EP112: Dr. Susan Ko on reputation vs. intent

360 degree leadership evaluations are common in the corporate world. Really thinking about the meta-skills of leadership (and learning them) is not something that I typically do in my position as a dermatologist/dermatopathologist without a formal leadership role in. my academic department. Through this conversation with my sister, whose job is to evaluate leadership skills, I more fully understand how I can improve in informal leadership positions like being a mother, teacher, mentor. 1. Ask what energizes me, and 2. Ask for feedback on what I could do more of or less of. Join me in this conversation on leadership! Dr. Susan Ko, PhD recently joined Vantage Leadership Consulting as a partner in 2023. She's applying her past experience at a venture backed high growth biotech company and her cross industry private equity work to leadership excellence at the individual, team, and organizational levels. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Brown University and pursued her Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Christine Ko: Welcome back to SEE HEAR FEEL. Today, I am happy again to be with my sister, Dr. Susan Ko, PhD. Susan recently joined Vantage Leadership Consulting as a partner in 2023. She's using her experience at a venture backed high growth biotech company in the past and her cross industry private equity work to leadership excellence at the individual, team, and organizational levels. She earned her bachelor of science degree in Psychology from Brown University and pursued her Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. She's lived in eight states across the U. S. and in South Korea, and she's traveled all over the world. We're going to talk about evaluating leaders and doing 360 degree evaluations, looking at how a leader's reputation in the eyes of others matches with their intent. She was able to do a sort of modified 360 evaluation on me. Welcome to Susan who is, as I've said in the past, also my sister.

[00:01:06] Susan Ko: Thank you. I'm always happy to be on your podcast. This is a fun topic.

[00:01:10] Christine Ko: One of the things we've talked about together is that in healthcare, or at least in my job as a academic dermatologist, we never really have evaluations like the one that I did.

[00:01:23] Susan Ko: Yeah we've talked about how in academic settings and universities, we don't often get formal feedback for leaders so that they can improve their leadership. In the corporate world, this is fairly standard. 

[00:01:37] Christine Ko: I should introduce this whole thing by saying that even though maybe in academia, we don't really, at least maybe I don't think of myself in a lot of ways as a leader, like I'm not Chair of the department or I don't have some leadership title in my department. But I think we're all leaders in the sense that we supervise medical students or residents. Residents supervise medical students or senior residents supervise junior residents. And I think those things count as leadership roles. 

[00:02:13] Susan Ko: That's such a great point because we have both formal leadership and informal leadership. In academic settings in particular, there is a hierarchy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that with that hierarchy comes responsibility to lead. Especially in academic settings, it's about teaching, right? And we don't necessarily perhaps think about teachers as leaders, but to your point, yes, of course, you have the opportunity to teach someone, to develop someone in some way. Did you learn how to mentor or teach residents, and what works best? Or how to leverage your skills to best bring out strengths or identify them? There are probably a lot of tools that would help. And maybe your role is one where the specific scope of your responsibilities includes, having a very clear role to be a leader in a certain area.

[00:03:08] Christine Ko: You recently wrote an article about leadership and how to bridge the gap between what you want to be as a leader and how others perceive you as a leader.

[00:03:20] Susan Ko: Your reputation. Yeah. I've worked with many leaders across industries, and settings, and at the C suite, different levels of organizations. I would say that it's very rare that you meet a leader who's deliberately saying, I really want to do a bad job, right? Essentially most leaders are trying to do their best, to be a good leader, and oftentimes may be surprised that what they're doing is actually not landing the way that they intend. They're, you know being perceived in a certain way when that's not what they intend. These formal assessments and reviews with leaders is helpful. Certainly as part of that process, talking to their peers, their direct reports, their boss can be extremely helpful in understanding, How does their leadership land? Getting feedback from people that person works with and interacts with is just another level of data that provides a much richer picture of what someone's leadership looks like.

[00:04:17] Christine Ko: Through Susan's new job, as I mentioned earlier, I did this 360 and some of my supervisors and some faculty actually that are junior to me, meaning hired after me, filled out surveys as well. 

[00:04:32] Susan Ko: Yeah so we did two things actually. One, we did an inventory that looked at, what motivates you? What are you engaged by? What gives you satisfaction in a workplace? Any time that you are trying to strengthen your own leadership, it's helpful to know where your strengths are, what brings you energy. What do you really enjoy? What do you value? So that was one of the surveys that you took. And then the other was understanding your leadership behaviors. How do you go about doing things like creating a vision? Working with a team? How do you execute? How do you influence others? I know you've probably read through your reports. Anything that was surprising to you? 

[00:05:16] Christine Ko: I read through them but it was actually over a month ago, and honestly, I didn't really know what to do with the results. They weren't actionable.

[00:05:26] Susan Ko: Not everything is actionable right away. I would say, just looking at your profile, that a lot of your energy is around affiliation. You like to be able to freely share and express your true feelings. You want to be emotionally spontaneous and expressive. Being able to be free, to be yourself, say what's on your mind, share your feelings, just put it out there. That is very high for you. Not surprising. 

[00:05:53] Christine Ko: My sister has always said that I should be more like this free spirit wandering around. 

[00:05:59] Susan Ko: The other thing that was really high for you is this area called independence, which is what gives you energy and satisfaction is when you're self sufficient, you're self reliant. You have freedom from interference that you have little dependence on others. The other thing that's high for you are things like interpreting, being analytical, being stimulated intellectually. This is kind of that whole research and knowledge learning focus. You really get a lot of energy from that. And you also get a lot of energy from enduring. This is your persistence, right? You're tenacious, you're determined.

