Latest / Daily Influence / 546. Empowering the Healers: Lara Effland on Leading with Clarity, Courage, and Compassion

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546. Empowering the Healers: Lara Effland on Leading with Clarity, Courage, and Compassion · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the daily influence where our mission is to deliver a daily dose of positive influence that can uplift you personally or be shared within your sphere of influence.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: While not every episode may directly apply to your unique circumstances, we strive to provide insights and inspiration relevant to most people's daily, weekly, and monthly lives.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether you are tuning in during the morning, noon or night, the daily influence is here for you.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listen, share, and embrace the power of influence in your life.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Daily Influence.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Greg Collino.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today, I'm honored to welcome Laura Eflin, an inspiring leader in the field of behavioral health.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura has developed and led national behavioral health treatment programs, managed teams of over three hundred providers and operational staff, and is passionate about mentoring providers to be healthy, effective, and grounded in evidence-based practices.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Through her work at the clinician development collective, she is dedicated to helping people, whether patients or providers learn best practices, gain clarity, and take effective action.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lara embodies the principles of positive and responsible influence that we celebrate in the INT series.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Daily Influence Lara.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thanks Greg.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was a beautiful introduction.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate that.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And thank you so much for having me here.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: This has been very inspiring to me, you know, to hear everything that you've been doing within your organization.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I love what the mission that you are driving with this podcast.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's an honor to be on it.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Lara, can you share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today with our listeners?
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm a licensed independent clinical social worker, which essentially is a therapist, a psychotherapist and
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Through the process of becoming a therapist, you really have a wide array of options.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is to how you're going to get there and what licensure you're going to hold.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so when, you know, in high school, I actually started to have a passion for mental health.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I saw not only the impact like for myself and my family, but also for my friends and the high school kids that I was growing up with.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was working on crisis hotlines.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was working with the elderly at a local nursing home.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I knew I just wanted to go into some form of behavioral health.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And psychology was just so fascinating to me, to look at not only the challenges that we face.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: As humans but the growth and the resilience and just like the try try again method is really just an inspiring you know thing to witness and to also to have inspiration for yourself as well because you too are you know as a therapist or human who's going through a lot.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I decided on social work because it actually is a very versatile kind of background to have in mental health.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can do so many different things with that particular degree.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I focused on clinical social work, which is really a main focus in evidence-based practices, theory around mental health, psychology, personal environment,
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just, yeah, I'm so grateful that I chose this.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been doing it now for eighteen years and it's been a gift, honestly, to be a part of this is my profession.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you for sharing that.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura, what does positive and responsible influence mean to you as a leader in behavioral health?
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how do you apply these principles in your work with both providers and patients?
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I loved that kind of like dynamic between positive and responsible because I actually feel like they play off of each other, you know, I think you want in order to be positive or responsible.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think you want to just always be learning.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's so important to understand.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: What, you know, there's so much that we don't know yet, you know, that we hopefully will figure out tomorrow.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's so many things that we have figured out that we didn't know yesterday.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that learning and education helps you be more positive because you see opportunity.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: You see that there's advancement.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's so much that you can do.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I always like to give options not only to like my patients but also to you know employees or my supervisees or so forth that like here's everything that you get to choose from.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The opportunity is really positive part of life.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And responsibility, I think, though, is to just be very grounded in your education and kind of making sure that it's coming from, you know, a wide array of vantage points and perspectives and recognizing that you have your own bias, that you have, you know, things that you personally believe in, but that doesn't mean that's true for someone else.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so being open to feedback and learning from another person, you know, experience and perspective.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think kind of ties the two together.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a really great points.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell us about a moment or experience where you thought you made a positive impact on someone's life, whether a patient, a team member or fellow leader?
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also love that question too.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things I think I've been reflecting on, you know, after being in this field for a while is that honestly, like, that is my barometer.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, what impact am I
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Am I making what impact do I have on people?
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I feel most passionate and engaged when I'm not or when I am, you know, having that positive impact.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the thing that I found
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: to be a really valuable part of my leadership growth was actually the job that I took here in Seattle.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I became an executive clinical director, kind of overseeing our West Coast organization with this large behavioral health company.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was a challenging place to go into.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, Seattle is a wonderful place with so many resources.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It actually, you know, Washington State has a lot of capacity and an opportunity for behavioral health.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: services.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think kind of accessibility is higher.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of insurance support around behavioral health.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just being here was really a wonderful opportunity.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when I came to work with the individuals, they were really struggling, you know, that the providers themselves were really struggling with kind of
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: feeling heard also wanting to do good work, but then struggling with like, well, how do we do good work, especially in managed care settings and so forth, when there's a lot of red tape and barriers and sometimes things that, you know, you would like to do, but maybe not able to do because of insurance reimbursements or so forth.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what I found to be a really great learning experience was really going back to that establishing a safe place for individuals who are providers so that they can do good care.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what that kind of took was to repair that relationship, you know, the leadership team had to show trust, you know, had to show that you were listening, had to have positive impact, not just with one person, but hundreds of people.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so how do you start to build that trust while also doing good work?
