Leadership Panel with Mr Simon Fleming, A/Professor Rhea Liang and Mr Oliver Adebayo
Summary
This on-demand session will discuss good leadership qualities with three impressive individuals in the medical field: Mr. Simon Fleming, Mr. Oliver Adebayo and Associate Professor Rae Lang. It is an honor to have them discussing their leadership experience so far and sharing their tips on what makes a great leader. Hear about their unique journey with imposter syndrome and the encouragement to attempt new leadership roles. These invaluable insights will provide a roadmap for medical professionals at various stages of their career.
Learning objectives
Learning Objectives:
- Explain what makes a good leader as defined by panels of experienced medical professionals.
- Recognize the qualities of a good leader and how they differ from simply having your voice heard.
- Describe the importance of reflecting on one's own experiences in leadership.
- Outline how an understanding of one's moral base and purpose can help a leader to make informed decisions.
- Examine the concept of 'faking it till you make it' when aspiring to hold leadership positions.
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Computer generated transcript
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The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.
So, uh we are ready to kick off the first panel for this afternoon and it's an honor to have three in credible human beings with us for that. We have Mr Simon's Fleming who is the founder of hammered out a campaign that is um really passionate about changing the culture in surgery. We have Mr Oliver Abdo who is the President's of the British Orthopedic trainees Association and we have associate professor Really Lang who is a general and breast surgeon and surgical lead at Bond University. Um Thank you so, so much each of you for joining us. Uh Today is our real honor to, to have you and I just wanted to um uh to kick off by asking uh perhaps Mr Fleming to, to start with if that's ok. Um Could you tell us a little bit about your leadership experience to date? Um Just give us a little bit of an introduction to your journey. Uh Thank you for having me and yeah, it's always pretty cringe when you're asked to introduce yourself because it's really hard not to sound like a humble brag like, oh, yeah. Well, then I did this and then I did that and then I did the other. But, but fundamentally, my leadership journey started because I, I was raised in a household by a, by a kind of a uh an immigrant family. Uh My, my dad was a Holocaust Survivor and he didn't really say much. But he always talked about uh uh in a rather dated of it's times sort of way, the duty of people with power, the responsibility of people with power is to try and help those without or with less. Um And what he was kind of talking about is advocacy and privilege. And so throughout my life and career, that's sort of what I did. Uh And much like uh Oliver, I, I got involved in the British Orthopedic Training Association. I got my orthopedic training number and I, I only joined voter and I regret it. I only joined voter um when I got my training number because I had, I was riddled with impostor syndrome. And I felt like I, I couldn't really be in the room. I didn't have the credibility to be there, but actually voter, you know, represents from aspiring author all the way up. And my first voter meeting, they were talking about their educational offering and I was kind of sat literally sat at the back of the room going I could do that. I think I could bring something to the party. So like the mug I am when people were kind of nominating. Uh I, I asked for support to stand as an educational rep and that's really where it all started for me. Uh Going forward, I, I became vicepresidente, I became present brittle predictor any association pretty much on a platform of, of kind of education and culture change. Those are the things that matter to me and still are. Um And then everything either went downhill or uphill depending on how you look at it. So I got involved in the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and now I'm, I'm privileged enough to kind of work globally with, with culture change in education, trying to just make things a little bit better. Uh You know, I'm not, I'm not necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm just trying to make things a little bit better and, and as you go along, a big part of my leadership journey has been reflecting what it is to be a leader and, and the fact that it's pretty, pretty humbling, it's about getting things wrong. Uh And it's about empowering and facilitating those around you. Uh You know, if you're a leader and you think it's about you, you're getting it wrong. It's actually not about you at all. Uh And, and that's kind of where I am and every time I get asked to speak about leadership, I actively try not to talk about myself and I don't think that's what it's about at all. Thank you so much. Um We're gonna, we're gonna come back to so much stuff then, um, uh, perhaps if I could pass on to associate Professor Liang just to maybe give us a little flavor of your kind of leadership journey as well. Yes, you'll have to, excuse me. Um, it's the middle of winter in Australia and I had the heater on and it just blew a fuse. So all the lights except the room light went out and so I'm crawling around under the table trying to reset the thing anyway, too many heaters plugged it at one time, I guess. Um, my leadership journey is a bit accidental. I think I was a lot like, um, Simonson. Um, I'm a person who's generally riddled with impostor syndrome pretty much all the time. Um, and it might be reassuring to viewers to know that this never goes away no matter how senior you get. So, um, what's not on my bio is that this last