly because in the online Harvard Business School article, the entrepreneurship focus that the article had, it's relevant to leadership, to entrepreneurship and in helping people succeed. Definitely helpful for students and in the current state of healthcare for all of us to think about a different way to think and re-imagining how we can think.
So one of the things that I want to talk about was just a little bit about my own experience with this fixed mindset or growth mindset. And it was my past experience working in learning and organizational development. I've had to work with a lot of groups and in medical education as well. And I was working with a group and I always came across, I know I'm an expert in this, in education and everything, and I want to help everyone learn how to do education principles and learn to teach differently. And so I've come across a certain way and in my mind I'm giving information that's very helpful for people and for faculty. But sometimes faculty would use this information and they would do well and they try a new method and their method would work really well in the classroom and we would celebrate other times, particularly when I was working with larger groups and helping them learn to develop curriculum a little bit in a different way, I might not be able to achieve that.
There were obstacles. So I hope was thinking about the growth mindset and sat back and really started to reimagine how my mindset might work differently. And in thinking about this, I opened myself up a little bit more and opened myself up to the people that I was trying to work with and trying to put myself in their shoes, trying to really work on the dynamic. And a lot of it is listening, as Erin pointed out, listening is very important. So I continued to work with them over time, and it did take several sessions much longer than we thought it would to get to the real root of why people would not move forward with this. And once we were able to identify that obstacle, we could then move forward. But I was convinced that if I didn't step back and think about my mindset of telling people how to do this as opposed to really just opening it up and listening to them and working with them, that we would not have gone forward and being able to achieve what we're achieving. So I think that's important.
Erin:
I really like the points that you brought up, especially around the kids. I feel like that's where I see a lot of this really happening in my own life, even more than my own. But with their lives, you start really seeing that mindset and how they can deal with different things. Things are hard and in their mind, even those things that we don't see as hard, they're hard for them. And so getting someone to see when a mistake is made, changing the wording, the way you're talking to yourself of I'm a failure and sticking in that fixed mindset, I'm a failure versus changing it and saying, I made a mistake now and I think it's now what am I going to do here to change, to get better and to grow? What am I going to learn from this situation? And I think kids, it's always difficult. It's difficult to get them to see that it's okay to fail because again, as speaking for myself in those moments where I had failures in college, where I've had failures in life, it's not an easy place to sit in. But I think if we can take a moment and stop and reflect and recognize, we learn so much more when we fail than through those successions. Success feels really great and we want those, but we're going to learn so much in that moment of failure and how we deal with those problems.
Beth:
And so the awareness that if you have a fixed mindset or any type, the awareness of your mindset, if you come across a failure or you come across an issue, is really the key to this, that we all have fixed mindsets or things that we use every day, and that's okay. And Carol Dweck mentions that the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset isn't about doing this all the time in your life. That there are times when you need a growth mindset. There are times when you need a fixed mindset. And so that's okay that if we apply this when we really need it to step back and say, maybe I need a little mindset adjustment, maybe I can reimagine how things can be that that's helpful. So I do think that it's not something we need to use all the time, but it's definitely something to think about when you come across obstacles.
Rahul:
Beth, I appreciate you said that about all of us having a fixed mindset and a growth mindset at various times. It's one of the things that really resonated with me when I was reading her book, because she talks about certain triggers that will bring the fixed mindset into play, like a big failure or a loss or a rejection or a task that's really big or maybe a task that's really hard, or even comparing yourself to someone who might be way ahead of you in terms of their accomplishments and thinking, I'm never going to do that. So I love that part of her book because she talks about giving your fixed mindset persona a name I named mine, the judge. Love it. That's great. Giving your growth mindset persona a name as well. So I named it the coach, nurturing coach. It just underscores the point that the fixed mindsets are there because they are defense against doing harm to ourselves, but then they do get in our way and we need ourselves and even maybe others around us to coach us from one to the other.
Maya:
Beth, I was really struck as you were telling your story about you were teaching other folks, you're helping instruct other folks about leadership because you are the expert in leadership, but also recognizing sometimes our expertise almost becomes a crutch, right? We're talking at rather than listening because what we're comfortable with, I know it can deliver this package, but it's about recognizing the folks that we're trying to lift up and inform. The other thing that I always, I don't know who gave me this piece of advice, but if we're working harder than our participants, so if we're working harder than our classes or we're working harder than the folks that we're trying to coach, then we're not giving them a chance to shine and let them grow. But that means we have to grow and to be willing to learn from the people that, oh, maybe they don't know the stuff I know, but they know a lot of other things that they have to bring us. So that openness I think is so important.
Erin:
I love those points. I think that it really brings out too, especially in those moments where others are struggling, you're trying to provide that help. I'm a fixer. I like to try to fix things. I'm an engineer. That's how my brain works. My husband is the same way, but there are times when I may not want someone else to fix my own problem or my kids don't want me to fix their problem, or a student comes and sometimes it takes that moment of the listening part of hearing them say something and then trying to, instead of offering the advice or the solution, trying to let them work through that problem for themselves, not respond for myself, okay, well what's going on here? We try to dig in more and see what else is happening for them so that they can find their own way forward because my path may not be the path that's going to work for other people. And so I think it's always fun to play that role of where should we be stepping in some of these places and how do we lead other people? Because I think the mentoring, the coaching part of it is it's very much what's going to work for you. It's your life that you're living. It's not going to harm me in any way the direction you pick, but it's going to impact you. So how do you want to move forward?
Beth:
Such a great point. One of the other things that came out and really resonated with me was I recently attended a leadership class, and I never really thought about this, but in the class, the emphasis was don't think that your mindset is just in your mind. Don't think that it doesn't affect others, that your mindset, your thoughts are in your mind obviously, but when you have a particular mindset, a strong mindset that maybe is not allowing you to solve an issue, that that mindset comes across with your behaviors. So don't always believe that that mindset, even though it's your mind and your thoughts, that doesn't influence your behaviors. And so that was one of the things that I needed to do was not just change, realize that I had a mindset change, but also that I had to create new behaviors. I had to create new actions that stemmed from that, that I needed to happen. So that was an eyeopener. Oh, yes. Not just in my head that I'm actually doing things that people know book. Yeah, it's there. So it's good to think about and the way you interact with people. That was my lesson from this too.
Erin:
I was going to say, I think, and it's also interesting to recognize in those moments that you're not alone and we're going to need the feedback from other people in those moments when maybe we didn't realize our mindset was not the most productive for the team or for other members around us. And so how do we get people to help us in those moments, catch us and push us, Hey, we need to shift gears a little bit here. This isn't working. So how do you find those people in the groups that you work within that can be your person to call you out on some of those items?
Maya:
You're making me remember also just working with team leaders who had that more rigid mindset and how it would feel for us as a team walking into rounds or that team meeting and then it gets everyone else. It's a physical, and even remembering, I'm having a physical reaction to what that environment was like as opposed to, okay, we're all coming in together to kind of put our ideas together and see what we're going to come up with today or see how things are going with our patients as opposed to like, okay, we all better be prepared to toe the line. And there are
Erin:
Times when you have to toe the line, but creating that learning environment, it can make a huge difference. If you come in with a very fixed, this is the only way to do it, failure is not acceptable. That changes how you can approach people. It's fascinating to watch.
Pete:
One of the things I think I use to help when educating the students is I never think of myself as the expert, and it helps me stay open and I can listen and hear them instead of thinking I know it all and bring it to them. But yeah, it's a balance sometimes in school.
Erin:
That's a great point. It comes up in coaching a lot. Whose problem is it? That's one of my favorite questions, especially when people are spiraling with a lot of the things that they have going on and this and that, and it's like, who's problem? Is this your problem to take care of? Or is this someone else's?
Pete:
Right? Always my students like, you're smarter than I'm, I just have 30 years of experience, so just take a deep breath and I try to get them to relax and move forward. Sometimes they get paralyzed in their fixed mindset.