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so I think,
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: finding a common goal that everybody can get behind and have a mission driven company is really important and that we all feel good about that mission and that we are choosing to be there because of that mission.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like, you know, it was a successful turnaround.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We really built a wonderful, you know, strong leadership team and also a great group of providers.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we felt really proud of what the work that we were doing and the people that we were helping.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: In your experience, leading and mentoring such large teams, what strategies have you found most effective in building cohesive collaborative teams where everyone feels valued and accountable?
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so I think, you know, so I don't know if you've ever done Clifton's strengths, finder, love that by the way, and I give it to everybody.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so learning is my top strength.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think for me, that is what I tend to kind of go into is having this openness.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like being open to feedback.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that learning back to kind of that positive and responsible, like how do you be a leader that
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a wonderful metaphor of, you know, a leader is a thermostat, essentially like how are you setting the temperature in the room and recognizing that there's other people who are trying to be a thermostat as well.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And how do you negotiate that space?
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think being really open and transparent.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: in your leadership team, I think being courageous and having difficult conversations is really important.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that also being respectful and practicing what you preach, but trying to also, again, come back to a structure.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: What, again, are we working towards together and trying to stay focused?
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And accountable to that.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So to me, I think just ongoing learning of how to best do that is really important.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's easy and it's always changing.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, every time you go to like finally complete an OKR, there's another OKR.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you have to, you know, kind of look at and understand.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for showing that I love that leadership is a thermostat in setting the temperature.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a great analogy.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you stick rounded and up to date in such a dynamic field and how do you inspire your teams to embrace continuous learning and growth?
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I try to share as much as I can about what I'm learning.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think because I love to learn, I find like I get really excited about the things that are happening.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I find AI to be so fascinating.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I find new evidence-based treatments, but then looking at also the application of evidence-based treatments and how we're learning so much more about diversity and how individuals from
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, a such a wide array of backgrounds are impacted by other than space treatment and so how to learn from that.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it is a lot to do with going to trainings, going to conferences.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: taking on, you know, always investing in yourself.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't, you know, I think paying for those types of courses or those advanced trainings are wonderful.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if your company doesn't have programs to subsidize those types of things, it's still to consider it to be an investment in yourself and to add that.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think to me, that is what makes this a joy is to keep learning.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I find that ensuring that you continue to see what else is out there and what else you're interested in passionate about because that too is growing as much as you are as you look at older.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's so true.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura, what message are words of encouragement?
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Would you like to share with our listeners who aspire to make a positive difference in the world, whether in healthcare or beyond?
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know if there's any clinicians out there and I hope it's okay.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to also share a podcast that I've been doing, which is clinician to clinician.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what I think is really important is to recognize that diversifying your skillsets, your knowledge, like what you can do or how you want to, you know,
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: contribute or have an impact in the world.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a key to making sure that you really enjoy the longevity of our profession.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's a long life working.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think diversification is really an asset, you know, that I think it's
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wonderful.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I find, you know, side jobs, you know, kind of side gigs or side passions to be really helpful.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: If like your day to day is, you know, your nine to five is really your bread and butter, but it's not your passion.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, finding something then outside of that that you can really invest in.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It will impact you positively in everything that you do.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's so energizing.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I just always say, don't give up on that and always be open to new possibilities and other things that you could add to your, you know, your toolbox.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's great advice.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing your insights, your passion, your wisdom with us.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, your dedication to helping both providers and patients grow, find clarity and take positive action truly exemplifies the spirit of responsible influence that we strive for here at the INT series and daily influence.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura, if our listeners want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do so?
• 14:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I actually have a website called cliniciandevelopmentcollective.com and I offer supervision, consultation, training, and it's really, it's a community and other providers in mental health, you know, kind of come together.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I do individual and I sometimes, you know, bring people together in groups, but also offering clinician vision program to help you with
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: really the basics, the foundation of what truly helps a clinician springboard from their masters to practice because it's a big jump and really nobody prepares you for it.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So trying to give a lot more again opportunity and opportunity for people to really master their craft.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Great.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Laura.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll put that information in the show notes.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for joining us today and daily influence.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so grateful that you were here with us and that you are spreading positivity and having positive influence on so many people.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Great.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So much.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was fun.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate you and everything that you all are bringing.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thank you.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to daily influence.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope today's conversation offered you insight and inspiration.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're resonated with you, share with someone who could use little positivity today.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember, your influence, bigger, small, can create meaningful change.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Keep showing up, leading, and growing one day to time.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, keep spreading positivity and purpose in all that you do.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye.