Lynda Holt Of Health Service 360: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Courage — this is the number one all-encompassing quality for me, so much so I designed a leadership framework called I CARE around it. When you are courageous as a leader, it doesn’t mean you have no fear, it means you show up anyway, you are real, trustworthy, and prepared to explore the difficult stuff. You are there for your people, courageous enough to listen even if you can’t fix everything and you are prepared to make decisions despite uncertain outcomes. I believe courage is in all of us, but we learn to conform, and not to put ourselves at risk and in the process, we lose a bit of ourselves. Leaders come in all shapes and guises, we need to be brave enough to stand in our own imperfect glory and give our people permission to do the same.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Lynda Holt.
Lynda is a prominent leadership voice, author and change activist in the health care sector. As CEO of Health Service 360, Lynda works with leaders and experts helping them to shape leadership, culture and build healthy workplaces.
Lynda noticed a group of leaders, change activists, and experts who didn’t necessarily fit traditional leadership paths, but made a tangible difference to their bit of the world. She created Brave Scene in 2012, as part of her wider development consultancy. Its purpose — to help these people to lead courageously, to explore what’s possible, and to make their contribution their way.
She spent her early career in frontline emergency care, and has spent most of the pandemic supporting clinicians and health leaders through some of the most challenging times of their careers. She believes most of us don’t even get close to what we are capable of and it’s time to change this, not by working harder or doing more, but by standing in our own imperfect glory. Her message is simple, ‘show up, be brave and do what you believe in’.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I love that expression, backstory — it gives us carte blanche to write our own history in a way that is empowering, rational, and looks like we had a plan, or even a big mission. The reality for many of us, myself included, is that we fly by the seat of our pants, make it up as we go along, and accept that hindsight is a beautiful thing.
I guess as a young child I knew who I was, I was wise — all my friends came to me for advice, I was chill — I didn’t do drama and I was wild — no adventure was too risky (until a few cuts, scrapes and broken bones proved me wrong). I was going to be a teacher, a hippy, maybe the Prime Minister, a photographer, write books, heal people — and I think I’ve done all but one of those things.
I suppose I had a good grounding for embarking on a career in emergency medicine, I loved the fast pace, the fixing, but most of all the people — we often collided at the best and worst moments of their lives. After many years of running emergency departments, leading teams from ward to board as they say in hospitals, I realised I wanted more — my goal of hospital CEO wasn’t going to cut it.
This wasn’t about money, it was about impact. I left the safety of my NHS career and started my own gig, I’d managed massive budgets, hundreds of people — how hard could it be?
20 years on — and by the seat of my pants on more occasions than I’d like to confess, I’ve crafted the company I really wanted to be CEO of, we’re making the difference I want to make, and I get to work with a great team of creative and inspiring people, every day. Much of our work is in the Health Sector as well as with social entrepreneurs and businesses.
Could I use hindsight and write the clever & coherent backstory that got me here — yes absolutely, but the truth is I’ve always crafted my life — and leadership, around the things that matter to me, that excite me and that create the impact I believe in. I guess I’m still doing many of the things that wild little girl did. I’ve bounced over a few bumps and acquired a few cuts & scrapes along the way, but on the whole have a business, and more importantly a social impact, I’m really proud of and I’m no where near done yet.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
You know I used to work in emergency departments, right? Some of my funniest stories are quite unprintable! But you know, I learned early on you can’t take yourself too seriously; we all make mistakes, and we don’t learn what we need to if we are too busy beating ourselves up.
Most of us have some bits of our work we are better at than others, I’ve learned to focus on what I’m really good at and surround myself with great people who are better at the rest of it than me. In my early days I didn’t have that luxury either in my business or in my hospital career.
Reminds me of the time I hid in a store cupboard so the surgeon in charge couldn’t find me. The operating theatre was my worst job, I wasn’t very good at any of it and I hated the hierarchical atmosphere. Most of the surgeons were amazingly talented, some also had the people skills of a rattle snake. On the fateful day in question, I was a lowly runner for the surgeon, who was a big man with a booming voice and a reputation for getting juniors kicked out of theatre. He needed a bag of warmed sterile fluid for irrigation — sounds simple doesn’t it, except these were oversized three litre drip bags — a bit like holding a balloon full of water.
I’m jostling with the bag trying to find the connecting point, he’s yelling at me at the top of his voice, and in a stroke of ‘genius’ I decide to grab the bag as if it were a set of bagpipes, squeezing it tightly under my arm. I snip open the connector and the warmed fluid explodes out like I turned on a hose. You guessed it, the surgeon is right in the firing line, it’s horrifying how far three litres can go, the more I tried to get the bag under control the more slippy it got. There was only one thing for it, drop the bag and run — I was going to get kicked out anyway.
