.png)
Humans Leading
Welcome to Humans Leading, the podcast for high-achieving women looking to live less stressed, more satisfying lives. Humans Leading is hosted by Dr. Jillian Bybee, a busy pediatric ICU physician, mom, coach, and creative who uses what she's learned from recovering from burnout twice to help women craft lives and careers they don't need a vacation from.
Join Dr. Bybee and her inspiring guests as they tackle essential topics such as perfectionism, limiting beliefs, stress management, what it means to be human, and more. Each episode is packed with actionable advice to empower you to prioritize your own wellbeing and create the life you truly desire.
If you're ready to start putting yourself on your own priority list and lead a more fulfilling life, tune in to Humans Leading and take the first step toward transformation.
Humans Leading
Leadership Takes Work...ing on Yourself with Dr. Jess Bunin
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
At any moment, whether we have a title or not, we are leading ourselves. And, as today’s guest Dr. Jess Bunin reminds us in this conversation, “at all times, we are leaders and followers.”
However, leadership is not an innate trait. It’s not something that we have or don’t have. It’s something that we need to work on if we want to get better.
In this episode of the Humans Leading podcast, Dr. Bunin shares her journey to leadership, the importance of having a feedback partner, the 4 categories she uses to handle feedback, developing self-awareness, the importance of trust, and her new book, “Self-Awareness and Trust: Leading Healthcare Teams from the Inside Out.”
This conversation was so energizing for me, and I know that you’ll love it too.
You can find more about Dr. Bunin here
- Website: www.jessbuninmd.com
- Speaker page: https://speaker.innovationwomen.com/user/20706
- All Levels Leadership: www.alllevelsleadership.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-bunin/
You can also find me here:
- Blog: Humans Leading | Jillian Bybee
- Instagram: Jillian Bybee, MD (@lifeandpicu)
- LinkedIn: Jillian Bybee, MD | LinkedIn
- Threads: @LifeandPICU
- Website: Contact — Jillian Bybee, MD (jillianbybeemd.com)
If you’re ready to kickstart your journey (or your team's journey) to a less stressed life, I’m ready to help you! You can get in touch about 1:1 coaching or inviting me to facilitate a workshop for your group, get in touch via my website.
Welcome And Why Leadership Matters
SPEAKER_00Hello, and welcome to Humans Leading, a podcast for overwhelmed people looking to live less stressed, more satisfying lives. I'm Dr. Jillian Bibe, a pediatric critical care medicine physician, mom, certified stress management coach, and wellness trainer who uses my personal experience with burnout recovery to help others do the same. This podcast is for anyone who is feeling frustrated or overwhelmed with their current way of living and looking for practical ways to make an impact in their lives today. If you're looking to feel less stressed, less stuck, and more fulfilled in your life, this is your podcast. I'm glad you're here. I wanted to be clear about our humanity as leaders and as healthcare workers or other professionals. And more importantly, I really wanted to be clear that I fully believe that every person on this planet is a leader. At any moment, whether we have a title or not, we're leading ourselves. And as today's guest, Dr. Jess Bunan, reminds us in this conversation, at all times, we are both leaders and followers. However, leadership is not an innate trait. It's not something that we have or don't have. It's something we have to work on if we want to get better. In this episode of the Humans Leading Podcast, Dr. Bunan shares her journey to leadership and the importance of having a feedback partner, the four categories she uses to handle feedback developing self-awareness, the importance of trust, and her new book, Self-Awareness and Trust, Leading Healthcare Teams from the Inside Out. This conversation was so energizing for me, and I know you'll love it too. There are so many practical takeaways to get you started or keep you going in your leadership journey. Here's a little bit more about Dr. Jess Bunan. Retired Colonel Jessica Bunan is a critical care physician and a professor of medicine and health professions education. She's held leadership positions in military medicine throughout the physician life cycle of undergraduate medical education, graduate medical education, and faculty development. She's a co-founder of All Levels Leadership, a company designed to revolutionize healthcare leadership training through coaching and consulting. Her book, Self-Awareness and Trust, Leading Healthcare Teams from the Inside Out, was published by the American Association of Physician Leaders in August 2026, and it's available for major retailers. You can find more about Jess in the show notes and also a link to buy her
Meet Dr. Jess Bunan
SPEAKER_00book. Now let's get into the episode. So I'm so excited to have you here on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Jillian. I'm thrilled to be here.
