I was lucky enough to have been invited to speak to the 2023 RACGP Future Leaders Program group, and the invited guests, at the Breakfast held at The Gardens by Lotus (Chinese Garden of Friendship, Darling Harbour) on Sunday 29 October 2023 at 0800.
Transcript
Well hello there! I’m going to tell you a story.
A story of a Japanese railway executive with the most incredible career progression.
And from this story, I’ll reflect on my own leadership journey and some messages that I would like to share.
Tama-san’s leadership journey started in January 2006 when she was appointed the new station master of Kishi Station on the Kishigawa Line. Wakayama Electric Railway had been suffering operating losses on that line for years, and Tama-san’s appointment represented an investment by the senior executive, a leap of faith so to say.
Tama-san’s role included greeting passengers at the station and her customer service was so successful, it helped revitalise the line and after two years in December 2007, she was recognised by Wakayama Electric Railway as the winner of the “Top Station Runner Award”. The following month, she received her first promotion to “super station master”, receiving her own office and at time, was the only female in a managerial position in the company.
Tama-san’s ongoing leadership resulted in a massive boost in the customer base and operating revenue for the company, as well as building local tourism for the town. In January 2010, Tama-san received another promotion to “operating officer”, an executive position in the company. The year after in January 2011 (her fifth year in the company), Tama-san was promoted again to “managing executive director”, the third in line in management after the company president and managing director.
Who here is aware of the story of Tama-san? Can you share the very curious and unique fact about Tama?
Tama is a cat! And the story of her career progression doesn’t end here!
In 2013, Tama was elevated further to the Honorary President of Wakayama Electric Rail for life. She passed away a couple of years later on 22 June 2015 from heart failure. Thousands of people attended her funeral, and she was elevated to divinity at a nearby Shinto cat shrine as the spirit goddess Tama Daimyojin. From Tama-chan to Tama Daimyojin – truly the most incredible career progression in modern history.
Now, I’m Michael Tam, an academic GP. I’m an alumnus of the Future Leaders Program of 2021, which crossed over from 2021 to 2022. My day job is as the Director and a Staff Specialist of the Primary and Integrated Care Unit of South Western Sydney Local Health District, and a Conjoint Senior Lecturer of the University of NSW. My unit runs a clinical service that provides physical health services to people living with severe mental illness who are disconnected from mainstream services, as well as undertaking research, evaluation, and health services development. I’m in governance roles across the local health district, state and national committees, especially in mental health.
What can we learn from Tama’s story? I have three major big messages.
The first is that that an important proportion of career success is simply being present. Being there! What do I mean by this?
When I look back on my own career, there were events that could be interpreted as having been in the right place at the right time. I completed my fellowship some time ago in 2007, just about the time Tama was promoted to “super station master”. At that time, I worked in full time private general practice, but was doing a couple of additional things. I supervised medical students on GP placements and had also enrolled in a Master of Mental Health at the then NSW Institute of Psychiatry.
Back then, the GP vocational training provider, GP Synergy, had a joint position with UNSW for early career GPs. The position was a 1-year contract where they would work two-days each for both GP Synergy and UNSW, learn to become a medical educator at both the vocational and undergraduate level, undertake a research project with UNSW under the supervision of the professor of general practice, and keep up a day-a-week of clinical practice. I was the successful applicant, and given the opportunity, converted my master’s to the research rather than coursework track.
Opportunity unlocks further opportunities. Having experience in higher education in learning and teaching and research allowed me to firstly obtain a staff academic position at UNSW. And then having that experience, allowed me to be competitive in 2014 for a staff specialist position as an academic GP at the then GP Unit at Fairfield Hospital in South Western Sydney. I’m now the Director of that Unit, though the unit itself has undergone some major redesigns in the past decade.
The moral luck in some of the opportunities should keep us humble. That said, in my discussions with my peers, supervisors, and mentors, occasionally an opportunity will appear in front of us. This will often be an opportunity that involves a major change for us professionally. We may wonder whether we are worthy or qualified, and any of us who are reflective may feel the sting of self-doubt. “Imposter syndrome” is a term sometimes used.
