Do No Harm

What happens when leaders hold too tightly to control?

In this episode of Meditations on Leadership, Don reflects on a lesson from his early years building an organization and how learning to trust others transformed the culture around him. He is then joined by his cousin, Dr. Aaron Carpenter, President of North Florida for Nemours Children’s Health, for a conversation about accountability, trust, and creating environments where people can grow into their potential.

A simple but powerful reminder: leadership does no harm when it guides growth rather than demands it.

To learn more about Don's work, upcoming offerings, and leadership resources, visit carpentercompanyconsulting.com

 If something in today’s episode spoke to you, I hope you’ll subscribe and continue the journey with me — because leadership begins within. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to Meditations on Leadership. I'm Don Carpenter. So much of leadership is shaped long before anyone else can see it. It is shaped in the quiet ways we respond to pressure, in the stories we carry about power, about trust and responsibility, and the habits we build when no one is applauding. And in the inner choices that determine whether we lead from fear, ego, love, service, or conviction. This podcast is a place to slow down and pay attention to the deeper terrain. Each week begins with a meditation, followed by a short reflection and then a conversation. Not because leadership can be reduced to any type of formula, but because the most meaningful growth often begins when we make space to notice what is happening beneath the surface. And today's conversation is a special one for me. I get to sit with someone who is not only a remarkable leader, but also his family, someone I've known since we were boys, and someone whose presence has always carried a quiet steadiness, curiosity and care. It's a real gift to share this conversation with my cousin, Dr. Aaron Carpenter. Aaron serves as the president of North Florida, Namore's Children's Health, based in Jacksonville, where he leads Namore's pediatric health system. Namore's Children's Health is one of the largest pediatric health systems in the United States. And the North Florida region includes Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando, along with a growing network of pediatric specialty clinics and care sites serving families across the region. Aaron joined Nemours in 2016 and most recently served as senior vice president and chief nursing and patient operations officer for the Delaware Valley. Following a national search, he was appointed to the president of North Florida in February 2025. Recognized for his exceptional leadership and nearly a decade of service at Namors. His clinical career spans more than two decades. Aaron has worked as a registered nurse in an adult cardiac critical care and pediatric emergency care, and later as a pediatric nurse and practitioner in both primary care and emergency medicine. He is board certified in pediatrics and is widely respected for his work in developing the next generation of advanced practice providers. At Namores, he founded the Pediatric Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Fellowship, the first program of its kind in a freestanding children's hospital. Aaron holds a bachelor's degree from Sacred Heart University, a master's degree from Yale University, a Master of Divinity from Trinity School for Ministry, and a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Robert Morris University. And as I shared, he is also family. He's my second cousin, my father's first cousin's son, and we're nearly the same age. We grew up spending time together as boys at our family shared land on Kendallwood Lake in Connecticut, a place where many branches of the family gathered over the years. Some of my favorite memories in life are with Aaron when we've planned our annual cousin's weekend, a gathering where the whole extended family would come together for a theme-filled weekend of skits, music, storytelling, and a whole lot of laughter. Aaron was always the calm voice in the planning process, always thoughtful, reflective, curious, and quietly wise. Even back then, I remember thinking, man, I wish we'd lived closer. We'd probably have grown up as very, very close friends. It's a real gift to welcome to the podcast today. So, Aaron, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

John, so good to be with you. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