Erin:
I think that paralyzation is really, it's interesting. Again, it's that moment of how do you help someone when they have frozen, get past that? How do you dig yourself out of your hole? You internally yourself, but as a leader, how can we help other people in those places where they're stuck? I think that that can be a challenge. And finding ways, again, to ask the question, get them to reframe again, going away from that, I'm a failure to, it's a mistake. We all make mistakes. Let's normalize that mistakes happen, and we're going to learn from this now. What can we do to help you now? So I think the questions that we really want to hear are your guys' thoughts on is how do you apply this? How do we change when we're stuck in that fixed mindset? How do we jump to the growth mindset? I'd love to get your guys' thoughts and what's worked for you.
Pete:
I can go first. I don't know. No, the safe space, having safe space where you can just be vulnerable and make those mistakes and have a good laugh or everyone learns from it very quickly, but I'm stuck. I used to have a very growth mindset when I was younger, and I find myself leaning towards the fixed mindset as I get older, and I don't know if that's just life experience or you've been hurt in the past or stuff like that. So it's a journey I think, to figure it all out. And then I'm trying to stay positive and optimistic for the students right now because I was, oh, you're Pollyanna and you're all this when I was younger, but I mean, I have taken on many obstacles and it was a growth mindset that did help me, was in the army. I wanted to get educated.
So I went to night school and I had the right leader be like, all right, go do something. Take the truck, go to college, come back into the field and you take the first watch. So stuff like that and setting that all up. And then I was like, I want to be a pilot. So I started getting my private pilot license and it was nothing got in the way. I just, you figured it out, right? You're like, all right, I need whatever, $50 to go fly for an hour on an E four budget. I was challenged, but it didn't stop me. Now I'm like, do I want to do that? That sounds painful. I see all the obstacles and I don't know if it's just life experience or not.
Erin:
That's a really interesting point and how that might change over life with all of our experiences. And I almost wonder if having the awareness in those moments of changing our mindset or being aware of why we might be doing things a certain way is a helpful situation. Sometimes it is protective in different ways.
Maya:
Yeah, I think it depends what the stakes are because at different points, say either as students or in our career from early to mid to senior, there's places where you can take risks and be open. And there are places like, well, no, I just have to deliver. This is the way I have to do it. I can't have flexibility. And I think it's also maybe there are areas where I can have flexibility. I can have flexibility now within my classroom. I've been doing that for a decent bit of time now, and I feel like I'm comfortable enough that if I fail, I'm not going to completely fall in my face there. But there are other areas where I'm like, no, I still feel, I was thinking about our podcast actually yesterday and realizing there are places where I feel really confident and experience in other places. I still feel like a newbie, and I'm not a newbie. I'm not a newbie in social work. I'm not a newbie in teaching at this point, but yet I still carry a little bit of that, which has both the ability to have growth, but also the ability to be like, no, I still need to be really careful that other people may still be judging. So it's really a tricky, I think it depends on what sector of our lives we're talking about.
Erin:
I think the context is huge in the situation of what is happening in these different spaces for us in those moments. And when that imposter syndrome kicks in different places, even when we might have been doing it forever, it still kicks in. It still surfaces every now and then.
Maya:
Brooke, as a student, I'm curious about this from your point of view.
Brooke:
I know I was thinking, I was like, I don't know if this is just going to be my perspective versus every student. Probably not everybody, but for me, I'm just sitting here listening, thinking that I did not realize that I think I have a very fixed mindset, which is not great. But I think that this is something that I was thinking about with school. Obviously you're in a learning environment, so it's a space where you're meant to fail. But something that I struggle with is I can fail a few times in a day. For example, I can fail this thing, fail this thing, and I'll be like, okay, I can come back from that. But then it's like after so many failures, they start to, I feel like trap a little bit where it's like, well, maybe this isn't just a failure. Maybe this is really because of me. So I'm wondering how do you get out of that or keep yourself from getting trapped in that?
