 Welcome to the Hack and Sack Meridian Health's podcast series for Women's History Month. I'm your host Jody Mayberry. This episode we're going to talk to Kathy Inora. Kathy is the Interim President, Hospital Services Division, and Chief Integration Officer. With Kathy, we're going to explore the topic of aspiring leaders. This is going to be an important conversation for anyone who wants to be a leader. This podcast is part of a series of dynamic short interviews sponsored by the Hack and Sack Meridian Health's Women in Leadership Team Member Resource Group. The group selected topics for this series that they knew were important to your career. Let's get started with Kathy Inora. Why is it important for the organization that aspiring leaders step up and embrace a leadership role? I think that we have to have the ability to do succession planning in the company with people who have the same culture, who have been growing up in the same environment so that we're able to seamlessly replace ourselves as we begin to move on and leave the place for new leaders. Do you feel that you need a big title to be a leader? Oh, no, I absolutely don't think that. I think people are affected by titles around you, but if you're asking me personally, do I need a big title or do individuals need a big title, I would say no. I think having big energy and having big ideas are what make individuals successful and what makes them move up the ladder. That's great to hear that you don't have to have a leadership position to be a leader that you can start from where you're at. What advice do you have for someone that they may not have the leadership title yet, but they want to be a leader? What advice do you have for them? I think the best advice is to volunteer to do different things. So if you're in a meeting and something comes up and it looks like they need someone to join a committee or form a team, I would step up to the plate and suggest that you want to do that. Fill the gaps that are being opened for individuals to be able to participate in some of the things that management is doing. So for instance, I've run the integration management office for the last 20 months and just went around the network looking for talented individuals. I didn't care what their titles were if they had some skill set that I needed in a particular area and I found so many people volunteering and coming up to the plate. Obviously, we talked to their bosses to make sure they're allowed to spend a day or two days a week doing something other than their actual position, but we've been able to identify some incredible bright talent and these are managers and directors and vice presidents and even executive assistants who've really come up to the plate and have done serious work on the integration when they didn't really have to and we've now compiled a list of a lot of talented people who we need to actually set up programs now on how do we take that talent and get them into different positions long term. This goes along with what you're saying already. So we don't have the leadership position but we want to be a leader, we're an aspiring leader. What are some of the ways that we can show our leadership capabilities before we've been given leadership responsibility? I guess I have to go back and say what makes a great leader? Great leader is someone who motivates other people, who communicates, who is unselfish, who believes in teamwork, who is self-motivated and so all of those are the skill sets that people should start nurturing as either they're a director or they're a manager. Those are things you can start doing in any position that you're currently in. If we do want to be a leader, should we let others around us know that that's what we want to do? I would say yes. Obviously if they had a good leader, that good leader who they were reporting to would be asking them what do you want to do, what's your career path, etc. I mean, me as a leader, I'm constantly asking the people who are working with me in the integration office or now in the hospital side of the business, what do you really want to do? What do you want to do two years from now? What do you want to do five years from now? How could I help you get there? As a leader myself, when you identify good people, you want to keep them in your network and good people need to have a career path. At what point in your career did you realize you wanted to be a leader? You know, I never thought about it. I was always in a position where if something came up, I would volunteer to do it. So if you're in a room with a group of people and so here's a new project and the executive looks around and says, who wants to do it? I would just say, I could probably handle that or I'd like to be on that team. So I can't say that I ever thought I was going to be a leader. I just wanted to always be interested in something and creative and keep my career moving forward. Those are the people who become leaders without actually saying, you know, and today I'm going to do this and tomorrow I'm going to do this. Just becomes a philosophy. You embrace change, you enjoy change and you enjoy doing new things and creative things. You mentioned earlier that by now, through some of the things you've done, you've noticed that there are some leaders in the organization. What are some of the traits that you notice in these people to say these are aspiring leaders that are going to have an impact? Being honest, having the ability to evaluate a situation honestly and not be afraid that they're going to say the wrong thing. People who are constantly thinking of the team and not using the word I all the time tend to be the people that get ahead. I think individuals need to show us motivation, be able to communicate. I find them to be honest. I find them to be loyal to the project. I find that they like to collaborate with other individuals, that it's not a me only, that it's a team situation. They tend to be unselfish with their time and their energy. They tend to be able to communicate to each other. Best young leaders are, though, or people aspiring to be leaders. I find have the ability to manage up and manage down. So they're not afraid to be in a room with senior executives. You know, they know what they could say, what they should or should not say based on their skill mix, but they're not intimidated by those around. If we want to develop our own leadership traits, where do you recommend we start? I think the most important is to find them is a mentoring. To find someone to role model, someone's not going to directly mentor you, but you really aspire to act like that individual because you see that individual being successful and having people listen to them and enjoying them and wanting to be around and to collaborate with them. You could watch that person as a role model. If the best case is if you find someone to mentor you and talk to that person on how to what are the next steps in my career? What should I be looking for? What should I be studying? What did I do right in that meeting? What did I do wrong in that meeting? I mean, even myself at this point in my career, almost after every real strategic meeting, I meet with one or two of the executives that I happen to be closer with. And I will say, how do you think that went? What could I have done better? What did I do wrong? And I learned even at this moment, whether or not I was successful in a particular meeting. And so that's the kind of thing you have to constantly not be afraid to analyze yourself, because you're not always right. You're not always wrong. Do you have any final words of encouragement for aspiring leaders? People should always aspire to do the best that they could possibly do and to surround themselves with people that they aspire to be like and learn from and always enable yourself the luxury of learning from other individuals, those above you and those in positions that might be lower than you, because everyone has something to teach somebody else as a leader. I think it's important to elevate those around you. I think it's important for us to enable individuals to do their best work. And I think it's very important for leaders to facilitate motivation to present a culture whereby individuals are encouraged to get out of their safety zone and do other things. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation, check out the other topics in this series of podcasts.