All right, we're going to move on to our next talk from Dr. Tom Dease from the TCU Burnett School of Medicine, Fort Worth, Texas. Dr. Tom Dease is going to talk about leadership through communication. He's one of our former ASG presidents, so I can't think of anyone else to be more qualified to talk about this topic. Dr. Dease, I think, really wanted this to be an interactive talk with participation from the audience. So, as he asks questions or poses questions to the group, please feel free to throw some comments or questions into the boxes below, and I'll be monitoring that, and I'll ask your questions throughout his talk, or we can save them for the end. Dr. Tom Dease, take it away. Very good. Thank you. I'm glad to be part of this ARIA program. It's one of the finest products that ASGE has produced and provides a lot of great education, really, around the world, so thank you for the invitation. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Zoom. I will tell you that giving a talk provides some levels of anxiety. Giving a talk on Zoom takes it up another notch, and then trying to give a talk on how to communicate effectively actually puts a great deal of pressure on a speaker, so bear with me as we talk a little bit about the role of communication, the role of communication in creating or being in a leadership role. And I will tell you, I'm now in my third career. I'm working with the School of Medicine here at TCU as a physician coach. I spent my first career in the Air Force, 20 years of medical education and paying back some time, and then my second career in Fort Worth as a gastroenterologist. In all of those careers, I didn't really aspire to leadership roles, but I found out that it just sort of was an insidious process. You get to work on a small team or a small group or committee. The next thing you know, you might be chairing a small group team or work group, and the next thing you know, you may sit on a board, and the next thing you know, you're in another executive leadership role. So whether you anticipate it coming in your future, whether you're pursuing leadership roles, be aware that in some fashion, you are going to be functioning as a leader. And with that, let's talk a little bit about what that means. So one thing I think is now as I'm midway in my eighth decade, it's important to try to retain some youthful energy and enthusiasm. So I have a plan that I'm going to share with you, and this may be your most exciting part of the talk. First of all, I like to hang around young people. So by being with this group today, I'm pretty certain most of you haven't reached the age of 74 yet, and so I'm hanging around with young people today, and of course, my role with medical students. All of those are in their 20-something age group, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a real key to staying young. The other piece is learning continuously. You know, even though I've been in leadership roles and done a lot of various communications, I found out that just in putting this talk together, there were a lot of things that I learned and put together that I hadn't before. So it's a process that helps to keep that youthful energy. And then finally, I hope all of you have a passion that makes you feel like this guy on this bicycle in the sculpture. Mine happens to be cycling, and this is a sculpture my office staff gave me when I retired from clinical practice, and though I never assumed this posture on a bicycle, it's the way I feel doing it. And so I hope that you have something in your life that helps you to feel that way, helps keep you young, youthful, and energetic. So the first question I have for you is, do you think of yourself as a leader? Again, we're not in the room together, so I don't know what some of your roles are, but I would wager that in many cases, you do have some leadership roles in the work you're doing now or certainly in your future. Are you in a role now with others that report to you? Do you work, again, just maybe in small groups, committees, work groups, or teams in which you have the opportunity to assume some leadership role in that group? Anytime you interface with others, whether to train, educate, or advise, you take on that leadership role. And I would argue that, you know, communication isn't part of leadership, it is leadership. I couldn't think of anything else that contributes more to your role as a leader than your ability to communicate. And I'm sure there may be some on this call today who are the Zoom today who are looking forward to use some of the things we're talking about. You're going to have to shift your brain from the high-tech side that deals with artificial intelligence to the low-tech side in the frontal lobe, which will be more of your thinking and communication skills. And I've lost my ability, there we go. So leadership really is, when we talk about communication, it's everything, not just what you say in words, it's everything you do. It includes, with the words, your enthusiasm, your energy. As Mr. Emerson shared with us, you're not going to accomplish anything without that enthusiasm and energy. And I think that's actually part of my plan for staying young, is to try to maintain that level of energy in anything that you pursue or anything that you do. Also agree that leadership is not a one-person thing, it is a collaborative process. It's about the many rather than the one. And so I'm going to ask today that you take a time during this presentation, and I'll ask you to share perhaps one of the insights that you've picked up today that is particularly valuable to you, that resonated with you in a way, that you might share it back to the group in talking about that. And I'll ask you to put that in the chat or in the QA section, or in a 30-minute talk, we're not going to cover all of the keys of effective leadership through communication. So if there's one that I have failed to mention that you would like to bring up, insert that in there as well, and we'll ask Dr. Kim to share some of those as we go along here today. I immediately went to a number of references on my shelf. I suspect that some of you may not have this book, The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. It's an interesting book, but I have to say I didn't pull a lot from it for this particular talk. My preferences were Stephen Covey. And if you haven't, if you don't have these books or haven't read them, and you want to explore more into the idea of leadership skills and communication skills, I would encourage both of