All right, my man. Well, before we jump in, let's uh let's hit the meditation that you picked. It's meditation number four. It's titled Do No Harm. So the quote comes from uh John Hyder from the Dow of Leadership. I I actually quoted him in my last podcast. And uh the quote is this remember that as a leader, you are facilitating another person's process. It is not your process. Do not intrude, do not control, don't force your own needs and your own insights into the foreground. If you do not trust a person's process, that person will not trust you. Leadership is not asking others to follow you. Leadership is learning how to truly see the people who, for reasons you may never fully understand, have entered your orbit, your classroom, your company, your staff meeting, your circle of care, and to trust that they too are on a path worth honoring. Over the years, I've come to believe this is one of the most sacred responsibilities of leadership. Recognizing that each person's growth belongs to them, not to me. Each person we lead carries a story we cannot fully see and walks through a process we cannot rush. Yet harm in leadership rarely looks dramatic. More often it shows up quietly. It appears when a leader confuses accountability with control, when results are demanded without creating space for growth, when guidance turns into pressure rather than a steady belief that with the right support, people will find their way forward. Guidance that turns into pressure can come from urgency, from ego, from the quiet belief that we know what someone else's journey should look like. I've been in rooms where leaders who never pause long enough to ask who I was, where I came from, or what I was carrying. They led with their ideas, their urgency, their image of what I should be, without ever meeting me where I actually was. And when I reflect on these moments, I don't remember being challenged or inspired. I just remember feeling completely unseen. That experience shaped more than I realized at the time. It taught me that leadership begins not with direction, but with attention. So I try imperfectly but consistently to bring a different presence into my leadership. One that listens before speaking, one that asks questions instead of assumes, one that resists the impulse to fix or rush someone along and instead creates the conditions where their own process can unfold. And something else happens when we lead this way. When people feel that their process is trusted, they begin to trust the space we are creating for them. This is a powerful principle taught to first responders. Do no harm. When arriving on a scene, they are trained not to rush in. First, they assess. They ask the question Is the scene safe? That question has stayed with me because in many ways the people we lead are doing something similar. When someone enters a new workplace or a team or a relationship with a leader, they rarely rush in ready to execute. First, they assess Is this a space that's safe for someone to be fully themselves? Not just physically, but emotionally, relationally. They are quietly asking other questions like, is my voice welcome here? Will I be trusted with real responsibility? Do I have the freedom to move things forward? Only when those answers begin to emerge do people step fully into the work they are capable of doing. And leadership, doing no harm means protecting the space where another person's growth can unfold. It means trusting their process enough not to replace it with your own. Because when people sense they are trusted, something shifts. They start assessing the environment and begin to move within it. The opposite of harm is not greater control, it is stewardship. The quiet work of creating an environment where another person can step forward with their own judgment, their own voice, and their own agency. Leadership at its best trusts the integrity of another person's process. And the trust we extend is often the trust we receive. So I'm gonna offer real time feedback. And when I look back at the early years of beginning an organization, specifically trekkers, I can see something now that I couldn't see then. I cared deeply about the mission. I believed that we were what we were building, and because of that, I wanted to keep it close, very close. And without realizing that, I began to hold the keys to too many things decisions, direction, and the culture itself. At the time, it felt responsible, protective, even. I thought I was doing no harm, but what I slowly began to notice was that something in the organization wasn't expanding the way I had hoped. The work was growing, but the leadership around it wasn't growing at the same pace. And eventually I had to face a difficult truth. When you hold something too tightly, it can't grow. And sometimes, without intending to, that kind of control can do harm. People don't step forward if they sense the leader is still holding the center of gravity. What I eventually realized is that doing no harm in leadership isn't just about avoiding obvious mistakes, it's about creating space. The key to building an organization whose culture truly trusts its foundations was to begin trusting the people around me, not just with tasks, but with ownership, with judgment, with the freedom to shape the future of the work. Honestly, I'm almost embarrassed by how long it took me to fully see this. But I'm deeply grateful that I did because the moment I began loosening my grip, something remarkable happened. People stepped forward, leadership began to multiply, and the culture of the organization became stronger than anything I could have built alone. So, Aaron, having heard that, I'm just curious kind of what stayed with you. What uh percolated? What are you thinking?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Don so much. First of all, thank you for having me on this amazing podcast. And uh thank you to all those who I've uh learned from um and continue to learn from as I drive into my uh my clinic here in downtown Jacksonville. I think you know there's something that really stood out to me about what you were saying, and it actually reminded me of a conversation that I had last week. So we um we gathered together as the sort of senior leaders of our health system for uh a conversation together, and we had the opportunity to share sort of our life journey in leadership. And one of my colleagues uh asked me the question, Aaron, tell us what what is what are the similarities between leading 12-year-old boys like you did for many years and leading in the in the organization that you were in now. And what I said to him, and it really resonated with what you just said around facilitating another person's process, is that you know, when you work with kids and lead kids, you can watch this transition from where they are very sort of centered, they're they're they're egocentric, right? They're focused on their own selves. And if you do kind of long-term leadership with kids or anybody, there's a process that unfolds where the focus comes out of themselves and then onto another person. And I think that that that really struck me as you were talking because leadership in its best form has to be about the other. It's about the person that you're bringing along or the person that you're leading. And um, the other thing that really I resonated with that you said, Don, was about trust. And um, you know, so many of your guests have spoken about relationship as the foundation for leadership, which I a hundred percent endorse. And I think what I would what I would what I was thinking about when you were talking was with this whole kind of concept of our own growth and leadership and our own development, there comes this time where we actually have to trust ourselves and our own ability in our leadership and our place to open our hands and give things off to other people. And so, you know, you you can't really kind of assume the the place of um putting the priority on the other until you kind of get to the place of trust in your own leadership and uh you know uh and personhood. And so I think that I'm not sure we ever fully arrive at that, but it's it's a process that that we go through, and I've gone through and I'm still going through, you know, at 54 years old, um, learning every day. And I think that that those two elements really stuck out to me about what you just read.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Well, so at the heart, I think, of what you just said um is is this piece around service leadership, what it means to truly serve in the capacity of leading others. It starts with the idea of serving somebody else rather than ourselves and ourselves towards power or more control or more titles or whatever it might be. And just to level set this conversation a little bit, I'd love to just have you share how many people are you responsible for at the at the height uh of your job?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah, so there in the North Florida region and Amores, there's about anywhere from 1,100 to 1,500 people. And um, we're a teaching institution, so that number fluctuates with the number of residents and fellows, and medical students, and nursing students that come in. Um, so it's kind of constantly on the move. But we're we're about 1,100 to 1200 steady people in North Florida.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