I headed to the store cupboard, mortified with embarrassment, worried he’d think I did it on purpose and fairly confident my career was over. After I’d been there for what seemed like hours, passing things out to people as needed, I heard the booming voice approaching. The surgeon — still damp around the edges, informed me the patient was fine, the op was finished, and I was a liability, which was fair comment really.
He then asked if he was really that scary? I looked him straight in the eye and said no!! He went off down the corridor laughing, leaving me bemused at his response and even more bemused at my own.
The things that stick with you are often those that make you feel shame in some way, and we need to find a way to feel, deal and heal from them. Yes, I was ashamed I’d done something so stupid, and at the same time had I not felt under pressure, that I was doing a bad job and that I (or my career) was under threat, I might have taken a more rational approach to the fluid bag — I could have asked someone for help, I could have asked the surgeon to wait, but fear was driving my actions.
So, as well as surrounding myself with great people, I’ve also learned to meet people where they are. I lead from the premise that people remember how you make them feel. If you make them feel fearful or bad about themselves you won’t get the best of them, you’ll get the guarded, self-protecting or disengaged version.
Being able to connect with people and understand their reality gives you a starting point to embark on a journey, and leadership is certainly a journey.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I’ve had & have many great mentors, role models and guides, each of them has helped shape the leader I’ve become, but if I had to pick just one it would be my dad. He was my rock. I knew he was in my corner regardless, he saw my potential, and he won’t hold back if he disagreed or thought I’d got things wrong. In my early days I worked for him, in his later days he worked for me.
Before I started college, while I was still deciding what I wanted to do, my dad said learn to sell, it will help you whatever career you take. Great idea I say, with no idea what he had in store for me!
At the time he ran a caravan and leisure business, he was short of staff for an exhibition stand, and somehow, I finished up spending a week selling portable loos. Sell the experience, my dad says to us, as he’s getting people to test out the comfort of these glorified buckets in an exhibition hall. He set the team targets, created some competition, both for numbers of loos sold and funniest stories, and we had a great time.
That week taught me a lot –
- more than I ever wanted to know about toilet habits.
- that if you pay attention to people, and listen, they will show you how to connect with them, lead them or sell to them.
- and that you don’t need to be super confident or extrovert to be a great leader.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
Reducing suffering by protecting mental wellbeing and keeping people connected with their lives.
In all areas of the business this is our underpinning mission, whether it is in workplaces, for people using heathcare facilities, or individuals on their own journey. I think the way you can deliver on your mission changes as your business evolves and grows, the principle purpose does not.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
Like most businesses, the pandemic has changed us. In early 2020 we watched our work dry up overnight, at the very time our clients needed us the most. When the rug is pulled from under you, I think your job as a leader is to create psychological safety, even if you can’t remove the uncertainty, you can create boundaries around what is in your control, give people a road map and most importantly acknowledge what you & they are feeling.
I’m certainly not saying I got it all right, we are a team, we support each other, and I am really proud of how amazing, flexible and solutions focused my team are. I think some of that comes back to purpose, if you are bought into the bigger mission, you find a way. We took the view we would do what we could, where we could and to some extent we still are.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
Honestly, no. Do I get frustrated by lack of progress sometimes? Absolutely. I’ve been in a hurry to make things better most of my life.
As far as motivation goes, it probably depends who you ask, some might say stubbornness, I’d say a combination of courage to tackle the things that don’t feel right and deep satisfaction at seeing someone changed, recognising their own worth and impact.
I also know we need to reduce the suffering caused by poor mental wellbeing, by settling for less than you want to be, and by not feeling you have the agency to make it different. This drives me, if we make it better for one person, they will make it better for someone else and so on.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
Great question, I’d say to be courageous, not in a hero, fixer way, but in a real human way. It can be tempting to put on your cape and say I’ve got this, I’ll save you, that helps you feel in control, but people are not stupid. They don’t need or want to be told everything is ok when it’s clearly not. They need to feel connected, that it will get better and that they are contributing or part of something. This means that as a leader, you need to find the courage to be honest, vulnerable and connected too, while at the same time creating hope, providing a road map and enable others to contribute.
In short, be brave enough to show up and real enough to connect.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
It’s tempting to feel that the energy and morale of the team rest with you as the leader, and for sure you can destroy it by your own behaviour, but I don’t think you can entirely fix it, and nor should you take responsibility for it. People are not empty vessels that need to be motivated or inspired. People are full of their own knowledge, ideas, emotions, fears — your job is to pay attention.
