Interview with Deborah Blake Dempsey
In this episode, we will uncover 3 keys:
- Self-Discovery and Authentic Leadership
- Effective Communication and Team Building
- The Transformative Power of Coaching
A Podcast Transcription
Episode 23: Empowering Healthcare & Corporate Leaders! Transformational Leadership Coach – Deborah Blake Dempsey
Intro
Odiva Vasell: (00:00)
You are a leader, whether you recognize it or not. You are a leader of fempreneurs. My next guest, Deborah Blake Dempsey, will teach us how we can step into that leadership power and begin to enjoy as we transform into the leader we are meant to be and light the way for others.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (00:25)
Hi, Odiva. Thank you for having me. My name is Deborah Blake Dempsey. I am a life strategist and transformational coach. I coach leaders.
Odiva Vasell: (00:34)
Leaders, leaders. And I think it’s in our lives, we see ourselves as so much as nurturers, like taking care of others. We don’t realize that we are in leadership and guiding those that come along beside us. That’s interesting. How do you even get people, to women, to know that they are a leader?
Self-Discovery and Authentic Leadership
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (00:57)
That’s a wonderful question. Leadership is honestly, it’s who we are. Every single one of us has moments of being leaders. Sometimes it’s more active than others. If you’re a parent, if you’re a friend, if you’re a partner, we’re all leaders. We have to step forward, make decisions, communicate, strategize, listen, not speak. Just to be able to stand in our power and figure out who we are in our personal lives and who we are at work.
Odiva Vasell: (01:27)
Wow. So this is like stepping into the power that you already have, power and influence that you already have to changing other people’s lives. So, as you just said, it is like an awakening for me. I’m a leader, too. What? I didn’t know. Okay. And this is beautiful. So do you typically work with women or men or young people? Is there a specific age bracket or anything?
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (01:54)
There is no gender. There is no age bracket. I focus on healthcare and corporate leaders. I also coach and mentor clinicians, doctors, and nurses who are moving from pure clinical work into the administrative work and trying to bridge the gap going into leadership. Whether or not you’re a clinician or you’re in the corporate, it’s not easy, it’s not comfortable. And there’s a lot of training that goes on in the process of leadership. But the actuality of being a leader, of having a team, of making a decision, of being comfortable and confident in your decision-making skills, your skills, your abilities. Um, how you fit in the room, especially if you’re a woman. It’s tough. It’s very, very tough. It can be very uncomfortable. And unless you have a personal leadership philosophy and know what your leadership style is, you will struggle as I have struggled, which is why I became a life strategist and transformational coach for leaders.
Odiva Vasell: (02:57)
I like what you said about your leadership style, and I just wanted to take a minute to just say, “Hooo-hooo!” to all our healthcare workers and the people that you work with and help that are in the healthcare industry, because, whoa, they’ve come through some tough times over the past couple of years, and we love you guys and support you and everything. And more about what you said about them transitioning into this kind of administrative role. It seems like they’re going from being the behind-the-scenes person to being the on-the-stage person, where everybody, every move that you make can be judged or even can. It’s a life that’s at stake. Someone’s life is at stake.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (03:46)
Absolutely. I think for the clinician, they go to school and they learn how to be a doctor, how to heal—all the technical terms, all the drug interactions. And then there comes a time when they decide they want to transition and also become an administrative leader, or if they are called upon for their skill set, and they’re like, “Come on, we want you to be a leader.” Now they’re in the room. And now they have a different kind of team. Not a clinical team, but an administrative team. And you have projects and programs in finance and budgeting, and it’s a different world. It’s an absolutely different world. And it’s not something that they’re taught in medical school, in nursing school. So doing that transition can be very hard, and there’s a lot of struggle. And I think, from my experience, I think a lot of times, because they’re so highly educated, people assume they can do everything, and they can’t. They can be amazing doctors, they can be amazing nurses or amazing regular corporate administrative people. But as soon as the leadership hat comes on, those are different skill sets. And a lot of times, people are not taught who you are as a leader or how to communicate with people, or how to understand that. Some people in the room immediately have an answer. Other people need to sit back and marinate and think about it, to come up with an answer and to give them space and. So different perceptions can come up, different judgments, different decision-making. If you don’t understand how leadership shows up, what comes from leadership, and the blessings and impact that you can have as an effective leader.
Odiva Vasell: (05:24)
Wow, I’m just thinking of architecture. You know how an architect has to have every piece of the puzzle right, for this building to go up and not fall on people’s heads. And here you have this structure or infrastructure of a hospital or medical facility. And as you said, all of those parts are different hats. And they are expected to kind of go into the role. I know in public service and government, they tend to just say, “Hey, we need somebody here, so you’re going to do it.” And when these people come to you, what are they feeling?
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (06:13)
Oh, burnt out, exhausted, sometimes angry, irritated. They need help, they need support. And I spent over 28 years in healthcare side, so I’ve done everything from revenue cycle, when the patient first calls up, like, “I need an appointment,” all the way into project management, process improvement, budgeting ROIs, all of these things. And I worked in places where physicians are lucky. They didn’t have to necessarily worry about those things. They have an entire team. But things are changing now. I think the pandemic really opened up a lot of clinicians’ eyes on what’s happening in their world, what’s happening to their patients, which is their primary concern, is their patients. But then there’s the administrative side that they don’t have any control over. And a lot of clinicians are now wanting to either leave and start their own private practices or they want to jump in and become leaders, administrative leaders, so that they can help drive the change and think of things from a clinical perspective based on their patient needs and not necessarily on the business need. The business is always important because that’s your infrastructure on how you maintain your business. But there has to be more. They want more of a say. And I think it’s such a huge challenge for them to be able to feel comfortable and confident having that say when they don’t really feel comfortable and confident being a leader because that’s not what they were trained to do. And so. There’s this there’s a certain amount of you have to have trust and faith in the administrators and the people you’re working with, but you also have to understand what it is that they’re telling you and not just saying, “Oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea,” but actually knowing. I understand what you’re saying, but being able to look at the project, look at the finances, look at whatever it is,
Odiva Vasell: (08:03)
Implementations.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (08:04)
Implementations, and then look, how does this affect patient care? How does this affect the clinician process? How is this going to make me have to stay here even longer and all of the administrative burdens that I now have to take on? And as a clinician, I don’t have a life. I love what I do, but I don’t have a life that I can bring back and reinvigorate myself to really enjoy being what I’m doing. And it’s honestly, it’s the same thing for anyone who’s a healthcare corporate leader or a regular corporate leader. There’s so much going on and so much change and not being fully comfortable being a leader. It holds you back. It holds you back.
Odiva Vasell: (08:43)
Okay, that’s the missing piece. And that’s huge because what you’re talking about is literally like running a country. These are like many countries, and there are people that are responsible for this area and that area, and let’s say you have the police, the doctors, the lawyers, the teachers, and everybody’s part. They really need some more attention. But how can you give them all that attention? How can you put the system into place that works for everyone and also being able to see, as you said, further in the future and say, okay, can we implement this? Or will some other side of the factors suffer? And I’m guessing that once they learn how to step into the leadership role, accepting it without having the impostor syndrome, which is prone to hold back, a lot of people, especially I’m finding more and more women are suffering with that. Once they step into that leadership role, I’m guessing it can also translate into their family life as well.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (09:46)
Absolutely. I think when you become a leader, let’s just really focus on women. When women become leaders, we are not just going to work in being a leader. We still have our families. We still have our communities. We still have whatever it is that you have in your life that makes it rich. You still have all of those responsibilities. And for women, sometimes it’s harder to say no. We’re dealing with perceptions. We’re dealing with some bias or gender assumptions. And so we’re taking things on. And sometimes we don’t know how to say no. We don’t say no, but or how about this? Or how to negotiate something that actually works, or even as simple as how to delegate, how to actually share the joys and the burdens of the workload. We don’t know how to do that because we feel bad. And at the end of the day, we have to embrace as a leader, that’s what we do. We’re supposed to share the joy and the burden and that invigorates and motivates people to do more, do better, and it makes you a better leader.