these. Your ability to lead, your ability to communicate complaints depend completely on the level of trust of the people that you're speaking to or leading. And he addresses that in The Speed of Trust, which is a magnificent book. And then The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, also very effective to help develop your skill set as a leader and as a communicator. So if you want to explore further this topic, those are the two things I would suggest to you. But first, you know, think a little bit about how you're going to communicate. We're going to focus today mostly on verbal person-to-person or person-to-group communications. But you communicate in a lot of different ways. And I think you need to make conscious decisions about how that communication is going to be done. Is it best delivered person-to-person? Is it best delivered to a smaller or larger group? Is it something you can put in a newsletter and effectively communicate what you want to communicate? Does it have emotional content to it? Is it a highly debated topic or something that might create ill will if it's not handled in the right way? Email messaging and social media. We're going to have a speaker today who's going to address that. So I'm not going to get into that topic at all. But there are certainly some topics that are suitable for those modes of communication and other topics that you do not want to put into social media or emails or that kind of communications. So my question for you is, for what situation would you or would you not use one of these above methods? You know, what type of message might work particularly well in a newsletter or email, but may not work very well in a social media? I've got some thoughts on that. Just feel free to drop those into chat or into the QA section, and we'll get back to that hopefully toward the end. But I do want you to consciously consider those things as you plan how you're going to communicate. The other thing you need to be aware of is that our brains are constantly scanning those around us to determine are they friend or foe? As soon as I came on screen, you made certain judgments about me, my appearance, perhaps my age, the way I'm dressed. We're always in that mode. So always consider that it's not just the words you say, but it's your presence, the way you present yourself that communicates a tremendous amount of the level of confidence you have. So you could ask those questions when someone comes on screen. You say, you know, should I listen to you? Can I trust you? Should I believe you? Should I even respect what you're having to say and what you're trying to communicate for me? Or should I perhaps just avoid you altogether? And we make these assessments every time we come in contact with someone, and those that you're communicating with are frequently making that assessment. If they're in your job or your employment, that's going to be, you know, on a daily or regular basis. So that's sort of a cumulative process. But keep those in mind as you approach the way you're going to communicate and the messages that you're going to communicate. Again, we communicate in words. It's very important how you choose those words, but it's also the appearance, how you dress, your facial expressions, energy, grooming, posture, clothing, body language, whether you speak with your whole body or just with your mouth. There's also these two terms that are not easily defined, but I think they do make a difference. And I think they're a bit of a problem when you're trying to deal with Zoom. Your presence is really presenting yourself as your most powerful self. And people know when you walk into the room and you sort of come into the room with some authority and skills. Gravitas is more of your own self-confidence, how you create the credibility and what you're saying, and whether people come to respect what you had to say over a sequence of events and time. And all these are much more subtle behavioral ways we communicate than just the words we speak. But then when you do get to words, it has to do with your tone, how you emphasize different words, the pace of your speaking, how you inflect the words, and even at times when you're speaking, a period of silence makes an important sort of a punctuation to your presentation when you want something to really sink in and people to think about what you've had to say to them. So how we communicate really determines, are people going to listen in the first place? Are they going to trust what I have to say? Will they believe it? Ultimately, with repetition of communication, that then develops a level of respect and loyalty that makes future messages even more important or more credible or more believable. So it is a cumulative process as you work with your teams, groups, committees, whoever you may be supervising and work, that you are consistent in the way you communicate, consistent in being trustworthy and believable. And therefore, that's the ultimate way that you develop that respect and loyalty among those that you're working with. The other thing that's important, and it makes it very difficult when we're dealing in a Zoom environment, is that I like for communication to be a conversation rather than a soliloquy or a monologue. Some of you may remember high school English when you're studying Shakespeare, and Shakespeare would go into these long soliloquies by one of his characters who's actually talking to himself. I really don't enjoy that kind of communication, and I think that's what makes Zoom, for me, a little bit more difficult than being in person where you can interact with the audience. But I do hope you will interact through the QA and the chat. So you want your speakers to feel acknowledged. You want them to feel present and important. I'm anxious to hear what you guys will have to say about what you've heard about communication and your own personal experiences, and it should be really a talk with the audience rather than a talk to the audience. And then it's often necessary to, once you've presented a topic, a new subject, perhaps some learning process, you want to clarify what the listeners have heard and what it means to them. I've always been surprised if when I've thought I've presented something with great clarity that when I've asked someone what they heard, it was completely different. So that sometimes helps, number one, to create a conversation, and that's one of the reasons I'm asking you to share some of your takeaways from this talk is what I said, actually what you heard and what it