week, I've actually become the sub Dean of Bond Medical School. Get that, you know, nothing I could ever have imagined when I was a medical student. Um, and, you know, I'm responsible for things like student welfare and clinical rotations and, you know, it sounds very grown up, but still, I'm, I'm that kind of slightly uncertain medical student inside going. Am I doing this? Right? I don't know, but people look at you as a leader and so you just sort of, you know, fake it till you make it. You just, you know that you're, I mean, sorry, I should go back a step like Simon's. I come from a refugee family. My grandparents were refugees during the communist revolution in the 19 fifties. And so that thread that runs through our family is very much the same thing that we are doctors to help people. Um, and we have had four generations of doctors in my family. I'm the fourth generation. So you know that your moral base is very sound um that you're not just here for the money. Um and certain things as you go through in medicine don't strike you as quite being, right? Um So you beaver away trying to make those things, right? And I guess I was lucky in a way that the current social environment was conducive to that, you know, they were willing to listen to my noises about getting more women into surgery and they were willing to listen to my noises about respectful behavior. And of course, over the years, Simond and I have resonated um from opposite sides of the world and worked together on that to amplify it, which has been lovely. Thank you so much. It's so great to have you and thank you for joining it, perhaps a less suitable time on the other side of the world. So thank you, um Mr Adebayo. I would love to hear a little bit about your leadership journey as well. Sure. Thank you guys. Um So, I mean, I completely resonate with both time and then profiting about the in process syndrome. But, um and I still have it 100%. And, and one other thing that I feel has helped my leadership journey, however, is that whenever I've seen something that I didn't feel was right or I felt needed change or just needed doing, I kind of felt like, well, who else is going to do it if I didn't do it? And that's kind of how I fell into my leadership journey in that. Um you know, from, even from medical school, I think it probably started from there where, you know, um ended up being a present of my African and Caribbean Society, uh student society. And it was kind of like, well, there isn't much happening here and, you know, there's a whole community of us, why don't we get together and share our culture? Uh And that's kind of happened and kind of the, the journey that led led up to me being elected a student trustee of uh the Student union because I've been involved in so many different student initiatives. And, and again, that was just simply from, well, there's so much more we can do to improve our student union. Um I think I could do that. And, you know, it was, it was one of those things where I think throughout every, every time I've gone through these shit roll, it's it's because I felt well, can I help improve things? Have I got the ideas? And do I have the time? And I think, um that's one of the ways that I've kind of approached any kind of a decision about leadership and all going for leadership role. And I think there's definitely a way that others could probably apply to their lives. You know, there's no barrier, you know, there any barriers yourself and if you don't go for it, you will never know if you can get it. You know, I've just become present of this orthopedic Training Association. And unlike Simonson, I was, I was only on the committee one term prior and, and, you know, I was the web masters, so in charge of the website. But I, I had some ideas and, and I thought, well, maybe I'm not good enough, maybe I haven't had enough experience. I was friends of Simond. He's very experienced person regards to the society. But, you know, he was an encouragement and said, well, why not? You got the ideas, you can do it. I went through it and I was voted in by the, by the society. So, um like I said, I think, never let, never let yourself hold you back. And I think that's the most important thing about uh going for leadership positions. Thank you so much. Um We've got so many areas in which we could dive into. So got some three great minds in the room. And on that note, if you do have questions that you would like us to pose to these three wonderful human beings, then please pop them in the chat box and we will have some time towards the end too to ask some questions. We'll pick out some of your best questions towards the end. But thank you for giving us an introduction to your leadership journeys. I guess from that journey, we've got people joining us from various walks of life on the event today at various stages of their careers and various stages of leadership as well. Some might be leading a committee for the first time. Some might be an experienced association leader and everything in between. But if you were to say uh how you can become a good leader or what are the qualities of a good leader? If you were imparting that wisdom to our delegates today, what would you say makes a great leader? Uh Probably, and I might hand to you first. Uh First of all, can everyone just call me re a, it's very odd because we're going, talking about Simond and talking about Oliver and then it's bra fleeing. Um Also because Australia is extremely relaxed compared to the UK. So on this side of the world, more than anywhere we all go by first names. Um So, um what makes a good leader? That was the question, wasn't it? Um Yeah, I think it took me a little while to figure out that it wasn't about having your voice is heard. It was about making sure everyone else's voice is got heard. So when you chair