Erin Powers on the value of intuition as a strong leader

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Hello, ladies should I just go ahead and introduce myself?

Yeah.

All right, well wonderful to be with you at the Hawaiian Eye, thank you so much for having me. My name is Erin Powers, and I am the vice president of global marketing and product strategy for BVI. I think many of you know this, but we are a global ophthalmic solutions provider, anterior and posterior, and we do business worldwide. So, we cover the globe, it's a very exciting position. I am also the president of OWL, Ophthalmic World Leaders. And I am also the chair of the development committee for Women of Dartmouth, which is a 501c3 and it's for women of Dartmouth, as it sounds.

 Wonderful, thank you so much for being here this morning and welcome to our Women Ophthalmology Healio Leadership Series. I'd like to start off by asking you to share any pearls that you have from your experience in your roles.

Yes, and I could probably write an essay about this, but as one of my dear mentors once told me, “Don’t give me the history of fire." So, I think the biggest pearl that has helped guide me through the duration of my career is to follow your intuition. Everybody understands kind of what that means. I define it as your gut feeling and it's your true north. Sometimes something feels incredibly right, and you can't necessarily define it. And sometimes a direction feels incredibly wrong, but you can't necessarily articulate the reason behind it, it's just an intuitive feeling. I've found that whenever I've really relinquished control, for lack of a better term, to my intuition, that's always really helped steer me in the right direction.

Erin, those are such wise comments. And sometimes you have to quiet down a little bit to hear that intuition within you.

Yes.

If you're around chaos and a lot of sound, then sometimes that intuition doesn't have time to surface.

Absolutely.

So, you have to actively look and listen for it, don't you think?

I agree.

So that's incredibly hard for somebody like me, Cynthia. And what an astute comment. You have to diligently search for that and stop your mind. I think that sometimes we can get so caught up and even some of the fact-finding that we're doing around opportunities or situations or challenges, that we really just have to stop and again, I say it kind of a strange way, but relinquish control, find your true north, follow whatever intuition your subconscious is trying to tell you.

And maybe not react so quickly.

Right.

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

So, I have question number two for you, Erin. Are you ready?

Yes, absolutely.

I'm sure along the way to where you are right now you have encountered some leadership challenges, we all do, obviously that's part of life. Can you share a challenge with us that you've encountered and through your leadership strength, have found a resolution or work around?
You give me far too much credit. I wouldn't say it's leadership strength as much as it's trial and error. Yeah, I've found that especially earlier on in my career I would have very stereotypical types of problems, of negotiations, awkward conversations, being a little bit resistant to confronting, I would say, just problems or things that I was concerned about with my leadership, even with my team, right? And what I've started to do to kind of develop myself and face that challenge is to run towards it, right? And a really good example of that is that whenever I have compensation discussions with my team, with my leadership, "guys, we don't do this as a philanthropy," that's what I tell my team. I'm like, people work for compensation and those types of conversations should not be awkward, we should run towards those, we should embrace those, because that's also going to be an environment where you learn a lot about yourself and frankly, what you're also going to do is just take some of that stress out. Once you have identified that this is an awkward topic for you, your leadership style, your communication style, whatever that is, if you run towards that, all of a sudden you've taken out a stressor and you've learned a lot about yourself and you've learned a lot about how you can communicate and develop further.

Yeah, it's wonderful, right, to embrace what makes you uneasy.

Yes, be comfortable in the uncomfortable. Right?

Right.

And that can come with everything.

Absolutely and that in itself takes strength to do.
It does.

Yeah, and it's a lesson in life, right? Embrace the uneasy, so, in that spirit, can you give us some advice to your younger self?
Oh, little Erin, yes. Oh, you're so excited, I still am today. The advice to my younger self and this comes through years of practice and some stumbling and some successes, is to practice the pause. It's as succinct as that. Cynthia, you said it earlier, sometimes finding that quiet is so difficult, but if you stop, you pause, and that can be in something abstract, "oh, I'm considering a change in my career, I want more challenge." Instead of just kind of like rushing towards something or rushing away from something, stop and pause and think through it. But it can also be applied, frankly, in presentations, in conversations, having a difficult conversation. If you practice the pause it might feel like an eternity to you, but I guarantee it isn't, number one. But number two, you're going to then, much more articulately convey your message and you're giving yourself time to react.

 It's interesting actually, in like our yoga philosophy we always say, "the pause is more important than the pose."

Yes, yes.

So, it's actually the pause in between the pose that liberates you.

That liberates you, well said, yes.

Yeah, very interesting.

Well Erin, it's been a pleasure having you in this series, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, ladies.