This is Lab Medicine Rounds, a curated podcast
for physicians, laboratory professionals and students.
I'm your host, Justin Kreuter, the Bow Tie Bandit of Blood,
a transfusion medicine pathologist at Mayo Clinic.
Today we're rounding with Dr.
Matt Binnicker, the Director of Clinical Virology
and Vice-Chair of Practice in the Department
of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic to talk
about working and leading through uncertainty.
Thanks for joining us today
Dr. Binnicker.
Dr. Kreuter, it's always good to be here.
Thanks for having me back.
It's great to have you back and to, you know, focus
on many of your other additional talents beyond just covid.
You, you are certainly, you know, a wise sage when it comes
to microbiology, but also also with leadership.
Yeah. Held a number
had the chance to hold a number of leadership positions
in the Department of Lab Medicine and Pathology.
I've learned it's a fantastic way to really
understand the organization, meet a lot of people
create networks, and it's all about knowing who to reach
out to and the team members to pull
around the table to get major initiatives done.
So I've been happy
and honored to serve in those leadership positions.
So maybe we can kind of share some
of this wisdom with our listeners today.
Maybe start off with, you know, this, why, why is working
with uncertainty an important skill for us to cultivate?
Yeah, uncertainty and ambiguity is part
of the fabric of being a leader.
And that's
because the higher up you move into leadership positions
the more ambiguity and the more uncertainty becomes common.
When an issue reaches a high leadership team
it's usually because there's no clearcut answer.
If there was a clearcut answer
the hope would be that it would've been resolved
by frontline teams and team members.
But when there's significant challenges
when there's uncertainty, that's when issues rightfully so
get escalated for discussion
and resolution by leaders or leadership teams.
And so again, it's really just a normal part
of being a leader or being part
of a leadership team is dealing
with situations where there's no clearcut answer.
So it's a really important skill to develop regardless
of whether where you're at in your career path
but certainly if you are interested or are already
in leadership positions to be able to be comfortable
with working through uncertainty.
You know, so I hear you talking and
and so for our students
young and career professionals to hear, you know
this is something to be deliberate about
trying to understand when you look
to your mentors who are dealing with uncertainty
how are they navigating that?
And for a more senior leadership to think
about as you're mentoring people, to be explicit
about helping them understand how you are dealing
with that uncertainty.
You know, one of the things I imagine, or that I struggle
with sometimes when talking about uncertainty
with my trainees, my learners, is kind of how do you
how do you navigate it while being grounded, right?
Because when there's uncertainty, there might be a changing
of minds as new information comes available.
And I could imagine there is that challenge to
understand when do you shift gears, when do you pivot?
And then obviously communicating that to the team so that
you know, they understand you are, you are a thoughtful
deliberate leader versus somebody who, I mean, you know
not to invoke politics, but people talk
about flip flopping in a negative connotation.
I'm kind of curious how
how do you navigate and thread that needle?
Yeah, it's one of the biggest challenges that being
in leadership positions is being able to stay grounded
or have a direction yet be willing and open
to course adjustments as new information becomes available.
I think the key here is to always have a true north
what is the value or values that you
as a leader or as an organization hold true to?
And what do you use
as your true north to always come back to regard regardless
of what situation and uncertainty are
in the midst of, for example, here at Mayo Clinic
our primary value is the needs of the patient come first.
So as we are dealing with issues where there's not enough
or ample information or data to make a real
clear cut decision we'll commonly come back
to that true north statement of is the decision we're making
in the best interest of our patients to
help them receive the best diagnosis in management.
As that really helps you to guide you through
or your teams through periods of uncertainty and ambiguity
is to always go back
to that true north or that guiding principle or value.
But it is very true that leaders oftentimes are criticized
for changing their mind or changing their opinion
on a situation as new information becomes available.
And I just think it's so important to get the message
out that a leader who is open to course adjustments
that's not a sign of weakness.
It's a sign of being willing to take
in new information to change your potential direction
or strategy dependent on that information.
But as long
as that direction continues to align with your true north.
I'm really curious to explore a little bit
your con- this concept of, you know, the true north.
Because I think a lot of times we think about, you know
leaders rising to a particular occasion.
And I imagine that for you
this isn't something that only during those really
stressful days that you are doing something to kind of, I
I'm not sure I, I don't wanna put words
in your mouth to live or communicate this true north.
So I'm kind of curious, maybe my question is
when you're not in a crisis moment
when it's not necessarily an ambiguous time
how do you kind of prepare or how do you behave
in a way that kind of further cultivates this idea
that everybody understands you're a leader that's got a
a true north, how, how does your off season look?
Yeah
Yeah. I mean, the goal is to not be operating
in chaos mode or response to tragedy or again, chaos.
That hopefully at least half the time you're
you're operating in some sort of a, a rhythm or run state.
Now, during those times where there's not chaos involved
I found it to be effective to use those periods
of relative calm to overemphasize
and overcommunicate the strategy direction and gain clarity
within the team of where you're headed and why.
So as long as your teams have a strong appreciation
of where you are leading them and where the future
what the future will look like
then we're able to navigate those periods
of uncertainty or chaos a lot more effectively
because they still will be able to go back and remember
this is ultimately where we're headed.
We're gonna weather this particular storm.