Erin:
I think that's such a good question. I don't know if there's a great answer to that. I think a lot of times it's the reflection part. And I think to me sometimes it's catching yourself in those moments of recognizing why is this such a big deal? What is this? Why was this the stone that broke everything? And so it's in those moments of, okay, pause for a minute. What else is going on? Because clearly this wasn't as big a thing as maybe half these other things that have just happened, but this one, it just took me there. And so I think being able to pause in those moments, and it's easier said than done to not spiral, but try to catching yourself in those moments. You can reflect on everything that's happened. Be sad when failure happens. There's nothing wrong with it. Naming those emotions that you have when that happens. But I think it's trying to stop that negative self-talk that we have with ourselves and try to really reframe. And we can keep growing in those moments. But again, easier said than done. I think we all find ourselves in those places that say, I definitely still do as well. So you're not alone in that.
Brooke:
Yeah, that's reassuring right now, listening to everybody. I'm like, oh, I guess it isn't just me. Even people that are aware of it and know about it, struggle to
Beth:
And be kind to yourself. Don't just stop, pause as Erin says, just pause, reflect, and give yourself a little kindness. You've got to break it. You've got to break that cycle, whatever you're going through. So with kindness really I think works sometimes.
Erin:
And I think just recognizing we're not all alone in these situations. I think sometimes when we fail, there's so much shame around that failure, that recognizing that there's probably a lot of other people in the same seat as us or have been through the same seat. There's so many things that have happened to everyone. And so having those people that you feel close enough with that you can go to and just let it all out. Sometimes just saying it and it can get that better. But I said we were in a session this morning and someone brought up the question of, if you're going to say such negative things to yourself, what's your best friend saying to you? How do you get the best friend in your head to give yourself that pep talk that you're not failing, that you can make yourself out of this. It's going to be okay.
Maya:
I love that phrase, best friend in your head.
Rahul:
Yeah. Brooke, I really appreciate your recognizing and vulnerability in saying that because I'm thinking of the same thing that I have a fixed mindset in many areas where I would like to move it to a growth mindset. And I'm remembering what Beth Frady had taught us at some point of time about mindset. And her example was of firing the gremlin and hiring the princess from which I'm thinking of how to quieten down or fire the judge and hire the nurturing coach. So I think that's one piece of the puzzle, just our internal piece still, I think how do we take this from an academic concept, which is nice to know, to actually something that is useful in our own life. And I think there is more beyond just the mindset. The mindset is like a seed, but it does need the right soil and conditions for it to actually germinate and flower.
So I'm thinking of something that's coming to mind as I was reading this book in the last three weeks. Another event was happening on the side. So I have a fixed mindset in not being able to dance. So my entire life have been really awkward, self-conscious, cannot do it to save my life. So last month we run into this situation where my son wants to perform at an event, and as luck will have it, he doesn't have his peers to form the team with him. So he comes up with an idea that let's do this as a family. It would be a unique concept and we can do it as a family, not as a group of peers. So he comes up with a song, convinces the entire family, I have to be roped in. And so I'm coaching myself, firing the judge and trying to hire the coach and say, okay, this is not about how I'm going to perform.
It's about how I can support my son and I can do that. So I embark on the journey. So I think the first step here for me was really connecting with my why and picking up the motivation that yes, now this is about my son. And so I have the courage to take a risk where I might have been burned many times before or failed or been judging myself. So what happens next is we pick the song and we start to practice. And I'm terrible. My 8-year-old teaches me step by step, shows me the recordings, helps me make notes so I can remember the sequence, gives me feedback and gives me some autonomy as well to practice in my own quiet time. And then we rehearse together and we get a little bit better. So I think here the next piece from picking an area was going into a supportive environment, including people in systems.
And my kids, believe me, had read the playbook for how to apply path goal theory of leadership on me. So giving direction, encouragement, support, practice feedback, everything you need inspiration to keep going. I think the other piece is chunking a very big task that may appear big to us, maybe not to others, into a small next step. What's the next step? Maybe I cannot do the full thing, but can I do one step? Can I take the next step and the next step and keep going? And thankfully it worked out really well at the main event. So now we have some memories that we can watch and bond together. And I think what I learned from the ending of it is that it does take some reflection in self-coaching, and then you celebrate the small wins and you don't stop at one because then it's your fixed mindset coming back. But you think, how can I now take the next step and build on this, whether it's in the same arena, or can I take this to the next arena of my life and use these lessons that I've learned? So I would say in response to what you're saying, I think we all struggle with this. This is the human condition, and if we can shift our mindsets even in one task a day, that's really important to our purposes, that's a win.
