121. Becoming a Confident Leader with Government Supervisor Michelle Barbieri, DVM, MS
Are you ready to embody a new level of confidence in your career? If so, then this is the episode for you. I am thrilled to share this discussion with my client, Michelle Barbieri, DVM, MS. We unpack how coaching helped Michelle find confidence in her leadership skills.
Michelle is a supervisory veterinary medical officer who works with marine animals in a conservation research program. She’s a leader in her role with the government, the local community, and in her research. In this episode, Michelle shares how working with a coach allowed her to find more confidence and ease in her career.
Discover how to discern your type of leadership, some methods for shifting your thoughts, and the tools available when you work with a coach. Your inner leader is ready to be unleashed. Learn how to calm anxiety, build presence, and enjoy your work in a new way.
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What You Will Discover:
What a leader is.
How to escape cyclical thinking.
Tools to enhance your leadership.
Methods for envisioning.
How to combat burnout.
Resources:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for Public Health Professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Hello everyone, welcome. I am so excited to finally be able to share today’s episode with all of you. If you’re new here, if you’re a newer listener, I’m so glad you’re here. This is such a fabulous episode for you to tune into. And make sure you hit that subscribe button wherever you’re listening, so you don’t miss out on the next couple of weeks because we have some really exciting topics coming out, conversations, so many good tools, skills, knowledge I am sharing with all of you.
But today is all about becoming a confident leader. I have my former client, Michelle who is not only a public health professional. She’s a supervisor, she works in government, she’s a mom. And when I met her she was really struggling with questioning herself, feeling uncertain, putting a lot of pressure on herself. And she talks about this in the interview, her experience specifically with leading. Now, whether you’re a seasoned supervisor, a director, you’re a new leader or you take on more informal leadership roles, I promise you this episode will help you so much.
Michelle talks about how she was able to shift from that place of doubt and insecure to feeling confident and feeling like a capable leader and showing up in belief of herself. And not only that, how that has shifted things in her personal life with being a mom and a partner and setting goals for herself outside of work and how much joy and fulfillment and purpose that has brought back into her life.
So I promise, no matter where you are in your career, if you’re an early professional, if you are mid-career, if you’re towards retirement, no matter what sector you work in. This episode is going to help you so much step into your authority, into your confidence and believe in yourself, not just at work but how much bigger, how much more fulfilling and exciting your whole life can be, including your personal life. So without further ado, I’m going to let Michelle take it away and share with you all her experience becoming a confident leader.
Marissa: Michelle, I am so excited you are here to share your experience with our listeners about being a leader, creating confidence and so much more. So before we get into all of that, do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and your professional background?
Michelle: Hi, Marissa. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so my professional background is in a different side of public health than I think a lot of listeners might experience. So I’m in the veterinary medical field. I work in government and so my official title is a supervisory veterinary medical officer but really what I do is I am a veterinarian. I do hands-on work with animals, marine animals and I also lead a conservation research program.
So my background coming up to this point is a little bit circuitous. I study marine biology and got really interested in the marine sciences, specifically working with marine mammals. And decided when I was finishing my master’s that I was really interested in the hands-on application of veterinary medicine to conservation. So the field that I really work the most in professionally is conservation medicine, but since about 2019 I’ve assumed greater leadership and supervisory responsibilities.
Marissa: Awesome. I mean, I think public health is so broad. And my personal public health background is very different than many other people’s. I’ve had social workers reach out, therapists, other folks outside of what we may traditionally think of public health. And I think you’re such a good example of that. I think most people who aren’t in public health wouldn’t necessarily think veterinary medicine could be public health. But it absolutely is when you take it from, not just a conservation point of view, but you zoom out on a macro level of how everything is intertwined, our ecosystem, human lives, the climate, health, so many things.
Michelle: Yeah, that’s exactly it. And a lot of the things that I work on are wildlife population health issues, but so many of the things that we think about in wildlife health are in that one health paradigm. Where we’re really talking about the intersection of the ecosystem, of the animals that we consume for food or use for fiber and the wildlife populations that are in contact with them and the humans that rely on all of those species for their wellbeing. And so in the marine environment we think a lot about fishing as well.
So yeah, it’s definitely an area where I interact with a lot of people that are in different aspects of public health as a veterinarian. And it’s so fulfilling, it’s such a cool opportunity. I love being at this multidisciplinary intersection in this field.
Marissa: Yeah, and I know from our time working together, the other kind of part of your job that I think really aligns with so many other sectors in public health is not just the work in government, which I know we’ll get into. But also the work with the community and your role in your department works a lot with the community. And so that’s a big part of public health of the work we are doing, the ultimate goal is to improve the community experience and that has to happen in collaboration with the community.
So not just topically, but I think the function in which your work happens and the different points in which it occurs is very similar across different sectors of public health.
Michelle: Yeah, it really is. And the thing that come along with that I think are also some of the challenges, which was really what led me to coaching. And that is just this obligation to people and communities and the weight of that is not trivial. These are some really big issues that we work with in this field and that comes with a lot of challenges. And it’s been a path that has really allowed me to grow in ways I never expected.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think there are challenges for everyone in the field, but then once you become a leader or a manager or a supervisor, then there’s kind of another level of challenges you face. Can you share with folks, we have folks listening who are seasoned leaders who also struggle with these challenges or maybe new to being a supervisor or manager. Can you share a little bit about your experience being a leader before coaching, what was it like for you? What was your experience like?
Michelle: Yeah. I love this question because it makes me think about what is a leader. And I have a title now and a role now that is clearly a leadership role and a supervisory role. But when I think about how I’ve shown up throughout my career, I have been someone who has been a reluctant leader a lot of times and I’ve been someone who has been a team leader and I’ve often just found myself stepping in to fill a leadership role when maybe it’s not clear what that is.
Maybe it’s a field situation and somebody kind of needs to bring the team together and talk through the plan and just lead the group. And so over the course of my career and myself really just I guess in a sense ending up in as a team lead in a lot of ways. And so I had some formal leadership training, but really the challenges of leadership in this more formal role that I’ve been in since about 2019 have been really different than those less formal leadership roles I experienced before. And those were all things that prepared me, but it was certainly a shift.
And of course the COVID pandemic, about seven or eight months after I started my position as a supervisor and in a leadership role, certainly challenged that even more. It was a really big transition. But the thing that I was really facing were just who am I to be in this role? And all of a sudden you’re making decisions and I just felt a lot of uncertainty in making decisions and that led to a lot of cyclical thinking.
And I would just put so much pressure on myself and exhaust myself really, in trying to figure out what the right decision was, thinking, in a sense, my mindset was, there is a right answer to this. I just don’t know what it is, but other people do. So I was just trying to figure out what the right answer was and didn’t really have a lot of confidence in my own decision making powers at the time. And that was really one of the things that just sapped a lot of energy for me and was making it really hard to enjoy my day-to-day world.
And this career is a gift. And so it was really hard to have that discordant feeling where I just wasn’t liking how I was showing up every day.
Marissa: Yeah. And I want to pull out a couple of things you said for our listeners. Kind of the first is leadership and supervising formal and informal, there’s so many different ways it looks. It might be accidentally leading a team or being asked to lead a committee, which might be very different than actually being someone’s manager on paper where you give performance reviews and set goals.
So I think it’s important that we acknowledge that no matter anyone listening, where you’re at in your leadership journey, whether it’s formal or informal. You might be experiencing some of these same challenges that Michelle has brought up from questioning yourself, doubting yourself, putting a lot of pressure to make the right decision and then managing uncertainty, which comes up as a supervisor because we don’t have all the answers.
And that can create a lot of anxiety and I know for a lot of folks listening, this might be bleeding over into your personal life, really getting in the way of being present on your nights and weekends or spending time with your friends and family and it has such a ripple back on our lives.