Odiva Vasell: (10:52)
Bearing the joy and the burden. Everybody grab a sticky note and write that down. And as entrepreneurs, most of us start our business from scratch, and we start it by ourselves, and it’s our baby, and we know exactly what we want. And sometimes if we get a baby spitter and we hand it off to someone and you come back and the baby hasn’t been fed, you’re like, okay, I’ll never do that again. You hold back even tighter the next time to your responsibilities until you reach that place of burnout. So taking a breath into that leadership is a process of not only delegating, because a lot of people have the concept that delegation is you tell somebody, do this, do this, do that, tell me more about delegation. What does it mean, really?
Effective Communication and Team Building
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (11:46)
As I said, it is that sharing first. It comes from identifying what you need to keep, what you can share, what you need to give away your talent at doing something. We can’t keep everything. Most of our to-do lists at work and at home keep growing, and then something gets missed or something’s done poorly, or we make errors. And if we figure out a way of saying, this is what I need to do, this is what I love to do, this is what I like to do, but somebody else can do it, and somebody’s going to do better. If we can be honest with ourselves, it starts from there. That is really where it starts. And then you’re like, I can give this to other people. Some people might feel insecure like, I’m giving my job away. No, you’re not. You’re opening up space so that you can do all of the other things as a leader that you need to do the other training and the mentoring. I’m a coach. I coach and I mentor people. And I do this because when I was in the corporate world, I didn’t have a coach. I didn’t have a mentor. I’ve learned everything. I suffered. The years went by, and I started fine-tuning who I was and my own personal philosophy. I started to embrace delegation. I started to embrace keeping my mouth closed, keeping my ears open, brainstorming with my team, listening to their ideas, giving them space to grow and make changes. That absolutely blew me away and made me a better leader. And I recognized that I had to learn that the hard way and been through many different trainings, as many leaders do go through. And it really is about the process. Identify what it is, pick your team, do all this, but they don’t really talk about you don’t know how to communicate with your team members.
Odiva Vasell: (13:34)
Communication is huge.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (13:37)
They process things differently. You can tell somebody, “I need you to do X, Y, and Z,” and then they sit there for a week not doing it because they didn’t understand. Your communication styles are a little bit different. So how do you bridge certain gaps in order to elevate them and that they can elevate you? How do you bring your teams together? How do you get them to work with each other? How do you get the information you need, the way you need it? And when you make these, they’re not always easy changes, but the changes over time highlight you as a leader. You become a leader because your team is productive. You become a leader because people can see, wow, all of your team are rock stars. All of your team can do blah, blah, blah. The secret, they work together. They work individually. You tap into their strengths. You identify. You help them whatever their weaknesses are. You help them strengthen them. You train, you mentor and coach. And a lot of leaders are not taught how to mentor and coach and do all of those things, or they’re working managers. There’s no space, so you can’t do it on the job. Sometimes you need a coach. You need somebody external to you to actually ask you those questions, pull out your answers, your process, and help you develop who you are. And then you get to go in and go, okay, I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses, I know my values, I know what works. And now I’m going to invite my team so that we all enjoy the joys and the burdens of working.
Odiva Vasell: (15:05)
I see a few things that come up with that, like getting that external perspective is always good in every area of life. Sometimes we don’t have that when we’re dealing with our family members and trying to communicate with that, but getting that outside view into, okay, so what is going wrong with the communication process between you and your team and someone to look at that for you, that’s really powerful. And another thing that you mentioned is giving space Because I think the greatest thing that hinders people is the fear. If I give them too much space, they’re going to make a mistake, and then the whole world is going to end. Maybe you give them some space, maybe a mistake will be made, maybe not. But you both learn together and then grow from it.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (15:52)
Absolutely. That is the delta of of growth. And those are amazing opportunities. People think of mistakes as I mean, unless you’re a surgeon and you have a patient in front of you, you don’t want to make a mistake. But if you’re dealing with codes or numbers or whatever, mistakes can happen will happen. And you work through the process. But it’s that communication. It starts with understanding who you are and how you communicate and asking your team to communicate to you the way you need information, but also giving them the space to say, you need this information this way. So here’s my ad in my way so that I can help you understand something. Why not give each other space? Give each other the opportunity for greatness being in controlled environments where people don’t have the opportunity to say anything. You miss a lot. There’s higher turnover because people are bored, because you’re not sharing the joy or the burdens of work. They’re just doing the same thing over and over the way you want. And they have no place for creativity, no place to add, so they don’t have any personal value in what they’re doing. And the next thing you know, they’re gone. And you’re hiring someone else and training someone else over and over and over again. And that really does take. Who are you as a leader? What is the job? What are we supposed to do? How do I fit? How do we all fit? And make it work and be as flexible as you can be within the situation in which you are leading.
