Dr. Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): Too often, we reserve the label of leader for someone with a fancy title before their name.

Logan Pause (Intro): But great leaders are everywhere in our midst.

Dr. Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): I'm Gaurav Agarwal, but everyone calls me G.

Logan Pause (Intro): And I'm Logan Pause.

Dr. Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): On Anatomy of an Everyday Leader, we believe that everyone has the potential to be a great leader on a healthcare team.

Logan Pause (Intro): To find out what it takes and what it means to lead in healthcare, we talk to people from around Northwestern Medicine who are doing just that.

Dr. Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): Whether you've just started your career in healthcare or are a seasoned professional—

Logan Pause (Host 2): have a leadership role, or hope to take one on someday—

Dr. Gaurava Agarwal (Intro): this podcast is for you.

Logan Pause (Intro): Join us as we peel back the layers of leadership to ultimately make healthcare better.

Logan Pause (Host): Mike Diakoumis is an example of an everyday leader. As a manager of talent development at the Northwestern Medicine Academy, he helped found the Northwestern Medicine Veterans Chapter of the NM Champion Network Employee Resource Group. Today, Mike shares how his military experience shaped his perspective on leadership.

Mike, welcome to the Anatomy of an Everyday Leader podcast. It's great to have you. I'd love to start and welcome you to the show, hear your story prior to NM. I know you've got a really interesting background for our audience to hear about, and then talk about how you got to NM.

Mike Diakoumis: I think that story starts with me developing an affinity for history at a young age. Specifically, I had an interest in military history, which evolved into a desire to serve in the armed forces. At some point, that interest narrowed in on the history of the US Army Rangers, and I decided that's what I wanted to do.

So, I enlisted in the US Army in 2007, and after a pretty grueling selection process, I found myself serving with the First Ranger Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. And in that unit, I would deploy to Iraq once and Afghanistan twice, and I would go on to complete Ranger School, which is the Army's premier leadership program.

I did enjoy my time in the Army, but I think four years was enough for me. It was a pretty intense lifestyle to sustain, and I'm still in awe of some of the guys that I served with that made this their career. There were just some incredible warriors and leaders I served with. I eventually got out in 2011, and I went through the dreaded transition process, which I think most veterans can attest to that experience.

Even when it goes well, it's hard having to reinvent yourself like that, coming from serving in the global war on terror and doing something so impactful and playing a small role in world events just to come back and look for part-time work in retail while taking college classes, kind of a jarring experience.

I often harken back to the speech a major gave us one time when the entire battalion was in formation. I think his intention was positive. You know, he was trying to talk us up and motivate us, but he said to us, "This right now, what you're about to do overseas, is going to be the greatest thing you're going to do in your lives."

And I really disliked him for that. Most of us were like 21, 22 years old, and this guy was telling us all that we've peaked right here. And I didn't want that to be true. I wanted to go on and do more impactful things, but that's what I felt like I was going up against in my transition. Everything felt like a step back from where I was.

I used to be an Army Ranger, and now I work part-time at a university. I eventually got my undergraduate degree in history and eventually moved on to a graduate program in management and organizational behavior, and that led me to my role here on the talent development team in the NM Academy. I like to say I found healthcare. But honestly, healthcare found me.

At first, this was just a job that kind of fit my skill set, but I quickly discovered that non-for-profit healthcare is such an incredible fit for transitioning veterans who are looking for that meaningful, mission-driven work. And that was my turning point in my transition. That's when I found my purpose here. That's when I truly felt like I transitioned successfully.

And I wanted to pay that forward. I wanted other veterans to find their place here too. And that's what led me and some of my colleagues to start the veterans chapter here at Northwestern. Not just as a place for veterans and families of service members to come together, but to help other veterans realize this is a great place for veterans to grow their careers. Yeah, I found work here, but this place really helped me find myself as a professional and as a leader.

Dr. Guarava Agarwal: Thanks for sharing that, Mike, and thank you for your service. You know, it's funny, Logan, listening to Mike, it felt like it was the first time you and I met. Ten years ago now, and you were telling me about the transition you made from an identity perspective as a professional athlete, professional soccer coach, and then moving into healthcare, and what are the lessons that translate to both arenas.