Michelle: Yeah, it really does, and thank you for saying that. I think that this is just my path and my experience and my timing of when I hit up against these challenges personally. But I think those challenges can come with a whole variety of different leadership roles and that’s a really important thing to say. Yeah, and I definitely was finding that there was bleed over into my personal life. So I’m also a mom, my daughter’s turning five in a few days.
Marissa: Wow.
Michelle: Yeah. And it’s hard to believe, time flies, but that was a real challenge for me because with my role it’s hard to turn off, especially when you work with wildlife. And wild animals don’t choose to need help on Monday through Friday between nine and five. So there’s a lot of opportunity for work to keep pulling me back in even when I’m not officially on the clock.
And being a new mom was really something that I found fulfilling but challenging in a whole different way. And when I was constantly kind of battling, trying to have time to be present in my personal life and see these milestones, my kid growing up, that would be really hard. And I missed some stuff because either I wasn’t feeling that I could prioritize that at the time, I didn’t have the confidence to prioritize that at the time. Or really just I was too distracted to be able to be fully present for those things. Even if I was sitting there, I was on my phone doing something else.
And so that was just a suboptimal combo really of things for a period of time where I just wasn’t finding that I was able to settle into my personal time and really ever be fully present in that personal time to relax and to recuperate. Because I was either worrying about whatever it was going on at work, second guessing whatever decision was hanging in the balance or whatever thing was coming up the next week. Or just allowing myself to get pulled in on my phone when I maybe didn’t always need to as much. I could have delegated more.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think that’s a common challenge, especially among working moms. But even those of you who are listening who don’t have children, I have heard this from so many clients just with their partner or with themselves, the time they want to dedicate to themselves outside of work. It’s easy to get pulled into an email when the notification comes on and then feel like you have to respond or be worrying up late at night about did I make the right decision.
Or how is the meeting going to go tomorrow and all of those kind of self-doubt questioning, uncertainty, all of what we’ve been talking about. So just for our listeners to understand, that’s where you were. Where are you now in your experience of being a leader? Is it the same or is your emotional and mental experience leading, different now?
Michelle: It’s massively different. I mean, I don’t want to say that it’s not without deliberate intention that I need to bring to that to maintain the better balance that I have. It’s not necessarily easy 100% of the time. But I have a set of tools that I can use that has massively opened up my ability to really stop dwelling on things. That anxiety component is so much less.
The shame and the fear and all of these emotions that I was feeling like I had to spend all this time sorting out and figuring out. I have learned that those are things that they can exist, but I can be neutral to them. They don’t have to own me. And I said before that one of the things that I used to feel a lot of the time was that if I was facing something, there is a right answer here and I’m just the one that doesn’t know it. I’ve been able to really reshape that mindset entirely.
And some of the things that I learned in coaching are intentional, mindful thoughts that I have going in my head constantly, things like I am the exact right person to make this decision in this moment. And when I can allow myself to just acknowledge that there are thoughts and emotions that come with those thoughts that can bring me anxiety, it’s okay for them to be present but they don’t have to override my ability to be present and to be participating in a meeting or a workshop or whatever the thing may be, just in communicating with the public, anything like that.
And I know that might sound like a subtle shift, but it has been the thing that has allowed me to really just rest when the work is done in a way that I was never really able to do before.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think so many people struggle with decisions, whether you’re a leader or not. This is one of the areas humans in general struggle, but especially in public health, socialized as women. And one of the things I’m hearing from you, shifting from being so focused on making the right decision to being focused in believing in yourself, whether or not it’s a ‘right decision’. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Because I know so many folks really think their confidence must come from having the right answer, knowing what to do, but we don’t always have the right answer, we don’t always know, there’s uncertainty. So when you shift to instead, believing in yourself, I have my back, I can make the best decision I can, no matter what happens. I’m confident to figure it out. Can you tell me more about that, tell folks listening more about that shift?
Michelle: Yeah, it’s such an important shift for me to be able to have the acknowledgement that it’s okay to be nervous about this. It’s okay to be uncertain about things. And I think that’s the thing that I realized is all the leaders that I look up to that I think are the people that have the ‘right answer’, they’re doing the same thing. There isn’t necessarily this right answer. It’s just having the confidence that whatever it is that comes up, you’re going to handle it because you’re the right person to handle it.
And that’s what I tell myself that I’m in this position to be the one that demonstrate how to fail and how to learn from that and how to regroup. That things aren’t always going to go flawlessly and that is okay. That it’s about making the best decision that I can in that moment. And I think in terms of that confidence piece for me that was incredibly, incredibly hard to get started on. And one of the things that I have learned is that this intentional thinking is critical for me to be able to do that day after day.
So I have these intentional thoughts that they’re grounding for me in a way that initially was really uncomfortable because I didn’t believe them. And some of the tools that I got through coaching were really important because sometimes that grounding thought and that intentional thought it feels so remotely untrue. You really helped me, Marissa, in recognizing that there are stepwise thoughts that I can take to get to that bigger thought.
And so sometimes those are really simple things but that path allowed me to identify with these intentional thoughts that give me that confidence, that give me that grounding. And really, when I go back to those in the moment even, they allow me to get my focus back into the conversation or the meeting or whatever the thing is that’s going on.
And instead of what I used to do, which was get so caught up in my thoughts that all I could think about were my thoughts and trying to suppress them. And that tool has been just so immensely helpful. And then when it’s done, it’s done and I can let it go and I can take things one step at a time.
Marissa: Yeah. I thought of an analogy when you were first talking about how you used to think all the leaders you looked up to and your mentors had it all together. But then you become a leader and you’re like, wait a minute. It’s kind of like when we’re growing up, not everyone but many people think that their parents have all the knowledge and answers. And then you become a parent or an adult and you’re like, wait, everyone’s just faking it till they make it. They’re doing the best they can, no one knows at all, there’s like no handbook here really. And I think the same happens for leadership.
Michelle: Yeah, I think that’s true.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think the tool Michelle’s talking about is, once you become aware of your thoughts and what you’re thinking, so in this leadership example, it might be, I don’t know the right answer. I have to figure out the right answer. All the pressure is on me. What are they going to think of me? All of those kind of catastrophizing thoughts, shifting from there to, I am the best leader ever. I always know what to do. Your brain’s going to reject that.
But making baby steps, and this is what happens in coaching sessions of, well, someone must believe in you because they hired you. So maybe you can borrow their belief. Or, well, what if you don’t need to know the right answer? What if you just make the best decision you can? Making those subtle shifts as you’re working through it is really where the change happens and that’s really what creates belief in yourself.
We think this belief in yourself is just, I don’t know, an innate confidence that someone’s born with, but that’s not true. It’s just being able to shift some of the thoughts you’re thinking to better support yourself and kind of not necessarily be your own cheerleader although sometimes we do need to do that, but at least not be your own enemy.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s why earlier I mentioned that before I had a formal leadership role, I found myself a reluctant leader. And I think it’s because I didn’t see myself as someone who just had this inherent confidence. I’m the person, to be the person, that’s just not me. And so I think that developing that confidence, not in a way that blinds you to the external realities that you’re dealing with. It’s not something that has to be negative.
I think I thought that confidence, I sometimes associated that confidence with ego in a way that there’s a whole lot of difference between those two extremes, that I think really matters. And this is something that is about being authentic and being true to yourself and being confident in your voice and your perspective as a valuable contribution. When it comes to things like supervising and in my field in veterinary medicine, sometimes you really do have animals’ lives in your hands. And when you’re working with large wild animals sometimes that’s also a human safety thing too.
Some of the work that we do really is something that human safety is of paramount importance. People’s lives are on the line in the work that we do. And so I think that the confidence to navigate those things with that version, for me, that version of high stakes is really important because I was crumbling under the pressure that I was putting on myself.
But now I can recognize that those are challenges and with them come fear and uncertainty but with this new found confidence that I’ve been able to access in myself. I feel that I’m so much more capable of supporting people in those moments, and animals as well.