SPEAKER_00Could you tell the little the listeners a little bit more about yourself?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I have a assorted past of being a psychiatrist in the past. I did a combined internal medicine and psychiatry residency and then chant transferred over to being a critical care doc. But consequently, um I bring a little bit of a psychiatric tone to everything I do, which has made for a very interesting life. So I bring a little bit of psychiatry into the ICU and end-of-life meetings and team building. I bring a bit of it into education and teaching and a little bit into my life, but don't tell my friends.
SPEAKER_00Don't worry, I won't tell them that, just like I always ask people not to tell them when I'm coaching them. Some people notice, obviously, people who've been coached or gone to therapy before. But it's really helpful to use those skills, which I'm sure we'll get into today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would love that.
SPEAKER_00So in preparing to talk to you, I start started talking, or I started reading your newsletter. Um, and I was struck by one of the first paragraphs in the first newsletter that you wrote. Um, and so I'm going to read it and then I'll ask you just to expand a little bit on it. Uh, you said, for more than two decades, I served as an army physician. I cared for patients in intensive care units and in war zones, and I taught younger doctors how to lead. Somewhere in those years, I learned a lesson that took me longer than it should have to understand. The best leaders are rarely the loudest or the most certain. They are the ones who have done the hard work inside themselves first. And the reason I love this is because I think I've been that person too. Um, and you know, when we look around medicine, but especially now when we look around our country and the
Quiet Leadership In High Stakes Care
SPEAKER_00world, a lot of times people think leadership means being the loudest or being the most sure. So I was curious, you know, what did your journey look like to get to this? And what do you mean by it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, my leadership journey started at West Point. I was um a 90s grad. Um, so our classes were about 10% women. I think I learned during that time that leading meant being one of the guys, which meant to me sounding like one of the guys and acting like one of the guys so that I could exert myself as strongly as they did. So I think my perspective started then. And then I moved into my medical school years. I went to Tulane for medical school, didn't really get much leadership training or do much leadership stuff there, and then moved on into residency. And I was fortunate enough to have some leadership training during my combined internal medicine psychiatry residency program. But during that time, also, I was a patient. And I was a patient a couple of times. So I had thyroid cancer first and then Hodgkin's disease. So I got to see what it meant to lead healthcare teams from both sides of the bedrail, from the physician perspective as well as from the patient perspective. And you can really clearly tell the leaders that are loved and beloved by their team, and the leaders where your team doesn't really want to be there and is waiting to get away from you from both sides of the bed rail. You can really tell that. And I found that it wasn't the leaders who came in and took over the code and were the loudest. Um, it wasn't the leaders who were stating the same thing over and over again to prove how certain they were. It was often the ones who deferred to the expertise in the room or deferred to someone who had written a different article at one point or had a little bit of a different expertise than they did. And that, I think, is what leadership is about. It's not about proving that you know everything, it's about building that team around you where they have the confidence to speak up when they know better than you do, when they have the moral courage to correct you and you need to, and you've set that up for them specifically and intentionally, and where you can optimize the contribution of everyone there. Because everyone has different skill sets and different strengths and weaknesses, and we can build the team the way we want to build a team, so that we can optimize all of those.
SPEAKER_00I think that speaks so well to the name of the company that you co-founded, all levels leadership. And um we were talking before we started recording that we feel like friends, even though we're just meeting. And that was one of the reasons I named this podcast Humans Leading, also, is you know, that I think I've realized over my career and being a person that there are so many different ways that we can lead. And a lot of times people confuse it with those very masculine, agentic behaviors instead of the sort of quietly supporting or the more feminine way of that leadership can look. But I think a lot of people, especially in medicine, um, who are lower in the ranks, so trainees, medical students, don't really feel like leaders, even though the curriculum is trying to help them. Um, what would you say about how those people can help lead?
