You’re the Leader, Now What? with Dr. Richard Winters – Episode 443 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Author, emergency physician, and Director of Leadership Development for the Mayo Clinic Care Network, Dr. Richard Winters, tackles how to fight burnout, shake off an “us vs them” mentality, and track your organization’s vital signs, and explains the P.A.G.E.R.S. test of wellbeing, INformal leadership, the leadership qualities of producers like Rick Rubin and Brian Eno, examining our relationship with time, why he often thinks of Sisyphus, and the leadership experiment you can try for yourself today.

About Dr. Winters:

Dr. Winters is a practicing emergency physician and executive coach at Mayo Clinic. As director of Leadership Development for the Mayo Clinic Care Network, he facilitates retreats and deliver programs that train leaders at healthcare organizations worldwide.

In 1994, he graduated from the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine. Winters is board certified and residency trained in Emergency Medicine from the University of California, San Francisco at Fresno, graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas Executive and Professional Coaching Program and is a professional certified coach through the International Coaching Federation. He completed a Healthcare Management Executive MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center, and obtained a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Prior to his work at Mayo Clinic, he served as managing partner of a democratic physician group, chair of emergency medicine, president of an 800-physician medical staff, and CEO/founder of a managed care startup. Winters lives in Rochester, Minnesota with his family.

Learn more at RichardWinters.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Dr. Richard Winters
Hey Stephanie, how are you?

Stephanie Maas
Hey, Dr. Winters on well, how are you? Thank you so much for being with us super excited to have you. If it’s okay with you, we’d love to dive in. Obviously, we know about your background and your book, there’s so much relevance with what you bring to the table. And I’m going to start with, for me personally, the why behind things are often just as interesting as the content. So my first question, it’s super simple. But why the book?

Dr. Richard Winters
Why the book? Yeah, so So I’m an emergency physician, right. So on one hand, I’m taking care of patients. And then on the other hand, I also develop leaders and provide executive coaching for many of leaders internally and externally to Mayo Clinic. And I was noticing that as I was meeting with leaders, and really leaders at all levels, this could be the most senior leader or individuals just stepping into leadership roles, but there were common themes. And so instead of each coaching session talking about these themes, I thought, well, let me write a book about this. And I can put some of these things in there. And and the common theme, really is people moving from these places of expertise is these things they know very well they know how to do they know how to take care of and then once they become leaders finding that they can no longer necessarily like flex that expertise, like the they’re used to walking into a room making a decision, and then moving on, as you’re a leader that actually is very distracting and and oftentimes not the right way to go. And so how do you put down your expertise, kind of help facilitate and coach colleagues to be the best they can to move forward. And so that’s what I tried to put into the book, also wanted something that was something where a leader could just open up the book and find, okay, I’m having some issues. There’s this person that keeps interrupting What do I do? Or this individuals burned out? Or I have to run a retreat? What do I do so something that they can just open it up and find some tactics there?

Stephanie Maas
So almost like a guidebook?

Dr. Richard Winters
Yeah. And so as a coach, the things that I like to talk about are the really messy things like how people are making sense of this really complex world. And so I find that people face two different kinds of challenges. One, are these really messy kind of thorny, adaptive challenges? We’re, all these things are coming together? And how do you process it? I love coaching around that stuff. And then there are things that you coached around that are really more like the technical challenges, which is like, I don’t know how to do this. And so okay, then how are you going to learn how to do this, or you need to gain a skill, you need to gain some experience. And I prefer to jump to the more adaptive stuff. And so I tried to put a lot of the technical stuff like how do you actually do this stuff, the frameworks into the book. So really, it’s as much to help the individual is to help myself to try to get into the things that I think are meatier, actually, for the leader to move forward?

Stephanie Maas
Were there any byproducts or outcomes from the book that were different than what you would have thought or expected?

Dr. Richard Winters
I mean, the great thing about writing in general is you go into writing a paragraph or some chapter with some intention. And then as you’re doing that, you start to learn new things, you start to see your words, you start to think about how is that being, you know, thought about, and how do I best, say these things. And so I think the process of writing a book, just as, like, as we’re running meetings, like, we run a meeting, and we hear ourselves saying this, and doing this, and then afterwards, we’re like, I don’t know that I wanted things to go that way. Or like, I’m talking to my teenage daughter, and I approach it in that way. I’m like, Okay, well, I’ve been to high school, and this is what I would do. If I were you. And then afterwards, I think she’s probably not the best approach.

Stephanie Maas
So hang on, are you also suggesting that there are guidelines for raising teenagers?

Dr. Richard Winters
I think that guideline is we all as parents have expertise, but our teenagers are gonna say, I don’t care what you say, I do what I want, you know that. And so how do you help them figure out the best thing for them, as opposed to, you know, from our own perspectives?

Stephanie Maas
Very cool. Diving into a little bit of the meat of the book, you address this idea of burnout, as a society today, that is a huge topic, burnout, the Great Recession, quiet quitting. These are kind of the buzzwords that are, you know, in everybody’s work life, professional life, how do you address them once they’re there? Because unfortunately, I think the reason why we’re hearing so much of this is it’s already there. It’s not about prevention. Share with us some of your suggestions around really dealing with that.

Dr. Richard Winters
Yeah. So I think this is where frameworks are helpful, like, ways of like, how do we think about this, and there’s a couple that popped to mind here. And so one is if you’re on social media, and you’re talking about burnout, it’s oftentimes you get into the talk of what we have done, and what they have done and how they didn’t listen, and how it oftentimes you get into this kind of victim mode. And so where it’s blame, and this is what’s being, and I think that’s that is that is a space that is part of burnout, but let’s like let’s step back. And so as we’re thinking about burnout, let’s think first of all, it like we can be shouting about whoever the politician is, at the time, we can be shot up shouting about whoever the big name in the news is, or you know, the insurance companies or the lawyers or the doctors, but there’s not a lot we can do about that. And so we’re kind of like shouting into The fog and still feeling burned out between saying nothing, do nothing and shouting into the fog. There are three different levels of things that we can think about as we’re approaching burnout. So the first one is just as we’re working in organizations at this organizational level, is the organization working in a way that they think well being is important. And burnout is something that we’d like to try to decrease. If so, what’s being done about this. And so I think about from a system level is, is the organization thinking about burnout and well being. And so as an emergency physician, and I go see a patient, there are vital signs. And so if I see a patient and try to make a diagnosis without looking at Vital Signs of not a very good emergency physician, for organizations, there are vital signs. And I think burnout, well being is one of those vital signs. And so we look at costs, and we look at revenue, and we look at quality, and those sorts of things. But we also need to be looking at the well being the burnout rates of individuals that we’re employing, if we’re not looking at that long standing, it’s not going to be a healthy thing for the organization. This is part of our responsibility. This is a system that we are a part of, therefore, let’s do something about it. And so that’s organizational level. And so the second level I think about is inter individually, like how we’re interacting with colleagues, and that is, on the one hand, are we working with people who were enjoying working with or having positive interactions with or not, it kind of stinks to be working with people that you don’t enjoy working with? So that’s one thing. And then the other thing is, how are we meeting together? How are we conducting our meetings and making decisions? And so we call these things meetings. But are they oftentimes meetings, people think they they like I hate meetings. But oftentimes, meetings are not meetings, like it’s oftentimes tellings. And so how do we create a workplace where we’re actually getting together? And we’re talking about things and understanding what different people are perceiving? And how do we move forward. And then I think then the final layer is just individually like personally, on a personal level, there are kind of different things that we can look at. And so yes, meditation is important for for those who like that, certainly eating healthy and having healthy, you know, activities and working out and sleeping well, all those things are a base, I know that if I’m working the night shift in the IDI, and if I haven’t eaten well, and someone was mean to me, that the next day, when my teenage daughter comes and talks to me, I may be a little bit more crusty than usual. And so if I’m keep having those sorts of days, it’s likely I’m gonna be burned out. So that’s, that is one part of of the individual thing. But the other part is also how we make sense of our own situation. And it’s, and this is like, as I was talking about to begin with, like how we deal with the complexity of our world. And if we feel like we’re trapped, then we’re going to be trapped. I talked to leaders, for example, who have difficulty speaking up. So as a coach, I’d be trying to figure out how you might be able to speak up in ways that allow you to actually voice your opinion. There are other leaders, for example, who speak too much, they, whenever they say something, someone else disagrees with them, they’re gonna repeat what they say they’re going to talk about their past and all their experience. And so for those individuals, they don’t like feeling that way. And certainly they’re causing burnout, likely by silencing others, but for themselves, like their view of the world of me, being a leader means I need to be speaking up and talking over people is something that needs to be challenged. And so I think it’s important for us to look at all three of these levels, the things we can change the things that we can change, that are a part of our organization that we were meeting together, and then ourselves, I give a talk to all the new Mayo Clinic physicians and scientists, and I’ll ask them, I’ll see how many of you can name the four chambers of the heart? And everyone raises their hand? What are the 12 cranial nerves, all of them will raise their hand and then we’ll say, so what are the components of well being and their silence? They can’t necessarily say what are the components of well being? And so would it be nice to have a language about this thing that we’re trying to get to well being and as we’re moving away towards burnout, and so for me, the thing that’s helpful for me is thinking about this thing called psychological well being also called eudaimonic. well being, and this is different from hedonic. So hedonic well being is like last night, I went out and had drinks and ate a whole bunch. And that was great today, if you like, you know, this is bad, I don’t feel so good. That’s not the kind of well being I’m talking about. So it’s psychological long term, like how we’re actually assimilating the world and feeling about ourselves. I as a physician, like mnemonics, and so there’s a mnemonic that I can put together called pagers that’s around this, and so pagers P is purpose. And so this is a sense that we are aligned with the purpose of the organization and the values of the individuals that we’re working with and meeting with and that are our friends. If that’s not happening, it’s we may start to feel burned out. And so that’s a PA and pagers is autonomy. And this is the sense that we’re being heard that actually our experience counts. And so as we have, as we perceive the environment, we have ideas for things that might change or that we would tweak that were being heard, and not being silenced, and that and that it’s kind of safe for us to do so. Not that we want others to do exactly what we want. But if we’re moving forward and we don’t feel like we’re being heard than our autonomy is hurt, and then so G is personal growth. Do we feel like today we’re having an opportunity to be better than we were yesterday, we have an opportunity to grow and pursue idea is of interest. If not, that could hurt our well being and we might become burned out. He is environmental mastery, do we have the things the resources that we need to get the job done. And so if you go to work and you’re being asked to do something, you don’t have the resources to do something that can be a big driver of burnout and of hurting well being. And it may be as an as we’re talking about recession, and we’re in situations where things are more restricted, we don’t have the revenue to do some things. And so that is E RS relations, positive relations with others, we’ve talked about that. And then self acceptance, our sense of being able to accept that we at times do things that we would not have wanted to have done, if we were to look retrospectively or even going forward that we make mistakes. And that can be paralyzing for individuals, if you get stuck in that space, like you’re living in the past. And this can be a huge source of burnout. I think for all of us. I mean, we’ve had interactions with friends and colleagues where, geez, I wish I didn’t do that. And our ability to Okay, learn from that, and accept that is so important for us moving forward and finding well being.

Stephanie Maas
Okay. So I envision this book appealing to a couple of different types of leaders. And I think you’ve addressed some of this. So I’ll try not to be too repetitive, you, you’ve got the folks that have been in leadership for a while, they’re doing things a certain way, and it’s just not working anymore, or maybe never was, but they’re finally seeing the writing on the wall or whatever the case may be. And then you’ve got maybe somebody who is new. And oftentimes our own experiences frame, how we do things. So for example, if they had good leadership, they will try and implement what they were able to witness. And then I can also see folks who just have a strong desire to transition into leadership. And if this is a part of you want to be something that’s a part of your future, here’s what you can start learning about now to be effective when that day comes.

Dr. Richard Winters
So think about so what is it to be a leader for some people, they want to be a leader so that they can have control. And so it means that they want to have followers because they have ideas of what should be done and just everyone fall behind them. I guess that is a form of leader. I mean, that is that’s, that’s difficult. And that’s not the approach that I like to think of in that sort of space, you really need to have the answers. Things need to work out well. Like you have so much expertise, you know how to solve it. And I think that becomes quite uncomfortable. But oftentimes, we do find ourself in these positions where we’re like, I don’t know what these people are doing, I need to step up and like show though, and I think that’s a good place to start. It really is it’s authentic, and all of us can see opportunities where organizations are in our interactions with others can improve. And so I’ll put that aside. Now you’re you’ve become a leader, I think the really the definition of leader becomes not one of having followers, who are who you can kind of control and stuff. But really, I think of a leader is someone who develops leaders, someone who can help other individuals find their voice and find their pagers like their sense of purpose or sense of autonomy, they get the resources and things that they need. And so when you’re doing that, you’re really putting on a different hat. It’s not the hat of the experts on who knows what to do. It’s more of the hat of someone who’s a facilitator and a coach and a teacher. That’s how I think about leadership. It’s those individuals that can do that. And so then also, I’m thinking about what is leadership? Is it a flick a formal title? Does it mean that you have to have a like I have to you have to be the CEO, or the director or the VP there is that that’s that formal leadership structure where you have the power to hire and fire and but I think what’s even more interesting to tap into for each of us is the our informal leadership roles. And that is the person who people go to during times of difficulty, I’m the person who’s most likely to be the champion and move forward may not have any formal title, but they are a leader, they’re the person who can help the group of individuals that they work with become better and work forward and find answers. I like that. I mean, I like to think about informal leadership, how can we be more like that those great informal leaders in our formal leadership roles? How do we how can we relieve some of the pressure of on ourselves to be able to have to know the answer in the moment and be able to collect and find the answer together from others. So that being said, I do want to put aside, there are times that a leader needs to make decisions, difficult decisions, and we need to step up and do that. But those are some of the times a lot of the other times are bringing people together and facilitating and how do we kind of adapt to those environments?