Marissa: Yeah. And everyone’s job has a different kind of pressure point. So for you, it might be the actual physical safety to the animals or people you’re working with. For others listening it might be maybe your job actually intersects with politicians and making policy. And that feels like a lot of pressure when there might be a bill going forward and whether or not it passes can impact health outcomes of millions of people. Or maybe you engage directly with communities that have been harmed by public health in the past so it’s important to be thoughtful.
Whatever it is, I think all of us in public health have that feeling of pressure. And when you become a leader that can heighten. And when you’re a leader, really what that is, is just a series of ongoing decisions that you have to make. And believing in yourself to make those decisions, especially when you’re socialized as a woman, is one of the hardest shifts to make because we are constantly told, “You don’t know what’s best. Other people know better, look to authority.”
Or even in our school systems, we’re taught there’s one right answer, you just memorize, take the test, get the answer right. And that’s not really how it works in the nuanced complex world of public health leadership.
Michelle: Yeah, so well said.
Marissa: Yeah. So I want to shift gears just a little bit because in our work together, even though a lot of the coaching was on decision making as a leader in the day-to-day decisions you had to make. That kind of morphed into decisions about your own career and thinking big picture of what do you want, where do you want to go? And you don’t have to share anything necessarily about your future path and where you’re going, but I know a lot of folks feel a little stuck in that place.
When we’re younger we have these big dreams and envision our career while we’re in grad school. And then you move through it and you kind of stop that dreaming. And so can you just share with folks who might be in that place, how did that happen? Where coaching around individual decisions and feeling confident suddenly became, okay, what do I want in my life? Do I have the confidence to create it? How can I feel empowered to make those decisions about my career on that macro scale?
Michelle: Yeah, thank you. I’m excited to talk about that because it is in my day-to-day world now. And so one of the things that I uncovered through coaching about my internal processing was that I, for whatever reason, whether it’s some combination of socialization or habits that I developed or I don’t know what. I was feeling once I made a decision I was locked into it. And it wasn’t, that was really not serving me. And I think it was adding to the pressure and adding to burnout for me.
And I just realized that there are lots of things that I still want to do and aspects of my personal life and my professional life that I still really want to dream about. But when I first started coaching I couldn’t fathom dreaming anymore about what might be next. And that was really hard. I’m getting choked up just saying it because I’m remembering back to how heavy that was to feel. And now I have another intentional thought that came from coaching that you really helped me with, which is, it’s okay to want what I want. And it’s okay to not want what I don’t want.
I’m still figuring a lot of that out, but I don’t have the worries and the baggage that I was putting on myself before that come with that because I control my decision points. And I can make one decision now and I can choose to make a different decision later and now I feel confident that I’ll make those decisions when the time is right for me in the direction that I want to go.
And so instead of just getting so mired in shaming myself for did I make the wrong choice here or there to end me up in this place of burnout. I realized I have so much more freedom. And I just feel this huge weight has been lifted so that I really am now thinking about some other dreams. I’m dreaming really big and really excited about where some of these things might go. Some of that relates to trail running, which is a hobby of mine and some things that I’m really excited to potentially do.
I did a baby step this year to be a co-race director for our local trail race, which was so fulfilling and potentially will open up some other doors. I am learning to be a beekeeper for the last couple of years and I’m thinking about how I might be able to combine my love of beekeeping with my career in veterinary medicine in some way to support some of the local beekeepers here and some of their needs.
So there’s just a lot of exciting stuff that I’m still working on but I feel so free to dream and try and explore and I don’t feel so pinned down by I have to make sure I’m making the right decision right now because I can’t change my mind later.
Marissa: Yeah, absolutely. And I think no matter how ‘big or small’ decisions we’re making, that’s a trap we get stuck in, not just, it has to be right or wrong. But the reason we get stuck on that is exactly what you said, which is we think what we decide has to be final. We can’t go back and we’re so worried about regretting it. But that’s a total myth. You can always make a different decision tomorrow. The circumstances might be different.
Michelle: Yeah, it absolutely does. And I think one of the other pieces of that for me was confusing that with loyalty and commitment and integrity. And I think I had sort of conflated the two, that I can’t change my mind about something because I had created this story. And part of that was thinking, well, I’m where I am and I have the opportunity to do these things, but I didn’t really earn that.
It was just this deep rooted lack of confidence and really, belief in myself and one of the things that you helped me do was kind of go back through and look at what the facts were and rewrite my story to myself.
Marissa: Yeah, I mean, one thing you’re bringing up which I cannot tell you how many people I’ve coached around this, which is this feeling of I owe it to them or obligation or loyalty. And I think there’s such an important mindset shift that you’re alluding to here, which is many of us are socialized for different reasons to believe we got what we got by luck, we don’t deserve it or it was a handout or someone took a chance on us. And when you think about it that way, it’s as if someone gave you your career. And so then you’re obligated to hold on to it, but that’s not true.
We all create our own paths. There might be people along the way who support us, who help us, who guide us but we ultimately create that path. And when you are able to see, I created this, I’m the driver in this car. Then you get to have the freedom to choose what direction you want to go or if you want to take a break.
And I see that so much in public health of people who just feel stuck in their job or their career or their organization because they feel the sense of obligation to stay as if they didn’t choose to be there in the first place, as if it was a handout, when really they really created that opportunity for themselves and they can create whatever other opportunity they want as well.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And that is a realization that I think is so important in me, to be on the other side of the immense feelings of burnout that I was dealing with at the time initially. And one part of that that I think is somewhat unique to us in public health, I think, is that we probably go into the fields that we go into because we want to help. I know that for me was a huge part of it and still is. I want to make a contribution.
And sometimes I think in my field it’s self-select for people that are prone to compassion fatigue and putting everything else before themselves and not making a change, not feeling that they can make a change. Not feeling like they can dream. Not feeling like they deserve the path that they’re on too. I mean all of those things kind of in a way are human nature, I think. And I think they’re also maybe even more emphasized in this field. And so it’s that much more important for us to take care of ourselves and to take care of each other.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think one of the things you’re talking about, I immediately thought of people pleasing. People pleasing is something everyone, especially women in public health, struggle with. And one of the results when you consciously or not are people pleasing is you are often doing what you think everyone else wants and neglecting what you want. And it’s a struggle to even recognize or figure out or admit what you want, let alone go after it.
So I think what you said earlier about practicing the thought that you’re allowed to want what you want and to not want what you don’t want. Is so powerful for anyone in public health who’s stuck in your career or who have a tendency to people please and really put others first and kind of put yourself last.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And it’s just a downward spiral when you’re in that place because you can’t take care of yourself. You can’t take care of others. I think it’s really important that, again, that we support each other and I hope that my sharing my experience is something that can help others as well.
Marissa: Yeah. And you shared a couple ways that these shifts, whether it’s the thoughts that you’re thinking or just having belief and confidence in yourself or making decisions has made on your life from now dreaming even bigger, both in work and outside of work. And also being able to make decisions in your job. Are there other impacts that have happened in work or your personal life as an outcome of these shifts?
Michelle: Yeah, I mean, the biggest ones are definitely the kind of dreaming and thinking about other things I want to do in my life. But it’s also had an impact on my family life. I think that I’ve been able to be a lot more present in my day-to-day. And of course, I still can get pulled away by things that come up with work, but I’m able to disconnect from that more easily than I used to be able to do. And I’m able to prioritize family time. I’m able to delegate so that I don’t have mountains of work feeling like they’re piling up.
And I have better tools to deal with those feelings of being overwhelmed because there’s a lot to be done and it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and to feel overwhelmed. And so when I’m getting to that point, I now have some tools that I can use that don’t necessarily change the workload that’s on my plate, but they change how I manage myself in the face of that workload.
Marissa: Which ultimately changes your workload. Because when you are able to get out of overwhelm and stay on task and be less distracted. Ultimately, you’re changing what’s on your plate and what’s not versus getting stuck, falling behind, things falling through the cracks.
