[00:00:00] Dan: Hello, and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.

[00:00:13] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. Dan Hammond, you've undertaken, a really interesting thing and really heartfelt thing. So many, many households across Europe have offered to take in Ukrainian refugees, particularly mothers and children, as a result of the war. And you have also offered to do this with your family as well. It's a big thing.

[00:00:41] Dan: It's yes. In a way. It is. I think it's been a fascinating experience because well, For a start, I would say the UK is doing a lot of people in the UK are doing this, but it is nothing like just just sheer proximity means that for example, Poland, I think has over a million families living in other people's houses. I mean, extraordinary, Extraordinary generosity. But for us it was really interesting. It came up it was a thing and we just said, look, we've really got to do this. And I have to say all the time through the buildup, we kept on saying, can we really do this? You know, we have really busy lives. We're very fortunate. We were, we're very lucky, we're comfortable, but you know, we're running a startup. We work long hours. We have lows, we have two young adults living in the house with us already our offspring. So, and we kept on having questioning ourselves whether we could actually do it. And yeah, there were a few tears along the way. But ultimately you, you know, that, that could be you. 

[00:01:40] These people are from, but it doesn't matter where they're from, but they're just humans. Who've been displaced by an act of war. And we would want to be, if it was us and easily could be we'd want to be welcomed. 

[00:01:50] Pia: And we find ourselves in a situation that we, that our parents experienced at the end of the second world war, and we thought would never happen again. And I think that's probably, what's been so interesting that we're having to make some choices around that. And I, I hope we can touch in future episodes on the learning both for your guests and for you, because it would probably shape you as it probably will shape the guests that we're about to hear from today.

[00:02:21] Dan: Yeah, definitely. I think it's really interesting. You mentioned that the Kindertransport and because we just, six weeks ago, two months ago, we were at a. We went to an opening of a house locally, which had a blue plaque put on it to make commemorate the fact that they took children in from the Kindertransport. And without knowing that only weeks later we'd been exactly the same position again in Ilkley is it's on. It's unheard of. And it's obviously a key moment for, for liberty. 

[00:02:49] I think there's a lot to talk about here about this experience, as you say for us. So the guests and how we how we live together. One thing I would say is, it's quite easy to get frustrated about what's going on in the world at the moment. And what, I think I've mentioned before my I, my daughter, Ella went to work in Calais at the the refugee camps over the summer. And we realized what she was doing was something practical. And I think for this is a sort of a lesson that we've learned is that it's easy to get all agitated about things that are basically out of our control. This is something we could do. And we realize that it's going to be something practical and healing for us to to not have that learned helplessness of this, this sort of environment that we're in, but to actually do something practical. So we were definitely going to gain from it.

[00:03:34] Pia: And there probably might still be a few tears along the way, but I think that they'll all be in the learning.

[00:03:40] Dan: Always always, Always. Yeah. And as you say, I think that we're going to have a similar some interesting stories about people. Getting up, getting out of their comfort zone and doing something different. When we meet Janet and Reid Boswell, who are our guests today. They've got a wonderful story to tell about them leaving the delicious comfort of Winchester, Massachusetts, and going to a foreign place to help others. So let's let's have a listen to that interview now. 

[00:04:07] You welcome Janet and read. It's so lovely to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:04:16] Janet: lovely to be here. Thank you 

[00:04:18] Dan: Excellent. And our first episode with two people and I and a couple, is incredible. So we're very excited and thank you very briefly putting yourself forward. So let's, let's get some intros, Janet it's, but what's some tell us what you get up to when you're not sitting here in front of a microphone.

[00:04:35] Janet: I am working in a, an organization that promotes early literacy uh, and embeds the program into a network of volunteer pediatric providers.

[00:04:46] Dan: Excellent. Thank you. And read

[00:04:48] Reid: I am an occupational medicine physician. I work in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My clientele consists mostly of a life sciences company, biopharma biotech. We also provide services to municipalities, nursing homes, healthcare organizations, and so forth.

[00:05:06] Dan: Fantastic When we're going to explore the other things you two have been doing when those two things don't to keep you busy So I've got to we always start with a little card game where we ask so that we can get to know a little bit about our guests. And I normally have to pick one of these at random but I spotted this as I was shuffling the pack and I thought no Reid and Janet have to answer this question And it is I annoy my partner slash best friend by basically How do you annoy each other Janet do you have any ways in which you can annoy Reid?

[00:05:37] Janet: I routinely annoy him by saying, as I mentioned last night, three times, blah, blah, blah.

[00:05:46] Reid: When I annoy her by going, I don't remember that.

[00:05:50] Pia: Uh, the couple amnesic conversation that is very, that rotates around.

