I have part of a movie quote in the header of one of my social media profiles that is intended to represent how I try to approach daily life. It is not super serious (no quote from Happy Gilmore can be), but it has meaning for me as a person, as a CRNA, and now as a leader. The full quote is below:

“Oh yeah. Lotta pressure. You gotta rise above it. You gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad. Harness. Energy. Block. Bad. Feel the flow Happy. Feel it. It’s circular. It’s like a carousel. You pay the quarter, you get on the horse, it goes up and down, and AROUND. It’s circular. Circle, with the music, the flow. All good things.”

The setback that changed my mindset

While the movie and the scene it appears in are obviously comedic, the basic tenets are a great connection point between two different parts of my career: a time when I struggled and where I am now. My path to leadership has not been a typical, linear one where I simply advanced through the recognized steps and found myself leading groups and managing anesthesia at multiple facilities. It took a significant professional setback to make me stop and actually look at how I was showing up.

Molehills, mountains, and finding ways to add value

Changing my mindset changed how I viewed each day, my interactions, and my goals for my career. Instead of seeing every negative event or interaction as a mountain to be conquered, I started to distinguish which ones were molehills and which ones were actually mountains. It allowed me to find ways, as a staff CRNA, to add value and contribute positively to the group as a whole, to the facility, and to my career.

What leadership looks like for me now

My end goal was never to become a leader within a group or an organization, but I like to think that the shift in mindset led to being trusted with responsibility for myself and others. There have been bumps along that road as well, but my main focus since I first became a Chief CRNA has been to stay solution-focused instead of problem-focused, to be willing to do anything I would ask anyone else to do, and to stay end-goal oriented instead of short-term focused. In short, to find ways to “Harness. Energy. Block. Bad.” I have also been lucky to have colleagues, bosses, and mentors along the way who have been willing to be patient, to educate, support, and guide me into being a better professional and, hopefully, a decent leader.

If there is one thing I would pass on, it is this: leadership rarely arrives on a straight line, and the setbacks are often where the real growth happens. The best leaders I have worked with did not wait for a title to start adding value. They found the molehills, saved their energy for the actual mountains, and made the people around them better. That is the kind of leadership we try to build at LifeLinc, one provider at a time.

About the author: Jason White, CRNA, is Vice President of Anesthesia at LifeLinc Anesthesia, where he leads clinical teams across multiple facilities. He began his career as a staff CRNA and later served as a Chief CRNA.

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