Stephanie Maas
Fascinating. Let me shift gears slightly. One of the things you mentioned earlier, this self acceptance, to get there takes such an incredible amount of self awareness that I think a lot of us don’t have or need years of therapy to get. You provide a platform, but it still can be so overwhelming. Talk to me about that.

Dr. Richard Winters
Yeah. So I think there’s a couple things like as I started learning to become a coach, one of my instructors said, like, the thing you like to say is you don’t have to change if you want to stay the same, like so we don’t have to change, right? Like, it’s working out where you’re at, that’s fine. It’s like you cannot coach someone who just wants to be where they’re at. And so we have to assume that we’re We’re in this growth mindset sort of phase where we’re looking for new ways of being better, more fulfilled and, and getting the things that we think, you know, that are important accomplished. And so on the one hand, we have to want to change, we have to want to have this kind of growth mindset. And on the other hand, we have to think that things don’t change in giant leaps. They change in small steps. And so wouldn’t it be so great if we could be like this, this this whole person we envision, which is perfect in the future, but it’s not like we can just put on clothes and be that person we have to be trying things on, we have to kind of walk with them, and see what’s comfortable and what’s not comfortable and Thrillist experimentations be VP identifying those parts that we like, and the parts that we don’t like and learning from there. So, so very much as we’re developing as individuals, as we’re developing as leaders, we are really kind of trying things on for a moment, which oftentimes feels quite inauthentic. Like I’m really good at numbers, you know, telling the story with graphs and things like that. And I feel like the numbers should just speak for themselves. Okay, well, that’s great. But maybe individuals need to hear a story. And they need to have a more grounding of behind the purpose. And so then, as a leader who likes to talk about numbers, I need to somehow learn now how to how to tell these stories, which it’s a process just to get to there. As I was a kid, when I was in high school, I’d make Miss mixtapes and I’d like try to find like the best songs right to put out there. And you know, some songs work, some didn’t. And the next mixtape would be better. And writing the book. It’s almost like I’m a, I’m putting a mixtape together. It’s like being a producer. And I look at those individuals, like there’s producers like Rick Rubin and Brian Eno, who can bring a bunch of individuals very talented individuals into a room and have them producing like these wonderful albums that are platinum selling their ability to take all these different ideas, put them together, and like create something really cool is I think what we’re all doing as leaders, we’re like finding these different songs, these different things, these different programs that we take, and we’re starting to kind of try them on and figure them out, play them in our own minds, and then see how they work. Oftentimes, also, leaders will come and they’ll have this idea that this is something that needs to change. Now I’m gonna push it, I’m gonna push it, it’s not working, why isn’t anyone listening? I think it is important to kind of step back and just look at our relationship with time, oftentimes, we’re thinking about things that we want to be changed by tomorrow or next week. But all we need to do is just step back a little bit and think about next quarter or next year, and how things might be different. And so think about Sisyphus, like pushing the rock up the hill. Like he’s rolling back down. I also imagine Sisyphus is in the subdivision that’s changing. And all of a sudden, this boulder by pushes that mountain away. And then this was like, Oh, I can roll this rock easily. Sometimes we just need the patience to let the rock be moved, you know, the hill to be mowed down by itself?

Stephanie Maas
Oh, I think that is hopefully something we’ll highlight. Sometimes we just need to have the patience to let the rock be moved. Okay, if we were having this conversation five years from now, what do you think the biggest challenges to leadership are going to be in five years from now? What’s coming?