You Lead Even Without A Title
SPEAKER_01How you still you're asking how medical students and residents can help lead teams?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, by owning it. Um, I totally agree with what you said, which is that if we asked a room full of medical students and interns, if they were leaders, I think probably five out of a thousand would raise their hand. Um, but I am a really full believer that at all times we are leaders and followers. And a lot of the skills overlap for being a leader and a follower. But I think it's true throughout our time in healthcare. So if you're a medical student, you are leading patients. You are leading medical students below you. Hopefully, you're leading in your community. So there's a lot of ways that you're leading, but also following and trying to learn from your residency team, from your attendings, from the social workers and physical therapists you're working with, from everyone on the whole team. So at all times, I think we need to have the mindset of how can I use my skills as both a leader and a follower to optimize the situation I'm in? And how can I learn that those skills overlap, but also there's distinctions. But the best followers are the ones who become the best leaders. And I think it takes a student of leadership to know and care about that. I don't think we have a land of natural-born leaders and not natural-born leaders. I think everyone can improve their communication, improve their team building, um, improve the efficacy of their organization, but they have to work on it. And it's work, and there's a lot of information out there about how to do it better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that last piece is really key, you know, in addition to all the other things that you said, it's really, you know, this self-responsibility and the learning of yourself that then allows you to go out and do it. Um, and we know, you know, from a lot of data that's out there that the best leaders are the most self-aware leaders. So how does your team and how do you think about people going to develop more self-awareness?
Building Real Self-Awareness
SPEAKER_00How do people start doing that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great question. So for me personally, it was all about therapy. Um, I have spent about 30, yeah, I've had 30 years of my life in therapy. I find the people that I resonate with are the people that have done a lot of deep self-work in whatever context they've done that work because I love having the deep conversations and understanding problems intimately to be able to solve them. So that's what resonates with me in the world. So my experience of self-awareness has really been through therapy. But I think there's a lot of skills involved. I think learning reflection is key. And when I say learning reflection, I don't mean going home at night and writing down what your day was like or spending five minutes reflecting. I mean reflection with someone who's going to challenge your reflection a little bit and point out your blind spots and shift you to a place where you see the situation a little differently and might do it differently next time. I think when we spend too much time reflecting without some outside perspective, we can actually get worse at what we do instead of better. So when I say reflection, I'm talking about reflection with a feedback partner or a reflection partner or a coach or therapist. So I think that's key. I think learning when the right thing to do is pause is really key, whether that's a momentary pause to catch your breath and refocus, whether that's a day-long pause to make a different decision. I think pauses are key. And then examining things like your biases and understanding where they came from and what behaviors they're driving. And most importantly, understanding your value system and how that may change over time. And that's okay. But knowing what values are important to you in the realm you lead, so that when you get into an organization or one situation where you're being encouraged to move away from those values, you recognize it and can make a better choice. Instead of just letting some drift happen where we stop living by our values, we still state that there are values, but we're not living by them anymore. So I think there's multi, many um components to self-awareness. And it's not just, oh yeah, I know I do that. That's not good enough. And invariably, uh, physicians think we're really good at self-awareness. And study after study tells us that we are not good at self-awareness. And if we look at things like the Dunning-Kruger effect, it's actually the folks who are most competent that are often the least competent. So perhaps you actually have the least self-awareness when you think you have the most.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's such a great point. There was um a study in critical care medicine in PEDs a few years ago, looking at that exact thing and um, you know, people's awareness at different levels. And so they obviously looked at um fellows, junior career attendings, and older attendings or late career attendings. And um it was interesting to see the self-awareness in both of those groups. Um, they perceived themselves both as fellows and as senior attendings, that they were very self-aware, while other people didn't necessarily have that experience of them. And so um I think that gets into another thing that you know is part of this is it can be really vulnerable when someone tells you something about yourself. And so, how do you navigate the stress response or that feeling like you're being called out without freaking out about it?
Staying Calm When Feedback Stings
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I have a a short-term solution for that and a long-term solution to that. Um, the the immediate solution, I think, is having a phrase that rolls off your tongue without you having to think about it. And that's going to be a different phrase for every human being based on what's authentic to them and what makes sense. For me, when I get feedback that I've done something wrong, which is pretty regularly. So I've had a lot of practice at this skill. But what rolls off my tongue is wow, thank you for pointing that out. And that just takes me from all of the hairs on the back of my neck standing up to feeling like my cheeks are getting red and I'm getting sweaty and nervous, to feeling like, oh, someone cares enough to give me feedback right now. Let me take a breath and accept it. And that is a very different feeling than are they kidding me? Why are they saying I'm not, I didn't mean it. Like that's what we always want to say when someone gives us feedback. Is that's not what I meant. But that's not helpful in that context at all. So, some phrase, it can be anything that rolls off your tongue that's authentic to you that allows you to just take a second, decompress. It can also be three deep breaths. It can also be um having touching your your thumb in a certain place or or just making your you aware of your body again. Something for everyone. Do you have something like that, Jillian, that you use?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think, you know, first of all, I love what you're describing. And I think um, you know, it really gets to the science of what happens in your body. And obviously, as intensivists, we love physiology. So um, you know, as soon as that happens, it's like your safety is threatened and your amygdala is like, wee, let's uh go on a ride of um either attacking the other person or whatever stress response you're gonna have. And this is really a way to get your prefrontal cortex back on the front part of your brain and say, Oh, what could I actually do logically here? And so um I often, it's not the same phrase every time. Sometimes they'll just go, oh wow. Or let me think about that. Or I will take a breath. I think one of the things about wearing masks often in the unit is that sometimes you can take a big breath and people don't notice that you're taking a big breath. It looks like you're sighing. Um, and it gives you a second. And then one of my other favorite things is I often have a water bottle with me. And so um, you know, just that behavior of, hmm, and then take a drink of the water gives me that chance to reset and get out of whatever stressful thing that is, rather than launching back in a really unhelpful way. Um, so that's what I do.
SPEAKER_01You get to physically reduce the temperature in addition to reducing the stress temperature.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Nice. Yeah. Yeah, I love all of those solutions. And I think it's important that everyone takes a look at what they could do in that moment. Because if we are going to be lifelong learners of leadership, hopefully we're gonna encourage people to correct us for the rest of our lives. And then we have to do something with that information. And we can't do that if we're so on guard that we're not actually hearing it. So hearing it is a key part of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's so important and gets into my next question. Then, you know, someone brings you a piece of feedback, you've taken the chance to reflect. Perhaps there is something actionable in there. You know, how do you repair a relationship if there happens to be, you know, something that has caused some stress? Or, you know, how do you start to make a change that helps build cultures and build teams?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
The Feedback Partner Framework
SPEAKER_01Um, about five years ago, I developed a feedback partner. And it has changed the way that I experience feedback entirely. And the way I think about feedback, when someone gives it to me, whether it's anonymous feedback, whether it's face-to-face in the moment feedback, whether it's five days later, whatever it is, I like to think about is it valuable? Is it going to change my behavior in a positive way? And so I think about it on a value curve. And then I also think um about the other axis being was this well thought through? And are they delivering it in a considerate manner? And based on those two axes, I divide it into four different categories of feedback. And there's that feedback that is essential. It's the stuff that I didn't know I was doing that. I'm gonna change it today, and it's gonna affect a bazillion people because you took the time to give me that feedback really well. That's great. Essential feedback is great. There's also this sort of necessary evil feedback where it's something that's super valuable and super important. Maybe it wasn't delivered the most tactfully, or when maybe it wasn't delivered by someone you trust, but there's still important information in there. There's valid feedback, which is yeah, good point, but it's not necessarily helpful or going to make a difference in your life. And I think the most important category is irrelevant. It's not helpful and it was said in a nasty way, and I need to let it go. And having a feedback partner helps me put every piece of feedback into one of those four categories to decide what to do with it. Do I want to implement it all right now? Do I want to grab the important points and use those? Do I want to put it on the back burner? Or do I just need someone to help me emotionally process the fact that someone said something to my face that was pretty hurtful and not helpful? And we're not good at figuring that out or thinking it through on our own. So that's how I think about it. And I invariably will take those things to a feedback partner and say, someone said this thing to me today. Is it true? And I've had people say, Yeah, like you're pretty intimidating, or yeah, you were wrong. Um, which is just great to hear from someone that that you trust and know is going to have candor versus someone who you don't know well or you don't trust yet, um, something along those lines.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Who who do you use as your feedback partners? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I have peers. One of them is um in my workplace now, and one of them is someone who is in my workplace historically, and now we are geographically separated, but invariably we call each other when these things happen. So, you know, between the two of them, one of them is usually available to work through this with me. But I think it's really important to think about who can be honest with you, who understands the situation, and who do you feel comfortable being vulnerable with? So it takes all three of those aspects. You have to be comfortable being vulnerable, they have to be comfortable giving you hard news, and they have to understand what you're talking about. And if you find someone where those three things overlap, I think that's key.