So I want to bring us back to something before we get to talking about what it what it's been like to lead a company as big as Namor's. But if you could go back to why you got into the profession of helping others, can you say more about like what drove you there?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Uh yeah, I'll try to do this quick. Um, so uh I I uh grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut. And um when I was a junior in high school, you know, not the top of my class, we'll just put it, we'll just put it in that uh we'll just put it that way. The local uh volunteer EMS crew came to the host to the high school and they were opening the first EMT class for high school students because they needed help. And I thought, well, that seems pretty cool, so let me go check that out. And um, so I enrolled in the EMT class and absolutely fell in love with it. And so um I continued that through my uh high school years and ended up entering a nursing program uh because I had was delivering all these patients to the local hospitals in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and saw nursing um in a perspective that I had never imagined what a nurse could do. And so I that was my kind of first, this seems like a really great thing. And so I uh entered nursing school um while at the same time I was invited to to start leading in a junior high ministry in the town, and that was that so that all kind of happened at age 18, and my life trajectory to today has been um what I call kind of an interwoven fabric of uh ministry and pediatrics for those two and a half to almost three decades now.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah, well, I spent the first five minutes in your bio basically uh spouting off the amount of degrees you have, which um are totally interwoven between those two things that you just mentioned. In terms of that early formation, you know, spending decades caring for patients as a nurse and pediatric nurse practitioner before moving into the executive leadership. How did those early bedside experiences shape the kind of leader you try to be today?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

