By Greg Czajka
One thing that has fascinated me since entering the professional world is how the people at the top got to where they are. Most often, you don’t get the chance to interview a hospital president and ask them about their career path so you may see if that is shared on their LinkedIn profile. In my experience, executives don’t post the full breadth of their working life online, instead focusing on the past 5-10 years. It makes you wonder how they made that leap from graduate to executive.
While I am not an executive, I do aspire to be one someday (some may call me crazy for having such a dream) and thought to share my opinions and experiences that have paved the way for me to get there.
I worked as a frontline BMET for 10 years before changing my career trajectory towards leadership. I recognize that there are numerous paths to follow and there is not a “one size fits all” answer, but I stand by the decisions I made and am grateful for the opportunities I had. Those 10 years allowed me to develop the technical skills and begin my growth in professional communication – verbal, body language and articulate e-mails.
If you ever sit in a meeting with managers, directors or higher-level individuals, take note on how they present themselves; how they sit in their chairs and address the room when speaking. More often than not, they are calm, confident and professional. While they may be shaking on the inside, they’ve learned to control their voice and body through repetition. Public speaking, whether in front of a room of 5 people or a crowd of 700 usually gets easier over time with practice. At least it has for me.
About 5 years into my BMET career, I pursued an MBA deciding that it would help me move into leadership sometime down the line. I believe it helped when I decided to transition into a clinical engineer role. I made this career move on the basis that knowing the other side of the HTM business (regulatory, contracts, project work, database administration) would prepare me to lead a team. Around the same time, I got involved with my regional HTM association in which I currently sit on the leadership board.
It was during this time that I felt I had matured the most and stopped thinking like a tech and more like a leader. I began looking at problems as opportunities to be fixed instead of ignored. I began corresponding with directors and an occasional vice president with regularity which further honed my communication skills. I took note of how these leaders crafted their emails – specifically not making them lengthy, breaking up thoughts into paragraphs, and using accurate spelling, grammar and punctuation.
One life lesson – long emails get skimmed at best. Keep them short and sweet if you want to get your message across.
Fast forward 16 months and I’ve solidified my position as an HTM supervisor – my first true leadership role. I went into the position trying to keep myself grounded – looking at all the decisions through the lens of a technician. Having been one so long (and relatively recently at the time), I knew where the pain points were and what was realistic to ask of my team. Retention, I found, is a daily challenge of any leader. If you let off the gas, it’s easy to slip and lose the trust, respect and cooperation of your team leading to them seeking opportunities elsewhere.
I began to involve myself in everything I could – learning the ways of hospital operations outside the lens of HTM. I made friends with other site leaders and went out of my way to ask questions about their work – how it’s done and why they do what they do. I wanted to expand my knowledge to everything because that’s what executives are expected to know. It helped that I had a “glass half full” and “can-do” attitude towards pretty much everything asked of me. Leaders are expected to get it done, not complain about the ask. Don’t get me wrong, I challenged decisions I didn’t agree with, but at the end of the day if it needed to get done, I got it done.
Fast forward another 16 months and I was promoted to a site manager at one of the largest sites in my system. I continued my trend of remembering my biomed roots while learning more and more about the rest of the site and meeting other leaders. I prided myself on being a go-to resource for many things and keeping organized. It was around this time I was introduced to Microsoft OneNote which replaced Excel as my note keeping tool of choice. Highly recommended if you can get past the short learning curve. If you plan to move into leadership, being adaptable and learning new things despite “this is how it’s always been done” is a must-have mentality! Those who cannot accept change are doomed to fail.
An opportunity to volunteer on a major conference planning committee presented itself to which I was thrilled to participate. This, again, introduced me to leaders throughout my organization and gave me the opportunity to participate and show what I bring to the table. Through this committee, I was introduced to a leader in a department outside of HTM that I found interesting. When a position opened up in that department, I applied and that brought me to where I am today.
If you’ve made it this far, my point is that networking and attitude play a role in moving up the corporate ladder. You need to be good at what you do and deliver on promises as well or people will see through you eventually. Don’t be afraid to branch out of your comfort zone, ask questions and take on new challenges.
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or ask me questions directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-czajka-chtm-6375301a/
– Greg Czajka is a support services operations director, operations and strategy for Advocate Aurora Health.
Note: The ideas in this column are those of the author and do not reflect my current or previous employer nor that of TechNation.
