Shy doctors can lead: imposter syndrome and the path to physician leadership [PODCAST]

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes

She never saw herself as a leader, and she was quiet and shy, yet she became a chief medical officer. Vidhya Prakash is an internal medicine physician and chief medical officer at SIU Medicine. This episode is based on her article “What becoming a chief medical officer taught a shy doctor,” published on KevinMD. You will hear how mentors tapping her on the shoulder led her into leadership, and why she stopped equating leaders with loud, commanding personalities. She describes the imposter syndrome and self-doubt that tell many budding women physician leaders they are not worthy unless they check every box. She explains why a physician’s problem-solving training is a strong base, and where more development is needed: engaging a team, navigating conflict, and the business side. She shares how she learned budgets by sitting with finance leaders, and why mentors and sponsors make leadership less lonely. Press play to hear why she says it is never too early or too late to pursue leadership, and how to invest in your own.

If this episode helped, follow The Podcast by KevinMD on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and leave a rating.

Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With more than 100 million impressions a year and nearly 750,000 followers, subscribers and email recipients across my channels, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let’s work together to tell your story.

PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome Vidhya Prakash. She’s a chief medical officer and internal medicine physician, and also the author of the books The Leadership Learning Curve and Learning to Listen. Today’s KevinMD article is “What becoming a chief medical officer taught a shy doctor.” Vidhya, welcome to the show.

Vidhya Prakash: Thank you, Kevin. I’m honored to be here.

Kevin Pho: All right. We’ll start by briefly sharing your story, and then we’ll jump into why you decided to write this article on KevinMD.

Vidhya Prakash: Great. Well, I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. My heritage is Indian; my family came here in the late 1970s. I went to medical school at the University of Cincinnati and then went down the military path. I was in the United States Air Force, and I did my internal medicine residency training and infectious diseases fellowship training in San Antonio. I served at a military hospital in Dayton, Ohio, for several years, and then went from the military to the civilian path. That’s what brought me to SIU Medicine in 2014, where initially I was an infectious diseases physician. I did a lot of teaching and a little bit of research, and I never had leadership on my radar.

My leadership journey is really one of a mentor or a supervisor tapping me on the shoulder and asking me to serve in different leadership positions. That’s what ultimately brought me to my current role as chief medical officer of our SIU Medicine clinical practice and associate dean of clinical affairs and population health.

Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us more about that story. You wrote that you never sought out leadership. It found you, literally. It tapped you on the shoulder. So tell us about what happened after that tap.

Vidhya Prakash: Yes. It was multiple taps, and leadership is something that I really feel like I stumbled into. As I shared, I never saw myself as a leader. That was never on my list of things that I wanted to do. Any time a mentor or a supervisor would tap me on the shoulder and ask me to serve in a leadership capacity, I would always question it, and I always wondered, “Why me? How am I a leader?”

As I reflected, which I mention in my book, The Leadership Learning Curve, I thought back on my journey. I realized that I never had any formal leadership training. It wasn’t really integrated into the medical school curriculum or residency or fellowship. It’s just something that I had to learn on my own, finding pieces and nuggets in the literature and from people that I admired, leaders that I admired.

But also, I equated leadership with certain agentic traits. All of the people who were selected for leadership didn’t look like me or act like me. I didn’t see very many women in leadership. I didn’t see very many Indian women in leadership. And further, most of the leaders were not quiet and shy like me. They were able to speak loudly, command a room, and make their presence known.

Now, when I really think about the leaders that I try to emulate and that I admire, I move away from traits, and I really look at action. What is it that they do that makes them effective leaders? Are they listening? Do they care? Are they able to pivot quickly, learn from their mistakes, and accept responsibility? And above all, are they mobilizing a team, mobilizing people on behalf of a collective mission? That’s where I really pivoted in my leadership journey and had that aha moment, and I feel compelled to share my story with other physician leaders and budding physician leaders. Whether you’re a medical student, a resident, a fellow like I was, or junior faculty, we really need physicians in leadership.

Kevin Pho: So tell us about the early stages of your physician leadership journey. You wrote in your piece that you had some self-doubt, a little bit of imposter syndrome. What was it like to navigate those negative feelings as you were just starting out as a physician leader?

Vidhya Prakash: I think for me personally, and it’s a known fact that a lot of budding women physician leaders tend to do this, if you don’t check every single box on the list of requirements, you don’t feel like you’re worthy of a leadership role. So that’s where I immediately went. I went to my list of deficiencies, why I wouldn’t excel in that role and why I wasn’t worthy of it, instead of moving toward the qualities that I have that I could bring to the role to be very effective.

I talk about how it was a broken record of self-doubt. Every single time, it was the same refrain: “Not you, not qualified, anybody else, you’re not a leader.” It took me a long time to break that cycle, and it was a vicious cycle. I had to turn the record off and throw it away to move into these leadership roles with confidence, knowing that I had a lot to bring to the role and that I had a very unique perspective as a physician leader.

Kevin Pho: Now, what was it like being in a room with other leaders from the health care system who, like you said, did not look like you and may not have acted like you? What was it like for those first few months to years?