Michelle: So true, yes, absolutely. And it takes deliberate action to stay in that space. It’s not something that is automatic but it’s getting easier and easier all the time.
Marissa: Yeah, it is definitely a process with the journey. I mean, I still struggle with some of this from time to time too. There’s no place of perfection or enlightenment at least in our lifetime. I don’t think AI will get that far. But putting in the effort to be on the journey and have that process and that progress is so, so worth it.
Michelle: Indeed, yeah.
Marissa: So to wrap up, just for folks who maybe are listening who are where you were before coaching, whether they’re a new leader or a seasoned leader who kind of feels like they have so much pressure on them, they doubt themselves, they never know if they’re doing a good job. They’re constantly questioning themselves, worried they’re letting people down. What would you say to them right now?
Michelle: I would say you’re not alone. There is nothing wrong with you. In fact, you’re completely normal, that these are all natural, while still everyone’s going to have their unique story, these are all natural things to experience, but you don’t have to keep living in that space. I got so much more out of coaching than I ever imagined. And when I signed up, I was all in and still scared that I would come out on the other side still in a hole so it’s okay to be scared.
But for me, coaching has completely changed my life and I think that there are going to be other opportunities where I might not even know what that thing is yet, that I’ll pursue coaching on something, some different aspect of things in the future. And came out of that, I remember one conversation that we had, Marissa, where I was feeling afraid that I was going to get burned out again.
And you reminded me, “But you have all these tools, it’s okay, if you do, you know how to seek the resources for that situation. You have tools in yourself. Coaching is something that you can revisit. Coaching is something that will always be there as a resource.” And the best part about it for me, and I hope that this will help those who might be listening who are in that place, you’re going to be the master of your solutions and that’s so empowering.
This isn’t about having somebody tell you nice flowery things about yourself. This is about building tools that you can use in the way that’s authentic and unique to you. So it is massively empowering, it’s transformational across work and personal life. For me that’s family life and motherhood and fun things in the future about my extracurricular stuff. And I just don’t know where it’s going to take you, but I hope that folks that are on the fence about it will explore. I think it’s just, it’s so life changing. I think about how much this coaching has changed my world in just a few months and it’s really hard to believe, so yeah.
Marissa: Yeah. And that’s really at least the type of coaching that I do, lots of coaching, it’s really about providing tools that will best help you. And I love what you said, master of your own solutions, because especially in the one-on-one format, it’s so tailored to what would be helpful for you. And I’m not enlightened or the guru by any means. I have tools to offer, but you have your lived experience and it’s together an experience we co-create to support you.
And then you walk away with those tools to be able to support you for the rest of your career. that fear about burnout again or will I end up in another toxic workplace? I hear that a lot, is very common, but once you gain these tools, they’re yours to use and to continue carrying on in your career, which is the most beautiful part about it.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And I think for me, the one-on-one was what I really needed at that time. I was reading books left and right, listening to podcasts and audiobooks and trying to find all these resources. And those resources are great, but they weren’t helping me in the individualized way that I really, really needed.
I needed somebody to challenge me, to have that back and forth, to help me dissect where I was at in my personal story and that was the tipping point. Because for a long time I had been listening to stuff and reading stuff and trying to figure it out myself. And I needed that neutral person in a coach to individualize it and personalize it, understand my story and help me, again, just yeah, be that master of my own solutions. That for me was the turning point, yeah.
Marissa: And I hear that a lot and there’s a lot of people have concerns, which I totally understand around the time commitment, one-on-one coaching and the costs. And one thing I just want to say for folks is the DIY where you listen to podcasts and read books, which obviously I support. I have a podcast, so I’m not against that by any means. But depending where you’re at, all the hours you spend with the DIY is a lot of time you’re giving versus maybe the one hour a week with a coach that might have a bigger impact.
Now it’s different person to person, that’s why you set up a consult and we would chat, but just something to think about. Actually is me trying to do this on my own, saving me time or is it actually costing me time and taking longer? That’s something to consider.
And then the other thing is that you were able to have your employer pay for part of the cost which folks, if you haven’t thought of that option, there’s several people. And you’re in government who have been able to have a supportive boss or deputy director or management who are willing to figure out the funds and support all or part of the cost of coaching. Ao that’s also an option that folks can look into.
Michelle: Yeah, and that is definitely something I wanted to mention as well. And it felt really good to have that support. So it’s kind of a win/win in that way, yeah. And I kind of think of the podcasts and the books and those things now as my continuing education in a way. So now that I have got this really strong foundation, all those other resources click in a way that they weren’t able to serve me before.
Marissa: Yeah, connecting the dots and can also be used not just for maintenance, because that sounds so boring, but continued growth in a different way. But yeah, I think for a lot of folks, and this was my story too, where I really needed to invest the time and money to get that more intensive support to be able to utilize those DIY resources or that self-direct resource in a way that served me better, had a bigger impact.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. The fact that I can look back on six months ago or so and be in a completely different place now. I feel like I got years of my life back because I think I would have continued spiraling in this difficult space that I was in and burnout. And now I’m like, “Cool, I’ve got all these ideas and I can’t wait to act on them.”
Marissa: That’s the benefit of one-on-one. I think about it, if you’re trying to lose weight and you try to go to your apartment gym on your own and watch YouTube that will get you so far. But if you hire a personal trainer, in the same amount of time you’ll have such different results. And now that’s not for everyone, obviously. But it’s just a good example I always think about is it’s amazing when you do invest in that kind of higher level support, how much progress you can make in such a short period of time.
Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you, Marissa, for changing my life.
Marissa: You changed your life, I just helped you, we co-created that. You did the work. I mean, that’s another thing that I’ll say to folks. I had another client who said something in our conversation where she was like, “I really was hoping Marissa would just give me all the answers but she didn’t.” And I was like, “That’s the biggest compliment I could have ever received because it’s about you carving out your own journey and I’m just here to help support you and give you the tools you might need, but ultimately it's about you doing that work yourself.”
That’s why it’s so gratifying. That’s why there’s so much change. If it was just me being like, “Implement this five step process”, you would not nearly have such a big transformation.
Michelle: Yeah, well said.
Marissa: Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know I have so many folks, whether you’re a leader or not or a supervisor or early career or late career or parent or not, took so much out of this. Because we all struggle with decision making, believing in ourselves, giving ourselves permission to want what we want and dreaming. So thank you so much, Michelle, I’m so glad you’re here.
Michelle: Thank you, Marissa.
You all, wasn’t that amazing? Isn’t Michelle just so awesome? I loved how she shared one of her practiced thoughts, how she’s practiced. Maybe I’m the exact right person. I am the exact right person. You can take that thought right now and start practicing it to build your confidence. I love how she talked about how you shift your thoughts. And we shared what that looks like in step thoughts and shifting your thoughts little by little.
I loved how she really brought up the distinction between formal leadership and informal leadership and how insecurity and doubt and pressure impacts all of us no matter what your official role is or your duties. And I think it was so inspiring to hear her talk about how she’s giving herself permission to want what she wants and really thinking bigger about her future, her next step in her career and her personal life.
I found it so inspiring. I was taking so many notes and I hope you did too. And if from this conversation you realized that you’re in a similar place that Michelle was when she started coaching, where you might be burning out, where you feel so much pressure, feel like you’re never doing anything right. You know you’re missing out on time with your family or your friends, but you don’t know how to juggle it all. I want you to come schedule a consult with me.
The consult is completely free, you and I chat for an hour on Zoom, you share where you’re at, what you’re struggling with and what you want to be different. And I share with you as a coach what you can do to make that happen and how my coaching program can help you. There’s no obligation to join. You get to decide if you want to move forward in the program or not, but either way the consult is free and you get to walk away with knowing the steps you can take to feel better.
