Karin Isherwood

Room to manoeuvre

Karin Isherwood’s early role model of leadership was based on a military example; her dad had an American military career. “There wasn’t a lot of room to manoeuvre or question and the government always made the decisions.”

When she was first promoted to a team leader role about nine years ago while working as a clinical psychologist at Capital and Coast DHB, her instinct was to use the model of leadership she grew up with. “I had no formal training in leading a team and as time went on I became more aware of things I didn’t know and needed to know to do a better job,” states Karin.

This kind of accidental promotion is a common occurrence for health managers, she adds, and often means clinicians are promoted beyond or outside their level of expertise, competence and comfort.

Programme

The programme required a big time commitment, says Karin. She put in a lot of personal time, took study days when needed and also did some study in work time. Each month the group would converge on Blueprint’s Wellington office for two to three days where they often worked into the evenings to prepare group presentations for the following day.

Meeting with the same group of people throughout the year developed great connections and trusting relationships and provided an amazing platform for an exchange of learning, says Karin. “Hard questions and difficult subjects were not avoided.”

Incorporating the points of view and philosophies of people from varied backgrounds and walks of life was often really difficult, she says. “The consumer leaders in my class were a real eye opener, mainly because as a child and adolescent clinician I didn’t have much experience with the adult consumer movement.”

She learned a lot about multicultural issues, experiencing first hand the different problem solving approaches of Maori and Pasifika people. “I also learned how to sit back and actively listen to other people and respect different points of view. I learnt about delegation, negotiation, and inspiration.”

Another part of the programme she found invaluable was the media training. “I often get asked to comment to the media and I used to hate returning media calls, so it was really good to learn strategies, for example, being very clear about two or three ideas I want them to take away, rather than getting caught up in their angle on the story. Other practical topics included learning how to read financial reports and Ministry of Health statistics,” she adds. 

Karin says the programme also helped her understand the national mental health strategy. “There are a lot of things the DHB do that the people on the ground don’t realise is about meeting Ministry of Health requirements, whether filling in forms or the way we file NHI numbers or deal with new regulations that appear to come out of nowhere. Understanding the national strategy makes it easier to explain to my team why things are being done. Before that it was often seen out of context and without a rationale.”

Karin would recommend the programme to any manager, with the proviso that they need to be aware of the time commitment. “Initially they opened it only to people already in management roles but because of the importance of succession leadership a wider range of people are now able to access the course.” 

Benefits

Four years down the track Karin believes she is now a much better leader. “While you can’t necessarily change your personality,” she says, “you can change the way you work with people.”

She likens her old style to that of a coach on an athlete team who only had people that were ‘good’. “It has been a big thing to learn how to tap into people’s potential and help them work to the best of their ability and gel as a team, no matter what the personalities.”

Her new buzz term is ‘team of choice’; a team of people who want to be there irrespective of pay or vacation time. “A team of choice attracts people because of the values involved and their sense of desire to be involved in a team that is innovative and values the team. That is a big thing that drives me now, how to become a team of choice.”

During the course Karin designed a survey for her team that encouraged them to think about their work and what made it valuable and stimulating. It asked about projects of interest, what constituted a good day at work, how they would like to be rewarded for good work, what challenged them and what they would like to change. It was favourably received. “Too many times we focus on the negative aspects of our situation. This exercise was intended to stimulate people to think creatively - and with vision - and have agency within their own work experience,” says Karin.

Personal

Karin decided to apply for the Executive Leadership and Management Programme (ELMP) because she felt its health orientation would be more appropriate than a general management course.

That decision was the start of a deeply inspiring process that has dramatically changed Karin’s approach to management. Her epiphany came at the programme launch where a consumer consultant stated that DHBs had improved their provision of mental health services but were still paying lip service and not providing a service consumers wanted to be part of.

“I remember walking away indignantly thinking “Who are these people to tell us how to do our job? We are trained mental health clinicians and we use evidence-based practice to help them recover”. Then I suddenly realised they were the people using the services and were exactly the people to tell us how to run our services. How could I have been so blind?” Another forceful presentation about meeting the changing needs of Maori youth also challenged her deeply. 

Page last updated: 10 February 2010