Dr. Richard Winters
Yeah, I think the biggest challenges for leaders all along since the onset of humanity, I would say, is just dealing with complexity. And we were dealing in these environments, where the things we’re considering the amount of unknowns are so high, it’s rapidly evolving. And so how do we bring individuals together amidst these unknowns, like to try to move forward with these goals we have. And then as we’re doing that, even like the outcomes of the goals, we cannot predict, because it things are changing. So fast, things are so volatile, and complex, those are going to be the problems of the leaders as as we move forward. And I think even more so if you’re in an organization that’s wanting to be successful, how do we help the individuals that we hire, you know, I’m different now than when I was 20 years old, I’m different than when I was a baby, like, I can do different, I was just able to, like, move from crawling to standing. At that time, I was probably wasn’t gonna be a good leader. And so now I’m 20, you know, and I’m just like, I don’t know, like second year of college, or whatever that is, I’m probably a better leader now than I was then. And each of us is we’re in organizations, like we have these arcs of our career where hopefully, we’re getting better this month versus the previous month, our best leaders were able to understand that. And so a lot of times, we’re talking about disengagement, and quiet quitting and things like that, right now, it may be that this individual is at a moment in their life where they need to maybe less focus this week, this month, this quarter on this work task, and they need to be focusing on family or they need to be focusing on these other things that are going on their life, but they need to be focusing on this thing of personal growth that’s going to they’re going to be learning a whole bunch from are we going to be leading organizations in the future? And I think not where individuals are commodities, where, okay, you’re disengaged, you’re out of here, there are going to be some organizations like that. But I don’t think that people are going to want to work as much in those organizations. It’ll, it’ll fulfill some needs. But for others, those organizations that have less churn that have individuals who are able to kind of be themselves in the moment, we’re going to find ways of finding that just people throughout their lives throughout their professional lives are are changing, and we’re going to be able to help them adapt, we’re going to be able to give them a little space when they need to, we’re going to have them step in. It’s not like we’re not going to be producing revenue and producing our goals goals during each moment. But we’re going to be able to identify and help individuals kind of where they’re at to help them go from where their ads to where they want to be in the future. And so it’s just, it’s really more about a holistic view of how we’re working together and how together we can accomplish these really difficult things and volatile and uncertain spaces.

Stephanie Maas
I think, actually, what you just said, there’s some pretty neat foreshadowing, again, it’s what we’ve seen coming is that holistic approach, and that’s a perfect analogy with medicine. It’s not just treating the symptoms. Anything we haven’t talked about that you would like to share, you think would be important to share?

Dr. Richard Winters
I think it’s important, again, for us to recognize the importance of our expertise, our experiences, the things like we’ve been there. And we’ve done that, and how much this adds to our efficacy and our ability to get things done. But also on the other hand, to be able to then separate from that, and move forward in ways where we’re not necessarily leveraging that. And that really is more as being a coach and a facilitator. And so I think just as an experiment, as someone comes up to you, and they’re asking you a difficult question, maybe how do you in that moment, not give the answer? How do you in that moment, not think about what’s happened to you in the past? And like be going through a year kind of database of experiences? How do you in that moment, just actually best help that individual who’s talking to you understand their database of moments to reflect on what things are like for them and how they’re experiencing it? And then given that, what might they do? And then given that, what will they do moving forward? I think on a one to one perspective, that’s powerful. And then I think, on the group level, the same thing happens, where we face these really difficult issues, staffing, we need to change the product we need to improve. I mean, there’s like so many things that we face. And oftentimes, as leaders, we go in us, or maybe just a small executive group, and decide like in the moment based on our database of experience, what needs to be done, but how powerful it can be during certain moments to to be asking that our colleagues like so what are your database of moments? What are your percept perspectives about this, and then only after you receive kind of developing the shared reality, this this shared perspective of what’s going on, which includes all the agreements, all the disagreements, all the fears and worries, but really a much better perspective of the total, like, challenge ahead. Only after we find that do we start to think about what we might do and what we will do moving forward. And so it’s really how do we as individuals, as leaders, as parents, as friends, kind of stopped being like reflexive robotics, like based on our experiences and in the past, and what we think should happen and start being more just open to listening and seeking to understand and discovery before we start to move forward.

Stephanie Maas
Thank you.

Dr. Richard Winters
Yeah, cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great meeting you.