So, you know, the those experiences that they were foundational to how I lead today. And I think, you know, I I actually still maintain a clinical practice, and there there are connection points with patients and families. And I, as you read, I started my career in adult uh practice and then transitioned to pediatrics, you know, at a few years after. There is uh this opportunity, Don, that you have, and you know, the the majority of my clinical practice was in pediatric emergency medicine. And what I share with people around that is you know, pediatrics is is a really fantastic profession, but when things are bad in pediatrics, they're particularly bad because it's it's a child that is involved. And so I think from really, really early on in those in my working on the ambulance and being an EMT and then becoming a nurse and then a nurse practitioner, those human interactions with patients and families have really molded my practice as a leader because you are exposed in so many different types of people and types of experiences. And so I think that that that really has formed how I how I interact with people. And it's always, even in the executive and leadership roles that I've had, that that focus has always been on, you know, how can I kind of support this person, how can I help lead this person? And I, you know, I use the term replication, but for me, leadership is always helping other people come along and developing the person who's taking my job when I when I leave it, right? Because maybe I'll do something different, you know, in my in my future. And so I think those those early kind of caring episodes in with people who many of whom were in really vulnerable states really helped to form that. And I think a little bit about what you said too, about you know, the concept of do no harm in leadership. Having practiced clinically for now almost 30 years, it's uh I think I've probably experienced every possible scenario that you could imagine, Don. And Even on those people that we come across every day who seem to fully have it together, um, there is a current under the water that is happening in their life that is gonna impact how they develop as a leader, how they develop as a follower. And so just having sort of a ability to tune into that and to listen for it and watch for it is has been a big part of my transitioning that kind of clinical practice into leadership practice, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I talked a lot about this idea of creating environments that uh of trust in order for leaders to grow into. And I just want to hit on this idea of trust in the in a clinical environment. You know, in healthcare, particularly in pediatrics, the stakes are so incredibly high. And how do leaders like yourself or others you look up to create environments where clinicians feel trusted to use their own judgment while still maintaining the safety and rigor that patients depend on? I mean, it's it's such a I mean, I know there's a standard of care, but at the same time, like how do you create that environment where most of our things we learn in life actually come from mistakes? But in in this world, you can't you really can't make mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah, you can't you can't make mistakes, but um, doctors and nurses and social workers and all those people are human beings, and all human beings make mistakes. And so I think you know, what I've seen in the advancement of what we call a culture of safety within healthcare has advanced dramatically in the last uh decade, I would say. And so some of that, Don, you know, relates back to um, I was taking notes as you were reading through the meditation and you know, creating a place where you have these learners and leaders who you're bringing along. Um, I always say like the lowest number is two, right? You're like you you're always you're always walking alongside someone or bringing someone alongside you. And so the culture, you know, in healthcare around that is, you know, of course, we have very rigorous structures and standards in place to avoid harm or to avoid mistakes, but we also recognize that they happen, and when they do, we have a process which we call just culture, where we try to identify why did the mistake happen. In the overwhelming majority of cases, those are not people issues, they're process issues. Something broke down in the process, and so it allows us to kind of enter into safe conversations with clinicians and leaders to say, okay, we're not assigning shame or blame around a mistake. We want to understand what broke down so that we can make sure that this doesn't happen again. And um, I think the culture of education in healthcare has changed a little bit as well. The number of hours that are required for training have been adjusted, how we train has been adjusted. And many healthcare systems, including you know, Nemours, in response to the real tragedy that we went through uh in the COVID years, have stood up wellness programs for for clinicians and team members because you know, recognizing that there actually is harm happening to healthcare providers in the environments that they're working in based on the stress and exposure that they have.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Well, when you think about what you personally have learned the most in this profession, perhaps it's at your current role or what you've spent the last couple of decades doing. How would you frame what you've learned the most from a perspective of leadership?

SPEAKER_00 26:20

What I've what I've learned the most is you know, it's it's very interesting to, you know, Namor, the Namor's North Florida is an organization of 1200, but Namor's children's health system, there's over 10,000 associates in our in our system, right? And so um, so it's a you know, it's an amazing pediatric health system. Um, and it's also a large corporate animal, right? It's a it's a corporation, right? And so what I've learned is that your expectations about who's gonna be a good leader are always undone. And I think you know, just sticking to your sort of instincts around, you know, you you sort of what I was referencing before, you begin to like observe leadership activity or leadership traits in people who are not formal leaders, right? And so you'll see someone just completely step up and um lead through something that you know you you didn't expect that person to go. And so having that kind of um, you know, don't expect that it's the people who have the degrees from certain colleges or certain areas who are going to be the best leaders. That frequently is not the case. So, you know, learning that um leadership is is in every place in our organizations and in the places that we lead, and having that eye towards who are who are the people that are beginning, their heads are popping up as those natural leaders that you say that is someone that I want to invest in because they've got that that leadership, that innate kind of a leadership interest within them.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah. Well, uh, I want to turn to a little bit to the inner work of leadership. You know, leading physicians, nurses, clinicians require humility because many of the people you lead have deep expertise themselves. What kind of inner work has leadership required from you over the years?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

I I am uh well, I I would say I score as an introvert, Don, but but I'm very comfortable, um, you know, and you have to be when you get to these positions on being extroverted. But in terms of uh inner work, I would say that my uh personal value system, right? So my faith, how I've grown up, how I am in tune to that, creates it for me internally an identity that is completely outside of my quote unquote job as a leader. And so for me, and the internal work for me is where so where am I finding my value and my identity? And that not is not necessarily within, I love the work that I do, and I I'm I'm you know, I love being a nurse practitioner and I love being an executive leader, but when I'm stressed and doing internal work around my job, um, it is refocusing on what where I see my identity. And so for me, that is uh on the on the introvert side of things, like peeling off and and spending some time in thought, reading, listening to a podcast, you know, prayer meditation, and just kind of reorienting internally to that, to who I am in terms of my identity and where where I draw my value from.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

So staying really, really close to what grounds you. Yeah. In a way that when you are asked to be the extroverted version of Aaron, you're able to act uh from a place of confidence and competency, uh, knowing that you've been fed in these other ways interpersonally.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Yeah, yeah. And I I think that that this sort of bivocational journey that I've been on um has has done well for that because I can kind of swing out of one and swing into the other, and it's provided that opportunity for me for the last couple of decades.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Yeah, well, let me ask about that because you know, if if anyone looking at your bio as I did, you know, there's kind of three things that kind of go in between, which is faith, meaning, and medicine. And um you hold this master's uh of divinity, which is somewhat unusual for a healthcare executive, I would imagine. Um I don't want to assume, but how has that spiritual and theological training influenced how you think about leadership and care?

