Empowerment and Leadership: Insights from Cathy Zerbe, a Top-Tier Leader in the CRO Pharmaceutical Industry

Join me, Susan Ireland, co-founder of Seasons Leadership, and Lauren Penning, Seasons Leadership communications and marketing leader, as we talk to Cathy Zerbe, a retired senior director in the CRO Pharmaceutical Industry, about how to inspire, motivate and empower teams.

Show Notes:
Cathy graciously takes us into her world, revealing her leadership style that puts empowering others at the fore. Cathy's approach of integrating technology, refining processes, and leading by example, serves as the backbone of her hands-on leadership style that has seen people around her thrive.

Now, imagine a workplace where respect and trust are the bedrock. Cathy believes, and we couldn't agree more, that these are crucial elements in empowering a team. In our chat, she delves into how she strikes a balance between work and personal life to avert employee burnout and shares her unique approach to dealing with workaholics.

As we segue into the final part of our discussion, Cathy shares her journey of mentorship. She talks about finding a mentor outside her own organization, standing firm on her values, and the importance of self-awareness and courage in the workplace. We conclude by reflecting on Stephen Covey's, "Seven Habits of Highly Successful People" and its relevance to Kathy's journey. Join us as we navigate these insightful conversations and discover a treasure trove of empowerment and leadership wisdom.

Bio: Cathy Zerbe worked in the Contract Research Organization industry for 30 years, primarily at Quintiles (now IQvia), Parexel and Syneos. With a master’s in computer engineering, she started in IT, was the worldwide head of Data Management for Quintiles for several years and then moved on to develop clinical trial planning and pricing tools. Her experience in line management includes managing groups of up to 250 people in 5 different countries, managing managers and engaging users. Her main goal has always been to empower people around her, and to help make other people's jobs easier.

 Resources:
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey
Glamping At Anglers Roost - Welcome to Angler’s Roost RV & Campground (anglersroost-montana.com)

Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)

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Transcript

Susan Ireland: 0:04

Welcome to summer with the seasons leadership podcast, where we celebrate the season of being in the flow, moving forward and taking actions full of energy. And today we were courting on the solstice. So really happy summer. Welcome to summer. And I am in, you can see, in a different spot. I am at the Anglers Roost RV and Campground in Hamilton, Montana, on the Bitterroot River. I am on a road trip, a summer road trip, with my brother and my sister-in-law and we are having an adventure. I wanted to do this podcast from the Calistoga Wagon where I am staying, which I have never done that before, Oregon Trail style. So, we are just having a great time celebrating the beginning of summer, and I hope you are too. But throughout this season we will continue to bring you actionable advice to improve your leadership and life. Today, thank you for joining me, Susan Ireland, and today my co-host is Lauren Penning, our communications and marketing leader for seasons leadership. We like to share a vision to make excellent leadership the worldwide standard. Learn more at seasonsleadership. com. You've experienced plenty of examples of mediocre or even bad leadership. Join us in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception. By listening and engaging in the discussions featured in this podcast, you help us bring leadership excellence to the world. Thank you for joining us.

Susan Ireland: 1:52

And today we have Cathy Zerbe, retired senior director in the CRO Pharmaceutical Industry, and CRO means Contract Research Organization. She was doing this for 30 years, primarily at And I think I got that Parexel wrong here. with, that's okay Paraxel and Synosis, yes, okay, great, thank you very much. I practiced it and still didn't get it right Under pressure With a master's in computer engineering. She started in IT, was the worldwide head of data management for Quintiles Quintills, quintiles, quintiles for several years, moved on to develop clinical trial planning and pricing tools. Her experience in line management includes managing groups of up to 250 people in five different countries, managing managers and engaging users. Her main goal has always been to empower people around her and help make other people's jobs easier. Welcome, kathy. Well, thank you very much. It's nice to be invited. Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry for messing up the pronunciation of your company.

Lauren Penning: 3:18

So thanks for joining us, Cathy. I'm going to jump in with our first question. When I was taking a look at your bio that Susan just read for all of us, it really struck me that your goal is to empower the people around you and help make others' jobs easier. And I just was curious what does that mean for you? Like taking it down kind of on a human level, helping make others' jobs easier? I think that's something that's a really cool goal, but it's also hard in practice to think about how you do that as a leader. So maybe we could start there.

Cathy Zerbe: 3:53

Sure. Well, i think I was in the unique position to be able to do that from sort of two different points of view. So from a lot of it was from a technological point of view What technology can I bring into the organization? or how can I implement the technology differently? How can I arrange things so that it makes people's jobs easier to do or easier to do correctly? So, especially when I was working with pricing, as you can well imagine, if you are working in a consulting company and you price out a study and you're off by five percent because you miss something, well there goes a whole bunch of your profit margin Because we never really that industry doesn't have a large profit margin.

