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Welcome back. Last episode we talked with Dr. Sabrina Beroz and explored a few key themes from the 2023 NLN Leadership Institute retreat. The key themes were provided by expert leaders that inspired nurse educators to lean into their leadership roles even when, and especially when, things get tough. Thank you for joining us. Now would be a good time to transition to our third theme. which was strategy. We got to hear from Dr. Joan Evans. She is an
executive coach and consultant. Dr. Evans came to speak to us about strategic planning and also a little bit of Neuroscience neuroscience in the context of leadership, which I thought was interesting because Dr. Rachel Onello and I, who also co-hosts, right, who's often a part of these conversations, her and I often talk about neuroscience in the
context of teaching and learning. But it was really interesting to hear about neuroscience in the context of leadership so that was pretty cool. You know, I think you often think about as a leader you can hold a lot of responsibility in moving a team or an organization toward a goal and you can get very driven toward that, but I think there's a lot to be said for reflecting on, well, what is the goal? And why is that the goal? And how will we know
we got to the goal? And how will we know we didn't get to the goal? I think there's a lot of skill development for a leader around strategic planning and determining really being very thoughtful and reflective about goal setting and getting really strategic about it. I think that she just shared a lot of insight around that. So what what were some of your thoughts Sabrina? So she actually differentiated
a couple of things. She differentiated strategic planning from strategic thinking and I thought that was really interesting because I think sometimes you say, okay, strategic planning very detailed, I have to get my spreadsheet out, I have to put down it has to meet the vision and mission of the organization and these are the goals and how am I going to meet my goals. Then you have your tracking and and who's going to help me meet these goals and you often think about
am I developing this in isolation? And we're not developing it in isolation. That's where that whole strategic thinking piece comes in where you have a team. You have a team who's going to work with you on how to do this planning but you've got a whole team that's going to do that thinking piece and able to I like to think about teams
in two ways. One - and we did did talk about this a little bit at the retreat - but how you need to have some psychological safety within that team so that you hear all the voices of all the individuals who are helping you with your strategic plan. So that strategic thinking piece is your
team who's working to do that. Then the other side of course would be accountability, where the accountability piece is you need to get this done, but there's two it you know that you want to be able to hear and that's kind of the ultimate. Amy Edmondson talks about this in her work and and we'll talk about different books. I think towards the end but she talks about teaming and how important it is today with learning organizations, which is what we all work
in nursing education. In order to do the strategic planning you need a team who can hear all perspectives yet know there is a goal to meet at the end of the goal. I think I walked away with that. I value teams. I started a consortium in the state of Maryland with a group, with a team. I couldn't do it by myself because I needed expertise besides myself in this team.
They were selected for their strengths and their expertise and we worked towards it and we worked as a great team we had that goal at the end. I like to say, Dr. Sue Forneris always says that it's important to begin with the end in mind, which is what we did. We said the whole big goal was this and that there was a team that we worked together and valued our strengths as a group.
Dr. Evans also talked about strategic planning and thinking as an art and a science so it's not just this this detailed pen to paper plan that you're going to put together that there is that other art side of hearing everybody's perspective to make it very best that it can be so that's what I took away as far as strategy from what she brought to us at the retreat.
Yeah, you know I keep thinking about it keeps coming up over and over again is that when you have a team really getting strategic about looking at the different strengths that everyone brings because that diversity and strengths and that diversity in thinking and the diversity in problem solving can, I think, if you can leverage all the pieces in a very productive, meaningful way I think it just drives every like everyone cohesively toward that goal.
Amy Edmondson talks also, teams, you know, like that's a solid team, has a framework around it. But she also talks about a concept of teaming, which we do a lot more now in our learning environments because we with ad hoc committees. We come to together quickly. We have a defined goal. You may or may not know those people who come together, but you have to quickly get up to speed on everybody in the team who has what to give to the team, what their strengths are.
Then you meet your goal and then you go off and then you have another committee where maybe completely different people that you're working with. Our environments are different today when we think about strategic planning and these teaming and and even strategic thinking which is what we do in teams. I know she also talked about and I'll let you because you are really a neuroscience person so I'll let you talk a little bit about that, but she talked about the amygdala.
So I'm going to let you take off on that a little bit. You know, when we think about the neuroscience and leadership around how our emotions and how they show up in our everyday life because we're a superhuman so we also have like super emotions, but I think as humans we like to kind of like dismiss them or ignore them but they show up all the time in our daily work and how to kind of regulate our emotions and when to be vulnerable vulnerable about our emotions and
when to share our emotions. I think in a team and as a leader is can be really important because I think that shows coming back to our initial earlier conversation - it shows connection. When people in our teams as leaders can see some connection and feel some shared experience, which is often driven by emotions, I think that
can be really helpful. I think for a leader it's about being able to flip neuro from the neuroscience of being able to flip back and forth between our amygdala very intentionally to our cognitive prefrontal cortex and I think that takes practice. Then to connect that also to psychological safety and Amy Edmonson's work again. You know, to be psychologically safe, that safety comes, generates pretty much from our amygdala. I'll give an example Sabrina.
I hope you don't mind. I'm going to put us out there a little bit but you and I participated in a VR experience where you're walking the blank. Right, that's a perfect example. Sabrina and I had this opportunity to go into a VR headset and it's called Richie's plank experience. There's a piece of wood on the ground in a very safe
environment. Then you put the VR headset on and you go up an elevator and the elevator opens and there you are on the top of you know the 80th floor of the Empire State Building or something. You are tasked to walk the plank out into the open air of the the outside of the building.
Even though cognitively you know that you are safe and that you can walk this plank because you were actually on the ground and you are not outside of a building and you are not going to fall, our amygdala, it's called amygdala hijack, completely takes over and our prefrontal cortex is no longer online and I'm saying our, I'll just speak for myself, I got one step out onto the plank and I was like no I can't do it but I could cognitively I know I could do it.
But my amygdala the sweating and my heart rate completely took over and it disabled me completely, disabled me from going out onto this plank and completing the task at hand right. Right. So it was funny when I was in the VR headset. I kept flip-flopping back and forth saying, "I'm on the floor. Take a few more steps. I'm on the
floor. Take a few more steps." And I got almost to the end of the plank in VR which opens up where you would just step off and then you would go down and I don't know what that experience is because I didn't make it that far because I came across and then I actually changed foot positions and then to the safest way I could to get back to the
elevator. So yes, that is a prime example and what's interesting is that you know often Dr. Evans was saying that your amygdala is not always accurate and that's a perfect example because that was not accurate because I really was not on the top of the 80th floor of that building but it made me feel like I was. I think she was saying that your amygdala actually doesn't really shut off because it can continue on to heighten you.
As you are in more of a stressful environment you may be controlled by your amygdala and that your frontal cortex is what really helps to make sense of what's happening, but that doesn't, that tires so I I think it's important that even that work-life balance or maybe throwing back a little bit to that saying positively you know, "I get to," kind of helps to just balance that off for you a little bit.
It's interesting to see how all these concepts actually are tying back to our experience with the retreat. Absolutely. So I think it's a good time to move on to our fourth and final theme, which was advocacy. The speaker was Mr. Michael Newsom, who is a senior associate vice president for finance and operations for Virginia
Commonwealth University. He came to talk to the group about budget systems in higher education and the disclaimer I want to make is that when I see the word budget and finance I'm like yikes like I don't know how
I don't know how to do that. It has numbers and math and I just shy away from it because those are not my strength but I tied this topic to the word advocacy because I think as leaders we often have to advocate for one of the most I think common things to advocate for is money: compensation, resources, or funding for programs, time, right, and those things are often tied together, or professional development, which also has a cost to it so much of
what we do to move an organization or a team or a program forward I think it's tied to the resources to make that happen and as a leader the only way that that can those we can obtain resources is to advocate. That's my kind of bias I think in order to understand financial or maybe this is how I make it palatable. This is how I can put any emphasis on understanding numbers is that I can't advocate for a team or a program if I don't understand the numbers.