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Yeah, I haven't met another healthcare leader who does have an MDiv yet, but I'm looking for that. So if you see anybody, let me know where you're gonna start a club. Yeah, I so I uh tell people this all the time that there's you know, there's for me, those there was a period of time in my life where I really struggled with that, Don, because I felt a calling to ministry and seminary, and I felt this strong calling towards pediatrics and what I was doing, and kind of investing in in both of those places. And there was this internal struggle in me for a long time around those two things. But what I what I share with people around my leadership journey is uh almost all of what I have learned about being a leader came through my ministry experience and my my you know divinity training. And the the training you know for seminary very different than training to be a nurse practitioner, right? So the whole like mindset around how you learn and process information in that structure was hugely beneficial to me. And one of one of the things um you know that you that you learn when you go to seminary is you will be studying a particular topic, but you will read multiple different viewpoints on that one topic. And so from a leadership perspective, that was also really formative for me because it's it translates into how you manage issues or resolve issues or deal with problems and understanding the perspective of the people that you're trying to work a problem through with, um, that people are coming at this from multiple different areas. It makes me think a little bit about what you were talking about earlier, too, right? So, like when we're leading and developing people, there's no cookie cutter done, right? Like, there's no, like, if I'm if I'm you know gonna be mentoring someone, I'm not mentoring them to be Aaron Carpenter, God forbid. Like we don't need that, we don't need another one of those. Like, let's have like that person be that person, and maybe there's some nuggets, you know, that I can share with them so that they can grow and develop. And so it's like that that experience in ministry training and mean ministry leadership was definitely formative for how I function as an executive leader now.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Meaning that that that so much of of that work really uh forced you to try to deeply understand the people and meet them kind of where they are. Yeah, that's I mean, I I've said for a long time um and written about this, but as well. But the idea that before as leaders, before we seek to inspire, we must first seek to understand. And understanding people, that's that's what I was kind of referring to in the meditation where I talked about being in a room with other people and being part of somebody else's process. And they never took the time to even try to understand or or beg questions that would create perspectives of you know how I got there to even outside of the professional development, but more of the human formation that brought me to that place. And that's why I want to ask you at the beginning about like what was that journey of moving into this space? So I appreciate you sharing that. I want to talk a little bit about the culture and healthcare systems. And I know it's not a sexy topic, but I did I did mention in my reflection this piece about culture and organization and how I was holding too tightly on to something that uh until I learned the lesson there, it didn't begin to really solidify. But you know, I think anyone listening knows that you can walk into a hospital or a clinic and you can often feel the culture almost immediately. And I'm wondering from you what are the signs that a health care culture is healthy and trusting versus one where people feel guarded and on the defense?