Beth:
So Rahul, are you now going to be taking dance lessons?
Rahul:
I am already. So what we're doing next is that they'll pick a song every few days and they'll say, let's do one step from, so I've convinced them, let's do one step from the song, not the entire song. And of course, they're great at it and they enjoy it themselves. And my journey is to just be there and not be conscious and just enjoy the time with them.
Erin:
I love the point too that kind of keeps coming up in some of your stories is recognizing that sometimes when we see ourself as failing at something or that fixed mindset of I'm not good at something, we're so focused on ourselves that even when we're doing it, no one else is really focused on us. It's more in our head. And so how do we get out of our own head? I mean, I am definitely fall into that category all the time. And so I think that it's trying to recognize it's not all about me. We're making memories, we're doing different things, but even still, the spotlight's probably still not on me. I'm making more of a deal out of certain things than other people are.
Rahul:
And I ended up listening to the book and leaving with the impression that our own lives can be so much better. We're just terrified of letting ourselves lose our lives. Could be so much better if we just do not worry as much about ourselves.
Erin:
Exactly. I love it.
Maya:
I think I got that lesson because I lived and worked a good chunk of my life in New York City and I ride the New York City subway and I would worry about like, oh, am I wearing the right thing or whatever. And then I look around me and I'm like, why do I need to care? Everybody here is different. Everyone has a different vibe. Some people are fashionable in this way, some people are kooky in that way. Nobody really cares about what any one of us is doing. We're all just part of this great mix. And so then I just try to remember I'm just a person on the subway.
Erin:
I love that. I think it's recognizing where we fit in and try not to get hung up on all the different things that are in our heads. How do we calm that voice in our head that's talking badly to us? Yeah.
Maya:
I guess what I was thinking about from Raul's story about moving out from you to your family and moving out from ourselves and even our teams to our organizations, and I know I talk with my students about the idea of whether or not they're in a learning organization or not, and I think as we talk about improving healthcare or re-imagining healthcare, how do we help make the environments that we're working in or that we're sending our students out into more like that as opposed to going out into very rigid settings where you stay in your lane and you don't agitate?
Erin:
Right. Similar conversation from today that came up of talking about culture change.
We can't change big cultures very quickly. That takes time if it's going to happen at all. I think one of the things that always sticks out to me, and I try to remind myself, especially when things are difficult, is pausing to have those moments where recognizing I have influence within my small sphere of people that I can work with that I interact with on different days. And so how can I use my own influence in those situations to really do something good, to be happy, to have a fun time to collaborate with people that I want to be working with and try to remove some of that negativity. We all know it's there, but maybe we can't change it. So how do we keep the positivity in those situations?
Pete:
Yeah, I think you are spot on by having the right focus on what can I do around me? Because what I got stuck in when I was younger is this healthcare system is broken, I'm going to fix it. And I burned out and did a lot of different things. But I think trying to, how can I make this room that we're in right now, the six of us a little bit better is a great way to focus on it. My scope might be too big, but I just want to make everything better for everybody, but I probably need to start with the microcosm of the smaller environment. That's great.
Rahul:
Pete, I agree with you. The unit of change is the relationships and the small groups that we work in. That's where change is going to begin.
Maya:
Have either of you been part of organizations where you've sort of been part of trying to bring about culture change though, in terms of this idea of growth and being open? I know I've been part of different, working in different healthcare settings and been part of leadership or even just sort of team building activities, and I'm wondering maybe what you all have seen or been part of.