So you know I was looking at advocacy and the concept as well and thinking about how important it is that we have some sort of financial acumen as leaders because I think it is important for us to understand both sides that the person you are approaching with a budget item that you want them to give you some money for whatever resource it is that you want you have to realize that there's
another side. They have to also advocate for others who are asking probably for things as well so I think when you go into your administrator and you're asking for something. You have to have what I call what is your return on investment. What is it that you, what metrics would you need going in to say this is why we need to have
this. Maybe because we've increased the enrollment in our Institution for nursing students that because you've done that you need more simulators or you need more VR time or whatever it is that you have to put together the numbers on why you need that and how that's going to improve your... your student outcomes, your program outcomes. Go in with
that in mind. I think that's important. I worked with a person who was a businessman and he used to use this phrase and he would say, "Well Sabrina, is the juice worth the squeeze?" Meaning you know, if I'm going to give you this money, is it really worth it? I need to know why and I need to know also is it sustainable? Is it just
a one-time shot? Whatever you've purchased is is not going to be sustainable because they want it sustainable so that's another thing you want to think about when you're going
in asking for something. I think sometimes particularly in nurses education we don't get a lot of accounting and that information that background in order to be comfortable with with numbers you know because we, I mean we use numbers and medication administration but we don't often think unless you're in a managerial role and manage a budget we don't think about that a whole lot particularly at patient care even at the educator role you know unless there's something
we really want to purchase. The other piece that I think is also something called return on expectations and so that's really your educational, you've done an educational program or you want to develop a program and you have to explain why that's important and what kind of evaluation because it's really not going to be marked
by increasing enrollment per se. It's going to be more like if you think about Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation and how is that going to change behavior in the end and he results of what you've taught. You can go out to NCLEX scores I guess sometimes that's a little bit difficult but you might need to go out that far if you were asking for a pretty large expenditure.
I think advocating knowing that advocating for your program includes expenditures that we need to as nurses become comfortable and as leaders comfortable with that.
I think what's hard sometimes is that is that for good reason but it seems that there's like a person or a small group of people that have the budget in all of its detail and all of its glory and there's a little bit of a curtain right there's like a little bit of a wall between maybe that budget and that knowledge and you and maybe you as a leader on the other side that needs to advocate for a program for
a division or for some work. How do we like that's what I'd love to talk to Mr. Newsome some more about, how it is that you align...how do you create your pitch and structure your pitch and advocacy for funds if you don't always know what's behind the curtain? it like feels like it's a little bit of you're kind of shooting in the dark a little bit and I think that's challenging.
I think that takes some savvy and some mentorship and some practice perhaps to know how do you anticipate what the the leaders that are holding the budget... what's important to them? And how do they want to allocate these funds? And who else is is coming and asking? Who else is coming in? So I think that goes back to just trying to prove that you really need this
and that what are your measures, what is that return on investment? How is it going to be sustainable within the organization and what will it do to improve program outcomes because we're talking about nursing education. I think the other thing I heard you say the cost of time and and that's really hard to measure and I think we go and try and advocate for time in for
example simulation. We want faculty to be able to have time to do simulation but how in the structure of workload that's time right and all of time does end up going to budget because you have to look at am I are you going to pay me for my time in simulation. A lot of these go back to budget and budget items and workload and your teaching at the same time as you're doing
simulation. I think it's important to consider first return on course expectations but you may need that right as well as the return on investment. I remember a specific example when I realized that time and and budget were sort of connected. I was a faculty course coordinator teaching a very large course. The course existed with the faculty and a teaching assistant that helped
to support the work of the course. When I moved into the course to be the faculty and the course coordinator the teaching assistant disappeared and I remember saying, wait a minute? Where'd they go? It wasn't like they just
went out to lunch. It was that there was an administrative decision to remove that resource for budgeting purposes from the course and I remember feeling like, but wait a minute, that means for me to do the work that they were doing it's going to take me more time and that means my time and attention from something else has
to shift to now do this work. It really it came down to budgeting and in the end I had to understand it and I did you know you just okay and move on and just reallocate your time and attention in a different way, which can be challenging though sometimes when resources are removed or you're trying to advocate for resources to be added
I think it's hard. I think how to define, like you're saying, how to define the cost or the the return on investment for that time because that time maybe for me could have been more spent on scholarship or on grant writing or on it you know who knows but you have to advocate for that and that's hard. I think that's just hard to do. You brought up grant funding and you have with grant funding you
have an evaluation plan. You have a plan of evaluation that is created to show your return on investment for that funder so that they know that if I fund this and I give this money this is so we have to think about when we go to advocate for something within an institution it's almost like grant funding. This is what is needed within the program and this is the plan of evaluation so that you know I'm going to evaluate what that return is on the money that you've given me or
the resources you've given me. It's really the same concept and I guess if we think about it from that perspective because as faculty we write grants all the time. You have to have that plan of evaluation. Think about that even for budgeting. Thanks for mentioning that because I think that it aligns nicely. I think this would be a good time to summarize we talked about. The four themes, which was creativity, connection, strategy, and advocacy.