[00:05:58] Reid: Yeah. Well, I was actually going to answer was I admittedly overthink things and she hates that. Yeah. Especially like directions to somewhere, you know, in the car or whatever, I'm just please, 

[00:06:15] Janet: okay 

[00:06:15] Dan: I think that's why we get on Reid, um, Juliet always says to me that's you let me overthink that for a minute. So brilliant thank you for answering that question So fluidly but take us into this world that we're going to talk about Can you why don't we kick off with you Janet again just take us into the world. What are we going to be talking about around teams today?

[00:06:34] Janet: Reed and I have both had the great pleasure and honor of being part of teams that have gone back to post earthquake Haiti since 2012. And every year we've gone with a bunch of medical and nonmedical volunteers and. Mobile medical clinics in rural communities in the Lygon area of Haiti that really have no access to routine medical care of any sort whatsoever and are extremely poor.

[00:07:05] Reid: Let me give you some background on how this started this medical mission. This was a homegrown project in our Episcopal parish in Winchester. The year after the earthquake in 2010 a primary care internist who happened to be a member of our parish who had done mission work, formed a team, a small team they got some medications, they raised some money and they went to Lygon. It was almost like a pilot program. Does this work or not? And they had set up clinics at these various villages and came back to us and said, this helped this people welcomed us, that this feels like it's a useful service to these poor people. So we wanted to expand the team.

[00:07:51] So I was heavily recruited simply because I have MD after my name. And I I didn't want to go, I'm sorry. I, first of all, it's, it was my professional insecurity. This is, you know, rural, tropical medicine is not my bag. I don't, I have done primary care in the past, but I oversee lab safety and, the biotech industry, things like that. So I'm sorry. I did have some professional insecurity, but I also I just, I'm not go to the third world kind of guy. I, I admit that I don't like to be inconvenienced. I don't want to be hot and without water or air conditioning and that kind of thing. And I didn't want to be poorly.

[00:08:40] But anyway, so I was reluctant to go, but I was, please come. And honestly the person who convinced me to go is Janet. She said, you need to get off your butt. But she made a trade though. She said, if I go to Haiti, here we go to, we have another mission that goes to an orphanage in Honduras. So she said, I'll go to Honduras. If you go to Haiti equally inconvenient, you can, you can do it. I'll give it a shot.

[00:09:10] And in my mind, I thought I'm just, okay, I'll do my little thing. Tagalong loud, write the prescriptions, whatever everybody else can know. Just tell me what to do. So that was my mindset going into my first trip to Haiti in 2012. And just background, it's all homegrown. We raise our own money. We buy medical supplies from a discount pharmaceutical company. We carry the medications ourselves in 50 pound duffel bags, getting through customs was fun. Um, you know, and then we were picked up by volunteers from a hospital in Lygon. They have a guest house where we stayed, so they load us up into pickup trucks and land rovers and flatbed trucks.

[00:09:58] And we rumbled our way through Port-au-Prince and to get from the airport to lay a gun, you must go through Port-au-Prince and the worst parts important that, so here we are coming from the states and this is the first I'm seeing abject poverty, and it's not just abject poverty, but it's post earthquake, abject poverty, tent cities, things crumbled. Palace had pancake done itself. It was an absolute mess and that was just jaw dropping that people were living like this, quite frankly.

[00:10:34] So this was, again, it was all a homegrown mission that sort of expanded. And we recruited people from outside of our parish. We had a couple from the local Jewish temple that came, he was a podiatrist. She was a pharmacologist. One of our pharmacists we had a nurse practitioner come from Oregon to come with us. So there was a lot of recruitment and we ended up with maybe 15 people that first trip. And from my perspective we got there and started unloading our, our, all these bags of stuff and it wasn't organized. And I just realized, I looked around, I realized I can't just kind of do my little thing. We're all going to be depending on each other every day, 

[00:11:25] Dan: That's how teams play into this. So paint the picture of how do Yeah How do teams help you to achieve this?

[00:11:33] Janet: We actually had two teams. We had people who were very savvy about. Fundraising and event management. Cause we had to raise a very big chunk of money in the United States to buy all the things. And then there were people who were really clever about space and organizing and figuring out how to portion out all the medications that we had over the five days so that we would not um, arrive at a community and not have what we needed because we had given it all away the day before.

[00:12:13] And people they gravitated and floated into the roles that that suited them and where their strengths lay. So the people who were organizational gurus would get out of the truck and look at the ruined church and say, we should put the pharmacy here and people should wait here. And um, you know, we should set up the doctors stools over here. Everybody sort of, uh, over time and it was like the classic team dynamic that, we got there and everybody crashed into each other. And then we got organized and we went from limping along to being this well-oiled machine by the end of the week.