Odiva Vasell: (17:24)
And I love what you said about learning their kind of I brought to my mind about the classroom, the learning styles, how some people, they see this, but you think they see what you’re trying to do, but they don’t see it in that way because they’re all individuals. And one of the things is, these days everything is on zoom and meetings, and we’re not face to face anymore. How does that take a toll on being a leader and having the ability to be in the room with everyone and see that so and so is bored or see that so and so is not getting it right? How are we connecting now?
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (18:07)
I think it’s easy for some people and not so easy for others. I think we’ve seen people flourish really well on Zoom and working from home, and other people need to be in the office. It really is figuring out, again, your leadership style. And now you have to do two. So now you have to figure out, this is who I am as a leader in person, and this is who I am as a leader online. Communication may be the same; it may not be the same. And you have to figure that piece out. The person who’s quiet at work, you’re going to have to figure out a way of engaging them. And even if it’s not through video, have them write something. What is it that you need? What information do you need? I need these five key things based on their job. I need these five key things, and have them tell you those five key things when you need it consistently. That way, you’re still in the loop. And then when you need to have the conversation, they can be ready. “I saw that you wrote this. Can you give me a little bit more explanation?” And then they’re ready because they’ve already written it. They have it all settled. And now you can have a different conversation. It’s not the same virtual versus in person. It’s not. But if we don’t give ourselves the time to redefine leadership for ourselves, redefine our philosophies and understand who your staff is, that’s the other thing about delegation, is the assumptions that we make about other people. So you might be working with someone for two years, and you think that their skills are, “Oh, they’re really analytical and they’re really smart, and they’re really quick.” And then they might think, “I really want to dive deep. I think I’m really good with looking into the data. I can summarize things,” and you don’t even recognize that because you already have an idea of who you see. And here they come and say, “I have different skills that I see. You’re not tapping into those skills.”
Odiva Vasell: (20:00)
Evolution.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (20:01)
Exactly. Over time, no one stays stagnant. They’re still learning something. Even though they may not be learning something at work, they’re learning something. So ask them. Engage the conversation with your staff. “What’s going on with you? What are your skill sets? How can we motivate each other and bring all of our skill sets? Everybody has to up their game now. It’s a different world. Absolutely. It’s a different world. So this hybrid approach or whichever way you work requires you to take the time to figure out who you are and what you need as a leader and then communicate that back to your team and listen to what they need as your team in communication. And because you’re the leader, you have to be the most flexible. You have to be flexible.
Odiva Vasell: (20:51)
So what I’m hearing, the key nugget that we can take away is leadership is knowing oneself.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (20:58)
Absolutely.
Odiva Vasell: (21:00)
And from that, let’s change gears a little bit and tell us a little bit more about yourself, your entrepreneurial journey. How did you come up with this business, and what motivated you to do so?
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (21:17)
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve been in healthcare for almost 30 years, and the journey was not always easy. There were moments that were absolutely awful, but I still had great success. I still showed up. I still asked questions. I still asked myself questions. I refined myself. And I recognized that the only way I did that is because I was self-driven to do it. There were no resources for me that I could see that could bring me to the next level. So as I kept moving up in my career, I started changing the way I led my team. And I recognized that that’s when I really got into delegation and listening to them and not giving them the answers and giving them that space to be able to make the decisions, to make things better, because I might be the leader, but I’m not the subject matter expert on everything. My team is. And I needed to respect them enough to recognize that and let them know, “I’m coming to you because you have information. So let’s work together. Brainstorm with me.” I used to walk up to my team and like, “I need your brain.” And in the beginning, they were like, “What?” And then once they realized that I need a brainstorm with you, I need for us to have a conversation, to move something along, they got excited every time I said, “I need your brain,” because they knew that they were a part of something bigger because I gave them space to strategize and work on other projects. And so now I can bring it in. I’m like, “You have this bit of information. Help me.” And they felt, “Oh, my gosh, I’m a part of that.”