But that was very interesting to hear, Mike, and remind myself of the first time I talked with you. For me, I'm a psychiatrist. I did clinical training. But as I became an organizational leadership coach, it's funny how much of the case studies out there on leadership are all from the military and the principles you all learn and what it means to be a leader. I was wondering if you might share the top one, two things that you think are taught to you all in the military that you think apply to a leader in any field

Mike Diakoumis: I think one of the things that's so interesting about the military is its approach to leadership and its value systems. Like, I've seen some pretty interesting crosswalks of like how many times does the word integrity or situational awareness appear in each of the military branches' set of values.

And there's a lot of crossover there, like personal courage and all these different things. All the branches of the military are looking for a lot of the same things. But ironically, the military doesn't offer a whole lot of in terms of this is how to be a great leader course.

There are some that are out there, but I'd say they're largely disconnected from each other and they're not speaking to each other very often. But what I do think is very interesting about the military and why, gee, you see so many case examples and things of this, is that the leadership in the military is like a leadership laboratory. You get dropped into this situation where you get to figure out what is leadership in this context. And it provides so much exposure to both bad and good leadership that it gives you a lot of time to establish your own philosophy.

Dr. Guarava Agarwal: That's interesting, you know, because at least in my mental model of the military, there's a lot of standardization, there's a risk if everyone's sort of creating their own model of what a good leader is or bad leader is. To your point, why you, you may be seeing a lot of good examples and bad examples is if everyone's sort of having to create their own model, that that's a challenge, I can imagine.

But on the flip side of that is Logan and I have talked a lot about training leaders, and we have been pretty adamant about the fact that leadership is not learned in the classroom. And if it is, it's going to need to be scenario-based, case-based, make it real. And so, I don't know if you might speak to that a little bit.

Mike Diakoumis: The standardization piece there, I think is a really good example of where I think the military's focus is sometimes there, is that you are going to find that standardization when it comes to leading the operation. But when it comes to leading the people, I think, is where things become a little bit more variable between person to person.

I think there's a lot of stuff on paper in terms of how we're going to maybe issue guidance in various things like that, or some of the actions and behaviors that leaders should or should not be doing. But in terms of how am I going to show up in these cases as an individual and connect with those people that's largely left up to the individual. And I think that's where the value system kind of comes into play. Personal courage and integrity, doing the right thing.

One of the things that I think is often misrepresented in popular culture is this robotic mindset when it comes to military leadership or the kind of just there take orders without question and various things like that. When in reality, we're really trained with flexibility in mind and critical thinking, because autonomy is what separates us from perhaps other militaries.

Dr. Guarava Agarwal: You know, obviously, now you are in charge of helping train our leaders, and I'm trying to understand how your model was learning on the job and saying, "Hey, you know what? In the real world, these are the things we are seeing, and I want to internalize those, reflect on those, and then make my own leadership model."

How do you balance that with there's a curriculum or a talk or a series that you can take to become a leader versus, "Hey, you know what? You really become a leader on the job and through reflection of your everyday experiences"?

Mike Diakoumis: I think a good curriculum or like leadership development program are going to be an effective mirror. Whatever it is that we're talking about, that there's enough insight and thought into what's being presented to you that you can clearly see yourself now, you can see examples of yourself from the past, and it gives you a little bit of insight into the person you want to be in the future.

It happens to us all the time, even the building of leadership development programs right now. My team and I are building a program on building trust. And the entire time going through that and researching and compiling the information into a beneficial learning experience for people, I am at least constantly looking at myself in this process and examining my own viability with this model there.

We can only go so far in terms of communicating what we want to see and how people are going to be showing up. There's so much in this process where we need to give people the room to explore that and look at themselves and figure out what is next for me.

Logan Pause: Mike, you've talked a little bit about leadership philosophy. And you talked about your experience in the military. Can you share with us and our audience what your leadership philosophy is?

Mike Diakoumis: I think, at its core, being a leader means being somebody who helps others be the best versions of themselves, and that comes through the ability to make honest and genuine connections with the people that you lead and work with. If someone feels that you don't actually care for them, then I don't think you're getting the best version of that person, and that person also isn't doing their best work.

And that's not necessarily a conscious choice that we make all the time. I don't think anybody wakes up one day and says that, "I don't like my boss, so I'm not going to do a good job today." But I do think it's hard for people to do their best job when they feel like they can't take a risk or share ideas or concerns. It's because these dialogues we have, that that's what really helps us put our best foot forward. And I can even put a lens around some of the work we do here. I've always held that our programs are as effective as they are because they are the sum of all their parts, and that includes the people who built them, every conversation that happened along the way.

They're not great because one person had an idea and ran with it. They're good because those ideas were shared, and we interrogated it as a team. But I think it all really comes back to us feeling like we can have those conversations, push back constructively, and having a bunch of people in the room that are being their best selves.