[00:12:59] And we would develop log jams during the week because the patients would, they take too long to go from point A to point B or, it took us too long to fill the prescriptions and we had to figure out how to slow down one part and speed up the other. And it was logistically really challenging, but it all worked really well. And we had a different cast of characters every year that way. But the people who are organizationally inclined gravitated to the things that they were good at. And that's what, that was the beauty and the magic of the team in Haiti. It didn't the characters changed, but somebody filled different roles every time.

[00:13:41] And because we had people who had been there before we had this sort of institutional knowledge of, this is a function that needs to happen. And we were able to direct somebody with this skillset into that role. And I'm talking about people who were volunteers who were not medical because our team was only half medical. The other half of us had to become instant experts in what organ system are these drugs associated with, and how do we get the information to the translators about how medication should be taken and when it should be taken and how it should be stored so that it doesn't disintegrate in the tropical sun.

[00:14:22] But the one thing I wanted to mention that we haven't touched on is the fact that our team in the United States was only half a team because once we got to Haiti it became this much bigger thing. We had a Haitian dentist, a Haitian doctor. The dentist assistant. We started after a while taking nurses from the local nursing school with us, and we hired a nurse from the local nursing school. And then we had drivers and translators and we were a nice little employment project. For that community. And teams like us who came along behind us, did the same thing and kept them employed, which was really terrific.

[00:15:02] Pia: it's an interesting thing, isn't it? That we can all feel that we have a, A comfortable level of expertise within our own comfort zone. But What you're talking about is taking your expertise and putting that into quite a challenging context where you then I have to rely on other humans because there's going to be gaps of the knowledge there's going to be that, that whole contextual organizational piece. And It sounds like that that might've been a little chaotic at the start, but that, but but actually you then I, and that out work out both on the ground and within the team who has that, who has that knowledge. 

[00:15:42] Reid: Yeah. So very quickly when I say the providers, the physicians and nurse practitioners direction, seeing the patients, we quickly coalesced and said, okay, that's your skill set, this is my skillset. I may be an occupational health doc, but I am pretty good with dermatology and musculoskeletal stuff. We had a OB GYN. Okay. Pregnant women go see her. W well back and forth about this is something I'm uncomfortable with. Let's talk it through. So we were very collapsed. It was probably the most collaborative professional relationship I've ever had with other physicians.

[00:16:22] Pia: was that a surprise? 

[00:16:23] Reid: Yes, it was it was it, and it was exciting and it was good. I, I remember sitting next to Gloria, our OB GYN, and she looked over at me and said, what would you be doing right now if you're back in the states? And I said, filling out insurance forms, but are you doing that?

[00:16:43] Dan: it sounds very glamorous your job read You make it sound very glam Um but did you ever talk about how you work together So beyond the task did you actually talk about how you'd inter connect and how that teamwork thing was going?

[00:16:59] Reid: Yeah, absolutely. We, even at the end of the day, we would share stories and how did you manage this level of hypertension. And I saw this, I've never seen that before on so there's a lot of discussion, even at the end of the day, professionally about, what's happening, what did you see? And this is all new to all of us, not, much of it was very routine. The usual stuff, high blood pressure, diabetes. Skin things we've never seen before, neurologic things we've never seen before and sort of piece together. And we had our little apps and, trying to figure out dosages of this or that, or what's the best medication for scabies and things like that. But it was a very fun collaborative because it wasn't about bitching about insurance companies. It was about doing real medicine.

[00:17:53] Janet: And I got to see some of that too, because the doctors and the pharmacist worked so closely and I was a pharmacy grunt running around filling things and cutting pills and that sort of thing. But we only had a limited formulary. We were only able to bring certain things with us. Some of the medications we had we had to use for people who were smaller than they were intended for. So there was a lot of dosage calculation, and I would see the providers come running in and talking to the pharmacist and there was a spark, there was an energy of excitement about it. We're all out of this. Could we possibly use that? It was intellectually challenging for everybody who was participating.

[00:18:42] And, I do the same thing every day. And in Havey, I've never did the same thing twice because it was different all the time. And that was exciting. And incredibly rewarding. And when you're going through something like that, with people that, casually I have a bond with the people that I've been to Haiti with, even though in our walks of life at home, we have often very little to do with each other. There's just a closeness that remains a residual that I don't experience with any other team. I've been a part of.

[00:19:16] Dan: So it sounds like you had a really clear sense of purpose You're that going and doing meds and not filling in insurance forms. Was there anything else that really made teamwork work it does It's not always automatic Was there anything else any other magic ingredients do you think?

