Public Health SPOTlight Podcast
Sujani Sivanantharajah, the founder of PHSPOT.org sits down with public health heroes of our time to share career stories, inspiration, and guidance for building public health careers.
The message she hopes to share through these conversations is that building a career is not only about climbing up the ranks, but about crafting a life that you want, around your unique needs, and one that gives importance to your mental health, wellbeing, and building relationships and friendships: you can only do good in the world if you take care of yourself.
Through PH SPOTlight, you will connect with peers you have never met before, and build relationships in a deep and meaningful way.
Public Health SPOTlight Podcast
Leadership Skills Every Public Health Professional Should Develop
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Leadership in public health transcends job titles—it's about how we inspire action, communicate vision, and guide others regardless of our position. This essential skillset helps navigate the complex, messy work of creating healthier communities through building trust and mobilizing stakeholders toward common goals.
Discussed in this episode:
- What leadership really means in public health
- Why it's absolutely necessary
- The specific leadership skills you need to develop
- How you can build leadership skills — even if you’re just starting out
Join the Public Health Career Club for leadership development resources, mentorship opportunities, and community support: phspot.org/club.
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Welcome to PH Spotlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join us weekly right here, and I'll be here too. Your host, sujani Siva from PH Spot. Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the PH Spotlight podcast, the place for public health professionals like you and me to be inspired, to learn and to build a fulfilling career that truly makes a difference. I'm your host, sujani, and today's episode is one that I've been looking forward to, and it's called leadership skills that every public health professional should develop.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're thinking, but I'm not a manager, I'm not leading a team, I just want you to hang tight, because leadership in public health is so much more than job titles. I do have a couple of episodes from the past where we've talked about what is leadership Like? Is it the same as management? Right, as you move up the career ladder, is leadership kind of tied to your, your position or your title, and the guests that I interviewed and the discussions we've had kind of pointed to the same. I'd say. Conclusion that leadership is independent from your job titles, right? So leadership is about how we show up. It's about how we influence, how we guide and support others, regardless of our position, how we guide and support others, regardless of our position. So, whether you're a student, an analyst, a program coordinator or even an executive director, right, leadership is part of the work that we do every single day in public health, and I would go as far as arguing that leadership is an essential skill that public health professionals need to develop, because it's how we influence change and it's how we make the communities that we serve healthier. Essentially, year, essentially, right. So in this episode, what I want to do is walk you through what leadership means within the context of public health, why it's necessary, the specific leadership skills that you need to develop, and then we'll have a short discussion on how you can actually build those skills, even if you're just starting out in public health or you're a student.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's jump in. What is leadership beyond the job titles? Right? So leadership isn't about how much power you have in an organization. It's not about being in charge. It's not about having a big team or a fancy title.
Speaker 1:At its core, leadership is the ability for an individual to set a vision, to inspire action and to guide others with integrity, empathy and accountability. Right? So in public health, leadership can often look like coordinating stakeholders from different sectors. So if you're leading a project and you're the only one who's part of that project, being able to coordinate all of the different players that will essentially support you on this project is what leadership is about. As an example, right? Another example is guiding communities through change. So maybe your organization has developed a program and this is going to be a huge change for this community. As a public health professional, can you show up and inspire this community to help them see this vision and to support them so that they can feel that this change is truly going to be life-changing for them?
Speaker 1:Another way leadership can show up in public health is making data-informed decisions with kind of that human impact in mind right, being empathetic to the individuals who will be impacted. So, speaking up when you're maybe sitting with decision makers and you're talking about the analysis that you've done to be able to also bring in that other angle of like, okay, how does this impact actual individuals? Individuals that's leadership. And then another example is advocating for equity, for justice and and evidence-based policies right. So how you show up for the communities you serve and the way you are able to inspire action, you're able to communicate a vision to the different people that you work with. That's leadership.
Speaker 1:So the second part of it is kind of like why is this critical in public health? Right, why is it important for us in public health to be good leaders, to be strong leaders, to be good leaders, to be strong leaders? And it's because the work that we do is quite complex, it's messy, it's multi-layered. We're dealing with systems, with policies, with communities, politics, data, deep-rooted inequities, and so being strong in kind of the area of leadership and having those skills it helps us to navigate the uncertainty that comes with the complex work that we do. If that makes sense, trust amongst the stakeholders that we work with and the communities that we work with, showing up as someone who has the ability to, you know, bring people together around a common vision, it builds that trust and then it makes your next steps, in whether you're developing a program or doing some research, that much easier. If you're able to show up as a leader in front of the people that you're working with and together you mobilize everyone to work towards a common goal, and then it essentially creates that lasting systemic change that we want to see in public health.
Speaker 1:We saw that, you know, in times of crisis, like the pandemic or the climate disaster that we're dealing with at the moment, we really need leaders who are trusted, who are calm, who can communicate clearly, and so, in public health, it's critical that each individual, regardless of where you sit, kind of, in that hierarchy within an organization, is a strong leader, because, whether you are leading a team or you're advocating or just everyday work, you want to be able to show up as a strong leader who has these skills to to bring people together around this common vision, to create change within the communities that you're supporting, right? So, ultimately, you want to help these individuals you know, whether they're stakeholders, your co-workers, the community take action towards a healthier life, right? So, in public health again going back to that necessity for each individual who works in public health to be a strong leader is essential. It's like, regardless of whether you're an epidemiologist, a project manager, you know health promoter, public health nurse, you, you need to be able to show up as a strong leader and you need to be able to think of yourself as a leader and for you to think about this skill set as something that's essential for you to have to essentially, you know, do well in that role, but also to succeed in this career that you've kind of built for yourself.
Speaker 1:Right as we're talking, I do also want to pull up the two podcasts that I think they're really good conversations to listen in on, and the first one is from very long ago. It's published in September of 2020 and it was episode number 20. So if you're using Spotify or Apple podcast, you're gonna have to kind of scroll all the way to the, to the bottom, to episode 20, because this one is episode 171 and it's called public health leadership in action with Anjum Sultana. This is a really good episode for you to listen to, because we do talk about, kind of you know, how can we show up as a leader? And then the other episode is episode number 12.
Speaker 1:So, again, kind of you have to go down to the very bottom, titled Fueling your Leadership Drive in Public Health, with Nadia Aksir. This was also a really good conversation around. You know what is that leadership drive, what does leadership mean and how Nadia was able to show up as a leader. And then we have that conversation around you know, do we need to be in management to be a leader? And then we talk about are there natural born leaders versus people given the right opportunities to become a leader, right? So both of these conversations are really good for you to listen to, in kind of a different format of an episode, but I hope kind of you know just this brief introduction of why leadership in public health is critical and something for you to think about and, hopefully, action, and for you to look out for opportunities where you can build your leadership experience and your skills, right so, speaking of skills, there are some core leadership skills that I think we need to develop, so we'll break down a few of them.
Speaker 1:First one is emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence is really the ability to understand, to regulate and respond to emotions, both yours and others. Work we do is often people-centered and, as a leader, regardless of what position or role or title you hold, it's important that you're able to listen to your, your stakeholders, the community members, and create that safe space for dialogue, because for you to be able to inspire change, get people committed around a common vision, there needs to be trust involved, right? So if you have high emotional intelligence and you're able to create a safe space for people to feel like they're being listened to, that they can express themselves, you'll be able to collect so much information, you'll be able to build so much trust and, as a result, you will be able to help people take action towards that common goal, right? So ways to build emotional intelligence and you know, this episode is really kind of an intro for me to plant the idea in your head, and I really just want you to go and see what resources exist within your organization. There might be some leadership training, there might be some programs that you can get involved in. So a lot of the skills and the ideas I give you are going to be very brief and I want you to take it as a starting point for you to go on and find more resources, right? So a good way to build emotional intelligence is to practice mindfulness and self-awareness. Also, ask feedback from peers. If you're in a situation where you are maybe facilitating a conversation or discussion, go back to your peers and ask them how do you feel that went? Are there areas that I could improve on that went? Are there areas that I could improve on? Right? So that's a good way for you to kind of do some self reflection and then also again see if there's any specific training around. How do you communicate with different types of individuals and ensure that you are able to create a safe space for dialogue and be able to kind of like listen, right? So emotional intelligence is a good skill set to develop for strong leaders.
Speaker 1:Second kind of area that you can look into is systems thinking. So, seeing the big picture I've mentioned this several times as a leader, you want to be able to get a group of people to see your vision and to inspire all of these individuals to take a call, to take kind of interest in a common goal, to take action towards that common goal. So if you're able to have that systems thinking and able to see the bigger picture in this in kind of like the area that you work in, maybe how policies or institutions and people are interconnected, you'll be able to speak to the different stakeholders and collaborators in a way that makes sense to them, right? So you always have to think it's not about the day-to-day operational work that I'm doing, right, I'm crunching these numbers and I'm doing this analysis, but how can I communicate this in a way that it connects to that bigger picture, to the, the system that all of these individual factors are connected within? Right, because public health problems don't exist in silos, right, and so you need to know how these different pieces all tie in and why your you know small project where you spent several weeks crunching these numbers, why that's important, how it connects up into the system, and so some ways for you to develop that systems thinking is reading, lots of reading of case studies, of different health interventions, and then even kind of looking at your own work and mapping out the players and the forces that impact that specific work. You can do some like traditional learning courses, online courses around how to build logic models, that kind of think about the interconnectedness of the different factors. But I think you know, if you can find specific courses around systems thinking in public health, it'll kind of open your eyes and allow you to kind of think in that way, and then that kind of sets the stage for additional learning and additional skill building in this area, especially listening.
Speaker 1:We kind of talked about this with the emotional intelligence piece, but listening is so key, right? So it's not just about writing or presenting. Those are very important because as a leader, as somebody who's trying to inspire individuals around the common vision, you definitely need to be able to articulate that, whether it's in like written format or when you're doing a presentation. But being able to listen, to be able to translate complex ideas and connect them with different audiences is so critical, and so being able to have these spaces, or create spaces where people trust you because you're a good listener, um, it's going to take you far as a leader. So, um, communication is key, right? Um, because you want to be able to, uh, present um your ideas to maybe it's a group of city counselors one day and then a community group the other day. You need to be able to know how to tell that story for these different groups of people, but then, on the flip side, also be able to listen to the feedback that they give you, because that's going to help you be a better leader, to be able to take what you're hearing and modify the story to make sure that it connects with your people, right, and so best way to practice communication is essentially that, like, practice that storytelling Whenever you get an opportunity to talk about your work, see if there's a story that you can pull around it, and it's not just.
Speaker 1:You know, here's my analysis and these are the methods that I use. But how can you tell that story to kind of show people, the. So what like? What does this all mean? The the so what like? What does this all mean? Right? Um, other ways you can do this is kind of again doing some learning, right? Learning plain language writing techniques. If you want to improve in your written communication, if you want to improve in your oral presentation, you can record presentations that you're about to take to see for yourself. You know where are areas that I can improve. Maybe get your peers involved and see if they have any suggestions for you. So that's another skill set. So we talked about emotional intelligence, we talked about systems thinking and we talked about communication. So those are three.
Speaker 1:The next thing I want to talk about is resilience and adaptability, right? So when you see yourself as a leader, and regardless of what position you're in, you will see that things are changing right. So things will change in your organization. Projects will pivot, new data will surprise you, but as a leader, you want to make sure you're grounded and you're flexible, right? I think if you're kind of like I don't want to be a leader, I just want to put my head down, do my number crunching and be done for the day. That's one way to go about it. The other way to go about it is like how does all of this connect with that bigger picture that we talked about? How is this impacting the people that we're supposed to serve? When you start thinking about it in that way, you will see that first of all, like if you can get yourself involved in some of these conversations and be at these tables, I think that would be excellent. And when you do get exposed to, you know these types of conversations that people are having, you will notice that there will often be lots of change, right, and so knowing that there will be change and knowing that you need to be adaptable and flexible will be key as a leader, especially, I think, when you combine it with being in a management role.
Speaker 1:Eventually, when you do move up the corporate ladder, or if you're already a manager or a director and you pair that with wanting to be a strong leader, I think being able to adapt, think quickly on your feet, is going to be a skill that is going to be very helpful for you to develop very early on. So in order to build that skill, I think reflecting regularly will be helpful. So just think about challenges you've faced in the past. How were you able to bounce back from that, have a personal support system, like who are the individuals I can lean on when things get a bit tough and I don't know kind of which way to go with my decision. It's good to have a support system. And then also celebrating the small wins that you do get right. We can be so focused on, on, maybe, projects that didn't go a certain way, or if we weren't able to convince a group of people to take a certain action. We may be hung up on those setbacks and not celebrate the small wins that we did have. So I think, to be able to build that resilience and adaptability, those are some of the things that we need to focus on. So reflecting regularly, building that support system and then celebrating our wins. So those are a few kind of skills that I think I would focus on if I were to step into that new role as a leader. Right, you know, regardless of what job title I have, I want to be a leader in public health. So how can I go about that? I will develop these different skills. Right, there was emotional intelligence, there was systems thinking, communication and then building your resilience and adaptability. So, for, I gave a few ideas of how you can build those different skills, but just very quickly, some other ways for you to figure out, like, how can I get involved in really like taking action to build up my leadership skills?