SPEAKER_00I love that. And I especially love the part of the willing to, you know, sort of call you out or deliver difficult feedback to you because I think all of us have been in situations where we go to a person who we know is going to validate what other whatever bad behavior that we've done, because we don't want to face the fact that the behavior was not as good as it could have been. And so you don't choose to go to your feedback partner. You go to like your, you know, gossip partner and that person just complains with you.
SPEAKER_01Or your significant other.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Except um, my significant other would never uh not call me out. So it's a perfect feedback partner. Um, he has no problem calling me out on my BS. Which is great. I really do appreciate that. Because, like you said, part of it is trust and you know who really has your ultimate goal in mind and who can remind you of the the values that you said you have when you forget them for yourself. Um, which gets really down to trust. I think, you know, it's something that's come up a few times. Obviously, we know in organizations or just in day-to-day relationships, having trust with the people around us is really helpful, but there's a lot of ways that we either subtly or not subtly erode it. And then um sometimes we can be surprised uh that people don't trust us the way we think they might. So, how do we how do you think about trust when it comes to health care and um leadership?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
How Trust Breaks Down At Work
SPEAKER_01Unfortunately, right now, when I think about healthcare, I actually think about the breakdown of trust instead of the rebuilding of trust first. I think about both. But I think it's important to understand what happens that does break down trust. And I think that there's a very recognizable pattern. And as we talk about it, I'm interested to hear if you see this happening in your environment. But there's information. There's information out there. Maybe we're not a hundred percent certain about it. So we're not sharing it yet. So we're afraid, like, when's the actual perfect time to tell someone this piece of information? So there's this sort of fog of uncertainty for you, which then becomes a real fog of uncertainty for people below you. Um when I say you at this point, I'm talking about the leader. So the leader's not sure what to say, so it doesn't say anything, which creates this fog. Then people start noticing these breaks. There's like breaks in information, there's holes, and then they try to fill in the holes. And invariably they fill them in with information that is far worse than the actual situation. Then they start taking talk underground and building on these stories and rumors of what they think is true without really knowing, and trying to find alternate sources of information from folks and and find people who are willing to commiserate with them and take their perspective instead of going through leadership channels to figure things out. Then we start blaming our leaders. Then we say, Well, they don't tell us anything, they don't care about us. And often the leaders trying, they just don't want to pass down bad information, they don't want to mislead you in any way, and but we start blaming them and then we make them the enemy. And now we're sort of destroyed, right? And so now we have this situation where the leader's the bad guy, I don't have any information, I'm stressed out because I'm believing the worst case scenario, and that's being reinforced by others. Does that sound familiar at all?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I think it's something, you know, both in my organizational leadership role and even just in my day-to-day job in the pediatric ICU. I think sometimes these hard things to talk about, you're exactly right. You don't know exactly what you're supposed to say. Or, you know, there are some times where someone has done something and there's a situation, if HR is involved or something else is happening. You can't actually talk about all the details, or even in medical error follow-up, what I hear a lot from trainees is, you know, why don't I have all the information? No one's doing anything about it. Um, and so we really had to learn when I was back as a program associate program director, just to share, like we've given your concerns, it's being handled by this person. If we have some follow-up, we'll let you know. And I think that really did a lot to squash the rumor mills and the mistrust of, oh, we give feedback, but nobody ever cares about what we say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think even one minute of a face-to-face conversation can quell anxiety really effectively. But we're afraid that we don't have enough time to have a good conversation. So we don't want to get into the conversation, or we're afraid we're not gonna have all of the answers, and that's gonna make us look bad. And so we avoid these conversations instead of having a one-minute face-to-face of saying, Oh, Gillian, I meant to tell you this is what I heard most recently. I don't have all the answers, but I'm gonna keep you posted every step along the way, every time I know something new. And if you have a new concern or question, don't hesitate to bring it my way. Like, what was that? 30 seconds? Yeah, and it makes a huge difference for someone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's so true. And one of the things I hear a lot, and I would be curious your perspective, is sometimes people don't talk about things or have those hard conversations because they're actually avoiding the other person's emotional reaction that they're terrified of. Um, so how do leaders navigate that? Because obviously there are some really volatile things, especially when there's change that's either in or not in your control as a leader, you're gonna get some heavy things back at you. So, how do you navigate that?
unknownYeah.