a meeting or when you're leading a team, it's about looking at the mix of abilities that you have in the group and thinking, you know, how do I make the best use of those abilities? How do I get their voices heard? How do we get, you know, all the ideas out of this group? And I'll tell you, it's amazing, 20 good brains will give you enough ideas to take over the world. It really will. So, for example, you know, I um step down as chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, operate with respect committee in May last year, having been involved since it's very start in 2015. And during that time, we've gone from being a reference group to a working group and then to a properly constituted committee. Um and we spent um in Australian dollars, seven figures of the college of Surgeons money. You know, this was a very well well resourced by national program that delivered mandatory training to every single surgeon in Australia and New Zealand. But the very first meeting we had, there were only five surgeons actually in the room. And you think a program like that, if it can grow out of five surgeons, all of us just bouncing ideas off each other and the most important thing was the psychological safety to make mistakes. So we threw around wild ideas, but the thing was no one was afraid to say them. And out of that, we curated it down to what actually became the program. Now, if you can do that with five people, imagine what you can do with 15 or 20 you know, medical students and young doctors are the best of the best you've gotten through a really stringent selection process. If we can't get good stuff as a leader out of groups made of young doctors, then then you know, who can. Yeah. So in a way, we have perhaps the easiest job out of all the leaders on this earth, really brilliant wisdom. Uh I'm just going to take your lead as a good leader and I'm going to use first names Simon's over to you. Um Yeah, I kind of following on from, from Ria. Uh for me, there's a couple of things I think what we are touched on is that ability to not just be a listener but like active listening. You know, we, we spent a lot of time in medicine thinking we're listening to people, but it's absolute tosh. Uh we kind of here and we pick up keywords and then we crack on with our day, but actually actively listening and it's something uh it's something I had to do consciously because most of, you know, me and I'm a talker. Uh and I I realized that actually to, to lead the committee in the way I wanted to, you know, capitalized the way I wanted to lead, I needed to find a way of stopping that. So I would actively, like verbally sit on my hands and actively pay attention to what everyone was saying. Uh And I think, I think as a, as a good leader, the, you know, there are those things like having self awareness, That's a really nice example, right? Recognizing that I have verbal diarrhea, but, but actually self self awareness. Uh and that level of insight is really powerful as a leader. You need to know where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Healthcare tries to force us to be polymath. So, right, we have to be our own auditors and we have to be researchers and clinicians and, and educators and, and, and, and, and we're expected to be able to do everything for everyone. Um And actually a really good leader takes a long, hard look in the mirror and goes, yeah, I can't do that. I wonder who I can speak to about that or ask about that and that kind of humility of, I don't know, I just don't know. But what do you think? Or who might we speak to? And that, that kind of feeds into um integrity. Uh I think there's that thing about kind of consensus, right? I'm sure all of us if, if I were to say, you know, um Oliver if you got, I don't want this to happen, but like Oliver, if you got run over by a bus tomorrow, who would you, who would take over the lead? You'd have an idea. Say with Rio, same with Phil, like we kind of know people who have the potential to be a leader, but also we have great radar for bullshit. And I think if you aren't honest and transparent and don't have that integrity, I think you struggle to build an environment where people are willing to listen to you and follow you and move in the direction of your vision because they're like, there's something there, there's something not right that just your spider sense tingles, I guess. Uh and, and finally uh gratitude like just uh it's so rare in the work we do to have, have someone thank you for the work you do. I, I don't know, maybe it's just me but, but so rarely do the people sit you down and go readjust just thanks great job, right? Not the kind of medical education feedback thing, but literally just I recognize you've been working really bloody hard and I really, really appreciate you. And again, as a, as a leader, I sometimes think it's just important just to take a bit of time to recognize that everyone's working really hard and, and not just like in a generic mandatory yoga well being kind of way, but actually go fill, you know, what I know that you've been working really hard behind the scenes and I really appreciate it and I couldn't have done this without you. Um And I think self awareness, honesty, integrity and a bit of gratitude and a whole bunch of humility. We'll get you pretty far. So we are building up a picture here. We have um got some really good themes. A lot of them are about other people, right? Um So how do we um harnessed the ideas and the pash in, in a room? How are, how are we able to work with other people to move towards a vision into doing? So actually spot some of the gaps in our own abilities and also being thankful and appreciative. So there's some really good qualities coming out there, Oliver, I'm going to hand over to you to um hear what, hear what your thoughts are