BRUDER STAPLETON: Good morning. Thank you, Wendy. It's really a pleasure to speak today. It's a little daunting to have member of your faculty in the audience and I expect a report card back tomorrow with how closely I'm mirroring the things I'm talking about here today in my daily activities. I also would like, just on behalf of the Department of Pediatrics and medical school because the welcomes have all been from the dental school and the public health arena that the school of medicine is very much excited about the programs that you are involved with and welcomes you to this meeting and hopes that you have a very successful conference. There's certainly a number of appropriate definitions of leadership and I'm sure that you'll see such similarity between the speakers. But my personal definition of academic leadership is the ability to lead a group towards a common goal or common goals and at the same time allow the members of the group to individually be successful in the process. So, I would like to repeat that. It's bringing a group together toward a common goal or goals but requires the success of the faculty and students in the department, because if the faculty aren't successful they won't be there for the future.

Wendy asked us to make this personal so I probably will be a little unique. When I was young, I was a somewhat successful athlete and my goal was to be a teacher and a coach--a football coach--and as I studied football coaches, I was fascinated with the success of Paul Bear Bryan, the famous coach at Alabama. But why I was fascinated was that he was successful over four decades at three universities. The football players he led were Korean War veterans. They were segregated groups, they were then integrated groups, they were hippies, they were Vietnam Veterans, they were baby boomers, and even at the end of his career he'd coach (inaudible). Can you imagine leading such a diverse group?  The style of football changed completely during those four decades and yet he was successful continuously. So, I recognized in him someone able to develop and recruit talent, to mold talented people into teams, and someone who had the ability to adapt, relate, and communicate successfully to wide groups of values and people over many years. Wendy asked me to discuss my career in the context of academic leadership.

To begin with, I have a personal mission. My mission is to improve the lives of children. To be honest, I have no idea when this became part of my personal fabric, but I'm sure it was in my thoughts when I hit it off from rural Kansas to the University of Kansas to become a teacher and a football coach. And later when I entered medical school, I'm sure it was there because I always wanted to be a pediatrician. I suspect that most leaders have a personal mission statement that guides their career choices, whether it's formal or informal, and given the nature of this program today, I bet everyone in this room shares my mission. Originally, I intended to improve the health of children as an individual by practicing pediatrics. During my residency training here at the University of Washington, my vision of how I might make a contribution to children was enhanced and expanded by my colleagues in my internship class. Four of whom later became deans imagine (inaudible) rounds with all these future deans and as well as by the faculty who inspired and took a personal interest in my career.

As a result, the guidance of Dr. David Smith, a very famous clinical genetist and Dr. Bob Hickman, one of the first pediatric kidney specialist, I became a pediatric nephrologist. These doctors demonstrated to me the power of proactive mentorship and how role models can profoundly change ones lives, something I'm sure all are aware of. Later, my academic career began at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. It was a time of rebuilding for the Department of Pediatrics and the chair, Dr. John Griffith, invited a number of us young faculty to participate in the important decisions of facing the department. As a result of those experiences, I had the opportunity to leave research programs, recruit faculty, head a medical student curriculum committee, and head the residency committee. These experiences energized me and also allowed me to recognize that I enjoyed working with groups of people that I loved having all kinds of things on my plate at the same time, and that I enjoyed building programs. I believe that these qualities are inherent to anyone in academic leadership.

At the age of 42, I became chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the State University of New York of Buffalo and pediatrician and chief of the Children's Hospital of Buffalo. That job required rebuilding a department and residency program and was a tremendous learning experience for me. I learned a lot. I can tell you. Difficult economics in the state of New York quickly forced me to learn the business side of clinical practice and to surround myself with excellent administrative staff. In 1996, I moved to Seattle to become chair of the Department of Pediatrics and pediatrician in chief at Seattle's Children's Hospital where the environment and the needs of the department were totally different than my experience in Buffalo, and so I had to learn a new and different set of skills. Sustained leadership requires adapting to different environments and different circumstances, something that Bear Bryant was so capable of. One of the first lessons that I learned after I became the chair of pediatrics was that leadership is more than excelling one's personal scholarship and it's more than management. A leader is not just a manager. Management is an important aspect of leadership, but leadership is far more than management. It was about two years into my chairman ship that I realized that I had worked for years to become the best pediatric nephrologist and researcher that I could be. And I that I now have a different job and I needed to start spending as much time learning how to be a leader of academic faculty as I had trying to be a good nephrologist. And then my new job required that same effort and it wasn't an easy transition.

Some of you who may have come to that realization that you give up a bit of your identity, something very precious to you that your identity is tied to your previous scholarship and academic success and you're not as good at this new leadership role as you were at the previous job that got you there, and it takes a lot of work. So, I began studying leadership through reading, observing, occasionally attending conferences like today's and most importantly, examining my performance and getting as much input as I could. And from my own personal studies, I've developed some concepts on leadership. So first, I think there are some organizational qualities of leaders and I consider that a successful academic leader must be a VIP. The VIP which stands for vision, integrity, and passion. A successful leader must be able to articulate a vision--the "V"--and bring the group that she or he is leading to feel that this is their vision and that they will personally be successful in reaching that vision.