Remember what I said about selling portaloos? People will tell you how to help, if you hold the space, listen, and observe. When you’ve done this, you form a collective plan, when people are part of it they don’t need you to engage them.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Honestly, quickly and face to face if possible, or at least by video or phone call. I think when we wait, trying to find the right words — or hoping it might go away, we just build it into something bigger, it occupies space in our heads and reduces productivity. If you are in the wrong or have let someone down apologize, if you can fix it offer solutions, if you can’t make sure you give people time to express their upset.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Yes, it’s tempting to throw planning out the window, or to have multiple contingencies depending on how you operate. The reality is the future is always predictable to some degree, and chances are your bigger vision and your purpose don’t change. Hang on to those, they are your road map. For me, detailed planning has become much more short term. We’ve always used 90 day planning cycles, and continue to do this, you can predict what you need to do for this period, plan for the next month in detail, and the following two in principle — recognising you may need to be flexible.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Stay connected — focus on how you serve your customers and keep your eye on your bigger mission.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
I said right at the beginning we all make mistakes, our job is to recognize them, learn and move on.
Perhaps the biggest is not paying attention to your people, you can’t withdraw, dictate, or expect people to just get on with it. Difficult times require leaders who are visible, both collaborative and decisive, and of course compassionate.
The second is financial, not paying attention to cash flow, dropping prices in desperation, not looking far enough ahead to predict what’s coming.
The third, and perhaps most fatal, is not looking after yourself, you are no good to anyone if you are stressed, ill or burned out.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Stay connected with your clients and market, the more you know the better you will be able to serve. Keep investing in yourself and your team. Pay attention to both cash flow and profit margins and don’t do work for the sake of it. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do work that matters to you and your team, or work that has a high fun element, even if it’s not the most profitable. Just be clear about why you are doing what you do.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
I have undoubtedly talked about my top five already. These are the things that underpin great leadership in my view.
- Courage — this is the number one all-encompassing quality for me, so much so I designed a leadership framework called I CARE around it. When you are courageous as a leader, it doesn’t mean you have no fear, it means you show up anyway, you are real, trustworthy, and prepared to explore the difficult stuff. You are there for your people, courageous enough to listen even if you can’t fix everything and you are prepared to make decisions despite uncertain outcomes. I believe courage is in all of us, but we learn to conform, and not to put ourselves at risk and in the process, we lose a bit of ourselves. Leaders come in all shapes and guises, we need to be brave enough to stand in our own imperfect glory and give our people permission to do the same.
Courage is a way of being and you get to choose how you show up, who you want to be, if you like. It’s easy to live by our excuses, perceived limitations, and biases, these constrain us as a human and as a leader. I am both conscious and intentional about how I show up — most of the time! I choose courage over conformity, I believe in rocking the boat when some motion is needed and in dropping the anchor in turbulent times. My values and my mindset are my anchor, they are inextricably linked, if I move too far from my values my mindset suffers, I don’t feel great, I make poorer decisions and don’t lead well.
Part of being a courageous leader is looking after yourself, prioritising yourself when you need to and giving others permission to do the same. For me a healthy mindset is one of hope, of realistic optimism, of gratitude and of love. I work to suspend judgement, let go of anger and embrace fear — and just like everyone else, I’m work in progress.
2. Focus on what you can control — sounds simple, but most of us get consumed by all the things that concern us, things we have no control over, from time to time. They can be a great distraction, because we can have an opinion without having to take any action. They can also be incredibly disempowering and bad for your mental wellbeing. By focusing on what you can control — even if this is only your own attitude some days, you get to take action, which builds your confidence, balances your neurochemistry, and gives you a sense of achievement.
I regularly do an exercise with clients, adapted from Steven Covey’s work, I get them to draw two circles one big one and one smaller one. In the first the circle of concern they write down everything that they are concerned about, you can do this as a team exercise or individually. Then I get people to look at their list and move into the smaller circle — their circle of influence, anything they can directly do something about. This is usually only a few things. Lastly, I get them to pick one and decide what they are going to focus on.
This exercise is one of agency, when we are focused on things we have no control over it is easy to feel powerless, insignificant even. Our brains don’t differentiate between what’s real and what we are thinking about. Constantly thinking about stuff we have no control over is a fast track to stress or even anxiety. I strongly recommend you try the circles exercise on yourself and with your team.
3. Stay connected to your mission — I believe that deep inside we all know why we are here and what we have to contribute to the world. This said, we live in a world where fitting in and conformity are often valued over individuality, where people who speak out are seen as trouble-makers, difficult or even whistle blowers.
Well, here’s to the difficult ones, we are the people who move the world forward, we are the ones who challenge assumptions, we are the ones who question the status quo. As a leader, particularly in turbulent times, you absolutely need to know what you stand for, where your red lines are and what you are here to do. This is what gives both the freedom and the courage to act.