Beth:
I have, and it can be pretty dynamic when it's done in certain ways. I think that the big thing is starting and having a plan. And I think about expressing and communicating about the culture and vision that you want to have and bringing people into it from various places so that you're not just doing it with a few people in the same location, but you're kind of bringing people from different aspects that might agree with you or go along with the same thing and are willing to try to bring it forward in different departments or different locations. So I think that it's got to be the spark is lit here and then you're bringing it to different places and it depends on what you're doing, but it has to be a culture of acceptance, of positivity, of this idea of growth. I think the biggest thing is acceptance and just keep growing and improving and having that desire to continue to improve and being open that failure is okay. That's the hard part I think in this field. Is it okay to fail? Where is it okay to fail? But I think that yes, it can work. I'm thinking we've done a lot with feedback and with learning, using feedback to learn to improve and really having everyone kind of be on the same page is important. You can brand things. You can create your own little emoji or logo to keep it visually going. There's lots of things you can do.
Erin:
Yeah, I think yes, I feel like change is always happening, is really what it comes down to. And a great place to throw my disclaimer, these are my opinions, not those in my institution, department of war. So I think that it's really difficult at times to create that change, especially when you're a small group. How do you get that influence to grow bigger? And I think it really comes to getting that institutional support in a lot of ways of trying to find places where the higher up leadership supports you in these different things to recognize what failure looks like. Because I think sometimes if you don't have that or if your higher up leadership sees certain things as failures, it becomes really difficult and becomes a very hard environment to work on and to try to enact a lot of different changes and different things. I think we've struggled over the long course of developing a leadership curriculum. What does that look like? How do we adapt and change? And what does failure look like? And if we have 180 medical students that we're teaching and three don't like something, are we going to completely change it for those three versus the other 177? And so it's really interesting to look at what is failure and how does your leadership react to that. I think that that's where sometimes you can have some of those friction points in the organization itself.
Rahul:
Erin and Beth, thank you so much for a great conversation on re-imagining our mindsets. It's been a joy and a privilege. I'd love to ask you if you have a message that you'd like our listeners to walk away with.
Erin:
It's a great question. I think there's been so many good things talked about today. I'm trying to think of what is the one thing that's sticking out to me. And I think again, that you're not alone is really what it comes down to with the mindset that trying to really get away from that idea that failure is only happening to you, finding others to help you in these moments so that we can keep moving forward and you're not stuck in your little hole that you've created.
Rahul:
Beth, what about you?
Beth:
Yeah, and I would say if you're really having an obstacle, a challenge with a task or relationships, that stepping back, pausing and just being aware, is it a mindset that you have that you might want to think differently about, start to think differently? And so we want to kind of address the audience of how do you think you can reimagine things for yourself?
Rahul:
Fantastic. Brooke, Maya, Pete, what are you taking away?
Pete:
I think I'm taking away, we all have this mindset, all these challenges, and because a lot of my backstory, I was in the army and then so I have this hierarchy in my head like, oh, the leader, whoever that is, the doctor, the general, they know it all, and I'm just here being a cast member in their play kind of thing. And just understanding it's human nature. And I think it's just understanding and accepting that, but being vulnerable and being like, ah. And that's tough for me at times.
Maya:
I think my takeaway here connects back to the self-talk conversation we were having. And that's, I'm the social worker in the rooms, of course, that's where my head goes. But one of you had asked earlier about how do we make that leap from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset? And I think the self-talk is where that happens first, right? Recognizing, wait, I'm really getting stuck, Brooke, what you were talking about. I'm getting stuck and I'm kind of beating myself up and it's a really hard thing to do, but how do I catch that phrase and change it and say it differently and give myself a different mantra to carry forward that's more encouraging, more positive, or that I didn't do this so well, but next time I'm going to do it differently. And that's enough. It sometimes has to be the self-talk, not like you're the best, but just, no, I'm going to get there eventually, and it has to be the message. So I feel like that's the bridge between those two mindsets.
Brooke:
Yeah, I agree. I think going off that, my takeaway is that your mindset, you have control over it and you can change it, which is a really good thing, but it is really hard. So that's something I'm going to try to work on.
Rahul:
I echo that, and Beth and Erin, thank you again for helping take our podcast to the next level. We appreciate it and look forward to many more episodes of collaboration. Listeners, we'd love to hear from all of you as well. How are you using this mindset shift in your life? Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, take care and keep learning and leading.
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.