In summary, Sabrina and I just wanted to spend some time sharing our reflections from being in the presence of great speakers and great leaders that were sharing their time and expertise with us in the NLN Institute for Leadership Program. Our hope is that you can take some pieces of of these nuggets that we have internalized , take them with you. We hope to do a deeper dive into some of these topics in future weeks
I think that's it. I think we can wrap up Sabrina by talking about some of our favorites where we go turn for some leadership support and inspiration, some maybe favorite resources, books, or podcasts. Do you have any that you'd like to share? I have a couple. I've already alluded to some, but one that I thought was really interesting it's called The Leader Phrase Book.
This was given to me by one of my mentors that when I was on the board I was always thinking how do I phrase things well so that when I speak up that people will hear what I'm saying. Maybe they're not going to agree with what I say, but how do I say it in a way that sounds like I'm a leader and I have something to contribute.
So it actually was a book called The Leader Phrase Book and so it's written by Patrick Alain and it just talks about how you phrase things how if you phrase things wrong it gives you an example of how to phrase it wrong and it gives you graduates and and actually it's a great book so I recommend that if you find yourself in a position where you want to know how to how to state something in a way or it's intended the way in which your your
thoughts were what your intentions were for it. My other book, which I love, is Thanks for the Feedback. The authors are Daniel Stone and Sheila Heen. They are really social behaviorists and they talk about three things. They talk about the we, the see, and the me on how you see feedback. It's a great book to read and it just gives you those three perspectives on it's really how you receive feedback. In nursing we talk a lot about how we give feedback but this is more about how
to receive it and how we're receiving it. That amygdala - try and kind of tie that together. Tnd the other book that I think is great is called Teaming and it's by Amy Edmondson and I talked about that
a little bit. It's about how organizations learn innovate and compete in a knowledge economy and so we're in a knowledge economy in nursing education but today we're in knowledge economies because we're developing AI and different knowledge aspects so that's another great book that that I recommend by Amy Edmondson. How about you, Michelle? Well at first I just want to say I love all
of those resources! I do not know about the leader phrases though I'm gonna have to go get on Amazon and pick that one up. So I do enjoy Brene Brown's books on leadership. I think Dare to Lead is one of them. I listen to her books because I I enjoy kind of getting it from directly from the author's perspective so I listen to a lot of books.
I'll connect that to some of the podcasts I most recently have been digging into and I've been going several seasons back to go listen to the beginning is Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, and Brene Brown. They each have their own podcast and what's fun about the three of those podcasters and authors is that they have very different perspectives but they hearing them in conversation together is inspirational especially when they're talking about a lot of human psychology organizational
behavior. They all will visit each other's podcasts so you can get all three of them on several different types of conversation so I've been digging back and listening to their archives of podcast episodes so that's what and again it's not always on leadership but it's definitely there's definitely huge leadership themes but it's a lot on human connection, vulnerability, mentorship. I think the themes that are talked about always
get connected to leadership. That's nice. That's nice. All right well thank you so much Sabrina for joining me in this conversation to reflect on the the takeaways and ahas that came out of the the Leadership Institute Retreat that we had. I'm just grateful for your contributions Yeah thank you. This is my first podcast so I put myself out there! Congratulations! So thank you for inviting me. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. Wonderful. Thanks so much.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of NLN Nursing EDge Unscripted Surface. We hope you join us next time. Until then, remember, whether your water is calm or choppy, stay connected, get vulnerable, and dare to go beneath the surface.