People get very hung up about purpose or mission, I see people spending hours trying to craft clever statements, or hooks. The thing is, purpose is a personal and emotional thing, until you really feel it you can’t craft it, and when you lead a mission people who join it will each have their own purpose.
We have a not-for-profit part of our business called #EndPJparalysis, its aim is to reduce preventable harm caused by physical or psychological deconditioning. We do this by sharing best practice, education and research across health and social care. People join the mission for all sorts of reasons, they may have had an older relative who suffered from deconditioning, they may want to protect their own future well-being, they might want to educate others — and this doesn’t matter. What is important is that we all share the desire to enhance well-being and prevent harm by keeping people moving and socially connected.
When you are leading people through uncertainty, lead with the mission and the difference that they and the business are making. There is safety in being part of something bigger than you, this is why so many people spend large parts of their lives trying to fit in. Your job as their leader is to make it safe for people to contribute, to pay attention when they speak out and to keep people connected to the mission.
4. Talk about mental wellbeing — we’re kind of back to courage again. Many leaders talk about compassion and empathy, and for sure that’s important, but after the last couple of years, nobody is untouched by the pandemic, and many people have paid a price in terms of mental wellbeing. It really is time leaders, in workplaces, communities and social circles, stepped up and got brave enough to have honest conversations about mental wellbeing.
Until we can talk openly, accepting our own discomfort and vulnerability, poor mental wellbeing stays hidden, stigma prevails, and people suffer.
None of us have all the answers, none of us can fix every problem people throw at us, but we can make it ok, safe even, to raise things, to talk and to get help if you need it.
I have spent much of the last 18 months hosting safe spaces for people in healthcare, at the front of the Covid response, to decompress, share how they felt and maybe get some relief. Most of the time I couldn’t fix anything and the people coming to those spaces knew that. They mostly needed to off load, sometimes an acknowledgement that it’s ok not to be ok is enough. These also gave me the opportunity to share some of my wisdom around maintaining mental wellbeing. We talked about all sorts — balance, what people did to decompress, staying in touch with lives outside of work, fear, how to stay focused on the impact and good they were doing.
The bottom line is humans feel to heal, emotion is how we make sense of what we experience, if we don’t deal with those feelings we become unwell, physically, mentally or behaviourally — sometimes all three. I believe that as leaders we are obligated to create that space — either directly ourselves, by making services available to our people or by enabling people to access what they need themselves.
When we bring uncomfortable things out in to the open, we take away the dark power attached to them. My one plea to you as a leader, a human even, is don’t leave your people in the dark, shine a light on mental wellbeing, make it ok to talk.
5. Create Hope — as the legend goes, the last thing in Pandora’s box was hope, when she opened the box she unleashed all manner of evil into the world, horrified by what she’d done, and fearful of what might happen next, she slammed it shut trapping hope inside.
I’ve often heard people say “hope is not a strategy” I would disagree, one of the greats things you can do as a leader is embrace hope. Hope helps us to look beyond what is right now, to what might be, what’s possible if you like. Hope builds our confidence in our ability to succeed. It’s a powerful emotion with a real ability to lift people, but if people are going to be inspired or lifted they need to believe you, to trust you and to feel safe with you — which means you have to trust yourself.
Hope is not blind positivity, or unrealistic wish dreams, it’s about getting down to business, selling a vision, involving people, creating something worth holding on to during the turbulence. Martin Luther King is a great example of hope prevailing, he sold the vision, led the people and waited for transformation to happen, stoking it at every opportunity.
As a leader you need to hold the mission or vision, and this is where your road map comes in It helps you both plot and communicate the direction of travel, it enables people to share the vision and most critically to contribute where they can.
For most people hope is not some passive thing, some vague feeling that they want things to be better, it is a powerful and motivational emotion, use it wisely. Most people don’t want to be fixed, or even for someone else to solve all their problems, they want to be heard, to be validated and valuable — these are basic human needs, part of our evolution.
Don’t be like Pandora. Don’t react in fear before you’ve had time to find hope. Good leaders trade in hope.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Oh wow, just one? “Be your own kind of beautiful” in a world where comparison, conformity and conditioning are eroding mental wellbeing, I’m making a stand for the misfits, mavericks and individuals that make up this beautiful thing called humanity. We are all connected, we all have a contribution to make, and we all have greatness within us. My greatness might be different to yours and that’s what makes the world work.
How can our readers further follow your work?
I think I said at the beginning there are two parts to the business — Health Service 360 (https://www.healthservice360.co.uk) which is focused on healthcare and Brave Scene — which is championing courageous leadership, my blog is https://www.bravescene.com/inspirations/ or you can connect with me on linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndaholt/ or twitter https://twitter.com/LyndamHolt
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
