Salus Forum: January 7, 2026

Jack

Your invitation made me remember when I was a family medicine resident, my history in undergrad and graduate school was to lead from the sideline, to sort of be the prodder and poker and not the person up in front, but the person questioning the person up in front. Maybe some of you don’t find it hard to believe about my sort of history in the world. And so they asked me to be chief resident, and I declined saying, no, I’d rather lead the way I lead. I lead from the prodding, poking, behind-the-scenes leadership. And they said, you know, Jack, that’s really sweet and cute.

And it’s one way of leading. But what we want you to do is take a step forward and accept the mantle of leadership and the responsibility that that brings to reflect on the whole group.  You don’t just get to, you know, complain or poke or prod. You have to be the person accepting those pokes and prods. And it was a remarkable change in the way I looked at leadership. And I still bounce back and forth in those roles, depending on the situation and where I’m working or the project I’m working on.

But I think those are two components. One is the person who questions the authority. The other is the person who’s out in front, taking the heat. This is an interesting dynamic.

Bill B  

I’ve written a lot about leadership; however, I have not been a very good leader myself. It’s the old saying: there are those who can lead, and those who can’t lead will teach about leadership, and those who can’t teach will write about leadership. But one area of leadership I think I have been good at, and it’s what I’d call enablement, where essentially I’ve been in a place, fortunately, where I have enabled other people to expand their own capacities.

A big part for me is helping people find their voice. I think there was a lot of literature written 20 years ago about women finding their voice. I’ve been fortunate to often work with women in the graduate school where I taught and served as president. Usually, about 70% of the students at my school were women. And I think often I was helping women find their voice. And I think that’s what I’ve been most proud of in the work that I’ve done.  This form of leadership, which involves supporting other people, has many components to it. It is a challenge to bring forward other people.

Gay

I think leadership shows up two different ways for me as a therapist,  helping people access their own ability to decision make as opposed to feeling stuck and spending quite a bit of time at the county service level as a manager for public health and helping other venues, other people learn how to access county dollar for betterment of county services was one of the things that I did for many, many years. So, in those two ways, it’s sort of like learning how to help people, leading people to help other people.