So head to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com/coaching, we’ll leave a link in the show notes as well and schedule a consult. Alright, everyone, make sure you’re subscribed because we have some really, really exciting episodes coming up in the next couple of weeks, including where I share my biggest leadership mistakes I’ve made in my public health career, my big oopsies and what you can learn from that.
As well as why you should ditch your mentors, I know, shocking that I said that in public health, but you’ll hear why. And my own public health burnout story. So make sure you subscribe, stay tuned for that and I’ll talk to you all next week.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Hello everyone, welcome. I am so excited to finally be able to share today’s episode with all of you. If you’re new here, if you’re a newer listener, I’m so glad you’re here. This is such a fabulous episode for you to tune into. And make sure you hit that subscribe button wherever you’re listening, so you don’t miss out on the next couple of weeks because we have some really exciting topics coming out, conversations, so many good tools, skills, knowledge I am sharing with all of you.
But today is all about becoming a confident leader. I have my former client, Michelle who is not only a public health professional. She’s a supervisor, she works in government, she’s a mom. And when I met her she was really struggling with questioning herself, feeling uncertain, putting a lot of pressure on herself. And she talks about this in the interview, her experience specifically with leading. Now, whether you’re a seasoned supervisor, a director, you’re a new leader or you take on more informal leadership roles, I promise you this episode will help you so much.
Michelle talks about how she was able to shift from that place of doubt and insecure to feeling confident and feeling like a capable leader and showing up in belief of herself. And not only that, how that has shifted things in her personal life with being a mom and a partner and setting goals for herself outside of work and how much joy and fulfillment and purpose that has brought back into her life.
So I promise, no matter where you are in your career, if you’re an early professional, if you are mid-career, if you’re towards retirement, no matter what sector you work in. This episode is going to help you so much step into your authority, into your confidence and believe in yourself, not just at work but how much bigger, how much more fulfilling and exciting your whole life can be, including your personal life. So without further ado, I’m going to let Michelle take it away and share with you all her experience becoming a confident leader.
Marissa: Michelle, I am so excited you are here to share your experience with our listeners about being a leader, creating confidence and so much more. So before we get into all of that, do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and your professional background?
Michelle: Hi, Marissa. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so my professional background is in a different side of public health than I think a lot of listeners might experience. So I’m in the veterinary medical field. I work in government and so my official title is a supervisory veterinary medical officer but really what I do is I am a veterinarian. I do hands-on work with animals, marine animals and I also lead a conservation research program.
So my background coming up to this point is a little bit circuitous. I study marine biology and got really interested in the marine sciences, specifically working with marine mammals. And decided when I was finishing my master’s that I was really interested in the hands-on application of veterinary medicine to conservation. So the field that I really work the most in professionally is conservation medicine, but since about 2019 I’ve assumed greater leadership and supervisory responsibilities.
Marissa: Awesome. I mean, I think public health is so broad. And my personal public health background is very different than many other people’s. I’ve had social workers reach out, therapists, other folks outside of what we may traditionally think of public health. And I think you’re such a good example of that. I think most people who aren’t in public health wouldn’t necessarily think veterinary medicine could be public health. But it absolutely is when you take it from, not just a conservation point of view, but you zoom out on a macro level of how everything is intertwined, our ecosystem, human lives, the climate, health, so many things.
Michelle: Yeah, that’s exactly it. And a lot of the things that I work on are wildlife population health issues, but so many of the things that we think about in wildlife health are in that one health paradigm. Where we’re really talking about the intersection of the ecosystem, of the animals that we consume for food or use for fiber and the wildlife populations that are in contact with them and the humans that rely on all of those species for their wellbeing. And so in the marine environment we think a lot about fishing as well.
So yeah, it’s definitely an area where I interact with a lot of people that are in different aspects of public health as a veterinarian. And it’s so fulfilling, it’s such a cool opportunity. I love being at this multidisciplinary intersection in this field.
Marissa: Yeah, and I know from our time working together, the other kind of part of your job that I think really aligns with so many other sectors in public health is not just the work in government, which I know we’ll get into. But also the work with the community and your role in your department works a lot with the community. And so that’s a big part of public health of the work we are doing, the ultimate goal is to improve the community experience and that has to happen in collaboration with the community.
So not just topically, but I think the function in which your work happens and the different points in which it occurs is very similar across different sectors of public health.
Michelle: Yeah, it really is. And the thing that come along with that I think are also some of the challenges, which was really what led me to coaching. And that is just this obligation to people and communities and the weight of that is not trivial. These are some really big issues that we work with in this field and that comes with a lot of challenges. And it’s been a path that has really allowed me to grow in ways I never expected.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think there are challenges for everyone in the field, but then once you become a leader or a manager or a supervisor, then there’s kind of another level of challenges you face. Can you share with folks, we have folks listening who are seasoned leaders who also struggle with these challenges or maybe new to being a supervisor or manager. Can you share a little bit about your experience being a leader before coaching, what was it like for you? What was your experience like?
Michelle: Yeah. I love this question because it makes me think about what is a leader. And I have a title now and a role now that is clearly a leadership role and a supervisory role. But when I think about how I’ve shown up throughout my career, I have been someone who has been a reluctant leader a lot of times and I’ve been someone who has been a team leader and I’ve often just found myself stepping in to fill a leadership role when maybe it’s not clear what that is.
Maybe it’s a field situation and somebody kind of needs to bring the team together and talk through the plan and just lead the group. And so over the course of my career and myself really just I guess in a sense ending up in as a team lead in a lot of ways. And so I had some formal leadership training, but really the challenges of leadership in this more formal role that I’ve been in since about 2019 have been really different than those less formal leadership roles I experienced before. And those were all things that prepared me, but it was certainly a shift.
And of course the COVID pandemic, about seven or eight months after I started my position as a supervisor and in a leadership role, certainly challenged that even more. It was a really big transition. But the thing that I was really facing were just who am I to be in this role? And all of a sudden you’re making decisions and I just felt a lot of uncertainty in making decisions and that led to a lot of cyclical thinking.
And I would just put so much pressure on myself and exhaust myself really, in trying to figure out what the right decision was, thinking, in a sense, my mindset was, there is a right answer to this. I just don’t know what it is, but other people do. So I was just trying to figure out what the right answer was and didn’t really have a lot of confidence in my own decision making powers at the time. And that was really one of the things that just sapped a lot of energy for me and was making it really hard to enjoy my day-to-day world.
And this career is a gift. And so it was really hard to have that discordant feeling where I just wasn’t liking how I was showing up every day.
Marissa: Yeah. And I want to pull out a couple of things you said for our listeners. Kind of the first is leadership and supervising formal and informal, there’s so many different ways it looks. It might be accidentally leading a team or being asked to lead a committee, which might be very different than actually being someone’s manager on paper where you give performance reviews and set goals.
So I think it’s important that we acknowledge that no matter anyone listening, where you’re at in your leadership journey, whether it’s formal or informal. You might be experiencing some of these same challenges that Michelle has brought up from questioning yourself, doubting yourself, putting a lot of pressure to make the right decision and then managing uncertainty, which comes up as a supervisor because we don’t have all the answers.
And that can create a lot of anxiety and I know for a lot of folks listening, this might be bleeding over into your personal life, really getting in the way of being present on your nights and weekends or spending time with your friends and family and it has such a ripple back on our lives.
Michelle: Yeah, it really does, and thank you for saying that. I think that this is just my path and my experience and my timing of when I hit up against these challenges personally. But I think those challenges can come with a whole variety of different leadership roles and that’s a really important thing to say. Yeah, and I definitely was finding that there was bleed over into my personal life. So I’m also a mom, my daughter’s turning five in a few days.
Marissa: Wow.
Michelle: Yeah. And it’s hard to believe, time flies, but that was a real challenge for me because with my role it’s hard to turn off, especially when you work with wildlife. And wild animals don’t choose to need help on Monday through Friday between nine and five. So there’s a lot of opportunity for work to keep pulling me back in even when I’m not officially on the clock.