[00:06:36] Where you don't get any energy from would be this notion of gaining stature. This is not what gives you energy. You don't need to be the center of attention. That's not what's interesting or motivating or gives you satisfaction. Other things that were for lower for you are being organized, attending to details, being meticulous and orderly. This does not give you energy. This doesn't mean you can't do it. But it doesn't give you energy. The other thing I found interesting was this category called challenging: things like maneuvering and winning. You're not looking for the angle or trying to manipulate things. 

[00:07:16] I think this is a good starting point, to think about what's satisfying to you, right? Where do you get energy from? Sometimes, the challenge is you're burnt out because the things you get energy from are not the way you're spending your time.

[00:07:29] Christine Ko: Yeah, I realized reading through the reports, these are so complicated. 

[00:07:33] Susan Ko: It's a lot. It's a lot of data, and it's a lot to take in,

[00:07:36] Christine Ko: What would be more broadly applicable, whether or not you ever have a 360 evaluation done, is to just think about what gives you energy. What makes you feel energized? And then instead of part B, like doing a whole survey and having other people answer for you, how would you figure out some of the things that Part B gets at?

[00:07:59] Susan Ko: To do this simply, essentially what you're trying to do is get feedback, right? And and understand how much of how you want to show up in the workplace as a leader, in your role, is consistent with how you are showing up in terms of how other people are seeing you. How do you increase your self awareness around where your strengths and opportunities are? Where your areas for improvement are? How do you understand more and get feedback so that you can, increase that insight and self awareness?

[00:08:30] Christine Ko: Yeah. I do think looking over the second part and listening to you talk about it is, like you said, the lexicon, the language, doesn't really translate to, at least, what I do. 

[00:08:43] Susan Ko: Yeah, your role may be so much about research and patient care. Like you said earlier, there's leadership behaviors, informal aspects of working as a mentor, or working with residents, or having a team of people that you're writing paper with. 

[00:08:56] Christine Ko: Yeah. I think that's good that you're saying, an easy way to do it, no matter what job or position you have, and also like the setting, whether at home or work or whatever, you can think about what your strengths are. And then just ask the people around you in that setting, if they'll answer honestly. 

[00:09:16] Susan Ko: Sometimes it's getting people to answer honestly, but it's your strength and your development opportunities, right? So sometimes an easier way to ask that question is, What do you think I could do more of or less of? If you're not in a culture and environment where feedback is part of the process, people might feel awkward or uncomfortable asking for feedback, receiving feedback. It takes practice to feel comfortable giving feedback, feeling the vulnerability to be open to feedback. That all takes practice.

[00:09:46] But I think it's a good place to start. It's not bad to take the time to reflect, just even on your own, around, what are my strengths? What are my strengths in my job? What are my strengths? How much am I being able to leverage that in the things that I do? What do I wish I was better at and what would I need to get better at it? 

[00:10:03] Christine Ko: Yes. When we've talked about in the past, on this podcast about metacognition and thinking about your thinking or emotional intelligence and thinking about your emotions, being able to name them and regulate them and manage them and move them to be appropriate for whatever situation you're in to be most effective. It seems like leadership is also worth thinking about and really being aware of sort of the meta skills that are involved in really coming across how you want to come across in formal leadership situations or in more informal leadership situations. Formal leadership positions are maybe the minority of jobs at a given place. I think for me, and maybe for most people, informal leadership positions may be more day to day. For most people, including me. I think I will try to look at my results in light of more informal leadership situations and think about how, what motivates me, how the things that give me energy versus the things that don't give me energy, might be better reflected in how I spend my time in my informal leadership roles as a mother or as a teacher or as a mentor. The part B, I think, confused me a little bit more, and it's helpful to think about the micro behaviors that other people see, my reputation in their eyes. I think it's really hard to perceive what other people think about you, or at least it's really hard for me to perceive what others think about me. Like, what would they really say to like their best friend or their partner or something? So, yeah, in terms of informal leadership, how would I really leverage my strengths into micro behaviors that help show what I really intend, for my kids, or for the people that I teach, and how I teach and things like that. So yeah, this conversation has helped me a little bit, and I hope that for people listening, it can be useful even if you haven't had a 360, to really just think about what does give you energy and maybe ask a few people around you in situations that are important to you how you come across and see if that reputation in their eyes really matches with your intent.

[00:12:30] Do you have anything you want to say before we end? 

[00:12:35] Susan Ko: It takes courage sometimes to feel open to feedback. As we're just saying, it doesn't always feel comfortable, especially if you feel like you're a novice to it. But the more that we can think about it, a lot of people have this saying that feedback is a gift. 

[00:12:51] Christine Ko: Yes. I agree. Feedback is a gift. It can be hard, if it's negative or constructive criticism. But I think it really is a gift when someone else tells you how you can improve, especially if it's very critical to your role, whatever role it is, whether at work or at home. As you said in the very beginning, I think very few of us say, I want to be a bad mother, or I want to be a bad parent, or I want to be a bad worker at work. I want to be a bad resident or student or teacher. So, thank you for doing this today with me and teaching me more about what you do as you evaluate leaders. Thank you.

[00:13:35] Susan Ko: You're welcome.