Salus Forum: January 7, 2026

Walt

That’s actually kind of a nice idea, more than a metaphor. And it’s a nice example of what we really are all about. Hopefully, some part of these concerns how we help others be leaders and how we best follow leaders.

Jeremy

I’ll mention one thing, Mitch can share about this as well. Our leadership journey sort of began together. He was a little ahead of me. He was already running the ICU at the county when I got there, but he and I decided to do something. It was the despair we had over the fact that they were about to dissolve our faculty because they didn’t want to bother meeting anymore. We thought, what the heck? It was the first faculty meeting I went to. They were voting to dissolve the faculty at the county level. I thought, this is ridiculous.

It was the absurdity of the moment. We’ve got to do something about this. That dragged me in, because I was a lot like the person that Jack described. I did not want the mantle. I did not want the titles. I did not want the headaches of being in the firing line. I liked leading from the sidelines. It was with Mitch that we realized our partnership as leaders really worked well for us. So, I have found it to be very helpful to co-lead and then to see leadership as a team sport and not as an individual activity.

I was a little hung up on the individualistic view of leadership, which I found made it very intimidating to take on leadership. However, leadership was less intimidating when doing it with other people. It was valuable for me to get an alternative perspective, because Mitch and I see the world in different ways. In some ways, we embrace a similar perspective, but it was really helpful the way he and I kind of co-evolved,

Jack

There has been a discipline and a practice of mine which I call Intentional Incompetence. It is sort of a funny term, but it means that when I am the leader of a team I am expected to be able to do all the components of the team’s functioning. Supposedly, you have to be able to do those things. But if you always do them, then other people can’t do them.

I think I learned this in residency. As a residency faculty, I could take care of the patients much quicker without the residents. Instead, I would declare: I don’t know. What will we do, Dr. Fish? How will we manage that patient? And so, practicing intentional incompetence provides other people with the opportunity to rise up and be at their full capacity and their full capability.

And there are times when people have questioned whether it was intentional incompetence or just Jack’s incompetence. And that’s okay, too, because if you’re going to back off and not do everything for everybody, there will be times that this causes a little bit of tension. Because other people want you to take care of that. Just take care of it, Jack. And it’s okay if you do. But if you don’t, then they have to find their own voice or their own skill or their own tools to do that.  And when they do, it changes the way their life operates. So, I think that’s another one of those balancing places, where there can be too much or too little. There’s a balance in there for leaders.