And I think at times that means just giving people a little bit of space to open up and talk about their personal stuff. Their weekend maybe didn't go great, or a current event is weighing heavily on their minds. And I think from a bird's eye view, some people might say that's not an effective use of time, and I understand that to a degree, but I would also argue that what's good for our people is also really good for our work.

And, you know, if I hadn't taken 10 minutes to connect with that person and see how they're doing, what are the chances that they just would've ruminated the rest of the day and stewed with those negative feelings instead of talking it out? And again, I think it's the idea that helping people be the best versions of themselves helps other people do their best work.

Logan Pause: It's really good. It's clear you can tell that you've thought a lot about it. How do you balance classroom learning versus practical learning? When we've got leaders across our organization, that have 50, 75, 100 direct reports, how do you think about equipping them with the skills, the knowledge to then go back in their environment, in a very busy environment, to lead in a similar way that you just kind of painted for us?

Mike Diakoumis: If somebody attends one of our series or hears our lecture, everybody hears the same lecture. And I think the way we can personalize the experience is that we're always ending with some critical questions that are getting people to think about the next step for themselves.

So, I got all this information here about change management today. For that learning to be effective and practical, that person needs to leave with some questions that they need to answer for themselves. In what capacity do I need to become better at this? What are some things I should be doing? Or what are some things I'm already doing that I need to lean into a little bit more?

These are really important questions here because I think you kind of started alluding this yourself there, Logan, is everybody's got different roles here. Those questions for me as somebody with five direct reports is going to be very different than a nursing or patient care manager who has 100 direct reports, right? The logistics of our day-to-day life are just so different from each other, right? And so, these types of questions really make it personal to that individual there. Because without that reflection, I don't think it is practical. You have to really think about you, and it's this idea of a mirror sometimes being held up to you, and I think those questions are an extension of that mirror.

Dr. Guarava Agarwal: You've talked a little bit about how much you learned by watching good leaders and bad leaders. I actually think that's a very important skill. That's a behavior that's not obvious. I see that sometimes with my son, right, is he is listening carefully when the coach is talking to him, but he's not actually listening that carefully when the coach is talking to other students or other players.

And that's something we've talked a little bit about, is that every time the coach is talking, there's an opportunity to learn. Not only when he's just talking to you. And so, how would you advise people to look at their day-to-day so that they're picking up these examples of leadership in the real world?

Mike Diakoumis: Yeah, I always try to hang on to those feelings I had both good and bad. Like, like how did that person make me feel in that instance and how did that affect me and my actions and the way I showed up? Because I think that level of perspective-taking helps you. I think you can work backwards with that information. If you're seeing somebody you're leading that is perhaps maybe not living up to your expectations or being their best selves, it helps to like re-examine everything up until that point. What have I channeled to this person, what have I communicated to this person, I think is really why it's so important to continue to do that perspective-taking and then to remember how past leaders have made you feel.

Logan Pause: Mike, in the age of AI and just the pace of which our environment is changing, what do you feel like are the greatest challenges for our leaders, and how might you coach or educate or teach them, given our environment that we're in?

Mike Diakoumis: If the past two decades or so is any evidence of this, anybody who is going to be a leader in the healthcare space or any business professional space for that matter here needs to have some basic knowledge on change leadership. Things are shifting so quickly and this joke here in the military, you look at like military history, that doctrine is always two steps behind technology. And I think we could even maybe say that in the civilian space too. But just keeping up with the pace of change is almost impossible. So, we have to build this level of adaptability in ourselves to be able to navigate change personally and to turn that lens to our teams and help them navigate through change there too.

And I think it's such a win-win situation because change leadership, regardless of whether or not you're going through a big change is just good leadership. There's so many things you could be harnessing in your day-to-day even if you're not going through massive process change. Things like closing the information loop or communicating the why behind something. I often find that being in leadership is often like being stuck in a rock and a hard place. You have to both advocate for your people and make sure an important job is getting done and maybe getting people on board with a strategy that's been perhaps disseminated to you.

And having people love every decision I make, that's out of my scope of control. I can't change how people are going to feel about a decision, but I can control if people understand why I made that decision. Nobody can really take that power away from me unless I decide to not utilize it. And I can do all that through effective change leadership. I I can come back to my team and close that information loop and tell them about the direction and guidance that I was given, the competing forces that I'm balancing here with and why I made the decision I did. And I think that's importantin rapidly changing times here.