Cathy Zerbe: 4:46

So people I always feel like there is, always I guess there is possibly the one person out there, but I've worked with probably thousands of people over the years And when people come into work in the day, in the morning, they want to do a good job. That's why they're here, they like their job, that's why they took the job, they want to do a good job. And so you can set up processes, procedures, technology, the order that you do things in. You can make it easy for people to do a good job or you can make it really difficult for them to do a good job. And maybe you didn't need to make it difficult for them to do a good job. But so often some of the people who are making those decisions are at a high level in the organization and they haven't talked to the people two or three levels down who are actually doing the work. And one of the vice presidents that I worked with once said how come you can do this and it's effective and nobody else can? And I said because I actually take a half hour and try to do the process that I just told people I'm going to have them do. And he said you're kidding, like no, we'll actually fill out the form or try to do whatever the procedure is, i'll actually try to do it.

Cathy Zerbe: 6:13

And because usually it's when you're actually trying to do it, when the rubber hits the road, that things fall apart, that things that were well-intentioned And I understand philosophically why we want to do it that way Or you absolutely want to meet the goals of the organization, but you've got to be careful when you put legs on things, that you haven't made things much more difficult than they needed to be. Sometimes it'll be a situation where someone is saying, oh, you know, while we're capturing this information, we could also track something else. Well, yeah, you could, and maybe you can do that without it, without the user even noticing, but maybe you just added four more steps for them to do while they're in there so that you could track this piece of information. That really isn't the goal of why we implemented this. So I think I tend to think of, at that higher level, you want to look at the details of the bits and pieces of the steps, the processes, the forms, you know stuff you've got to fill out, but you and think about how it meets that higher goal, and but you also need to, i guess, yeah, just be careful that we didn't make it harder than we needed to, and I, in fact, have been a recipient of my own. You know, i've created that problem myself.

Cathy Zerbe: 7:50

I created a program once and there were me and one other guy and the whole company could use the program. That was it. Now, it was a program that was very complex, trying to do a very complex thing. We were really the only two people who needed to use it, but then they were like, ooh, we can get these other people to use it. We're like whoa, no, you can't, because it assumes that you know all these things And so it can be easy to put something together, and that was always one of the things I had would try to be careful about.

Cathy Zerbe: 8:26

If I put something together that if only I can use it in two other people, that's not successful. It needs to be something that everybody can use, and you can use it on the day that your baby didn't sleep last night, so you've got a headache. You know they're all jumped up on caffeine And you know you want to be able to come in on you know your average day, or even maybe not your average day, and be able to use the tool or the processes. And they're supposed to be there to help you, to be an aide, to make sure things are done consistently, but to help you not forget things. But it's a tool supposed to help you, not get in your way and make things.

Lauren Penning: 9:11

It sounds like part of it is comes back to feedback and listening Like you're trying to figure out how these people are going to use it to make it easier, and you talk about wanting to empower the people around you. So I'm curious to pull on a little bit as a leader how you set up kind of a culture where people feel empowered to come forward with that feedback, because obviously there's a lot you can do with the feedback once you have it, make everything easier for people. But did you find in the world that you worked in and maybe give us a little bit more insight into what that's like, that people already felt empowered Or that was something you had to kind of help people feel like they had a safe place to come forward with things.

Cathy Zerbe: 9:58

I guess I've worked in both situations. Mostly I've worked in places where I think people did feel empowered, but I have also been brought into a couple of situations where the last manager left for some, you know perhaps not the best reason And they've brought me into, you know, tidy things up and set things right again And those folks don't feel empowered at all And they're scared and they don't know what's going on And the whole department going to get thrown out or what's going on. So I really think that the key empowerment is respect. You've got to respect and trust the people who work for you. Sometimes you're in an organization that there are changes at the top and you're getting instructions from the top that you're supposed to do something. It doesn't make a lot of sense and people will question me well, why are we doing it? Because we've been told that that's what we're supposed to do. Well, i don't know. And I said I have to trust the people above me that if I had the same information they had yes, of course they've got information we don't have. They should have information we don't have. And I have to trust them that if I had the same information that they had, I would make the same decision. So if I want people to trust me and trust up, I also have to trust them those both ways and in fact, people generally don't trust you until you've already demonstrated trust in them. So, again, i probably at a higher level of detail than most people, but if I go into a new situation, a place where people do not feel empowered, i will go around and talk with people individually.

Cathy Zerbe: 11:47

I want to find out what they know about their job. What do you do all day? What's the easiest part of your job? What are the things that you do that are too difficult that every time you're doing it you're like there has got to be an easier way. There has got to be an easier way, and you feel and on top of that, you do that once an hour. So I think a lot of it is.

Cathy Zerbe: 12:12

You interviewed someone a couple of weeks ago and he said it's about being recognized that I see you And I think a lot of respect is. I am going to show that I respect that person And I know they know how to do their job Way better than I know how to do their job. I haven't been doing their job or maybe, if I have, it's been years since I did their job and it's all different now. Technology has changed, policies have changed procedures have changed lots of stuff. It's always changing.

Cathy Zerbe: 12:45

But I want to demonstrate that I trust them and I want to understand what their hurdles are, because then, if I can understand what their hurdles are and put that puzzle together, a lot of times people think that they're the only person that has that hurdle, and sometimes they are the only person that has that hurdle, but there are three other people that have similar hurdles And one of the I guess my cousin says my superpower is the ability to put together those. Talk to 10 different people who seemingly do completely different things and see what's in common, and so. But I guess I think that's part of how you empower people. You do, you give them things to do that demonstrate trust in their ability and in their skills. People who report to me directly, certainly, and even you know I encourage them for people who are reporting to them.

Cathy Zerbe: 13:54

But what do you really want to be doing in life? Do you, you know, are you in the right job? A lot of my mentoring probably half the people I have mentored over the years ended up doing something different Maybe not wildly different, maybe a different department in the same. You know, different section in the same department, a different focus, but sometimes wildly different. I had one admin assistant who became a travel agent, so but again I think that's helping people to do their best, to be their best, like the gal you spoke with last week who was talking about you know working so hard and working. You know burning out. So sometimes helping people to be their best.

Susan Ireland: 14:41

Yes, oh, i just wanted to say that was Patricia's in a curse, so people can make that connection. Yeah.

Cathy Zerbe: 14:49

Yes, and one of the reasons why people get burned out is because it's not just about people doing their best work, but people be doing their best. And I also, you know, reached a point of burnout, i think. when I finally quit working, i, you know, kind of slept for two months. I was so exhausted. But what when people are burned out, when they're overextended, when work continues to try to break in on people's personal lives? like you ought to be working 60 hours a week. No, you shouldn't.

Cathy Zerbe: 15:29

I don't want you to work 60 hours a week. I want you to have your own life and your own interests And I want work to be a big part of that and something that you enjoy doing and something that you're proud of and that you know that you're being successful in. but you're going to be most successful at that if you have a balance. And you know there is always a point in everybody's job when you've got to put in those really long weeks. but it shouldn't be week after week after week after week after week after week. And there's some people who are workaholics and that's what they like to do. But I generally and I have to respect that when I have had workaholics who report to me, but I really try to encourage people not to make that choice. I don't, i guess. personally I don't think that's, in general, the healthiest Right.

Susan Ireland: 16:20

Kathy, i'm curious because what you're describing, you know, is somebody that I would like to work for, right, somebody who respects me and wants me to do my best and also is doing her best to make my job easier. I mean, couldn't be better boss. But I know, you know, with the positions you've had and the huge responsibilities that you've had, there's pressures on you too right that maybe you might not be treated the way you are treating your employees, so that how do you balance that and not have it flow down? you know what they like, the stress that you are getting from your higher ups, and then you know how do you, how do you, how do you block it?

Cathy Zerbe: 17:17

Well, I have a very honest answer. I'm not sure it's what you want to hear.

Susan Ireland: 17:22

We want to hear it honest.

Cathy Zerbe: 17:25

I have a strong personal faith and I don't handle those issues God does. But I think it also, from a practical point of view, is very, very helpful to have somebody to be looking at at the level above you your manager, or, if it's not your manager, someone else at his or her level who is in your court And sometimes it has not been my direct manager, someone sometimes it has been someone else at their level who I could go and talk to have lunch with. Whatever Politics are not my strongest suit, they never have been, and it's part of why I. My sweet spot is being a director, senior director. It is not being a vice president. I have been an acting vice president before. I do not like it. I am not good at it. I can do it, but I don't want to. But if you hire me to be a manager, i'm going to make director to level comments all day long, because that is just the level at which I think I can't help it.