Vidhya Prakash: It was daunting. They say leadership is lonely, and I have realized that that is resoundingly true. It is very lonely, and you have to pave your own path, and you have a responsibility to bring others there with you. This falls into the whole mentorship and sponsorship paradigm, right? Mentors share wisdom. Sponsors share power. So as I stepped into leadership roles, I really felt a responsibility to pull others with me, give them a seat at the table, and give them a voice in leadership.

I have to mention the American Medical Women’s Association. It’s a national organization for women physicians, and it has dedicated programming for leadership development: EVOLVE for residents and ELEVATE for physicians. I feel they’re doing their part, which I think all national organizations in health care need to be doing, and that is creating dedicated space for leadership training.

Kevin Pho: When I talk to other physician leaders, they say physicians have some inherent leadership qualities just by virtue of their training, because as residents, they have to lead teams. They have to teach medical students, right? So by virtue of their training, are all physicians leaders?

Vidhya Prakash: I think so. We’re problem solvers. Think about a chief complaint, right? Look at the way that a physician solves a problem. You have a chief complaint. You elicit the appropriate history. You get the relevant labs and radiographic studies. You get more information, everything is synthesized into an assessment and plan, and then you go. We’re doing much of the same problem-solving in leadership.

I think where the shift is, and where we need more development, is in how to effectively engage a team, how to navigate conflict and different types of personalities, how to develop strategic plans, and how to understand the business side. That’s where physicians have an opportunity to add to that already deep foundation of leadership, so that we’re effective when we step into leadership roles in health care specifically. And I think where there’s the most power is when physician and nonphysician leadership come together and lead health care practices, whether it’s in a hospital, an HOPD, or an ambulatory center, and so on and so forth. We need both voices and both perspectives at the table to do things right.

Kevin Pho: How did you learn the language of business? Like you said, talking to nonclinicians, you need to communicate in a different vocabulary than what we’re used to. Did you get an MBA? Did you have specific business training? Tell us how you learned to speak the language of business.

Vidhya Prakash: Sure. I think in the first couple of years, much of my training was experiential. What I did was ask a lot of questions. One of many examples is the budget. That was really daunting for me because it just wasn’t the language that I spoke. So I sat with the CFO, and I sat with the head of accounting and asked them questions line by line about the budget, big-picture questions and then more granular questions about the details. Then I went to departmental meetings and sat with those business and finance leaders, who frankly brought a different perspective to those discussions and a very unique lens. So a lot of my training was experiential.

On top of that, I invested in myself. I attended leadership development programs through the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Association of American Medical Colleges. The list goes on and on and on. But that investment was vital to my understanding of the business side of medicine.

Kevin Pho: You mentioned earlier that more physicians need to be in leadership positions. Can you give us an example or two of some of the differences that you’ve made as a physician leader?

Vidhya Prakash: Sure. When you look at the administrative side of medicine, what are you dealing with? Numbers, right? And numbers by themselves are just numbers. They’re not really meaningful data without context. For a clinical practice, what I’m able to bring is the context behind those numbers, because as a physician, I have maintained my clinical practice. I’m in the thick of it. I have clinic one half day a week; I held onto that. And I help on the inpatient infectious diseases service at both of our large teaching hospitals in town. I understand the physician perspective. I know what the nuances are, I know what the struggles are, and I’m able to put those numbers and that data in context, which is really, really important as you’re interpreting the data and making decisions for the clinical practice.

Kevin Pho: For those physicians who are just coming out and are listening to you and are inspired by you, let me ask this another way. If you were to give your younger self advice when you were just starting out, what would you tell yourself? What kind of advice would you give, knowing what you know now?

Vidhya Prakash: That leaders are not born. You are not born a leader. It’s not black and white, “Yes, you are a leader,” or “No, you’re not a leader.” Every single person has leadership potential, and you just need to go for it. You don’t need to check every box. You need to try, go for the leadership positions, learn, and continue to rise through the ranks, because frankly, your patients need you. They need you as a physician, but they also need you at the table to make very relevant decisions that ultimately impact their care.

Kevin Pho: And what about dealing with some of those feelings of self-doubt that you yourself felt? How would you advise those younger physicians to deal with those feelings?

Vidhya Prakash: Develop your network. Leadership feels lonely, but it doesn’t have to be, and this is where mentorship comes in, whether it’s peer mentors, senior mentors, or sponsors. Talking it out with people who are in leadership positions, who have been through it, and who are part of that journey is very helpful. It helps you recognize that you’re not alone, navigate those feelings and move past them, and actually become empowered to continue to move forward.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Vidhya Prakash. She’s a chief medical officer and an internal medicine physician. Today’s KevinMD article is “What becoming a chief medical officer taught a shy doctor.” Vidhya, we’ll end, as always, with your take-home messages to the KevinMD audience.

Vidhya Prakash: Thank you, Kevin. Again, I’m so honored to be here and to talk to you about something that’s near and dear to my heart, which is physician leadership. My take-home message is that if you are a physician in training, a junior physician, or an established physician, it is never too early and never too late to pursue leadership. In addition to that, invest in yourself. Invest in your leadership journey. Pursue leadership training opportunities. Kevin, you talked about MBA programs; I think that’s very reasonable. And for those who are in academics, on the leadership side, in medical education in particular, start thinking about integrating leadership into your curriculum.

Kevin Pho: Vidhya, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for coming on the show.

Vidhya Prakash: Thank you, Kevin.

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes