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Chief Change Officer™
#420 Adaira Landry MD: From Mentorship to Micro Skills—Tools for Thriving at Work — Part Two
00:18:35
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- [00:13]
A
Hi everyone. Welcome to our show. Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change. Progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Dr. Adara Landry and I almost crossed paths years ago while she was earning her Master's in education at Harvard. I was seriously considering joining that same program, driven by my passion for learning and education technology. I didn't end up pursuing it, but I'm glad that fate brought us together through our shared interest in upskilling learning and the book Micro Skills, which she co authored with Dr. Reza Lewis, who joined me previously on the show. Dr. Landry is now a Harvard emergency medicine physician educator and co author of Micro Skills. Madison was always in the picture. Her mother believed she had the hands for it. But it was two real life emergencies that confirmed her path. In this two part series we talk about mentorship that actually works, why waiting to feel ready can backfire, and what it means to take ownership of your time and energy. Dr. Landry doesn't just talk about communication, she models it. Let's get into it. Let's look at your book Micro Skills. Reason Mentioned is partly a collection of articles you both wrote over time, but it's also a pretty substantial book, not a short one by any means. So I'm curious who came up with the title? What was the thought process behind it? I imagine it ties into the kind of impact you hope to make with the book, but I'd love to hear your perspective on how the title came to be.
- [02:42]
B
We had initially actually picked the name Chiseled. That was what the book was going to be called, Chiseled. I love that word. But we got some feedback that it was a little too vague, perhaps a little too, it might be construed as too masculine of a term. Is it like someone who's like buff or like it just wasn't used well in the workplace. It didn't trans, it didn't transfer over, I think as a workplace word. And we got some feedback that probably is not going to be the final word. And so I think we started thinking about what is it that we want for the reader to get out of the book. And I think this idea of micro skills comes actually from a term that I heard when I was training to be a doctor. So what happens often in medicine is you have to do this large procedure. Let's say we have to put, we have to put a catheter in someone's neck, right? But that's like a 40 step, 50 step process. And so for each of those steps, you can really learn how to hold your fingers, how to hold the tubing, how to position the patient. You can optimize each of those things. And a lecture I heard when I was a resident was actually titled Micro Skills for Placing this Catheter. It was. That's what it was called, and I loved that title. And so when I was thinking about what word we could use, I went back to that lecture and I thought to myself, I remember that in that lecture, they weren't teaching the grand scheme of everything, but they were going into the minutia. These are the things you had never considered about this particular procedure. So I think we wanted that idea. When it comes to the workplace, many of us want to be better at communication. Many of us want to be better at navigating conflict. But if you don't get into the weeds of it, then you can totally miss some really important skill sets. And so we really wanted to dive really deep into those critical actions and key aspects of developing these larger goals that many of us set.
- [04:46]
A
I say Micro Skills is surely more business friendly as a title in today's world, especially in the business training and learning space, everyone's talking about skill based learning. Some even argue degrees aren't as important anymore. So calling it Micro Skills really lends. It's like saying small actions, big impact and people get it right away. Now, when I first read the manuscript and I told reads this too, my first reaction was ambitious. Most business books focus on one big idea and drill deep into it across eight or 10 chapters. That's the usual advice. Pick a niche, build around it. But your book is broad. It covers networking, communication, mindset and more. Honestly, I can already see eight or ten spin off books from this one. So I'm curious, why did you choose this all in one approach instead of zooming in on just one area?
- [06:06]
B
I love this question. You have great questions. I think you're right. If you look at most business shelves or shelves in the business book section of the store, it's like communication with leadership, team management. I think there's a gap though, for those of us who just want to get better quickly, holistically. And I think there's actually a lot of people, especially as the millennials and gen zers are entering the workspace where they want fast results, they want that immediate impact. And having them need to read 20 books, 10 books, 15 books before they get there, I think is not listening to the audience. And so we really felt like we were understanding this shift to Just like, quick knowledge, short attention span, cut some of the fat, lessen the data, and get straight to the point. And that was really important. That really goes back to our background in education. If I have to give a lecture and I only have one teaching point, but I'm giving a ton of data, a ton of background, my audience might get lost. Right. And so we really wanted to just trim a lot of that fat out and get straight to the point. In terms of why we wanted this big, comprehensive book is we knew that we could, as we trimmed out a lot of the data, we could cover a lot more ground and it would become this, like, comprehensive starting place for people who are especially entering the workplace. Yes, you might need additional resources. So at the end of every chapter, of course, course we have more reading and additional things that they can watch and stuff. But we feel like this would be enough where if you just read this book, you would be like light years ahead because there's so much, there's so much content that it would at least alert you to, okay, this is how I avoid conflict. This is how I build brand or expertise. This is how I care for myself. And so even though it's not a lot of depth, it at least is highlighting a lot of topics and creating awareness. We have actually initially wanted the book to be just for early career professionals. We mentioned that in the intro. We have found mid career senior career professionals still finding it helpful and full of information that they had not learned. So I think there's still value across the career span, but I think there's a lot more value for that early career professional who's like, why does it seem like everyone else has it figured out and I don't?
- [08:31]
A
I've said this before. I really see both of you as career doctors. When I started this show a year ago, I chose consciously to position it under the career category. While I've interviewed people from all walks of life, I realized there's a massive gap in real, practical career education. And I'm not just talking about job search tips or resume writing, especially now with tools like ChatGPT. I mean, the deep stuff, insight, hindsight and foresight, real stories, real case studies, real learning, real human intelligence. Myself, I've been through top schools like Yale and Chicago.