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Yeah. So well, that we we track some metrics in this space. So um there's yeah, so you know, you if you've ever been to a a doctor's visit or a dentist's visit or whatever, you probably get surveys that ask about your experience. And so uh for healthcare, and actually um, you know, through the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services who kind of regulate what reimbursement, how reimbursement happens, patient experience and patient satisfaction is a is a big element of that. And so so that's one way to to do it, Don, right? Like you can you can look at the metrics of the organization and see how are your patients experiencing your culture. But but some health systems go beyond that, right? So some health systems, all health systems care about how the the patient experience is going because it's tied to their reimbursement. But some healthcare systems go beyond that to look at what is actually the culture within the organization for associates. And Namores is one of those organizations. So, you know, we have for for many years kind of tracked how are we doing as an organization with our doctors and our nurses and all the team members that work for us, and soliciting you know, feedback from those teams about um where where is it working well and what are we not doing well? Like how how is this not working for you? Because we want our our doctors and nurses and everyone to be in the best place that they can be to care for the families and the kids that we care for. So it so there's a lot of ways to kind of take the temperature on that, if you will, in healthcare systems, but it it also um relates back a little bit to what we were talking about earlier with with um mistakes. And in organizations, healthcare organizations where there is bad culture, there the quality of the care delivery is not as good. And um, and those are all measurable things that health systems look at. And so, you know, it won't surprise you to hear me say that like you know, culture, the the culture, um, well, the leadersets the culture, and culture is about people, and so um, you know, there are um some some health systems that are very, you know, on the leadership continuum, let's say, right? Some are pretty authoritarian and some are more you know authoritative and some are more people and patient and family focused, and you know, so but you you experience it as a person interacting with that health system when you go for to see your provider or to go for an emergency room visit. And you know, it's it's really um it's important, but it's about people. And uh when I came to Nemours, I came into a situation in a in a leadership position where the team that I led um had pretty bad scores around engagement and experience. And uh that there there was a clear pathway around that, and that was about developing people and developing leaders to lead people and building relationships and all those sorts of things. And so um, so it's it's important in healthcare, and the the consequences are significant, you know. And I'll just close that out to say, you know, I've worked with three different academic pediatric health systems, and pediatric systems are the softer, kinder, gentler healthcare systems. Uh, I have also worked in adult systems, but there that you'll know, and you you can generally tell. I don't know if you had a chance to hop on the Namora's website, but you could tell pretty soon what the culture of an organization is by by reading a little bit and experiencing it in a small way like that.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Yeah, well, uh pediatrics is kind of like the uh early elementary in this ice in a school, and then walking into the high school was the uh equivalent of walking into like an emergency room or something. Well, there's so much I would like to to dig in there, but I I really want to get to this question, which is I'm just thinking about you as a leader, and um I'm a big believer that if we are aligned with what where passion meets our talent, our ability to bring our fullest selves to whatever we're doing exponentially increases. And also aligned with being able to do the very thing that gives us the most energy, which is kind of a weird thing because you're in a service piece, but also while you're doing that, you're receiving a lot from it. So I'm gonna give you a quick uh example of what I mean by this and then ask you a question. So one of the biggest challenges that I had in getting into the work of youth development and creating an organization, and I spoke a little bit about it, but it was the ability to move away from the front lines of working directly with youth to a place of executive leadership, working with those who are working with the youth. And uh that process uh was hard because of how much passion I had for being in the trenches with kids. And I had to make a decision, you know. But in fact, I thought at one point I might hire someone else to be the executive director and just allow me to do what I'm doing at the kind of community street level. But I decided not to do that and decided that uh mentoring is mentoring, and I could mentor the people I hire to do the mentoring uh with kids, and that seemed to be the right move, and that allowed things to expand and grow, and uh everything else I said in the meditation. With all that in mind, what I've known about you, um, at least from afar and in person, is your passion for direct service. And I know if I remember your story correctly, you served in that direct service in Delaware, and your boss, who you respected a great deal, asked you to take this job in Jacksonville, move your family, et cetera, et cetera. And you struggled with it. And then I'm gonna, I won't rule, I won't share the whole story because I want you to share it, but you made a tactical decision. Um, and I'd like you to tell the audience what that is and why you did it. And then I want to kind of piece together about how that experience informs your executive leadership. So, what did you what was the deal you made with your boss?

SPEAKER_00 43:15

My yeah, my boss, um, my boss is uh is amazing. And you know, I and I've had that experience done, you know, we we all have the the people in our lives who have formed us um as leaders. And my two my two leaders at Namores have been really remarkable in that space. But when I was contemplating this move, I had you know made a commitment to myself, um, because you know it took a little while to get to this level of um practice that I was going to maintain a clinical practice. And it's not um typical for healthcare executives to maintain a clinical practice once. to get to uh you know the the sort of executive level roles. But my my the the the life that gets breathed into me when I'm able to be in my clinic and you know uh be with families and kids is uh really it's just like a recharge of the batteries and and then I can go. So we a colleague of mine um who is a pediatric surgeon and I opened a clinic a general surgery clinic in lower Delaware which is a very rural area and pretty medically underserved for PES and we just kind of said we're gonna do this because there's no pediatric surgery practice in between you know basically for 200 300 miles. And um we just got into the community and we started seeing kids down there and getting referrals and when my boss asked me to take this new job um that was one of the real challenges for me kind of saying what am I going to do with my clinical practice so um I said I said to my boss um I I will take the job in Jacksonville but I'm coming back once a month to do my clinical practice in Milford Delaware and um he was wonderful and he said you do whatever you need to do. So um so I am flying back to uh to Delaware once a month which is great because I get to check in with my family um and I I have my clinic once a month with my friend Pete who's the surgeon there and that that has been you know really amazing for me personally but also um I get to keep my hands in clinical practice and I think Don you know from from a leadership perspective and this is this is true in our in my industry in in medicine and nursing that you when our teams see senior leaders continuing to to do the things that they do it brings a lot of relational connection with them. It's like oh well he's he has this other leadership job but he still comes and sees patients with us. And so when I go to Milford and see patients I actually am not sure that everybody in Milford knows that I'm the president in North Florida because it's just me and Pete seeing our patients and it's it's been um hugely life giving for me.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Yeah I I was so moved when you first told me that I wanted to make sure that uh I shared this but I want to I want to approach it from one particular uh perspective which is you you touched on the fact that that people who know that you're you're doing this other work who are colleagues that you you know oversee and and manage to some respect or hold respect for you because you are doing that you know what's what's at stake what's needed in order to do that well but I really want to get at the this energy question and because I think it's a a valuable lesson for anybody currently in leadership who may be in a leadership role but who may be uh not that energized uh by it and you have this incredible gift of being able to go down there once a month and do that which I imagine boosts your energy a great deal for the work you're doing in North Florida and just wondering if that weren't part of the deal it sounds like you wouldn't have taken it uh taken the job in North Florida but let's just say that that you could no longer do that how else do you think you would feel that passion that get that energy burst in light of the fact that you are also leading this you know multi-layered multi-sectored uh industry in North Florida so I would answer that question by saying this in all of the roles that I've had Don including like being a volunteer junior high youth leader you know in Trump Connecticut all in all of these roles I've always seen a balance between what I refer to as job necessary and entrepreneurial opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

So the job necessary is you know some people might call that the whirlwind um if you've heard of the four disciplines of execution but you know it is just all the machine Don that you have to keep running in an organization. It's keeping the lights on it's paying the payroll it's it's building schedules and creating things and for me that's sort of a it's a necessary right like it's it's what you have to do but it is not what brings the energy what brings the energy for me is the entrepreneurial side of things and thinking about like what is the next great thing that we're going to do for children's healthcare in North Florida right because there's a million and a half kids up here and we could do better. So what's the what's the next awesome thing that we can do and so for me the that my clinical practice gives me energy like that but there are also other things within my role where I've identified like man I'm at my best when I'm with my colleague and thinking through what if we opened a clinic in here and we brought in this thing and we did this new thing. And so I think it's it's really vital Don because if you are if you are a person who does not have that kind of energy in your leadership role the job necessary or the whirlwind will take you down it will it will take you down. And it's and it you kind of we use this term at Nemours a lot called connect to purpose where we we talk about stories um both from our patient perspective and our our team perspective of like oh yeah that's why we do this right because you get lost in that whirlwind um and wondering what the next month's uh profit and loss statement is going to look like but I I I use this line a lot and I might sometimes my team mocks me for my little colloquialisms but I'll say this like everybody like I'll be in a meeting and I'll say all right everybody just stop a minute I want you to kind of just stop for a minute and remember the significance of the thing that you're doing today there's uh there's 300 families coming through this building today and you have the opportunity to connect with them and make a difference in their children's lives and so like just um having that sort of place of connection to whatever it is that made you decide to do this thing that you're doing like it was really exciting to you at one point right so for me if it wasn't that clinical practice it would be that percentage of my role that is really thinking about what's the cool next thing that we can do to to make kids' lives better.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Yeah that's awesome Aaron I really I really love it I took a lot of notes there well we're down to really the last two questions and I wanted to ask you just kind of on this theme of do no harm in terms of the world that you live in I know the do no harm at the medical you know standard but I'm wondering about if you were to name if you had a group of people in front of you and you said you all know about the do no harm mandate but um I want to um highlight um what's at the essence of do no harm in terms of your relationships with your co-workers or within the culture that we're trying to build here what would you name is the biggest breakdown like what what what what would the do no harm number one worst practice be I would probably say in in this environment and the experience that I've had in in pediatric healthcare it is the Lone Rangers Don it's the um it's the folks who really believe that they that they they don't need the team and that they've got it figured out and they they they want to go full steam ahead and you know there's a whole lot of psychology behind that which we don't need to go to get into but um I think that's probably the biggest risk or the biggest threat to do no harm because doing no harm within medicine and nursing but also doing no harm within leadership means um being humble and vulnerable as a leader and recognizing that there's never a place that we ever get to that we've stopped learning, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Like there's always the next thing to learn.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Yeah well said well said uh and great example right there in terms of the Lone Rangers not really needing to even observe somebody else's process they're on their own uh timetable and within their own process um well if you um one one last piece here and that is you know my final question if you could go back and offer one piece of wisdom to your younger self when you first stepped into leadership what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Um wow uh my bit my bit of advice to myself would be have grace for yourself like you have grace for everybody else and I'm still learning that lesson today Don um so my um capacity to extend grace is fairly considerable uh except when it's my own self. And so I think that was much worse for me when I was a young leader and and much better now after many years of introspection and and growth but that's probably the advice you know there's a there's a streak uh in me that likes everything to be perfect as it's delivered and never really is and so that's that's you know just kind of having grace with that and being okay with it. Well we're built from the same lineage I guess literally there's some there's something in the DNA there no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

That's good. That's good. I'm glad I asked you that now I don't feel so alone in it. Well Aaron wow uh that was a quick hour but thank you thank you can't thank you enough for uh joining me uh knowing especially how busy you are but just uh being able to share from your experience I love the blend of your your your professional journey that's um kind of blending these two worlds of introvert extrovert and any given day you're in one one particular side but thanks for sharing so much about your life and uh and what you've learned. I appreciate it thanks Don thanks for having me here absolutely absolutely well if you could just hang in there for another two minutes and we'll uh do a proper goodbye but I wanted just to offer what I think is at the heart of what Aaron said he ended where he kind of started which was when I asked him about what it was like to at the heart of leadership in terms of really developing somebody he talked about his early years of working with young people and being able to watch their developmental process of being so egocentric and it moving from um the focus being on self-interest to this place about caring for other people and being able to be there long enough to support somebody in that process of development. And when we look at it from the perspective of building teams it's a team that comes comes together with all these individuals who then at some point mesh together because they trust the environment and begin to care for one another. He talked about that theme multiple times throughout this conversation and I do think it's um at the heart of what this particular meditation is about because if you can't get bring people along to a place where they have the self-awareness to understand that what's in the best interest of this team is for me to not be so self-interested, but be open and supporting and be in a service leadership role to the others around me. So that was a big lesson and I uh I really it's a great reminder for all of us in this work. I also think that his kind of a comment about what is job necessary versus what is entrepreneurial opportunity, meaning like there's tasks that we have to do and then there's other opportunities that we can dream about doing in the midst of our same job. And one can bring you a lot of energy for the other that ability to think about you know what's it the what's the next best thing that we could be thinking about can bring the mundane tasks more energy because you're working on this other thing. And he he gets to do it from a real incredible opportunity of going back to Delaware to serve kids. But at the same time he's doing it in his own job of thinking about uh what he could be doing next. And that's really this idea of balancing mission and vision. What do I have to do with my job and what do I want to do? Where do I want to lead this organization? What's the next best thing? And that's where vision comes from and that's where people can really get on board and know that um that this isn't a stagnant organization, that this is going somewhere. So and then finally uh just that reminder at the end that our ability to care and love and have grace for other people starts with having love and care and grace for ourselves. And that's why I always say that the journey of leadership begins within because um our ability to uh truly love ourselves is exponentially correlated with our ability uh then to love others and um it's very hard to love others when we don't love ourselves. So with that I will bring us to our two closing prompts um the first question that uh I'd love you to ask yourself is where in my leadership might I be rushing someone else's process because I'm confusing accountability with control where in my leadership might I be rushing someone else's process because I'm confusing accountability with control and the second one is is there someone in my life or work right now who may still be assessing the scene what could I do to make the space feel more trusting and safe for them so if is there someone in my life or in my workspace right now who may still be assessing the scene asking certain questions about before they execute and instead what could I be doing to make the space feel more trusting and safe so they can execute as always big thanks to Aaron thank you so so much Dr. Carpenter for joining us I love saying that uh appreciate you appreciate Linda I just your whole family really really grateful for you big thanks to Omar for his audio engineering skills always uh so available and so good at what you do Omar thank you if today's episode resonated with you I beg you I plead with you I ask you if you would just share the podcast episode with just one person so that we can continue to build the learning community that we've created here. If you have a reflection or thought you'd like to share with me I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me anytime at Don Carpenter Company Consulting dot com. As always thanks for listening and always remember the journey of leadership begins with that.