Speaker 1:I'd say start with reading, reading books around leadership. It doesn't need to be related to public health per se. Just reading about what it means to be a good leader will help you change your mindset and separate leadership from management, right? Op-eds are really great. If there are leaders in public health that you really respect and follow, read any articles that they may have written for newspapers. Follow organizations like the I think there's a National Public Health Leadership Institute. So, reading books, articles, any leaders that you follow on LinkedIn. They may be writing like reflective posts as well. Those are good ones to read.
Speaker 1:Second practice Practice what we'll call like micro leadership, right? So are there opportunities in your current work? Maybe you can volunteer. Maybe there's like mentorship that you can take on in your current work. Maybe you can volunteer. Maybe there's like mentorship that you can take on um. Can you um try to show up as a leader in these different areas? Um, and try to kind of identify, like, how are you changing your mindset? What are some things that you're doing to show up as a leader, right? So leadership is like muscle, so you want to keep using it. You want to keep setting that mindset for a leader in public health right, you want to show up as a leader in public health. So try these kind of micro leadership opportunities and see if you can find these in your current work or other areas that you're involved in.
Speaker 1:Another one is to join some sort of a leadership program, right? So, whether it's within your organization, they may have these programs that are several months to several years long where they train you as a leader, several months to several years long, where they train you as a leader. There may be fellowships, different public health organizations, local or national. They may have different programs. Try those out, because I think it's helpful to sometimes have that structured setup when we're trying to change the way we think about something. So having that structure could be really helpful. So looking out for some of these leadership programs and applying to them and um, hopefully, kind of getting in and getting a bit more of a structured um, skill building approach, um approach could be really helpful.
Speaker 1:And then, I think, setting a goal for yourself like a leadership goal. What is it that you want to like? Who is it that you want to show up as? Right, like, what does you, as a leader in public health, look like for you? You, as a leader in public health, look like for you? So you know, defining that for yourself and having that goal makes it easier for you to do all the other things that I just talked about. Right, because if we don't know which way we are going, like which direction, it's help, it's not easy to figure out. Okay, what are my action steps? So setting a goal for yourself will be helpful because there's a direction that you can go towards right. So I hope this episode kind of introduced this idea of you being a leader in public health and kind of, what are the different things that you can do? And if you're listening, you're like okay, yes, I want to build my leadership muscle, I want to be a leader in public health.
Speaker 1:Some great places to kind of start are all the online kind of public health association websites. You know they may have different resources for building leadership. Linkedin learning definitely would have some leadership courses, books inside the public health career club. Our community is filled with you know peers that you can chat with about leadership. There's leadership. There's workshops and different opportunities that we have there. Follow people, individuals in your organization or outside the organization, organizations that you look up to and you see leaders in that space. Follow them on LinkedIn so you can study how they show up as a leader, right. So these are some ideas for you to really jump into things and take action and not just kind of sit and think, oh yeah, I think it'd be nice to be a leader in public health, but really take that action right.
Speaker 1:So, to wrap up, I hope I've been able to convince you that leadership in public health is essential. It's something that I really feel that each one of us needs to have, and that you don't need a title to start building that leadership muscle. You don't need to be a manager or in a management position to be a leader. You just need that willingness to grow in that eagerness, that inspiration to want to see change in the communities that you serve. So remember, leadership is how you show up. It's how you're supporting your team, your community, the different stakeholders you work with, and how you're able to inspire that change and help people see a common vision right. So I hope, with that I can convince you to just choose one action that you can take this week around leadership and being a leader in public health and see where that takes you right. Just one small step. So try that. Let me know if this kind of sets you off on a path to developing more leadership skills and for you to show up as a leader.
Speaker 1:And I really encourage you to use LinkedIn maybe to write a reflective post about this, about being a leader in public health, and definitely tag me, because I'd love to. I'd love to read it. So thank you so much again for spending past 30 minutes or so with me. If this episode sparked something for you, please do share it with a colleague or send me a message. I'd love to hear how you're growing in your public health career and if you're not already in the Public Health Career Club, our membership community, please join us.
Speaker 1:It's an incredible space. We host events, we have mentorship opportunities. We have resources to really support you on your public health career. We've set two membership tiers to make it accessible. Either $7 or $25 a month Gives you a ton of value. So take a look at that. Phspaorg slash club. Until next time, keep showing up, keep learning and remember. Leadership isn't something that you wait for. It's something that you wait for. It's something that you practice. It's something that you show up as okay. Um, you've been listening to the ph spotlight podcast and so johnny and I will catch you the next episode.