about, what makes a good leader. Yeah, I think, I think for you definitely summarized that the conversation quite nicely and I think uh much of leadership is about your team and the people that you're leading. Uh and for that, you need to be a good listener. Uh And you need to listen to what people are saying, both what they're really saying and what, what the underlying uh what the underlying issues are when there are issues occurring and what, whether there is anything that you're missing that you could add or that you can help your team to, to, to find balance with. Um So I've been being a really good listeners uh is vital. Um and, and also investing in the team members, you know, taking the time out to speak to your team members to understand who they are and what they're about because that's only going to help you. Uh like what uh really is saying, get the most out of their minds when, when you're set around the room trying to figure out problem. So that's a, I think those, those two things particularly being a good listener, but also taking the time out to get to know your team is kind of vital to being a, being a good uh beginning a leader. Um Oliver, I've got to, I've got to stay on the floor with you if that's OK, I'm straight straight on to um kind of flip side of that. So being a leader can be hard, right? Being a leader can be really hard. Um What sort of challenges do you face as a leader? But you personally and perhaps more broadly and how do you, how do you overcome them? Yeah, I mean, kind of leading off to leading up to what, what I do, what I just mentioned about getting to know your team. I think one of the biggest challenges I mean, that I face particularly is is getting people through the work that you expect them to do all that they expected to do. Uh, and what happens when it isn't done? And how do you deal with that as a leader? Um, whether you've been a, you already know them previously, wherever you're, you've got a friendly or, or a professional relationship with them, or perhaps you don't have a relationship with them in advance. And so you kind of have to bridge that gap if you haven't already. And I think, uh, that's probably the most difficult thing. Uh for me as a leader is, is dealing with people where their team members when they aren't delivering and how do you get the most out of them? How do you firstly approach them and understand why they're not doing what they need to do? Because that's the first, the first problem is, is why they're not doing it. Is it because the work is too hard? Is it because um they're, they're struggling in their own personal life, is it, is it because they, they're not happy with the direction of the things that they have to do. So, um it's understanding that and being able to tease that out and then hopefully offering the support to be able to move forward and, and get the task done. So whether it's either adding another person to the team, you know, to that subgroup to help them along or, or giving them a bit more direction and what should be done or even just being, it's listen to and realize that actually maybe there's a lot going on and maybe they're not the right person for the task at the moment and, and making that decision. But I think it kind of boils down to what I mentioned before about. It's about getting to know your team and being able to talk to them when, when things aren't going right, being on open and honest, like Simon's, Simon's said that and also being, having that gratitude to be like, well, you're doing well. You've done well so far, maybe this isn't for you or we don't want you, you're, you're doing well at the moment, but we need more. And what can I do to help you to achieve that? Um And so I think, I think that's probably been the biggest challenge for me personally and, and that's kind of what a few, the strategy I kind of tried to employ to kind of think about how I could move things along. Thanks Oliver. Um Really any, any kind of challenges that you faced along? You're kind of journey? Yeah. Oh Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Oh, that's all right. Um For me, I think I'm uniquely qualified to talk about this in this panel because I'm the only woman here. Um But we have additional layers of gender bias that affect us. So as we know, it's quite much more common for women to be mistaken for something other than a doctor when we're um on in the clinical settings. And the same for when you're a leader. Um if you happen to have a male vice chair or vice president's people will just naturally gravitate towards talking towards them and assume that you're not the actual leader. Um And the same in mixed groups, you know, um in my roles with universities and colleges, almost always, you have a positional roll on some higher committee which brings the various leaders of the committee's together. And when you're there, you know, um they'll ask whether you can take the notes, things like that. And you're like, um I prefer not because when I write notes, I can't actually concentrate on what's being said. Um and it does strike you as somewhat unfair that they wouldn't have asked any of the other men to do that. So I have learned over the years to assert myself firmly, but, you know, gently, it's not about, you know, making a big fuss about it and accusing others of being sexist, but to make quite clear that you are there in the same position as everyone else um to get the work done and not to be the tea lady, so to speak. Yeah, without any disrespect to tea ladies, of course, who are very important people. But you know what I mean? It's, that's not an expectation that's often put on men. I have found as the years have gone by actually that the younger generation actually already automatically get this. And so quite frequently, I find that the ally ship actually comes