Chapters Transcript Lessons from OZ: The Power of Authentic Leadership Course: Inspired MD Summit: A Professional Growth and Leadership Development CME Event for Physicians So what does the Wizard of Oz have to do with leadership? OK, so we're gonna, we're gonna um move a little bit away from talking about specific experiences in our whole life, and I'm gonna try and use a, um, show that, by the way, by show fans, how many have seen the the movie or the TV Wizard of Oz? All right, so most of you good, because I got worried for a minute that maybe not enough people actually know about Oz. Um, it was 1939 when the movie came out and it was quite a hit. Well I wanna start is by talking about perspective. I love taking pictures and this is a photograph I was walking along the beach and I saw this shell. It was a very interesting picture. I'm trying to figure out why it was so interesting and I walk around the other side of the shell and recognize that the actual shadow is a heart, and depending on how you look at things and your perspective, we'll change your perspective on how we see events whether it's in. One direction or the other and what we wanna show you today is how you can change your perspective in a way that will allow you on your leadership journey which starts with yourself we talk about leadership we talk about leading your own life before even leading others. So gratitude is such an important aspect. It's literally a superpower and studies have shown that if you wake up and write 3 to 5 things you're grateful for every morning, you'll actually feel better you'll feel happier. It literally is a superpower and how can we get into a world of gratitude? There's one simple power up that I like to say that you change the words I have to to I get to. So for example, do I have to do something like do I have to attend this session? Do I have to be here or do I get the privilege to learn from people so I can be better? Do I have to see another patient or do I get the privilege of helping someone who's suffering when they're most vulnerable and literally change their lives for them to be healthier? Do I have to be a part of change or do I get to be part of change? So changing the words have to to get to can actually be a game changer. The next time you feel that you have to do something, try and change the words get to. Honestly, I do it all the time. It really makes a difference. Um, one of our, I was gonna respond to this, but I wanted to wait. Someone said, I know the grass is always greener on the other side. Is it? Is the grass actually greener? How many of you have grass? Like, I actually have a yard with grass in it. OK. It looks greener on the other side, but you know where the grass is actually greener? The grass is actually greener where you water it. That's where the grass is greenest water your grass and if somebody else's grass is greener, then they're doing a lot more watering they're tending to it more and so many people like to say it's so much better. They're so lucky they have it so much better. Let's start looking inside and saying how can we make our world better so that our grass is the greenest and it may not look the greenest to everybody else but better look the greenest to us. So this is a great book and um Fritz and I and others went to this uh leadership training called Hallie and two of the leaders of the actual authors of the book Doug Cont Meda Norgaard, um, Doug and Mehta put together a book called Touch Points with the concept being that there are 3 secret ingredients that could take any activity and elevate it with energy, with purpose. That's a touch point. You got your head which is your intelligence and your training, your heart, which is your compassion, your kindness and your authenticity, and your hands, which is literally your ability to do things and put those all together in the best possible way, creates that spark that touch point for those of us who had gone this undergone this training and who have read this book, everything we try and do, we try and create a touch point. And you know when a touch point happens because you feel better after it somebody has elevated you or you've elevated somebody else that interaction is a touch point and when something goes wrong when you're missing one of those ingredients you know it. So for example, you don't have the intelligence or the training, you may not seem logical, actually illogical or possibly even incompetent. If you don't have the heart, the kindness, and the um ability to be who you are true to yourself, you might seem inauthentic. And if you don't have the ability, the physical ability to do things, you look incompetent. Putting these together. Is actually the key that I'm gonna show you is brought out by the Wizard of Oz. Now we think of The Wizard of Oz first of all about perspective. So when the show starts, do you remember what, what does it look like on the screen? It's a terrible storm, it's a tornado, it's in black and white. I remember this was 1939 when this movie came out. Black and white was actually the norm for movies and she gets caught up in this whirlwind. She's in the house and it lands and she steps out. And I remember as a kid saying wow because the perspective certainly changed it went from black and white gloomy to beautiful color technicolor, which was like miraculous at the time so perspective is such a key part. I wanna show you a different perspective, the Wizard of Oz and the reason I like this metaphor, this allegory so much is because. When you start thinking about how can I be the best self, how can I be the best leader, you could think about The Wizard of Oz and think about what it is teaching you. OK, so here are the here's here's the journey, right? Dorothy is trying to get home and who does she have these characters? She has the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the lion. And by the way, this was a musical also. It's one of the most beautiful songs ever written somewherew Over the Rainbow. I mean it's really quite incredible movie. Well, what did the scarecrow need? Anybody remember? Brain. He needed a brain, OK? What does a brain represent? What did the thin man need? Heart, what does the heart represent? And courage, it's not what I would have thought to pick along my journey but I'm gonna show you that might be the most important attribute of all so let's go through it. Let's start with the brain so the brain represents the training, all the creativity, intentionality, the strategic planning, the self awareness that we've been talking about. And knowing our strengths and our weakness that's up here we have to bring that to anything that we have going and actually Einstein has a great quoted education is not learning of the facts but training of the mind to think it's not knowing the facts, it's knowing how to put them together and utilize them to something better so that's our brain now the heart is an interesting one, right? We think about kindness and empathy so critically important in medicine. There's a really interesting book by Kelly Harding called The Rabbit Effect. I don't know how many people have read this or know about this, but it turns out that kindness actually improves health, and she talks about that there was an experiment that they were doing where they were feeding, um, rabbits very high fat diets and looking at their coronary arteries. They'd have to sacrifice the animals, look at the coronary arteries and see which dietary modifications created the most risk. But one subset of rabbits actually had much less plaque than the others, and yet everything else was the same, and it turns out that the rabbits came from one postdoc who was providing that data, so it's for certain something's wrong so they looked at the feeding, everything was perfect, everything was perfect except one thing they said, let's follow that postdoc. The postdoc took the animals, the rabbits when she was feeding them. And she would pet them. She, she was an animal lover so she treated them with kindness almost as pets while she was taking care of them and those rabbits had decreased plaque in their coronary artery suggesting that the kindness was actually the factor. This book is full of references. There's a lot of actual data that shows that kindness improves overall health. That's the heart, it's not just better for us, it improves our health, and I mentioned that this this. Study which is um Robert Waldinger and um Mark Schultz put together the uh good life which is this 80+ year history of a group from Harvard that expanded out to the Boston community where they looked at all the different factors of what was most important for longevity and happiness it was the relationships. It was the kindness that you share with another individual and by the way, who are we least kind to? Ourselves, we're the least kind to ourselves. Nice does not equal kind. You must embody this, OK? When you're giving feedback and we're gonna have a session on feedback when you're giving feedback, just being nice to someone might actually be the worst thing you do being kind to them means giving them constructive feedback what they're doing well but also how they can do better, where are their vulnerabilities, what are they not doing as well as they should be? That's being kind, not being nice nice does not equal kind. Courage. Courage is probably the most important attribute. In fact, this is a great quote from Maya Angelou, who also said, who, who was the person who said it's not. Um, what you say or do, it's how you make someone feel. It's just incredible how she looked at the world. Courage is the most important of all virtues because without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues consistently. In other words, you need courage, you need courage to get up here on the stage, you need courage to get in front of somebody else and say we're gonna try and get you to feel better, you need courage to recommend a new idea, you need courage to speak up when something's not right. In fact, it's the lack of courage that a lot of problems that we see occur because people don't have the courage when they know better to say something. Courage is critically important important in any endeavor that we do just to get started because what we've heard of all the self doubt and everything that we've had. Um, talks about knowing yourself, we constantly question ourselves, but courage is critically important. Now I have to say I never liked the line. He was not my favorite character and his song is the worst in the, in the whole movie, but the fact that the line was there, um, I know we're out of time just like very quickly my when what happens when you raise children as a gastroenterologist, my oldest son, when he watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time, turned to me and said, Dad, I, I don't understand something. The, um, straw man needs a brain, the, the, the tin man needs a heart. What, what does the lion need? An esophagus? True story. Anyway, so I'm being a little vulnerable sharing you some of my, um, some of my uh stories, but vulnerability needs courage. You need to be seen and heard, taking risks, innovating, being creative, connecting with others, speaking up for what's right. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change that Dee Brown says, so true, and you need courage to have vulnerability. You need to take the shots. Wayne Gretzky, this quote may be one of the reasons why I even took my role here at NYU, making a big change in my own career when my youngest son said, Hey Dad, Wayne Gretzky says you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. If you don't take the shots, you'll never know if you score the goal. You must have the courage to swing the um stick to get the puck in the goal. You know this one already. The great philosopher Michael Jordan. I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. We must have the courage to take the shot. Michael Jordan, you would never think of him as ever missing a basket, but he did, because he's human, because we're all human. We must take the shot, we must have the courage to be vulnerable. Don't be afraid of failure. So, who represents authenticity in The Wizard of Oz? I'm gonna show you a clip because this was not obvious to me and um I do some of these leadership uh um training sessions with David Haass, a colleague of mine, and David Haass, the last leadership training said, hey, I think, I think I know where the authenticity is, right, so let's take a look at the Wizard of Oz. And I believe my eyes. Why have you come back? Please, sir, we've done what you told us. We brought you the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. We mounted her. Oh, you liquidated her, right? Very resourceful. Yes, sir. So we'd like you to keep your promise tools if you please you. Not so fast, not so fast. I'll have to give the matter a little pot. Go away and come back tomorrow. But I want to go You've had plenty of time already. Do not arise the wrath of the great and powerful. Watch Toto. Watch Toto. If you are really great and powerful, you'll keep your promises. Do you presume to criticize the great Oz, you dreamful speakers, think yourself lucky that I'm giving you audience tomorrow instead of funny years for now. Oh. The great Oz has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. The great art has spoken. Who are you? I am the great and powerful wizard of Oz. You are. I don't believe you. I'm afraid it's true. There's no other wizard except me. You humbug. Yes, it's exactly so I'm a humbug. You're a very bad man. Oh, no, my dear, I, I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard. All right. There is a lot to learn here. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain is the least authentic leader. He was the worst wizard because he was the least authentic. He was a total phony baloney. And think about How we know people like this, right? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. You don't wanna be that dude. You really wanna be someone who's authentic and so who represents authenticity? Toto Toto pulls that curtain back and shows everybody that this is actually the wizard, not this fictitious projection that everybody's seeing and I love this quote. Because it shows that not only authenticity is so essential, because when the wizard became a person, he was able to at least try to help Dorothy. In the end, he wasn't successful, but at least he was able to try. Certainly couldn't do it in that regard, behind the curtain. Oh no my dear I'm a very good man I'm just a very bad wizard there are very good people who have very good intentions they're just awful leaders they're just awful leaders because they try and create, they try and be someone that they're not. They want to be like somebody else but they're not themselves so I kind of like the way that ends you're a very bad man actually I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard. I'm actually really trying my best. I'm just a very bad leader because I don't have the skills to be my best, to be the best leader. I think there's a lot to really learn looking at the Wizard of Oz as a leader, as a leadership journey, and by the way. Where is self-awareness coming? How does Dorothy actually get home to her home in, in Kansas? What does she do? And what did she say? There's no place like home guess what she's saying? The grass is actually greener where I just came from the grass is greener where you water it, she says it's where I'm home where all really is what I'm looking for took her this whole journey. So I think the whole process of this story is really about a leadership journey that embraces so many of the values. So think about the Wizard of Oz when we talk about authenticity, we talk about what the best leaderships are are like so that none of us are bad wizards. Know yourself, know your story better about gratitude and I think what happens is, is when she clicks the heels, she's saying I'm very grateful for who's in my life and why people are in my life and what I actually have, why I am who I am. You convert the have to to get to put you in that mindset of gratitude. You wanna to water your own grass and not complain about why it's not as green as somebody else's and think about the brain, the heart and courage and don't forget about Toto because Toto represents the authenticity and kindness starts with being kind to yourself. Nice doesn't equal kind, so make sure that when you're kind you're kind in a very authentic way and recognize it'll improve not only your health but your happiness and have the courage to be vulnerable and to fail. Remember those two outcomes success and learning. They're always there for you and anything we do, so don't be that guy don't be that projection and by the way, I'm a big Trekkie and anybody who knows Star Trek and the Korbite maneuver, they actually took that image, um, because it's so, it's so such a frightening image. um, remember what Sully said you've been training all your life for this moment. You guys are ready to do it. Be a leader of yourself, have the courage to move forward and always try and do your best, and thank you very much. Published February 3, 2024 Created by Related Presenters Mark Pochapin, MD View full profile
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