Now, I don’t believe in the aphorism, “fake it ‘til you make it”. The reason for that is that I find it a deceitful and rather passive stance. When I think of “being present”, what I mean is that we make an attitudinal decision. We make a choice. We “choose” to take responsibility and be accountable for the human endeavour represented by that opportunity.
For instance, I started my joint higher education and research role in 2010 between GP Synergy and UNSW with an understanding that I wasn’t fully competent for the role. But accepting the trust my supervisors had in me to learn and develop the necessary competencies and being honest that I needed to seek help and support to achieve this.
My Future Leaders Program project was ostensibly the “First Do No Harm: A Guide to Choosing Wisely in General Practice” project of the RACGP. I was the co-chair of that project and I’m very grateful that we managed to launch it last year during GP22. However, the real nature of my project was to address a problem I had as the co-chair back in 2021. I’d been co-chair for several years, and the project had stalled. Although we could blame COVID-19 for the non-progression, this wasn’t the only factor. As before, I don’t believe in “fake it ‘til you make it”.
Being present meant – as the person leading the project – that I needed to definitively address the non-progression, which included addressing my own ambivalence about the project. One of the decisions that I had to face for myself, and I found the Program very helpful, was that I was going to be accountable to ensure the project can be launched and ensure that the necessary processes and structures are put into place. OR, if it really wasn’t achievable, that I would be responsible for retiring and ending the project so to not waste members’ money any further, and to accept the reputation risk on behalf of the team.
Tama’s story has a second message for all of us. It can be easy for us to trivialise her story as frivolous. Or be a little bit too open minded such that our brains fall out. Tama was a cat! Her success as a leader, or what we might point to as leadership, was fundamentally attributable to teamwork! There is no leader without their team. What does it even mean to be a leader who is not leading a team?
One of the things that I’ve learnt to appreciate over time is that one of the central principles and mechanisms that I wield in leadership roles is in creating my team, supporting my team, and rallying my team. My individual personal bias as someone who is a bit perfectionistic and internalising, and outcomes and technical focussed rather than empathic, is to preference “doing things myself” as an innate solution at times of stress. My Hogan Personality Inventory was very consistent with this.
Leadership is a team sport, simply because a human endeavour that requires leadership will necessarily require a group of people working together with a common vision, mission, and purpose. Cats are pretty awesome, but I have had enough cats in my life to know that they are incapable of personally and individually turning around a failing railway line. The story of Tama is one of a team of motivated people, with a genuine love and affection for their feline overlord, as well reversing the impacts of the economic decline of a neighbourhood serviced by Kishi Station, who together have created something amazing.
The third message from Tama’s story that resonates with me is one of a reminder. It’s something that I personally think is important in how we go about our professional human endeavours in health. That it is perfectly alright for our endeavours to retain an air of whimsy. It is okay; indeed, it is desirable for the endeavours for which we may lead to be fun.
Many of the important things we do are serious matters. Disease, inequity, trauma. Science, research, evidence. Policy, regulation, procedures. My experience across several large organisations and within bureaucracies, is that the modern managerial culture biases towards an approach that takes itself so seriously, that it expunges all the whimsy and joy from work.
As a simple example, think about just every document you’ve seen with headshots and brief bios. The typical and received “professional” format will have everybody looking at the camera with a “smile at the camera” smile, and a deadly serious textual description.
Endeavours worthwhile of leadership are human endeavours and as per my discussion of the importance of teams, human relationships are inescapable. Fun and joy in our work contributes to what makes our lives meaningful. The purpose of our important endeavours needs to be seen and subsumed into the greater philosophical context of the “good life”. Why does any of this matter at all? As a leader, we have a role in setting the culture of our teams.
So, it’s okay to not take ourselves and our endeavours so seriously that we lose perspective that as leaders we are nonetheless people. Being present, choosing to take ownership for the responsibility for an endeavour doesn’t mean that we are infallible. Building, supporting, and developing a culture of positive human relationships in our teams; enjoyment, and joy in our mutual endeavours; is what helps the construction of meaning and meaningfulness of work. And remember, even Tama Daimyojin only ascended to godhood after her work was done.
Thank you.