from um someone in the younger generation he'll speak up. So for instance, at the bedside, if the patient is talking to a registrar who's mail quite often, that registrar will say actually this is my boss properly ng. Um You know, um and the same thing happens in committee meetings and group settings quite often. I find now that someone will speak up and say actually re adhere is the chair of such and such committee. Um So I, I think the culture is changing, but for those of you who have that power of and it's not just a gender thing. You know, if you are white, if you are older, if you are educated in certain schools, if you come from a certain background, you know, always look out for those people who may not have those privileges and speak up for them. What an important message. Um Salmon, I know that's something you're really passionate about as well. Um And I wondered whether even coming out that from the other side, right, as an ally, have you experienced any challenges as a, you know, feel free to talk more broadly about a leader but kind of on that theme, you know what? As, as Rio was talking, that's kind of where my head was going. Whenever you do a panel, you start like to mentally pre prepare your answers and then someone says, something and you're like, no, you turn uh because I was going to talk about, you know, the challenges of, of it being kind of lonely and it can be quite isolating. Uh But actually the stuff real was talking about is hugely important and that's, that's about conflict, uh which is kind of a step up as well from Oliver was talking about, which is that, that the job of a leader is not to be in the spotlight is often to have the really uncomfortable conversations. Uh and it's to try and do it while simultaneously living your values. So you need to, while being respectful, be assertive, you need to maybe tell someone that their behaviors are not acceptable. You need to accept that if you're gonna be a real leader rather than a performative. I mean, it for the plaudits type of leader. Um a lot of the time, the stuff you're gonna do may not always be popular. Uh It may not always be easy, there may be consequences for you or your organization and the job of a leader is is to uh take the hip, right? So, you know, when, when, uh when, when I was about to Presidente, when I was working as Vice Chair of the Academy tickle Royal Colleges, it was like, you know, the Academy have had a great day today in this meeting and we're really grateful for everyone or Simond from the Academy said some really difficult stuff and that's not cool. Uh, and, and finessing how you have those difficult conflict based conversations can be really, really hard because it fits in a little bit with, with the kind of bit that I was going to talk about, which is about getting it wrong, uh, and making mistakes and letting people down. Um, uh, and all that kind of weighs, weighs heavy on you, right. Like part of the job of a leader is to have more sleepless nights than everyone else. That's kind of the gig. Um And again, as an advocate, part of that is not only having those different conversations but being prepared to apologize and you think when you get it wrong. Thanks Salmon. Um Oliver, I don't know whether you've got any wisdom to share kind of on that same themes that were kind of talking about change. Now we're kind of talking about, you know, not moving almost beyond an Axion based kind of leadership model to thinking about how do we affect change and as a leader, that can be a big challenge, right? How do you kind of move, move, move an oil tanker to face in a different direction? Right? I don't know if you have any advice on, on that and um uh any models or techniques or approaches that you've kind of used to affect change. Yeah, I mean, I think change management is like a whole field in itself and leadership in there and I think, um I think one of the things or ways that I I approach changes is firstly thinking about visibility um in any change that you want to make their needs to be some visibility of what it is, the change that you want. Um So, you know, one of the things that we did as an organization last year is that we felt that the diversity within orthopedics was lacking. Um We felt that we weren't doing enough to support it. And one of the ways that we tried to move forward with that was as a group. Voting's a culture and diversity representative onto our committee whose sole job was to look at culture and diversity issues uh and to push the agenda forward. Uh And similarly, this year, we, we've, we've done the same with uh with our, with sustainability, whereby we've got a sustainability lead whose sole wall is to push forward a sustainability agenda. And this year we had our uh sustainability conference virtually a medal which was a success. Uh We had over 100 and 50 people internationally, uh tune in and, and, and, you know, one of the things which I think if you want to make a change, then you've got to be, you've got to have visibility and, and, and, and make the change that you want visible. If you want to be more diverse, you've got to display diversity as part of your uh as part of your remit and, and make, make your organization more digress. That's as, as simple as that, you know what we like this year, we want to focus on sustainability. And so we said we're gonna do everything we can to promote sustainability. Um I think that's one of the things which I think visibility is key, especially in a world which is, which is so visual social media um with television and, and the way that we interact with each other is that we've, we've just got to have that and, and as a leader, you need to project that and that needs to be a part of your message. Uh And if you're not doing the things that you, you say that you want to, you know, if you're not promoting that, that message, then then you can't expect the rest of the organization to follow suit. It's like lead by example, right? It's such a common, commonly used phrase. Exactly, but probably for a very good reason, right? Um In terms of the future of healthcare leadership, we've seen, we've seen kind of seismic changes over the last couple of years. What does the future look like? Where, where are we going? What is the future of healthcare leadership, Simonov got to pass to you. I mean, it's such an easy question to answer. Um I think that's not fair. I hope that uh we will get over ourselves a bit. Healthcare leadership is still super hierarchical. Now, there's nothing wrong with hierarchy because sometimes you need it, especially if your task focused, you need someone to say, Oliver, you do airway fill, you do breathing right? Or this is the list today. This is what we're going to do and this is the way we're going to do it. However, pretty much the rest of the time, there's just no value in hierarchy. In fact, the problem we have in healthcare and you and I have spoken about this at great length is that a lot of the hierarchy isn't really hierarchy. It's kind of more patriarchy. And even then it's pretty toxic. And we have, you know, adult learners who are being spoken to, like they're toddlers. And I'm hoping that the future will be quite a reflective one where healthcare workers. I'm not just talking about doctors here. Take a long, hard look at what they need in the team and who's best to lead it. And sometimes that's the medical student and sometimes that's the HCA and sometimes that's the consultant and not being precious about who's wearing the crown and who gets the title and who gets the plaudits. Because again, the best leadership isn't about credibility. You know, there's always quotes about like, just see how far you can go if you don't care who gets the credit for it. And I think, you know, we haven't got there yet. It's still about who's first author, who's second author. Well, I'm not gonna bother if I'm on the third author and, and if we can just stop being our own worst enemy, I think there can be a, an exponential growth in actually what we can do and what we can achieve. But it requires a huge amount of reflection on all of our parts. It does require some uh kind of leadership from the top demonstrating that, that they're not just in it for certain things and it requires all of us to take a long hard look at if we're happy to be a follower more often than not, uh which I think is the way forward. Uh Oliver, where, where, where do you think we're heading in terms of the future of healthcare leadership? I think the Simon's hit them, they're on the head. It's about flattening the hierarchy um or the patriarchy because actually, again, like, like you mentioned is that sometimes their situations where there is definitely someone better suited to leading other than say that the the highest ranking doctor, for example. Um And so I think the future of healthcare leadership lies in things like medal uh not to just give you the shout out, but actually platforms like this provide medical education to everyone, you know, and, and hopefully provides educational on leadership, how, how to lead when to lead. Uh and that then empowers people to, to be able to speak up at the right times, to be able to, to lead when that situation arises when they are required to leave. Uh And hopefully that, that means that we have a, an environment where um we have flat in the hierarchy and we can, we can progress as a team uh all manner uh of situations. And I think, I think education is probably the basis of, of better leadership. Um I think uh obviously, from a uh if we're just talking about health care, obviously, uh from a doctor point of view, I think that we need to also take more responsibility for the administration of our, of our first year education, but also the administration of medicine. Uh And, and so, you know, I think firstly, by educating and having better leadership education, I think we're going to find that hierarchy and make things better, really interesting. So we've got um uh flattening the hierarchy, accessibility in par others. And I think in that there's a theme of getting involved, right? Actually being a leader is about getting your hands dirty and actually working hard. You know, it's not just about as Simond has said in the chat, it's not just about talking to yourself, you know, a leader with my other people is just a person talking to themselves. And I think there's two things in that, right? It's not just about talking and it's not just about us or me. Um it's got to be about the team and, and what we kind of achieve together on that kind of new. Um We've got, we've got folks who are kind of joining us today and they, as we've kind of said, maybe kind of leading a committee for the first time. Um If you were to kind of leave them with an inspirational thought or an advice for those aspiring leaders who are just starting out in their kind of leadership journey, what would that one piece of advice be? You can only choose one? Um uh Seidman, I gotta go to you. Um This is still my favorite leadership quake. I use it all the time and I think if you're just starting, you're just riddled with impostor syndrome. You get people telling you, you know, one day, one day fill when you're a little bit older when you're a consultant or when you're a professor and it's just never let anyone tell you that you're too young or too inexperienced or two junior to do what you think you should do because a baby shark is still a fucking shark. Believe in yourself, believe in yourself. Absolutely. Um Oliver. Um Yeah, I mean, very similar. My, my quote would have been be the change that you want to see in your organization. Um You know, you, if you