[00:19:31] Janet: I think the people that we were able to recruit to our team, and it was all word of mouth. We didn't put something out on Facebook or something. They were, people had a common sense of what our role should be, that we weren't just going to do something because it was an important thing to do. We were going to be with people and be part of what was going on with them.

[00:20:05] There was a lot of writing out there about, missions and the philosophy of missions and, whether do gunners from the west should be going to other countries and doing this kind of work. We were all really, whether we agreed entirely about any of those philosophical questions, we were all really thoughtful about them and willing to engage with the other organizations that we encountered. While we were in Haiti, we ran into public health workers hospital employees, people from another couple of really important non-profits that are Haiti led, and we did some collaborative work with them and we've subsequently been able to support them financially. And. Some grant writing and that sort of thing that we were able to do for them. But what made the dream work in terms of my own personal opinion about all this is that we all had this common desire to do something in response to what we saw going on in Haiti and what we hoped and dreamed the country could be with less intervention, negative intervention, and more positive support.

[00:21:16] Reid: I think one of the benefits was that not just providing medical care, but simply showing up. These people saw us coming through them because we wanted to help. And that was enough for them. You just came whether your medicine works or not, at least you came and you tried and you showed up and cared. And it meant a lot to them. 

[00:21:45] Pia: that's a profound impact, both on the people in Haiti, but also that this, this experience and doing multiple missions must have a, I would imagine a shaping impact on you personally. How has it changed your concept of how you connect with humans to get stuff done back at home?

[00:22:08] Janet: I would say that the reason I wanted to go to Haiti in the first place was because I saw what a life changing experience it was for Reid. Here was this guy. He didn't want to go. And doesn't like change and he doesn't really enjoy traveling. And here he came back and it was clearly transformative and it had a bumping additionally transformative effect every time he came back.

[00:22:32] So clearly something changed with him that I wanted to experience as well, which is why I was so thrilled about going, but I think going to Haiti and, you know, a lot of the team members were significantly older than I am. And some of them were a little bit, they traveled in different circles than I did, and they had different thoughts about some things. And I learned when I was interacting with them really closely that I could trust them to be there, to do what they were there to do. And to treat me without any kind of lenses and boxes that we would have with each other at home.

[00:23:14] And I try when I'm dealing with people now on teams that I'm not familiar with or who don't don't have similar backgrounds from mine to assume that level of trust and cooperation is going to be there wherever I am. And, it's, there's to disparate.

[00:23:32] Reid: I, again, going way out of my comfort zone felt, it was like that roller coaster thing. It was at once scary and thrilling. And then coming back to the states, it's it puts a whole new lens on how I see health care and, you know, especially in Massachusetts and Cambridge, which is the Mecca of healthcare in this country.

[00:23:58] And I thought to myself we, for example, we saw a young girl who had new onset seizure disorder. What am I doing with that in the middle of a mango grove? In Boston, this kid would get an MRI top-notch neurology, workup, medications. And all we had was one seizure medication then probably not enough to get her through until she could get more. And I thought we take so much for granted and to think what these third world people go through without the kind of healthcare that we have is imperfect as it is. It's a bit eyeopening and it's just changes how I interact with my patients here.

[00:24:46] And I don't know, I guess I'm just thinking back to the are working together, and in Janet's right about the whole trust thing, I opened up to my team at work and it feels like I'm trusting them more to do their job and not trying to do it for them because I am a control freak. And that's the one thing you cannot. I'm trying to do everything he needs and wedding go I guess is a good way to put it is, you know, let people do their job.

[00:25:19] Pia: I think you've put your finger on it Sometimes we expect other people to change, but in actual fact, when we make the change and sometimes that comes through a choice that we make. But it's it's a chemistry thing isn't it And amongst the team. So if you make that change yourself that's going to have an impact on the way that the dynamics flow, and you'll get different results but quite often we're waiting for everybody else to change and that becomes quite frustrating.

[00:25:45] Dan: Janet, Reid, it's been great hearing your story and taking us into that uh unimaginable world. And my admiration for you goes even further hearing that your sort of Reid and I didn't realize how you were not that sort of person. So it's really impressive to go right out of your comfort zones and go and do that I'm going to ask you to You've sort of maybe covered this a little bit but, given these experiences what um would you say to someone in a team, a team leader team member what's uh what's your word of advice to them to them to connect and get stuff done? 

[00:26:22] Janet: I would say that you need to really examine what you're doing and why you're doing it before you go running off and doing a trip like this. Does it make sense? Not the, am I going to be comfortable or am I going to freak out the first time I see somebody with a machete wound or, you know, but which was one of my pervasive fears, my pervasive fear about going to Haiti was, am I going to just lose my mind when somebody comes into the clinic with a machete wound? 