Odiva Vasell: (22:56)
They were seen. They were valued.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (22:58)
Exactly.
Odiva Vasell: (22:59)
They cultivated the culture.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (23:00)
Correct.
Odiva Vasell: (23:02)
How did you get into coaching for this?
The Transformative Power of Coaching
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (23:07)
I got into coaching because I recognized that that’s what they need. I couldn’t give them the answer. I couldn’t tell them what to do. And I didn’t want to give them the answer because I thought about myself, and I thought, I have a lot of information. I have a lot of ideas. And I’ve had those scenarios where whoever I was reporting to didn’t necessarily want to hear it. They’re like, “I already know. I’m going to tell you what to do.” And I decided I want to take a different approach. And as soon as I did, I started to see everybody begin to change, and they were happier and more satisfied, and they would actually come. “Can I help you? What can I do? How can I support you?” Like, wow, all I did was just validate you, recognize you. Thank you.
Odiva Vasell: (23:50)
Validate you.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (23:51)
Yes. I recognized you in other meetings to say, “I worked with X person to get this information.” And I never stole their thunder because I wanted them to show up as leaders in their roles. They may not be leaders by title, but they were leaders within their role, and I wanted to honor and respect that, and that was huge. So when I realized that, I also recognized that a lot of coaching mentors were very hard for people to find because everybody’s busy. Coaching, I noticed that a lot of people who ended up getting coaching, at least in the work environment, were the executives.
Odiva Vasell: (23:32)
Highest.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (24:34)
There. So the regular average person did not have access to a coach. They did not have access to have the type of coaching conversations that I’m not going to judge them. It’s not going to be on your review. I’m not telling your boss, your supervisor, there’s nothing. You show up how you show up, and then we just work to pull the answers out of you. Because in coaching, the answer is within the client. All I’m there to do is pull the threads to get you to find your own answer and then transform into the leader you’re meant to be.
Odiva Vasell: (25:07)
So let’s just talk a little bit more about validating. As you have explained beautifully, is that becoming a leader is finding yourself and validating others also. You have to start with yourself. Give us just a little synopsis of how we can start doing that,
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (25:30)
being honest with ourselves and not seeing things that we’re weak at. We’re not weak. It’s just not necessarily in our skill set. That just means that move it to where you’re brilliant, where’s your strength, let that validate you, and then take your weakness, give it to somebody else, because that’s their strength. You just validated them, and you validated yourself and gave yourself space to lead.
Odiva Vasell: (25:57)
Oh, goodness. These are such great principles and. As they apply across the board, through life, with visibility, with family, with work, it’s all the same. So I just listeners, next time you listen to this, when you rewatch this, have your pencil and paper handy and take down some of the golden nuggets of wisdom that Deb has shared with us. And I’m going to provide you with the links, connect with her and get on a coaching call with her and really start opening up first to transformation so that you can be you. And I want to thank you, Deborah, for joining us today.
Deborah Blake Dempsey: (26:45)
Thank you so much. I really appreciate this opportunity. You are fantastic. This is absolutely a worthwhile hour that you and I have spent with each other. I appreciate getting to know you and talking about leadership and why it’s important to me.
Odiva Vasell: (27:03)
Yes. And I’m so grateful for what I’ve learned today and I know the listeners are going to really appreciate this. So thank you so much.
[music]
Conclusion
In summary, discovering your leadership potential through self-discovery, fostering effective communication and team collaboration, and embracing the transformative power of coaching are key elements in the journey toward becoming an authentic and effective leader. Whether navigating remote work challenges or overcoming personal obstacles, these tools prove invaluable in unlocking your strengths and inspiring positive change. As we continue to prioritize self-awareness, open communication, and growth, we not only elevate ourselves but also contribute to environments where genuine leadership flourishes. Cheers to ongoing growth and the pursuit of inspired leadership!