see the change and, you know, you can, you can, you can be a part of that you lead on it. You know, don't, don't be afraid. That's, I mean, you're saying, you know, you believe in yourself. Uh be that, be that change. Uh And you'll be surprised how, how far you can go. Um, you know, and believe in yourself 100% agree with what Simon's said, be that change and believe in yourself. Super. Thank you. Um We have had a couple of questions in the chat. If you do have uh other questions, please do pop them in uh the chat. We're also hoping to get re a back in a little second as we uh we're working on that. Um But I'm going to ask a question which Daniel has posted in the chat, which is how do you delegate tasks? Um You know, because we can hypothesize about kind of the big ideas about leadership, right? But actually, sometimes this is really practical and this is about management as when we'd like to separate management and leadership in medicine, right? But sometimes you got to do a little bit of both. And, um and I, and that's a really good question. How do you delegate tasks? Um Oliver. Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know, before you even start delegating tasks is kind of what I mentioned earlier on which is understand the team and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Uh And if you're starting out as a new committee or as a community leader, for example, um if you don't know the people in your committee or you're, you're not already friends of them will have some uh intimate knowledge of their strengths, weaknesses, get to know them, give them, give them a phone call, you know, ask them some questions, find out a bit about them. Uh and um and in doing so you and, and understand what their goals for their role is. I think that's one of the key key things about when you're leading a team route, which has specific roles is find out what their, what they want to get out of being a part of the team and, and their role and, and, and then tailor your delegate accordingly. You know, someone is more created and loves, loves designing stuff. That's kind of where you want to, you want to direct the more created tasks to someone's better at the administrative stuff and that's what they get at and, you know, delegate towards the stuff towards them. So, um I think you got to know your team, find out what they want, what they want to get out of things and then, and then you can delegate efficiently. Um I'm just going to keep moving here because we've got another great question coming in and I uh and it's kind of on uh on a kind of layer of what you've just said, Simon's so a baby shark is still a shark. Um According to you guys, um what qualities are most important for an early leader to have? And I'm gonna put a subtitle in there as well and say is there anything that you kind of need to do as that early junior leader in a Petri Arctic or hierarchical system that can actually, um, you know, actually make you the, make you the leader in that scenario or help you kind of lead in that kind of challenging scenario where things are a little bit more hierarchical. Um, yeah, super interesting question going to post it to summon. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking, what about what, what Oliver was saying? And it kind of feeds in from that delegation thing and there's a fine line, right? Because you don't want to go in there and be that dictatorial, do what I say because I said it, this is my vision and we're doing it my way. I always quite like there's like a George pattern quote. He's some of his quotes are particularly helpful, but this one I quite like, which is, you know, don't tell people how to do something, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with the results. And actually when I was more junior in, in botha, for example, often the teams I was was leaving were with far more senior people. You know, when I was working at the academy, half the people I was speaking on behalf of amplifying what have you were super senior. And, and so again, actually that, that active listening is a great leadership style because again, being a leader isn't about the person who does everything that the, you know, it's the chair of Pepsico, like never be the smartest person in the room. So actually, the great thing about being more junior, being at the beginning of your leadership journey is you're at that amazing part where you get to sit back and listen and learn from the people in your team just because they're not quote unquote in charge, doesn't mean they don't have a wealth of stuff for you to learn. And, and so don't be afraid to sit back and go, hey, team, I'm, I'm the new chair and I've got a vision for what I'd like us to achieve. And now I'd like to hear from you about how we might do it. Um, and the other thing and this isn't a medal, you know, thing, but it is a metal thing is, don't be afraid to go out there and seek new skill sets unashamedly. I recognize that I'm, I'm that guy. And so when I was a core training, I, I went on, I went on negotiating courses and I went on conflict resolution courses and I went on leadership courses and management courses because I recognized that I didn't know what I didn't know. And so actually, when you're, you're very junior, it doesn't mean you're incompetent, it means you're not competent yet. So seek out other sources of information and that may be on your team and that may be courses. But actually, that's I, I, I often find that it is the group's with the uh more junior leaders that can make some of the biggest impact, but they just come at it with a completely diverse viewpoint. They are both. They often now especially wonderfully, are more diverse than, you know, me because I'm a straight white private school educated rugby boy, but also they have a diverse way of thinking about things. And so I would, I would take a more junior leader over, you know, someone who's been at it for 50 years. And he's like, we're going to do the same thing we've done since 1969. You're like, yeah, good, great. Uh but don't be afraid to seek, seek a bit of education and listen to your team. Amazing wisdom. Rhea is so good to have you back and we have, uh we've been chatting through um challenges as leaders. We've been chatting through advice for um uh leaders who are kind of starting out in their leadership journey. And then we've moved to just asking some questions from the audience. I want to pose one to you if that's OK from James who has asked a really great question. And I think one that challenges a lot of leaders and it be great to kind of hear your thoughts. Um How do you deal with naysayers? Are those people who don't seem to engage? I mean, oh boy, have I done naysayers? Um when we launched operate with respect. In 2015 there was a delusion of hate mail, um, which is trickled off. I still get the occasional one because I was, even though I'm not the chair anymore, I'm still, I think I was the face of it for so long that people just send me stuff. I've been told to go back where I came from. I've been told to familiarize myself with the Australian health system before I spoke. I've been told that I was too outspoken for a woman. Um And someone rather nicely said, are you sure as a junior surgeon, you want to make yourself so notorious? Um Of course, I had to point out I wasn't actually as junior as they thought I might have been. Um So that was a reflection of their bias. So, so yes, there's been lots of naysayers. I mean, I guess the harder thing you can deal with all of that if you've got a good committee. But the harder thing is actually having a nay say within your committee. What's something that's really been useful for me was that I was also involved in the construction of the surgeons leaders course for the college of surgeons and got to work with some of the greatest surgical leaders, you know, I've ever known um such a privilege and I learned so much from them. But in writing that course and reading around the leadership theories, um it doesn't matter, there's so many different theories of what makes a good leader and how you lead and leadership traits and leadership styles and whatnot. But the understanding that actually you need those naysayers because they're your insurance against groupthink. You know, if you have an entire room that's full of people who are like, yes, that's a great idea. We love what you're doing then. I mean, that's how you get those weird advertising campaigns. You know, the ones where a whole company, like, it's gone through several levels of conceptual development and they hired actors and they filmed the thing and they thought it was great and then they release it and everyone's like, what, what were you thinking like, seriously? Um And so that's groupthink and it can happen quite easily because of that lack of diversity. So you actually need the naysayers, but they need a different style of management. So again, it's making the most of the people in the room, you know, they are what we call the lighthouse. They're the ones who warn you off the rocks, you know, and you get really tired of them sometimes because they're like, but what if this goes wrong? And has anyone thought about this terrible thing? And do you think there's a risk in doing this? You know, and so you start to feel sometimes like they're the negative energy, but I have found that if you cut them out and keep kind of saying no, no, you know, we thought about that you're wrong that they just sort of get louder and louder or else they actually absent themselves, they take themselves away from the committee because they feel they're not being heard. It's much more useful actually to go. Just let me understand what you're saying. Can you, you know, explain that a little bit as long as you are honestly listening to them. Um, then even if you don't end up taking heed of that particular point that they're bringing up, nevertheless, you do actually need that person on your team to stop you from. Yeah, kind of ending up as the happy glad be Jerry groupthink crowd. I think that's a really, really amazing kind of thing to take away. Um And, and I think there's a theme around everything that we've kind of talked about today, which is people, right? And actually everybody's valuable and, and I think, um I think that's what I've been taking away from everything that Simon's Oliver Maria have been saying is that leadership is about other people. And um we don't have, we don't have any more time to, to talk, but I think that we probably could talk all day about ways in which we can kind of change the world in ways in which um collectively as a healthcare community, we can push for better. Um But we just don't have enough time. Um I want to thank each of you um for giving up your time. Today um for um imparting some of your pearls, imparting some of your wisdom and sharing a little bit of your leadership journey. I'm going to pop your Twitter handles into the chat. Um If people do have questions, um uh you know, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if people kind of tweet you um afterwards, um uh if, if you don't then feel free to tweet us at metal and we're really happy to uh to kind of continue to uh chair that conversation going forward and, and be involved. And um but yeah, there's, there's lots of ways to, to kind of stay involved in healthcare leadership, especially with these three great people who you are. Uh I know, I know you won't blow your own trumpet, but you really are kind of leading the way and, and so, uh so thank you for, for joining us today. I'm really grateful. Thanks for all feel for having us a pleasure. Thank you.