The department's vision should be based on a shared mission. Our art department here at the University of Washington has just adopted a new mission statement. We've grown dramatically over the last five or six years. Our faculty have grown from 130 to over 200 within a six-year period, and we really had to take time to step back and reflect on where we were headed and what would be the principles for our future departmental investments and new programs. And I'd like to read for you the mission statement that our faculty developed because to me it's very inspiring. "Through excellence, innovation, and collaboration we will improve the health of all children and adolescents by educating the pediatric and physician leaders of the future, advancing research, advocating for children, and providing the nations best primary and specialty clinical care. In partnership with our healthcare and academic institutions, we will create a collegial environment where academic faculty can reach their personal and professional goals."  And after adopting this, I can tell you that our faculty are very, very inspired with this and it now is guiding our department. I--integrity--is so important in today's world as we're all aware. There never before has been a time for leaders with integrity that's been so important. Successful academic departments over time have faith that their organization and their leaders will make ethical decisions, both for the people we serve and for their interests. "P" for passion. I like the quote that, "nothing great is accomplished without enthusiasm." Successful leaders are passionate about their missions and the goals of their organization and we must, as leaders--because everyone in this room's a leader--recognize that we carry the flag.

The faculty are not going to be more passionate about the goals of our department than we are and we have to make that very clear. I also have come to the conclusion that there are three personal qualities that are extremely helpful in being a successful leader, and those three qualities are humor, kindness, and strategic thinking. Now I will--not having a Power Point slide--I will save you the embarrassment of not laughing at my slides that I always include jokes and my wife tells me not to put them in, and I never tell her that they bombed, but after the last speaker, I'd be very hesitant to try and be humorous. But humor in the context of leadership means not taking yourself too seriously. Angels fly because they're so light. That's a statement from a very interesting, wonderful book called "The Art Of Possibility."  This art of book possibility is a book that uses an orchestra and a conductor as an allegory for leadership. Humor makes it possible to pick yourself up after things don't work out as you planned. What about kindness? Kindness to me has both a traditional and non-traditional meaning. Kindness reflects our respect of the people in our organization. My definition of successful leadership requires the success of people within the organization. A leaders concern for the faculty never goes unnoticed but kindness in a non-traditional sense also means being honest. Dealing directly with success and perhaps more importantly with failures is being kind. Giving feedback and honest evaluations may not be seen in the traditional definition of kindness, especially if you're dealing with failures or poor performance, but dealing with difficulties and attempting to remediate unsuccessful colleagues is truly kindness and leadership. What about strategic thinking?  It's necessary to adapt to the ever-changing environment like Coach Bryant. We encounter constant changes in academics, don't we?  Having plan "B" and plan "C" when the state budget goes south is so important for our future success, and it's also essential for the moral of the faculty.

Wendy also asked us to provide some personal lessons we've learned from our leadership experiences and I won't tell you all my total failures, but one of the first lessons I learned as a division chief and later as the chair was that the success of the organization depends on the talents of others. Recruiting and retaining talented faculty and administrators has to be the first priority of a leader. Jim Collins in his book "From Good To Great" calls this "getting the right people on the bus."  The second lesson I learned--and it was pointed out by our Dr. DePaolo about Ben Franklin and George Washington--is that you have to lineup the talent of the faculty with the jobs they are performing so that they can be successful. If you don't do that the individual and the department are doomed to failure, and sometimes it's extremely hard to make that decision or to convince people that their talent doesn't lie in exactly the role they're playing at the time. The third lesson I learned was the need to develop leadership within the department. Most of our departmental leaders--if you think about it, don't know about you in the crowd--were chosen because you were outstanding academicians, that you were wonderful clinicians, teachers, researchers and that the reason you're in the role you're in had nothing to do with your leadership ability. You were just an outstanding person or maybe the last woman standing. I don't know but, you know, you were outstanding or you wouldn't be in the roles you're in, and so there's no basis of experience of leadership and it's so critical to develop that leadership skill within the department because no department or program will be successful if it depends on one person.

The fourth decision I learned was not to make important decisions alone. The more important a decision is to the department, the more important it is to seek input from the faculty. Today's faculties want and expect a voice in decisions that affect their future. I learned that there are many bright and thoughtful faculty in our department that can often save me from making many mistakes, and they also offer support for decisions that are difficult for the faculty to accept. Finally, I've learned that understanding generational values is extremely important to successful leadership just like Coach Bryant. Departments are not homogenous groups. We work with generations that preceded the baby boomers, the gen (inaudible), and now the graduate students and residents that are coming into our departments are (inaudible), all of these individuals have different values and require different approaches. Understanding and relating to each of these groups is essential for successful leadership. So, in conclusion, I want to say that I find academic leadership really fun and exciting. I find it's a privilege to work with the diverse and intellectually stimulating faculty that populate our academic departments and I congratulate each of you for your leadership roles that you're playing. Thank you.