- [09:22]
B
Booth.
- [09:23]
A
Sure, there are career services, but honestly, what they offer today isn't that different from 20, 30 years ago. And for most people around the world, whether Gen Z, millennial, Gen X or older, there's little meaningful career guidance. Everyone is figuring it out on their own. So, like you used a book, I use this show to reach people with unfiltered career conversations. That's why your book Micro Skills really resonated. It's ambitious, but that's exactly the kind of help people need. Now, I know we can go into every chapter today, but if I gave you say five minutes to talk about one section of the book, the one that speaks to you the most, what would it be? Is it communication, networking, mentorship? What's that one skill or idea you think people really need to hear?
- [10:39]
B
It varies day by day, truly, because. And that's how we wanted the book to be, where you could just turn to the table of contents and pick the section that you feel like you are going through right now and read that section so it doesn't have to be read to cover. But it could be. I think for me right now I'm actually really in this space of micro skills for learning how to grab your next opportunity. And one of the things, the specific micro skill within that chapter is pausing before you accept an opportunity. So I was of the mindset growing up, I was like fully subscribing to this mantra of say yes to everything. You probably have heard that before. It's at least it's very common in my field of medicine, which is like if someone offers you an opportunity, you say yes. You say yes, especially early on because you never know what you're missing out on. So I fully engage in this belief and I said yes to everything for many years. And that led me to feeling like the burnout, the overwork, the feeling like you're behind all the time is normal. Like that. That should be how it is. Because we're always saying yes. That means we're not filtering things out. And without that discernment, you just are saying yes to a lot of noise, a lot of what's called non promotable work, things that don't really help scale your career or even help your reputation. So I think we put this micro skill in there because we want people to know that it's okay to not impulsively say yes and to really inquire and learn what's in front of you and see if it's worth your time. That strategic skill I learned really late. Even when it came to picking my field of emergency medicine, I didn't explore it to a depth that I would if I was picking a specialty. Now, like there weren't questions that I was asking. I was just like, oh, this seems fun. But I wasn't thinking about it in a much deeper level. And so this idea of probing, investigating before you commit to something can really help you understand what the return on investment is. I didn't come up with these terms, but there's two terms that I love. Fomo. The fear of missing out. And then the converse is Jomo, the joy of missing out. And I think a lot of us fear that if we say no, oh boy, we lost our chance, it'll never come again. And that's hardly ever true, especially if you have real ambition, real talent. Jomo is freedom. It's relief, it's space, it's mental health protection. It's this idea of finding the blue ocean. And like saying, I really want to go this way because I've thought about what makes sense to me versus just reflexively saying yes to everything. And so that was an important micro skill for me because for many years I packed my plate. All of those things I was saying yes to were just horizontal. It was flat. It was just like all those things were just flat. Additions, add ons versus actual vertical climb.
- [13:38]
A
You brought up such an important point and it ties perfectly to something I released some time ago. Episodes 243 and 244, featuring Lisa Bodell, who helps teams at Google Zoom Amazon rethink how they work by focusing on simplicity. One of her core strategies is called Kill Stupid Rules. It is all about eliminating what doesn't serve us, whether that's outdated processes in organizations or at the personal level, habits and obligations that burn us out. And honestly, that hit home for me years ago. I burned out in my job. Looking back, I know why I said yes to everything. I thought that was ambition. I thought that was what you do in your 20s and 30s. But I learned the hard way that ambition without boundaries isn't sustainable. I dealt with mental health issues as a result. What saved me? Clarity. Learning to say no. Simplifying. And as you just said, it's not selfish, it's strategic. We only have a few minutes left, so let me ask you this. Is there anything I didn't ask you today that you really want to say? Maybe one or two final takeaways you want every listener or viewer to walk away with, even if they forget everything else.
- [15:32]
B
You asked? Wonderful question. So this is not a critique, but I will say that we wanted a book that was fast impact and people could actually detect their change immediately. And the promise of the book is that if you buy this book on a Friday, you'll be better at your job by Monday, assuming you read the book over the weekend. But the idea is that we don't want people to feel like they have to wait for change. And you know, we don't ask people in this book to go get a PhD or to go move across the country and start a new job. That's not what we're preaching or asking. We try to find suggestions here that are easily implementable, that are accessible to all, that also normalize that change is hard. We talk a lot about why the stuff we're recommending for you to do won't be easy and wasn't easy for us as well. So we understand that change is challenging, but the idea is that we don't want you to feel like you have to wait for life to be better.
- [16:31]
A
Thank you so much, Adara. I wish we had more time, but I know you have a class to get to and I definitely don't want to make you late. I really appreciate you taking the time today. Like I said, I hope we'll get another chance to talk again. Maybe not just about the book, but also about learning, growth, and all the experiences we share. Even hearing your childhood story today, I realized there are so many parallels to mine, especially that deep craving for learning and family expectation. I'm really glad we've finally connected. Thank you again.
- [17:16]
B
Oh, I'm glad I met you too. And thank you so much for this really amazing conversation. Vince.
- [17:31]
A
That's where we'll close this conversation. Adara shows us that ambition without filters isn't ambition, it's noise. When you pause before saying yes, when you focus on what moves you upward, you get closer to a career and life that actually fits. Micro Skills isn't about massive changes, it's about meaningful ones. You can start today. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show. Leave us top rated reviews. Check out our website and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.