The landscape may change after the storm
but ultimately we know we're gonna get back
to that true north and
that future direction that we've talked
about and over-communicated and overemphasized
during the periods of calm.
I'm curious in your answer there
you're talking about the, you know, the importance
of kind of normally operating with a, a rhythm and a run.
And I know you got a lot of rhythm, you're a runner.
Yeah. And I'm curious
about how we could help our colleagues who are struggling
with uncertainty during these times.
You know, as a leader, sometimes maybe junior leaders
or you know, early career professionals might be struggling
with that uncertainty and, you know
may feel very out of a, a rhythm.
So how, how can we help those colleagues who are struggling?
Yeah, I've learned that it is a skillset that's learned
over time and with experience.
It's just not something that many people are born
with in terms of being able to be dropped into uncertainty,
ambiguity and be comfortable with that.
I think we're wired to be uncomfortable when
things aren't clear.
And so what do we need to do as leaders to
help prepare the future generation to deal with that?
We need to give them exposure
and experience in dealing with difficult decisions.
So it all goes back to leaders being willing to
grow the next generation of leaders.
And you look for good talent, you put them
in opportunities that will test their skillset
and allow them to develop you even allow them
sometimes to fail and talk through what that failure to look
like and how we could do things differently in the future.
Failure is an opportunity to learn and if
if people aren't given opportunities to be
in those situations and learn from experiences
they're not gonna be battle tested
and be able to respond during periods
of uncertainty and ambiguity when it really matters.
So again, it's all
about growing leaders, giving them opportunities
supporting them through success and failure.
That's really the key.
A as you talk about that, I, I really see your point there
on that kind of debrief, talking with them particularly
about when there has been a failure
and something I've come across is people that kind of have
I guess what we talk about more
of that fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset.
And so they take that conversation in
in a very hyper critical negative way.
That person may have a lot of talents
and how can we help them to kind of move
from that kind of, wow, I, I really don't
this getting a negative feedback is really uncomfortable.
How, how can we kind of help them see the
the growth and opportunity in front of them?
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned, you know
the fix versus growth mindset.
And I think as leaders it's really essential to
help develop a culture of growth mindset.
In other words, we view challenges
we view failure as opportunities to grow
and become better rather than grow challenges and failures.
Meaning that you are a failure
and so many people have that mindset, if I don't succeed
in this particular situation, I can't become better.
And that's one of the key attributes
of a good leader is to help your team members work
through that and be able to see
that you can work through challenge and failure and come
out on the other side to be a better leader
or a better team member.
And it goes back to giving people opportunities
putting in them in situations where you hope
that they will thrive and succeed, but they may fail.
And being there to support them and talking them
through that, helping them to see what the future might hold
if things are done a little bit differently
and always encouraging them along their path of leadership.
You know, I'd like to kind of close, I I think stories are
are powerful kind of teacher, I, I'm kind of curious
if you would share with our listeners kind of a story
of how uncertainty has has really surprised you most?
Yeah, you know, when I think about this question
I have a number of stories come to mind immediately.
And the, the story I'd like to tell is
is during the Covid 19 pandemic in which Mayo Clinic stood
up what we called our diagnostic stewardship group
which comprised of laboratory leaders, infectious diseases
occupational health, primary care, and really the task
of that team was to develop the testing strategies
and the safety strategies
for our patients and our employees.
And they, the difficult thing
about that group was we were truly dealing
with new information on a daily basis.
There was so much uncertainty and so much ambiguity involved
that it was a prime example of leading through uncertainty.
And I think what that experience taught me is
that if you bring together a number of different voices
you're much better prepared to weather a storm
than if you try to make decisions in isolation.
I had my, I brought some expertise
and I had things that I was aware of and familiar with
but I also had blind blinders to other issues.
And so by bringing in multiple team members
it helped to expand the layers of expertise
and gave us a much broader picture of the situation.
Did we get it all perfect?
No, but we were able to make the best decisions
with the available information at the time
and we were also able to communicate when things changed
why they changed.
So again, just to reemphasize, when you are leading
through a period of high levels of uncertainty
and ambiguity, it's very important to pull together a team
a diverse team that allows you see the complete
landscape that's gonna help you better weather the storm
and be able to make the best decisions possible.
That's so profound.
A, a word that we haven't said in this podcast yet
that I'm thinking about is, you know, really vulnerability.
And one of the things that I'm taking away
from our conversation today that's really kind
of been a thread to a lot
of your answers and your insights has been
that by leaders making ourselves vulnerable.
And then in your story there I see that vulnerability
by inviting several people under the tent to
form it helps you make the best decision, really leads
to the best decision as opposed to, I think there's a lot
of other thoughts when people want to think
about a strong leader as kind of the, the monolith.
And, and I really like how you've kind of really
threaded that through a lot of your answers
cause I think that's something that, you know
myself and probably a lot of our
our listeners can really benefit from.
Absolutely. Yeah, it, it definitely helps
as a leader to surround yourself
with an A team that is really critical
to dealing with daily operations
but also handling those significant challenges.
We've been rounding with Dr.
Binnicker on leading and working through uncertainty.
Thank you so much
for taking the time to talk about this with us.
Absolutely. Thanks again for having me back.
And to all of our listeners, thank you for joining us today.
We invite you to share your thoughts
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Please direct any suggestions to MCLeducation@mayo.edu.
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