And being a new mom was really something that I found fulfilling but challenging in a whole different way. And when I was constantly kind of battling, trying to have time to be present in my personal life and see these milestones, my kid growing up, that would be really hard. And I missed some stuff because either I wasn’t feeling that I could prioritize that at the time, I didn’t have the confidence to prioritize that at the time. Or really just I was too distracted to be able to be fully present for those things. Even if I was sitting there, I was on my phone doing something else.
And so that was just a suboptimal combo really of things for a period of time where I just wasn’t finding that I was able to settle into my personal time and really ever be fully present in that personal time to relax and to recuperate. Because I was either worrying about whatever it was going on at work, second guessing whatever decision was hanging in the balance or whatever thing was coming up the next week. Or just allowing myself to get pulled in on my phone when I maybe didn’t always need to as much. I could have delegated more.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think that’s a common challenge, especially among working moms. But even those of you who are listening who don’t have children, I have heard this from so many clients just with their partner or with themselves, the time they want to dedicate to themselves outside of work. It’s easy to get pulled into an email when the notification comes on and then feel like you have to respond or be worrying up late at night about did I make the right decision.
Or how is the meeting going to go tomorrow and all of those kind of self-doubt questioning, uncertainty, all of what we’ve been talking about. So just for our listeners to understand, that’s where you were. Where are you now in your experience of being a leader? Is it the same or is your emotional and mental experience leading, different now?
Michelle: It’s massively different. I mean, I don’t want to say that it’s not without deliberate intention that I need to bring to that to maintain the better balance that I have. It’s not necessarily easy 100% of the time. But I have a set of tools that I can use that has massively opened up my ability to really stop dwelling on things. That anxiety component is so much less.
The shame and the fear and all of these emotions that I was feeling like I had to spend all this time sorting out and figuring out. I have learned that those are things that they can exist, but I can be neutral to them. They don’t have to own me. And I said before that one of the things that I used to feel a lot of the time was that if I was facing something, there is a right answer here and I’m just the one that doesn’t know it. I’ve been able to really reshape that mindset entirely.
And some of the things that I learned in coaching are intentional, mindful thoughts that I have going in my head constantly, things like I am the exact right person to make this decision in this moment. And when I can allow myself to just acknowledge that there are thoughts and emotions that come with those thoughts that can bring me anxiety, it’s okay for them to be present but they don’t have to override my ability to be present and to be participating in a meeting or a workshop or whatever the thing may be, just in communicating with the public, anything like that.
And I know that might sound like a subtle shift, but it has been the thing that has allowed me to really just rest when the work is done in a way that I was never really able to do before.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think so many people struggle with decisions, whether you’re a leader or not. This is one of the areas humans in general struggle, but especially in public health, socialized as women. And one of the things I’m hearing from you, shifting from being so focused on making the right decision to being focused in believing in yourself, whether or not it’s a ‘right decision’. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Because I know so many folks really think their confidence must come from having the right answer, knowing what to do, but we don’t always have the right answer, we don’t always know, there’s uncertainty. So when you shift to instead, believing in yourself, I have my back, I can make the best decision I can, no matter what happens. I’m confident to figure it out. Can you tell me more about that, tell folks listening more about that shift?
Michelle: Yeah, it’s such an important shift for me to be able to have the acknowledgement that it’s okay to be nervous about this. It’s okay to be uncertain about things. And I think that’s the thing that I realized is all the leaders that I look up to that I think are the people that have the ‘right answer’, they’re doing the same thing. There isn’t necessarily this right answer. It’s just having the confidence that whatever it is that comes up, you’re going to handle it because you’re the right person to handle it.
And that’s what I tell myself that I’m in this position to be the one that demonstrate how to fail and how to learn from that and how to regroup. That things aren’t always going to go flawlessly and that is okay. That it’s about making the best decision that I can in that moment. And I think in terms of that confidence piece for me that was incredibly, incredibly hard to get started on. And one of the things that I have learned is that this intentional thinking is critical for me to be able to do that day after day.
So I have these intentional thoughts that they’re grounding for me in a way that initially was really uncomfortable because I didn’t believe them. And some of the tools that I got through coaching were really important because sometimes that grounding thought and that intentional thought it feels so remotely untrue. You really helped me, Marissa, in recognizing that there are stepwise thoughts that I can take to get to that bigger thought.
And so sometimes those are really simple things but that path allowed me to identify with these intentional thoughts that give me that confidence, that give me that grounding. And really, when I go back to those in the moment even, they allow me to get my focus back into the conversation or the meeting or whatever the thing is that’s going on.
And instead of what I used to do, which was get so caught up in my thoughts that all I could think about were my thoughts and trying to suppress them. And that tool has been just so immensely helpful. And then when it’s done, it’s done and I can let it go and I can take things one step at a time.
Marissa: Yeah. I thought of an analogy when you were first talking about how you used to think all the leaders you looked up to and your mentors had it all together. But then you become a leader and you’re like, wait a minute. It’s kind of like when we’re growing up, not everyone but many people think that their parents have all the knowledge and answers. And then you become a parent or an adult and you’re like, wait, everyone’s just faking it till they make it. They’re doing the best they can, no one knows at all, there’s like no handbook here really. And I think the same happens for leadership.
Michelle: Yeah, I think that’s true.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think the tool Michelle’s talking about is, once you become aware of your thoughts and what you’re thinking, so in this leadership example, it might be, I don’t know the right answer. I have to figure out the right answer. All the pressure is on me. What are they going to think of me? All of those kind of catastrophizing thoughts, shifting from there to, I am the best leader ever. I always know what to do. Your brain’s going to reject that.
But making baby steps, and this is what happens in coaching sessions of, well, someone must believe in you because they hired you. So maybe you can borrow their belief. Or, well, what if you don’t need to know the right answer? What if you just make the best decision you can? Making those subtle shifts as you’re working through it is really where the change happens and that’s really what creates belief in yourself.
We think this belief in yourself is just, I don’t know, an innate confidence that someone’s born with, but that’s not true. It’s just being able to shift some of the thoughts you’re thinking to better support yourself and kind of not necessarily be your own cheerleader although sometimes we do need to do that, but at least not be your own enemy.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s why earlier I mentioned that before I had a formal leadership role, I found myself a reluctant leader. And I think it’s because I didn’t see myself as someone who just had this inherent confidence. I’m the person, to be the person, that’s just not me. And so I think that developing that confidence, not in a way that blinds you to the external realities that you’re dealing with. It’s not something that has to be negative.
I think I thought that confidence, I sometimes associated that confidence with ego in a way that there’s a whole lot of difference between those two extremes, that I think really matters. And this is something that is about being authentic and being true to yourself and being confident in your voice and your perspective as a valuable contribution. When it comes to things like supervising and in my field in veterinary medicine, sometimes you really do have animals’ lives in your hands. And when you’re working with large wild animals sometimes that’s also a human safety thing too.
Some of the work that we do really is something that human safety is of paramount importance. People’s lives are on the line in the work that we do. And so I think that the confidence to navigate those things with that version, for me, that version of high stakes is really important because I was crumbling under the pressure that I was putting on myself.
But now I can recognize that those are challenges and with them come fear and uncertainty but with this new found confidence that I’ve been able to access in myself. I feel that I’m so much more capable of supporting people in those moments, and animals as well.
Marissa: Yeah. And everyone’s job has a different kind of pressure point. So for you, it might be the actual physical safety to the animals or people you’re working with. For others listening it might be maybe your job actually intersects with politicians and making policy. And that feels like a lot of pressure when there might be a bill going forward and whether or not it passes can impact health outcomes of millions of people. Or maybe you engage directly with communities that have been harmed by public health in the past so it’s important to be thoughtful.