Hard Conversations And Big Emotions
SPEAKER_01Well, one of my key factors always in building trust is understanding your people. And so what you just said, it's really important to understand what that emotional response is going to be. If it's someone like me who expresses their frustration and fatigue with tears, and I just need to know that going in, that's great. Like I understand my person, they're not sad, they're not suicidal, they're not depressed, they just are frustrated and tired, they get some tears. You can just hand them a tissue, move on with the conversation, all good. But if that emotional response is anger and fear and your fear of that, like that's something to really be aware of too. And there are going to be folks in your above or below you in your realm who who are sort of scary. And in which case you need to know and understand them and hopefully get them off your team. But if that's not possible, to not go into it alone, to have an ally, to go into those conversations with a partner, um, someone who can ensure that you're safe and ensure that what needs to get said gets said and that the communication goes well. So I think it depends on what we're talking about with the emotional response, before we just say, here's how we handle an emotional response. But either way, I think it comes down to understanding your people. This is one of the key things in life that I took from being a psychiatrist, which is that you, I, I'm gonna talk for myself. I can handle any person if I understand how and why they became the way they are. As soon as I start caring enough about a human being enough to stay curious and learn about their current environment, learn about their fears, learn about their history of trauma, their history of a bad situation at work, their history of a mistake at work, whatever is driving their fear. As soon as I know that, I have a completely different relationship with that person and I can move forward. And this was really true as a psychiatrist. I would have people, and the first time I met them, I'm like, I just don't want to work with this patient. Um, but then as I got to know them, it really shifted and I would I realized where I could help and where they needed to develop more insight. Um, so those things I think are really important to understand. The better you understand why and how something is happening, the more you can do with it. So again, understand your people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that really takes it from, you know, what's wrong with you to oh, what happened to you? What's the context in which this is all coming up? And really does let you come at that conversation in a different way than just attacking somebody because you have a perception that they're completely the problem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and what is the best way for me to give you feedback and for you to receive feedback? Um, should I give it to you in writing first and then we sit down and talk about it? Should we write it down together? Like what is going to help you process it and not feel attacked like that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's so great. And, you know, these two topics, slash all of the topics, I'm sure, are things that come up in your book. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about it and, you know, what inspired you to write it.
Inside The Book And What Comes Next
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I would love to say that it is a capstone of my life, but I hope my life is only half done. So um, hopefully it is not. But the book is again self-awareness and trust, leading healthcare teams from the inside out. It's divided into three portions. The first five chapters are about self-awareness and all the things we've talked about, reflection and pauses and bias and values using all self-compassion using all of those factors and how to work on them. The middle five chapters are about the breakdown and rebuilding of trust and what it takes to do that, conflict management that's restorative instead of dangerous and problematic, and then sharing power among teams, building teams that are comfortable sharing power, meaning you're comfortable sharing power. Um, that's those are the middle five chapters. And then the last five are about like what now? How do we build psychological safety? How do we practice civil discourse? How do we optimize our environments in polarized times? How do we optimize our influence in polarized times? And what if it is time to walk away? So I have for many years had it sort of in the back of my mind to write a book, uh, mainly from one of my peers, Josh Hartzel, who's been saying for years you gotta write a book. Um, but what happened was pretty fascinating. So um in December, I um was quote, either forced out or left my job, one of the two, depending on how you look at it. But I found myself in a really interesting place of did I want to only do clinical care at my institution or did I want to keep teaching? What did I want next with my life? And it was a perfect opportunity to re-evaluate. And in doing that, I realized if I could have a life where I get to do some clinical work, but keep teaching, keep building people. Like my passion in life is to create people who are way better at things than I am. And that's what I love. And so that started me thinking about how can I better be a coach? How can I better be a mentor? And it just got me started in writing a lot of these things down. And then I learned about the world of professional speaking. And one of the key things that one of the coaches I work with said was, you know, it'd be really helpful if you wrote a book and you could use