Cathy Zerbe: 18:36

But it does help to have someone and the reason why I say someone at a level above you, even if they're in a different department or they see things from a different level than you do So venting to someone who's at your own level ends up sometimes becoming kind of gossipy and not really helpful. It can be good and can be helpful depends on who the person is. But talking to someone who's seeing the organization from a level above you, i think can be helpful when it comes to garnering support, and that is a huge part of leadership. Excellence, i think, is influence that you have over other people And recognizing that actually every single person in the company is a leader, because every person has influence over other people And we tend to think of leaders as people who have influence over a lot of other people, but they're also groundswell organizations or issues that have happened and that is starting with the leaders at the bottom, and they're very important.

Susan Ireland: 20:02

Right. Well, that's super insightful to me, because engaging with other people around you, people who have the different view or perspectives from the organization, can really help us see wider than we can. right, and you said you're not good at politics, but maybe it's a way that we think about this. I mean, i agree, if I call it networking or whatever, it's actually using the resources that you have most effectively and it's people, it's connecting with people and relationships. It is yeah.

Cathy Zerbe: 20:50

And the life is all about relationships, the bottom line it is. And another, i guess, just actionable thing and I have done this before and it's a lot of people would say it's not the smartest thing to do, but I do it anyway. If I feel like I have someone in particular that I keep butting heads with, if I have an opportunity, i'm likely to try to spend some time with that person, just one-on-one, and find out why are you butting heads? Am I doing something you don't like? Am I a threat to you somehow? What's the problem? And sometimes you end up finding out that it's about something else entirely different. It wasn't about you at all. Or you do find out that you're both trying to do the same thing And I spent enough time in the DC area, I guess, to know you get all your chips together and then you call them in as you need them, and I generally have a lot more people who owe me than I owe, and I sometimes have gotten in trouble because I do too many things for other people.

Cathy Zerbe: 22:02

I'm in trouble, but we're all working for the same company And so, really, if we're all working for the same company, we want to help each other out where we can And I think that I like a company that has that approach And I'm very blessed with the companies I've worked for. The companies I've worked for have had that approach.

Susan Ireland: 22:27

Great.

Lauren Penning: 22:28

Yeah, i mean it sounds like you've got just a lot of self-awareness. I'm just was listening to how you were talking about you know what level you want to stay at That's like your lane And then just what kind of companies you like to work for. We talk a lot about values at Seasons, leadership and how, when you're hiding in, that sweet spot in your leadership was when your values are kind of matched up with what you're doing and the situations you're in, and so I think we've already gotten to it a little bit. But I wanted to kind of poke at what you would consider to be sort of your core values, and maybe what have you done when you found yourself in a situation where they were not being respected or were not the center and kind of what you did about that.

Cathy Zerbe: 23:13

So I guess probably integrity is about my core value And that, to me, is about, you know, doing the right thing and treating people the right way. And I have quit jobs over that, you know, not after trying to address the situation first, but and then that was actually my second job I was, you know, just a worker bee and and now that I look back on that I see many different ways that could handle the situation differently. But at the time I didn't know so, But I was all bent out of shape.

Cathy Zerbe: 23:52

That they were doing the wrong thing. I wasn't going to be part of it. So I think I guess that that sort of answers your question. It also plays out I mean, you know, back in the days when you had an office, i'd have a sign underneath my nameplate. You know that had a quote. You know people believe what you do Right Now. I don't remember who said that quote, but and you know, so I try to I think it's important.

Cathy Zerbe: 24:32

You've got to walk the walk yourself. You've got to. At least you've got to try to walk the walk. None of us are going to make mistakes. We're going to hurt people's feelings. We're going to make the wrong decision We're going to.

Cathy Zerbe: 24:42

You know, the only thing that anybody can ever do is make the best decision they have with the information they have at the time, which is never all the information. But I do think that I guess one of the other actionable points that I have is there's something going on in your group that you don't like. You're doing something to contribute to that. You may not recognize what it is, you might not realize what it is, but you need to go home and think about that later. And sometimes it's your boss that they're escalating and it's hard to.

Cathy Zerbe: 25:23

That's a hard, that's really hard to be supportive of your boss and the organization, even though you don't agree with everything they do. But that's usually when I say things like well, you know, they're aware of information that we don't have and we wouldn't even want to know, so we've got to let them do their job and we just you know it's important for us to do our job and the whole, the whole organization, will work together if we can do that. So we're we're missing out on something that that person is aware of. We've just we've got. We want them to trust us, we've got to trust them.

Susan Ireland: 26:03

It also feels like Kathy, you've got there's a like Lauren said, it's huge self-awareness, but also a level of courage to be able to speak out, take action, align with your values, and that's not I mean, that's easy said, you know, but actually when you're at the moment or the event, it's sometimes really hard. So, and you've done it all this all these years and been successful.

Cathy Zerbe: 26:39

I well, thank you. I guess I do demonstrate some courage sometimes. I guess the other thing that was Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly successful people came out when I had just been promoted to being a director And he actually came to speak in the Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, north Carolina, and I got to go see him at like two day conference And I I really I know it's an old school book, but when you talk about values and it's it is. I certainly practiced that a lot And I found a lot of the tips in that book to be very, very helpful.

Susan Ireland: 27:27

Yeah, It's worth a review. I have that book and I've read that book. Oh, it's been a while since I've. I mean, I'm going to take it out of the bookshelf and take a look at it again.

Cathy Zerbe: 27:40

Yeah.

Lauren Penning: 27:41

Yeah, i think that's really cool. I was also just kind of circling back to something we talked about a little bit earlier. You were saying to find someone in your court And I, just as you were talking about how you you know you stand up for what you believe and integrity and how maybe, looking back on, you know that situation you were in earlier in your career where you were like this is against what I'm, what I believe in, i'm out. Maybe you could have handled things differently.

Lauren Penning: 28:12

I'm wondering where you know, along the line, you found that great nugget of like I got to find someone outside of the level I'm in. That can give me this, this other perspective, cause I wonder if maybe that's part of you know, maybe one of the strategies you would have employed later in your career if you were finding something to be against what you were, what you were feeling. And I've certainly been in those situations and work where you know when you're talking to your peer it feels really gossipy. You know about the situation you're in, but I think for some people it can be really hard to find that person who's a level above. So I don't know if you've got any tips on how you went about that, or how you found that person to be in your court but not in your level.

Cathy Zerbe: 29:06

Well, i think the I don't even, i guess you start looking for it. I mean, i had a person who actually was a peer of mine at the time who encouraged me to find a mentor, and so I went looking for a mentor, and a mentor doesn't even have to be in your own department, they don't have to be in your own company, but you have to go sort of looking for them, and I have. I was, you know. I found one and I've also served as a mentor for other people.

Susan Ireland: 29:49

Yeah, that makes sense. I know, debbie, and I encourage everybody to get a mentor, and maybe more than one. Yes, right, because there can't be everything to everyone, so best we can get a team on your team. You know you have a team Susan, team happy. Your team Lauren.

Cathy Zerbe: 30:12

And the people who are, you know, and of course the person who you want to have be your mentor is a busy person and they don't have time to do it. And so sometimes what I would do first is just ask if they would have time to have coffee with me or lunch and I don't know what people do in this WebEx world. If you have virtual coffee, but sometimes, sometimes that that and and then to say, well, this is really helpful to me, i have you know to say I have, i have something I'd like to discuss with you. Could we get together for a cup of coffee? I just need 15 minutes of your time, and then you've got to honestly be respectful and only take 15 minutes of their time. But but then you can say this was really helpful to me. Can we do this once a month?

Cathy Zerbe: 31:04

And sometimes, if you ask someone to be your mentor, they'll say, oh no, no, i don't have time to do that, i don't want to do that. And some companies have very this is again an example. Some companies have very formalized mentor programs where you have to go through training to become a mentor and then you've got to write up a report every month on what you did with your mentee And you know again, was a good idea And I'm not going to get my legs on it. It is now too hard to do. Nobody wants to do it anymore. So a lot of people who have been my mentors at the time probably wouldn't have said Oh yeah, i'm Kathy Serby's mentor, that's, you know, that's my role. But if I were to say to them, you were always one of my mentors, they go Oh yeah, i suppose I was. Yeah.

Susan Ireland: 31:50

Yeah, that's wonderful. It's great advice. I think we might be wrapping up to the end. Is there anything, kathy, that you would like to share with us, something that we have not asked you?

Cathy Zerbe: 32:11

Nope, I had written some points down. We've covered all of them, Oh good.

Lauren Penning: 32:16

Well, thank you, yes, thanks so much for joining us, Kathy, yeah, and thank you, listeners, for joining us for the seasons leadership podcast. We hope you take these words of excellence with you to help strengthen the organizations and communities in which you live and work And join us in making excellent leadership the worldwide standard by subscribing to our community on Patreon. Remember, no matter what level or role, you can become more than you are today. Visit patroncom. Slash seasons leadership to become a member and begin working toward your full leadership potential. We'd love to connect with you as we build our community of excellent leaders. Until next time, we hope you enjoy the positivity of this season of summer where you are in the flow, moving forward and taking actions full of energy. Thanks so much.

Susan Ireland: 33:08

Thank you, and I just want to say one last shout Angler's Roost RV and campground. They have been so helpful sharing their store with me. I've got my fishing vest on and and and this is just a wonderful thing and really do recommend them. If you're in the Bitterr oot Valley, stop by here, okay.