Whatever it is, I think all of us in public health have that feeling of pressure. And when you become a leader that can heighten. And when you’re a leader, really what that is, is just a series of ongoing decisions that you have to make. And believing in yourself to make those decisions, especially when you’re socialized as a woman, is one of the hardest shifts to make because we are constantly told, “You don’t know what’s best. Other people know better, look to authority.”
Or even in our school systems, we’re taught there’s one right answer, you just memorize, take the test, get the answer right. And that’s not really how it works in the nuanced complex world of public health leadership.
Michelle: Yeah, so well said.
Marissa: Yeah. So I want to shift gears just a little bit because in our work together, even though a lot of the coaching was on decision making as a leader in the day-to-day decisions you had to make. That kind of morphed into decisions about your own career and thinking big picture of what do you want, where do you want to go? And you don’t have to share anything necessarily about your future path and where you’re going, but I know a lot of folks feel a little stuck in that place.
When we’re younger we have these big dreams and envision our career while we’re in grad school. And then you move through it and you kind of stop that dreaming. And so can you just share with folks who might be in that place, how did that happen? Where coaching around individual decisions and feeling confident suddenly became, okay, what do I want in my life? Do I have the confidence to create it? How can I feel empowered to make those decisions about my career on that macro scale?
Michelle: Yeah, thank you. I’m excited to talk about that because it is in my day-to-day world now. And so one of the things that I uncovered through coaching about my internal processing was that I, for whatever reason, whether it’s some combination of socialization or habits that I developed or I don’t know what. I was feeling once I made a decision I was locked into it. And it wasn’t, that was really not serving me. And I think it was adding to the pressure and adding to burnout for me.
And I just realized that there are lots of things that I still want to do and aspects of my personal life and my professional life that I still really want to dream about. But when I first started coaching I couldn’t fathom dreaming anymore about what might be next. And that was really hard. I’m getting choked up just saying it because I’m remembering back to how heavy that was to feel. And now I have another intentional thought that came from coaching that you really helped me with, which is, it’s okay to want what I want. And it’s okay to not want what I don’t want.
I’m still figuring a lot of that out, but I don’t have the worries and the baggage that I was putting on myself before that come with that because I control my decision points. And I can make one decision now and I can choose to make a different decision later and now I feel confident that I’ll make those decisions when the time is right for me in the direction that I want to go.
And so instead of just getting so mired in shaming myself for did I make the wrong choice here or there to end me up in this place of burnout. I realized I have so much more freedom. And I just feel this huge weight has been lifted so that I really am now thinking about some other dreams. I’m dreaming really big and really excited about where some of these things might go. Some of that relates to trail running, which is a hobby of mine and some things that I’m really excited to potentially do.
I did a baby step this year to be a co-race director for our local trail race, which was so fulfilling and potentially will open up some other doors. I am learning to be a beekeeper for the last couple of years and I’m thinking about how I might be able to combine my love of beekeeping with my career in veterinary medicine in some way to support some of the local beekeepers here and some of their needs.
So there’s just a lot of exciting stuff that I’m still working on but I feel so free to dream and try and explore and I don’t feel so pinned down by I have to make sure I’m making the right decision right now because I can’t change my mind later.
Marissa: Yeah, absolutely. And I think no matter how ‘big or small’ decisions we’re making, that’s a trap we get stuck in, not just, it has to be right or wrong. But the reason we get stuck on that is exactly what you said, which is we think what we decide has to be final. We can’t go back and we’re so worried about regretting it. But that’s a total myth. You can always make a different decision tomorrow. The circumstances might be different.
Michelle: Yeah, it absolutely does. And I think one of the other pieces of that for me was confusing that with loyalty and commitment and integrity. And I think I had sort of conflated the two, that I can’t change my mind about something because I had created this story. And part of that was thinking, well, I’m where I am and I have the opportunity to do these things, but I didn’t really earn that.
It was just this deep rooted lack of confidence and really, belief in myself and one of the things that you helped me do was kind of go back through and look at what the facts were and rewrite my story to myself.
Marissa: Yeah, I mean, one thing you’re bringing up which I cannot tell you how many people I’ve coached around this, which is this feeling of I owe it to them or obligation or loyalty. And I think there’s such an important mindset shift that you’re alluding to here, which is many of us are socialized for different reasons to believe we got what we got by luck, we don’t deserve it or it was a handout or someone took a chance on us. And when you think about it that way, it’s as if someone gave you your career. And so then you’re obligated to hold on to it, but that’s not true.
We all create our own paths. There might be people along the way who support us, who help us, who guide us but we ultimately create that path. And when you are able to see, I created this, I’m the driver in this car. Then you get to have the freedom to choose what direction you want to go or if you want to take a break.
And I see that so much in public health of people who just feel stuck in their job or their career or their organization because they feel the sense of obligation to stay as if they didn’t choose to be there in the first place, as if it was a handout, when really they really created that opportunity for themselves and they can create whatever other opportunity they want as well.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And that is a realization that I think is so important in me, to be on the other side of the immense feelings of burnout that I was dealing with at the time initially. And one part of that that I think is somewhat unique to us in public health, I think, is that we probably go into the fields that we go into because we want to help. I know that for me was a huge part of it and still is. I want to make a contribution.
And sometimes I think in my field it’s self-select for people that are prone to compassion fatigue and putting everything else before themselves and not making a change, not feeling that they can make a change. Not feeling like they can dream. Not feeling like they deserve the path that they’re on too. I mean all of those things kind of in a way are human nature, I think. And I think they’re also maybe even more emphasized in this field. And so it’s that much more important for us to take care of ourselves and to take care of each other.
Marissa: Yeah. And I think one of the things you’re talking about, I immediately thought of people pleasing. People pleasing is something everyone, especially women in public health, struggle with. And one of the results when you consciously or not are people pleasing is you are often doing what you think everyone else wants and neglecting what you want. And it’s a struggle to even recognize or figure out or admit what you want, let alone go after it.
So I think what you said earlier about practicing the thought that you’re allowed to want what you want and to not want what you don’t want. Is so powerful for anyone in public health who’s stuck in your career or who have a tendency to people please and really put others first and kind of put yourself last.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And it’s just a downward spiral when you’re in that place because you can’t take care of yourself. You can’t take care of others. I think it’s really important that, again, that we support each other and I hope that my sharing my experience is something that can help others as well.
Marissa: Yeah. And you shared a couple ways that these shifts, whether it’s the thoughts that you’re thinking or just having belief and confidence in yourself or making decisions has made on your life from now dreaming even bigger, both in work and outside of work. And also being able to make decisions in your job. Are there other impacts that have happened in work or your personal life as an outcome of these shifts?
Michelle: Yeah, I mean, the biggest ones are definitely the kind of dreaming and thinking about other things I want to do in my life. But it’s also had an impact on my family life. I think that I’ve been able to be a lot more present in my day-to-day. And of course, I still can get pulled away by things that come up with work, but I’m able to disconnect from that more easily than I used to be able to do. And I’m able to prioritize family time. I’m able to delegate so that I don’t have mountains of work feeling like they’re piling up.
And I have better tools to deal with those feelings of being overwhelmed because there’s a lot to be done and it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and to feel overwhelmed. And so when I’m getting to that point, I now have some tools that I can use that don’t necessarily change the workload that’s on my plate, but they change how I manage myself in the face of that workload.
Marissa: Which ultimately changes your workload. Because when you are able to get out of overwhelm and stay on task and be less distracted. Ultimately, you’re changing what’s on your plate and what’s not versus getting stuck, falling behind, things falling through the cracks.
Michelle: So true, yes, absolutely. And it takes deliberate action to stay in that space. It’s not something that is automatic but it’s getting easier and easier all the time.
Marissa: Yeah, it is definitely a process with the journey. I mean, I still struggle with some of this from time to time too. There’s no place of perfection or enlightenment at least in our lifetime. I don’t think AI will get that far. But putting in the effort to be on the journey and have that process and that progress is so, so worth it.
Michelle: Indeed, yeah.
Marissa: So to wrap up, just for folks who maybe are listening who are where you were before coaching, whether they’re a new leader or a seasoned leader who kind of feels like they have so much pressure on them, they doubt themselves, they never know if they’re doing a good job. They’re constantly questioning themselves, worried they’re letting people down. What would you say to them right now?
Michelle: I would say you’re not alone. There is nothing wrong with you. In fact, you’re completely normal, that these are all natural, while still everyone’s going to have their unique story, these are all natural things to experience, but you don’t have to keep living in that space. I got so much more out of coaching than I ever imagined. And when I signed up, I was all in and still scared that I would come out on the other side still in a hole so it’s okay to be scared.
But for me, coaching has completely changed my life and I think that there are going to be other opportunities where I might not even know what that thing is yet, that I’ll pursue coaching on something, some different aspect of things in the future. And came out of that, I remember one conversation that we had, Marissa, where I was feeling afraid that I was going to get burned out again.
And you reminded me, “But you have all these tools, it’s okay, if you do, you know how to seek the resources for that situation. You have tools in yourself. Coaching is something that you can revisit. Coaching is something that will always be there as a resource.” And the best part about it for me, and I hope that this will help those who might be listening who are in that place, you’re going to be the master of your solutions and that’s so empowering.
This isn’t about having somebody tell you nice flowery things about yourself. This is about building tools that you can use in the way that’s authentic and unique to you. So it is massively empowering, it’s transformational across work and personal life. For me that’s family life and motherhood and fun things in the future about my extracurricular stuff. And I just don’t know where it’s going to take you, but I hope that folks that are on the fence about it will explore. I think it’s just, it’s so life changing. I think about how much this coaching has changed my world in just a few months and it’s really hard to believe, so yeah.
Marissa: Yeah. And that’s really at least the type of coaching that I do, lots of coaching, it’s really about providing tools that will best help you. And I love what you said, master of your own solutions, because especially in the one-on-one format, it’s so tailored to what would be helpful for you. And I’m not enlightened or the guru by any means. I have tools to offer, but you have your lived experience and it’s together an experience we co-create to support you.
And then you walk away with those tools to be able to support you for the rest of your career. that fear about burnout again or will I end up in another toxic workplace? I hear that a lot, is very common, but once you gain these tools, they’re yours to use and to continue carrying on in your career, which is the most beautiful part about it.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. And I think for me, the one-on-one was what I really needed at that time. I was reading books left and right, listening to podcasts and audiobooks and trying to find all these resources. And those resources are great, but they weren’t helping me in the individualized way that I really, really needed.
I needed somebody to challenge me, to have that back and forth, to help me dissect where I was at in my personal story and that was the tipping point. Because for a long time I had been listening to stuff and reading stuff and trying to figure it out myself. And I needed that neutral person in a coach to individualize it and personalize it, understand my story and help me, again, just yeah, be that master of my own solutions. That for me was the turning point, yeah.
Marissa: And I hear that a lot and there’s a lot of people have concerns, which I totally understand around the time commitment, one-on-one coaching and the costs. And one thing I just want to say for folks is the DIY where you listen to podcasts and read books, which obviously I support. I have a podcast, so I’m not against that by any means. But depending where you’re at, all the hours you spend with the DIY is a lot of time you’re giving versus maybe the one hour a week with a coach that might have a bigger impact.
Now it’s different person to person, that’s why you set up a consult and we would chat, but just something to think about. Actually is me trying to do this on my own, saving me time or is it actually costing me time and taking longer? That’s something to consider.
And then the other thing is that you were able to have your employer pay for part of the cost which folks, if you haven’t thought of that option, there’s several people. And you’re in government who have been able to have a supportive boss or deputy director or management who are willing to figure out the funds and support all or part of the cost of coaching. Ao that’s also an option that folks can look into.
Michelle: Yeah, and that is definitely something I wanted to mention as well. And it felt really good to have that support. So it’s kind of a win/win in that way, yeah. And I kind of think of the podcasts and the books and those things now as my continuing education in a way. So now that I have got this really strong foundation, all those other resources click in a way that they weren’t able to serve me before.
Marissa: Yeah, connecting the dots and can also be used not just for maintenance, because that sounds so boring, but continued growth in a different way. But yeah, I think for a lot of folks, and this was my story too, where I really needed to invest the time and money to get that more intensive support to be able to utilize those DIY resources or that self-direct resource in a way that served me better, had a bigger impact.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. The fact that I can look back on six months ago or so and be in a completely different place now. I feel like I got years of my life back because I think I would have continued spiraling in this difficult space that I was in and burnout. And now I’m like, “Cool, I’ve got all these ideas and I can’t wait to act on them.”
Marissa: That’s the benefit of one-on-one. I think about it, if you’re trying to lose weight and you try to go to your apartment gym on your own and watch YouTube that will get you so far. But if you hire a personal trainer, in the same amount of time you’ll have such different results. And now that’s not for everyone, obviously. But it’s just a good example I always think about is it’s amazing when you do invest in that kind of higher level support, how much progress you can make in such a short period of time.
Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you, Marissa, for changing my life.
Marissa: You changed your life, I just helped you, we co-created that. You did the work. I mean, that’s another thing that I’ll say to folks. I had another client who said something in our conversation where she was like, “I really was hoping Marissa would just give me all the answers but she didn’t.” And I was like, “That’s the biggest compliment I could have ever received because it’s about you carving out your own journey and I’m just here to help support you and give you the tools you might need, but ultimately it's about you doing that work yourself.”
That’s why it’s so gratifying. That’s why there’s so much change. If it was just me being like, “Implement this five step process”, you would not nearly have such a big transformation.
Michelle: Yeah, well said.
Marissa: Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know I have so many folks, whether you’re a leader or not or a supervisor or early career or late career or parent or not, took so much out of this. Because we all struggle with decision making, believing in ourselves, giving ourselves permission to want what we want and dreaming. So thank you so much, Michelle, I’m so glad you’re here.
Michelle: Thank you, Marissa.
You all, wasn’t that amazing? Isn’t Michelle just so awesome? I loved how she shared one of her practiced thoughts, how she’s practiced. Maybe I’m the exact right person. I am the exact right person. You can take that thought right now and start practicing it to build your confidence. I love how she talked about how you shift your thoughts. And we shared what that looks like in step thoughts and shifting your thoughts little by little.
I loved how she really brought up the distinction between formal leadership and informal leadership and how insecurity and doubt and pressure impacts all of us no matter what your official role is or your duties. And I think it was so inspiring to hear her talk about how she’s giving herself permission to want what she wants and really thinking bigger about her future, her next step in her career and her personal life.
I found it so inspiring. I was taking so many notes and I hope you did too. And if from this conversation you realized that you’re in a similar place that Michelle was when she started coaching, where you might be burning out, where you feel so much pressure, feel like you’re never doing anything right. You know you’re missing out on time with your family or your friends, but you don’t know how to juggle it all. I want you to come schedule a consult with me.
The consult is completely free, you and I chat for an hour on Zoom, you share where you’re at, what you’re struggling with and what you want to be different. And I share with you as a coach what you can do to make that happen and how my coaching program can help you. There’s no obligation to join. You get to decide if you want to move forward in the program or not, but either way the consult is free and you get to walk away with knowing the steps you can take to feel better.
So head to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com/coaching, we’ll leave a link in the show notes as well and schedule a consult. Alright, everyone, make sure you’re subscribed because we have some really, really exciting episodes coming up in the next couple of weeks, including where I share my biggest leadership mistakes I’ve made in my public health career, my big oopsies and what you can learn from that.
As well as why you should ditch your mentors, I know, shocking that I said that in public health, but you’ll hear why. And my own public health burnout story. So make sure you subscribe, stay tuned for that and I’ll talk to you all next week.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
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