SLP as an Organizational Asset
Kelsey Bannon, Assistant Director, Project Development and Implementation, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
What motivates me as a leader is being able to help people work as efficiently, as happily, and as fulfilled as possible in achieving the mission of the Institute, and, to that end, SLP has been a tremendous asset. When I joined IHME’s Strategy Team six years ago, it was as one of three or four project officers. We now have more than 15 project officers, and the Strategy Team has grown to over 60 people that pride ourselves on pulling all the moving pieces together, communicating effectively, drawing different audiences in, and making sure the work of the Institute continues through rapid and creative problem solving.
Advancing Our Organization
Because IHME is a bit like a start-up, many of our employees are brand-new professionals. They arrive with stellar academic and research credentials but have had relatively little experience to develop their leadership skills. Starting a few years ago, we had a few people go through SLP, and based on positive feedback, a few more attended, and so on, and, if anything, the feedback just kept getting better. We now require all project officers and all project officer IIs to attend, and we've started to expand that requirement to other functional teams at IHME as well.
Many of us in IHME tend to be very hands-on with coaching and other forms of guidance for our direct reports, and those of us on the Strategy Team also regularly mentor many colleagues who are not our direct reports. This approach has really worked for us. SLP has contributed to our success by giving those of us who have participated a shared experience; common vocabulary; tools and methodologies for coaching, mentoring, and giving feedback; and the opportunity to reflect upon our leadership, conflict, and communication styles.
When I earned my Master's in Public Administration through the Evans School here at the UW, there were a few courses that talked about how to be an effective leader, but at the time, I didn't have my current position to apply that knowledge to. I have found that being able to take what I learn at SLP and apply it the very next day in my own organization is very effective in helping to further develop my core leadership strengths. I appreciate SLP’s focus on the elements of being a leader and also how the material progresses from self to team and then the entire organizational system—that is very effective for me.
Building Strengths and Sharing Knowledge
I went through SLP with a few IHME colleagues, including one of my direct reports and one of her direct reports. Amongst even that small section of my team, going through SLP together was both fruitful and really fascinating. Prior to SLP, we were reflective of the fact that our communication styles and professional personalities were quite different, but SLP gave the three of us the terminology to discuss how to make our team operate better. Participating in the workshop actually helped us to unpack a few communication barriers we didn't even know we had. I think that all three of us found our interactions more fulfilling and derived greater satisfaction from the work we did together after completing SLP and applying some of the tools to our working relationship directly.
Another incredibly useful aspect of SLP was that it provided the space for my supervisee and me to discuss which parts of her job she found most gratifying, how she preferred to receive feedback and acknowledgement, and what sort of things she struggled with in her supervising interactions with her direct report. As a result, I discovered how I could better mentor, support, and guide her. Often, in the action packed day to day of our jobs, purposefully dedicating time to big picture reflection tends to slip, so I was very pleased that SLP gave us the space and tools to do exactly that.
Many of the concepts presented made sense to me and mirrored what I already practiced, but I've found that having the words to define those concepts has increased my ability to adapt and flex my leadership style. For example, I began to make more deliberate choices about whether I was going to support, coach, delegate, or direct. Being able to make a conscious decision with people that I supervise about whether, for example, I needed to be in a coaching role versus a delegating role—and even being able to split that up amongst responsibilities for one person—has been really beneficial.
A unique strength of SLP is bringing together people you would normally have very little interaction with because they're from completely different departments. I deeply appreciated the opportunity to talk almost anonymously with peers at the UW about struggles we were encountering on our teams or inside our organizations. Being able to hear others' experiences and perspectives was valuable completely aside from the leadership elements of the curriculum.
IHME is housed in Belltown, so between that and our business model, we often feel a bit removed from others at the UW, and it's easy to feel like the challenges that our Institute faces are unique. An interesting and unexpected aspect of SLP for me was realizing that a lot of the struggles we encounter here at the Institute aren't so different after all. Despite our varied backgrounds and departments, we're all part of the University of Washington system and similarly mission-driven. In some ways IHME is unique, but at the same time, in attending SLP I discovered how much all of us at the UW are quite united under a common goal.