it both as a therapeutic tool for you as well as a tool to have clients understand and you transmit some of your knowledge. So for me, this book, every chapter is half memoir, half leadership lesson, or leadership topic. And so it's stories from throughout my life, whether that's growing up, being a patient in the hospital, being a critical care doctor, being a combat doctor, whatever it was, different stories throughout my life, and then different key leadership topics that I wish I had understood better when I took my first leadership positions and didn't know what I was doing or how to handle problematic people or how to build trust in teams or or how to be confident enough to share power and to report uncertainty and things along those lines. So all of that is in this book. Um, you read it, you'll learn a lot about me. My wife keeps saying, you know, I'm I'm learning a lot about you as I read this book. So there's a lot of personal stuff in there, but it all carries through to really important leadership lessons that I believe can change healthcare for the better. And that's really what I wanted to get out there. I think the information about how do we build better systems and better teams, we have to start with ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love all of that. I think, you know, just listening, I'm so excited to read it and to share it with people because I think it speaks to exactly what your message is, which is start with yourself and by sharing your own stories and you know, things you've done well, but also likely a lot of things that you'd like to do differently next time because you know better now. Um, I think those things are the most helpful when we talk about that and we're when we're willing to get up in front of people and say, hey, I have a list of things that I haven't done right. I actually have a senior colleague who's pretty close to retirement and I was putting together a um a panel about failures for the pediatrics residence a few years ago. And I asked if he would be a guest. And so he sent me an email with just little bulleted points of like 10 things. And he said, I could talk about all of the ways I've messed up on this list. Which one do you think would be the most helpful? And I thought, yeah, I've chosen exactly right because you're willing to get up there and say, I've been doing this for three decades. Here's just a smattering of the things that I've done poorly, and here's what I learned from it, and here's how I tried to do better, which I think um is an exciting thing in medicine, because not everybody's willing to do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I talk about it as keeping a CV of failures. Yeah. Because how helpful is it if someone comes to you and they're devastated by something they did wrong, and you can say, Oh, yeah, when I was a second-year resident, I did that. And here's what happened, and here I am. Because a lot of our trainees see us now as senior physicians and just think that we haven't made a mistake anywhere along the way. So the more that we can admit those to people and talk about them openly, the more confident our trainees are going to become as physicians and sharing their I don't know's and I messed ups and on all of those things that build psychological safety in our environments.
SPEAKER_00Well, I love that. And I feel like I could keep talking to you forever. I just want to be mindful
Final Takeaways And Listener Requests
SPEAKER_00of the time. So if you could leave the listeners with one final thought, either about leadership or the book, what would you want to tell them?
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna can I tell them too?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Obviously.
SPEAKER_01For leadership, I think truly to become a better leader, finding a feedback partner who you can trust. Um, I often say feedback is love. Um, I think it's really true. No one's gonna give you feedback if they don't think you can be better. And so finding someone to process that with is really key. And then the second big point in my book that we haven't talked about yet is that I'm not asking you in the book to become a different person or to view the whole world differently or to have different priorities. All I'm asking you to do is to become a stronger version of yourself. Just build your strengths. Think about who you are and who you want to be and strive for that. So it's not asking you to be different, just work on yourself and be better. And that's really, I think, should be everyone's goal is not to focus on everyone else around them, but a little bit better each day.
SPEAKER_00That message, and I think that's a perfect place to end. I just want to say that everybody should go buy your book when it's available and listen to you. There's lots of other podcasts out there where you've shared this wisdom. And I'm just so grateful that our healthcare system is uh has you in it to share these lessons. Thanks, Jillian. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got something out of it that will stick with you and help you live a less stressed, more satisfying life. Even if it's something small, these little things add up to big things over time. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would rate and review the podcast on Apple or Spotify. I also invite you to subscribe to make sure that you get all the newest episodes as soon as they are released. And for bonus points, if there's something that really landed with you, I would love it if you could share with a friend or with your network. That's how you can help humans leading grow and reach a bigger audience. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.