[00:26:57] But no, think about. Does what I want to do, make sense. Am I willing to do whatever it takes to get to the end of this project? Whether it's rattling around in a mountain, in the back of a pickup truck where the tail keeps flopping open and you have to hang on to the person you're sitting next to like, literally that level of team dependence. Are you up for it? And I would say do it because it is going out of your comfort zone and doing something different and exciting and important just makes life so much richer than being afraid to try things like that.

[00:27:34] Reid: And I would echo that there's, if you're reluctant to jump in, you know, look inward and what are your barriers for not doing what you think is right? Is there something about your daily life that you claim to, that you can't give up at least for a week to do something different and do something meaningful?

[00:28:00] Pia: Yeah I find that really, really inspiring actually. I think for many of us listening to this we will look in and think what do we need to give up internally in order to be able to give more and actually probably gain a lot in the process.

[00:28:14] Dan: And then a true We Not Me spirit, I mean, Pia and I we talk a lot about We've found that there's a lot more community activity going on now, so we don't have to leap on a plane in a do you've done in Haiti. There's opportunities to give of ourselves, isn't there? So, you've really inspired our listeners today. So Janet, Reid, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on We Not Me, thank you so much.

[00:28:35] Reid: It's so wonderful. See you again, Dan. And nice to meet you, Pia. 

[00:28:43] Pia: It struck me listening to Janet and Reid that coming out of your comfort zone actually was quite a transformative experience. You know, you have that high level of expertise, but in a contained, safe, expected environment. And then you take it into a completely different environment. And what they appeared to get out of it was that they just had to collaborate, and they had to trust one another because there was so many factors that they didn't know about, th that were disruptive. And it brought out a completely different way that humans connect.

[00:29:23] And I think what I also observed was that didn't just stay there in Haiti. They brought that back into their own working lives. And that's being able to transfer that probably was the most incredible leadership development and teamwork experience that they could have ever gone on, but probably didn't anticipate would be that.

[00:29:47] Dan: Indeed. I think it's really easy for these, for you to go off and do these things and come back with it as a medal on your chest, you are unchanged, but with some sort of thing that people can talk about that they allowed it to change them, actually, I think that's really important. I was really reflecting on on Reid's sort of two journeys, if you like, one is from reluctant to go to actually going, the physical journey. But I think even a bigger one was, how he annoys Janet is by being a control, freak, and, um, overthinking things. But had to learn to let go in order to work with a team. And I think that was such a, that was an even bigger journey I suspect.

[00:30:25] And we have to, yeah. In teams, if we're going to make it work, we have to change ourselves, to to adapt to make it work. And there's some lovely examples of that in there and some really challenging circumstances. So,

[00:30:39] Pia: And I think to that, just to cap, that is how much are we sometimes imprisoned by our own comfort zone, just like the decision that you've made with your Ukrainian guests, that can bear down on us and we can justify why we stay the same, but actually we need to get into the discomfort in order to be able to explore what may be possible. And that's not always easy, but I think being aware of that as yourself and where of that in a team is really powerful, opens up all sorts of 

[00:31:10] Dan: In so many ways, actually, I've got the impression that you're like physical comfort, but it also that, as you said, that, that professional comfort, this is what I do. I can't go off and do that. And I actually might let me put myself into that space and yeah, this is in order to, for the team to function. So yeah, quite inspiring. 

[00:31:29] Pia: So, um, well, that's fantastic. Kicks off season three with with with really gone straight to the heart of it. Now I think our next guest is a viral phenomenon from about 15 months ago. So who is up next?

[00:31:44] Dan: We have the legendary Jacki Weaver Jacki Weaver, coaches some challenging teams or teams in, in a large council area in the UK. And of course she became very famous in February, 2021. Didn't we didn't she for a recorded zoom meeting.

[00:32:03] Pia: The Hanford parish when there was some interesting behavior and she shot it down by jecting them from the call. So the meme of you have no authority, Jacki Weaver has probably hit YouTube many many times around the world, but we really need to understand a bit more of the thinking behind it, us take it down another level and look at the teamwork that exists there, but also what her learnings have been from the last year.

[00:32:32] Dan: Yeah, cannot wait for that, but that is it. For this episode, you can find show notes and resources at squadify.net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. Also, please go onto your favorite podcast platform and give us a nice five-star rating. We'd really appreciate it. 

[00:32:54] If you'd like to participate in the show, you can leave us a voice message. The link is in the show notes. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.

[00:33:05] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.