And just at the very least here, it's transparent at the end of the day, right? Like, like I'm not keeping any secrets here. I'm giving my team insights into what I'm doing here. And if at the end of the day they can walk away with some level of understanding of why we're doing what we're doing or I did what we did here, that's the best you can do sometimes there.

Logan Pause: Mike, for our audience, can you just briefly explain what change leadership is?

Mike Diakoumis: Yeah, I would say it is the practice of project management, but looking through the lens of how people are reacting to a project and the changes that come with it. As human beings, we are neurologically predisposed to be aware or afraid of change. It's a survival instinct that has kept the species alive for as long as it has. But it is also something that we react to very strongly, even if it is change of a pretty small nature. That's the way I put it there. So where I think project management is managing of the task, I'd say change management is the managing of the people in that same process.

Dr. Guarava Agarwal: I like what you said earlier, and I think it's a really important clarification. I would say it's the single biggest change in me from when I was an everyday leader to now sitting in a titled leader, which is you sort of highlighted this idea that, earlier I think, people could have construed what you said earlier as people need to feel good. I need to make people feel good. But you sort of highlighted here that when you're a leader, what I owe people is transparency. I owe them the why of what I'm doing. But I may not control if you like that or it may not feel great, but that is what I owe you. And I don't owe you the fact that you're going to agree with everything I say or that every decision will make you feel good. I think that's an important distinction, as you sort of become that title leader versus that everyday leader. So, I'm glad you shared that as well.

My impression is that, in any situation, someone can become the leader. It might not be the person that was supposed to be the leader, but depending on how the situation unfolds, anyone can become that leader. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I imagine our everyday leader listening needs to sort of understand what happens to you in those moments where you realize that you're being called to serve and you're being called to lead.

Mike Diakoumis: You made this distinction between title leader and kind of like leader in spirit kind of thing there. That's very much present and alive in the military, and I'd say any and all branches. There's so many times where tasks or various initiatives pop up where somebody kind of needs to take charge in that moment in time, or they just might ask for volunteers for something, right? That is very much something that happens there. And I've seen that translate into the healthcare sphere here. So many of the leaders I've met here from the veterans chapter fall into this individual contributor leader kind of space role where they're classified as a leader here, but they may not have any direct reports.

But you notice the initiative and the autonomy on display there a lot of times with these folks here. Leading to them is often stepping up when nobody else does. You know, like you're looking around a room, you got a job to do, there is no official leader in the room. It's making that decision of, "I'm going to be that person in that moment." It's really ingrained, I think, in the way we do things in the military there, because we got this pretty large breadth of what leadership is in the military, and it is one of our strengths.

I think we kind of channel that a little bit here too whether that's you see the supervisor category of leaders here, RCs, and individual contributor leader roles and things like that. It's just there's never a shortage there.

Dr. Guarava Agarwal: How do you build a culture, to your point, this is sort of ingrained in you all that anyone can become a leader, everyone may need to lead in a situation, what's the how behind that? Because I think that's really critical. It cannot be the 1,500 titled leaders that are the only people leading. It really needs to be the other 40,000 of our employees that know that in this moment when they're taking care of a patient, you may need to lead or you should lead. How do we build that?

Mike Diakoumis: I think it's a simple difference between permitting a behavior versus promoting a behavior. I can say all day how I have an expectation or a desire here for people that are not in leadership roles to step up and do that thing. But if I'm not providing opportunities for people to step into those shoes or pick up that baton, then those words don't mean a whole lot at the end of the day.

So, it's both me actively and verbally encouraging the behavior and operationally consciously throwing out these opportunities for participation or work in a work stream. You know, this is not a dotted line relationship team. There is a work group designed to accomplish a specific task and leaving that opening and opportunity for somebody to jump in there and demonstrate that leadership. That is an example of me promoting that behavior as opposed to just permitting it.

Dr. Guarava Agarwal: That's what I deeply, deeply believe, is that we have sort of confused this as an individual trait of good leader or bad leader, but a system can be created where people are better leaders. It's a both/and situation where the individual matters, but the system that we are in encourages good everyday leaders, or not. And so, that's really, really a key point.

Logan Pause: Mike, it's great to have you on. Appreciate your service. Appreciate both your service in the military and to those at Northwestern, and helping develop better leaders across our organization. So, I appreciate you a lot.

Mike Diakoumis: Appreciate you having me.

Outro: Thank you for listening to Anatomy of an Everyday Leader. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode.