Jan Malcolm
speaker
82 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2023
last heard Sep 2023
Jan Malcolm’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me to join you and Clarence in this conversation. I think it's a critically important topic, leadership in general, but leadership in health, leadership in public health, particularly now, given what we've just been through and the time that we're in, there is so much we need to learn.
from what we've just been through and figure out how to take those very hard won lessons through the COVID-19 pandemic and apply them not only to being more ready for the next health emergency, but how do we improve what we do every day to serve the people that we serve, which is everybody.
And I think too, that, you know, the one thing I know for sure is that it is not true that leaders are born and not made. I think there needs to be intentionality to to thinking about what is leadership? How do you get better at it? Nobody just, you know, kind of comes fully formed as a leader, no matter your training or your experience. I think there are always ways to get better.
I do think that there are certain characteristics that help one to be a better leader, but the characteristics alone don't make you a good leader. And by characteristics, I guess I mean things like, I think actually there are values and there are personality traits, if you will, or styles, and then there are skills. And I think those are three different things.
But how you marry them together, how you take advantage of any, how you, first of all, I think it's a lot easier to lead and to lead authentically, which is a key word, I think, authentic leadership. People can sense it if it's there and if it's not. But what makes an authentic leader, I think, is somebody whose work is aligned with their values.
And who who kind of is intentional about how you how you use the traits that you either naturally have or that you learn over time and then being being really attentive to where, you know, where your skills are the strongest and where they're not. So I think, you know, kind of on that front of values to me and I feel so lucky to have had a career in health policy and public health.
because that is just an exceptionally well aligned with my personal values, especially the field of public health, what we're all about really just resonates with me and makes it easy to love this field and the people in it because we do share this deep values connection about social justice, about thinking at a very kind of ethically driven
equity-driven look at how society is either helping or harming people's ability to be healthy. I just have always felt so at home, actually, in this field and with these incredible colleagues that I've had. I think some of the traits that are important, again, I think top of my list is authenticity
and empathy, really genuinely caring about the work that you're doing and the people that you're doing it for and the people you're doing it with. And I think another trait that I would call out, probably especially from the last few years, is persistence. Because nothing that we do in public health is necessarily easy.
And nothing, I think we've learned this the hard way, even when we make great progress, that progress isn't, it's not a given that that's always going to last. You sort of have to keep remaking the progress and building on it. So I could go on and on about values and about traits, and we can go any way you want on that.
I'm not going to try to make a comprehensive list, but just wanted to kind of get across the point that I think it's helpful to be cognizant of You know what are the values are they aligned, what are some of the traits that you can draw on which might be different in different circumstances, and then the skills question and maybe we'll we'll go into that you know, through this conversation.
you know, but certainly communication, coalition building, kind of political acumen. I think, you know, we could go on and on. I think skills around emergency preparedness, oh my heaven, have we just learned, you know, how important that is, not just to read the book, but to, you know, practice that, I think, in a much more robust way than we've ever done before. So,
You asked me a really open-ended question, and I could go on the whole novel with that, but let me stop there.
Well, yeah, thanks, Clarence. You know, I think in a crisis in particular, communication is essential. That was probably the main job that I, as the leader of the state health department, had was to try to keep the lines of communication flowing between the scientists and the policymakers, between the quote-unquote experts and the public, with the media, with the legislators.
And to Stan's point, being able to not just say, here's my speech, I have to deliver these facts, to listen to people, to listen to the community. As I know you know, Clarence, this has been a devastating pandemic in many ways, but it absolutely further kind of illuminated and exacerbated, I would say, all the flaws in the system.
And so that people who've been disadvantaged and experienced inequities for so long on so many different fronts, it happened again with COVID. And so, understanding and listening to the community about what about our response? As hard as we were working and trying, what about it wasn't working for the communities that were at some of the greatest risk?
And to be not in denial about that and to really seek out honest conversations
with communities who were disproportionately affected, and then to Stan's point, on the other end of the continuum perhaps, the folks who really were having a hard time believing that COVID was as big a deal as we were saying, whether those were folks in the business community or folks who were just very concerned about the role of government in all of this, hearing that incredible,
variety of experiences and perspectives and being able to try to navigate your way through how do you effectively communicate with folks who are in such different places in terms of how this is affecting them, what the reality is of their point of view and their circumstances. So You know, there's many more things, obviously, about kind of keeping a cool head and trying to help keep people going.
You know, so many people worked their hearts out for so long and how to support them, how to encourage them. But I would say, you know, kind of that trying to help people keep it together from an organizational health perspective. And then... this multifaceted communication challenge, those would be probably the two things I'd call out.
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