Leading With My Heart

In her monthly leadership series, Dr. Barbara Schmidtman—vice president of cancer health operations at Corewell Health West—offers her perspective on addressing workforce-related issues through effective leadership practices. Find all her posts in this blog series on the ACCC website.

I love people. My love for humankind is likely the reason I feel so committed to delivering exceptional care to patients with cancer. My role in introducing innovations and offering efficient new ways of delivering care to our communities allows me to motivate my colleagues by the examples I set.

To say the last two years of working under the shadow of the pandemic has been difficult for the cancer care community is an understatement. How do we continue to find passion and meaning in our work and daily lives after what we have seen? I have heard people from different professions across the country ask, “Where do we go from here? How can we continue to lead when we are so tired? I don’t know how to find joy and purpose myself, let alone help a patient find it.”

The short answer is, before we can help our patients and colleagues achieve wellness, we have to first understand what “wellness” means to ourselves and others. Over the years, my research has taught me that the key to instilling wellness in the workplace starts with good leadership. The most effective leaders repeatedly ask both, “How do I care for myself?” and “How do I care for my teams?”

To create a comfortable environment within our teams that nurtures and prioritizes wellness is a process. I am by no means an expert on prioritizing wellness from a clinical psychology mindset; that is not in my scope or expertise. I am trained in business and have focused my studies on leadership and industrial/organizational psychology, which is hugely applicable to creating wellness within our workspaces. As we leaders work to understand what well-being and burnout mean in a post-pandemic world, we must fully embrace the fundamental aspects of what it means to be a leader by embracing compassionate change, leading with heart, listening to colleagues, building trust, demonstrating moral character, and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.

Finding Strength in Vulnerability

By leading with my heart and being unafraid to show my vulnerability, I have taught my teams to understand that it is sometimes okay not to be okay. When that happens, we should feel safe talking to one another about our insecurities in the workplace. It is okay not to know all the answers, as long as you work to find the solutions.

At the beginning of the pandemic, my husband was handling supply chain logistics for hospitals. As such, he was very busy addressing mask shortages and the lack of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospital staff. He worked long hours at the hospital and was unable to fully attend to the needs of our two small-ish children, who were now attending school virtually. We had limited resources to help care for our kids, as our parents were older, and we were afraid that exposure to the children could infect them with COVID-19. As for me, I was the director of an entire service line, so I was also limited in what I could do at home.

One day, while in our cancer center, I suddenly started to cry. One of our team members walked up to me and asked if I needed to talk. One side of me, the leader who can at times be reserved and fearful of oversharing myself, wanted to decline the offer. But then I remembered the importance of being authentic and unafraid to be vulnerable, and I agreed. We talked for nearly two hours, not just about what I was feeling but about what they were feeling too. They were experiencing just as much emotional distress as I was, and we created a safe space to share our frustrations and fears. This was the moment I realized the true value of being an authentic leader. A connection was made outside of the normal business routine, and it was life-changing.

That day, I learned on a very personal level that when leaders share their fears and insecurities, we encourage our teams to do the same. I truly believe that by being authentic, leaders can create a safe space for our teams to also be authentic.

A Beautiful Bird

I recently read a 2019 article in the Harvard Business Review that continues to ring true for me, especially in the context of these pandemic years. The author recounted a conversation she had with Christina Maslach, a renowned social researcher. She said that Maslach explained how to promote the well-being of staff by first asking the question: “If a beautiful bird flies into a coal mine, and comes out covered in soot, do we blame the bird?” No, said Maslach, the soot is a product of the environment in which the bird is flying.

This is how we should understand our workplaces: environments into which employees can fly and come out more beautiful on the other side (or vice versa). It is up to leaders to cultivate that environment. Doing so is essential: I hear time and time again from those fighting the good fight in healthcare that education about well-being, burnout relief, stress management, and self-care is essential for a satisfied, healthy, and effective workforce.

During the next six months, I will use my entries in this blog to focus on things that are inspiring me and putting new wind in my sails to stimulate new thinking about how to cultivate and implement effective leadership practices. Topics such as building trust, defining dysfunction, finding joy, and creating fun in the workplace will hopefully give you some inspiration for new ideas for bringing peace and satisfaction into the office. Our friends and colleagues from ACCC span from sea to shining sea, and together we are one team working toward a common goal.

Barbara Schmidtman, PhD, has worked in healthcare for more than 20 years in a variety of professional and clinical roles. Currently, she is the executive director of cancer health at Spectrum Health West Michigan in Grand Rapids. Dr. Schmidtman serves as a member of ACCC’s National Oncology Conference Taskforce, and she is the acting committee chair of the Workforce Subcommittee, a subgroup of ACCC’s Governmental Affairs Committee. Dr. Schmidtman earned her Ph.D. in business administration from Northcentral University, where she specialized in industrial organizational psychology. Dr. Schmidtman’s doctoral studies focused on physician behaviors and how demonstrated physician leadership affects individuals and teams—either positively or negatively. Dr. Schmidtman has a passion for speaking locally and nationally on leadership styles and approaches.