Ep.17 - You Don't Need A Title To Be A Leader (feat. Alison Mann)

I feel like I was just teasing Amelia.

I was like, I'm just here for moral support.

I'm a spectator today.

Yes, yes, I hear you.

One thing that you had said when we were talking about education versus clinical versus leadership, all those things tied together because I think you and I have had similar career pivots in that regard and have taken those types of roles.

I don't know about you.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about this.

I feel like being an educator and being in a leadership role also made me a better clinician, made me a better medical professional, because I think it would like, re kind of ignite my passion for learning itself, making myself better, like my students, because I taught vet nurses as well.

My students would ask me questions.

And I would be, you know, as much as you want to know everything all the time.

Yeah.

You can't.

I don't think you can know everything all the time.

So I'd be like, you know what? That's a great question.

I'm going to figure that out.

But I just remember feeling like when I would do those things, I'd be like, this is why I really like being... veterinary professional, like teaching or doing a leadership thing and guiding people and trying to help, help educate and make people better.

That made me want to be better and made me remember why I was doing it.

I don't know if you, if you kind of have the same, like, man, this really like gets me going, you know, this really makes me feel more excited because our careers are also hard, right? Like you mentioned.

And so I think like, I think it's nice to have that little bit of reminder of why we like what we do and and feel kind of more jazzed about about about doing it because you do have to kind of pick yourself up every once in a while but I don't know if you felt like that

yeah definitely definitely had similar experiences and I think when it comes to being a leader what I enjoyed the most wasn't the kind of standing up in front of people, talking to them about leadership per se, but actually educating my team and supporting and mentoring my team.

I think that is the best part for me of being a leader is actually exploring things together.

Like you said, you don't necessarily know the answer to everything.

And I think that's one of the downfalls of, you have to be aware of when you become a leader is that you don't automatically become this superhero overnight who knows everything and knows how to deal with every single situation.

Because I think you can fall into the trap sometimes of feeling like you have to know everything.

um so for me yeah let's have a look at that together let's explore that together and i think sometimes that's maybe where i think my coaching has always been there as well because sort of helping people to find the answers for themselves and that's something that i really enjoyed about my leadership role as well is that kind of supportive like oh okay so what would you do in this situation um and actually teaching people that it's okay to make mistakes as well.