means to you, I think is even more important is how that might affect your behavior going forward or change the way you think about a certain topic or subject. Dr. Deese, we have a comment here from the audience. Oh, yeah, great. Thank you. About listening, in your last slide there, Steve Hackney says, a pearl of wisdom that I try to practice as much as possible, God gave us two ears and one mouth, therefore we should be listening twice as much as we speak to effectively communicate. Absolutely. I'm a real fan of that, and that's the one reason for setting up that conversation. Again, in a situation like this, it's a little bit more awkward, but most of the time when you're speaking to an audience or to a group or even one-on-one small groups, there's some good advice in there. Seek first to understand. Listen, that question is right on cue there, Kim. Thank you. Seek first to understand your audience. Listen to what they have to say before you engage. I've been in a number of small groups where it seems like everybody's competing to talk first, and it gets to be a bit of chaos and confusion, but if you can listen, try to maybe even repeat what you've heard to assure clarity about that. Try to limit your message to as briefly as you can state that particular topic, and sometimes with at least a little repetition to make sure the message is clear. Again, I much prefer the collaborative conversation, and I certainly welcome feedback today and some of the things that you have learned through your communication as well. Then the other thing that I think plays a part in trust, developing credibility and trust, is a sense of transparency about yourself. If you're talking to a group and you've actually dealt with a failure or you made a mistake or did something wrong, you want to be transparent about that. You want to acknowledge errors. You also want to acknowledge other people in the group who have accomplished something good or successful. Give them credit where credit is due, and be fairly open about maybe a skill that you don't think is particularly strong in your case. If you don't feel yourself a good public speaker, you say, I'm sort of uncomfortable doing this, but you guys helped me along here and let's make this work. Transparency goes a long way for building a confidence and trust in the message that you're delivering. Now, I'm wondering, I couldn't avoid making a few comments about Zoom because it does change the whole spectrum of communication. There's some really great things about Zoom. One is I didn't have to spend a day getting on an airplane and flying up to Chicago and the hassles of travel, and you didn't either. You just turn on your computer, flip it on, and here we are all in a group having a nice conversation and presentation. So, you can also access speakers anywhere in the world. Anybody in the world can be your audience. It's definitely a lower cost environment. It's very time efficient and convenient, but I will tell you, it does come at some price. And I would ask you too, if you've got some thoughts about what you really like about Zoom and has seemed to make a big impact for you, put those in the chat as well. We'll get to those in a minute. But also, Zoom has a few negatives, and it is problematic. There's always more distractions and less, perhaps, the tendency toward less engagement. I'm sitting in my office at home today. You may be at home or in your office at work. People come in, phones ring, text messages come. It's very hard to stay focused and attentive. Whereas in a room where everybody's locked in together, it's much easier to connect. I think it's very difficult to display your speaker's authority or gravitas through Zoom. Although not impossible, it does create a barrier. This interaction is very awkward, I think, having to delay Q&A to the end, perhaps, and not be able for you to express things verbally rather than in a typed-in message. But we'll make the best out of it, and it'll turn out just fine. It does reduce some networking opportunities. I think when you're in a room with people and you can connect a little bit better, you can then divide easier into small groups and network a bit. I know Zoom provides some of those capabilities, but it never really matches up to the real thing. It's just naturally not as personal as it could have been. And again, some of you may have some other thoughts about Zoom. Some people love it, some people hate it, and I'm sort of in the middle on the topic. It does give us some advantages. But I'm convinced leadership truly is communication. It's everything. Everything about leadership is the way we communicate. It's in the mode that we communicate. It's in how we communicate by our appearance, our actions, our words. Are we trusted? Are we respected? Do we develop loyalty by the way in which and what we communicate to our audience? And again, it's naturally a collaborative process. And truly, listening is the first step in good and effective communications. You want to know where your audience is, what they're thinking. Maybe what's your knowledge base around this topic of communication? So it's always a good thing to listen. And so we're going to leave a little bit of time, hopefully, to be able to listen to what you have had to say via the written communications. I was a little disappointed. We couldn't have a verbal exchange, but just the nature of the webinar. So consider the impact of Zoom when you're arranging meetings and use it when it can be effective. So let's, Dr. Kim, if you would, we're going to just listen to what some of the insights were that may have been shared today by our audience. And they can continue to add as Q&A goes on. Thank you, Dr. Deese. At this point, there are no other Q&A or comments. I think this is the nature of Zoom and this virtual world we live in. And so one of the things we talked about before was your talk was meant to be interactive, and it's hard to do that because you can't read the room. I can't even see the screen. Yeah, I was hoping to learn something today, Dr. Kim. I didn't bring it all. I know there's some knowledge base out there that's much greater than mine. What are your thoughts? Have you come up with anything that you think is magic about communication? Well, I would say something about Zoom. I would say that a lot of our talks now given to the GI fellows, residents are on Zoom. I think it's convenient for everyone. Like I say, you don't have to get everyone in one room, and all the parking, all the logistics involved. And so we've moved to Zoom lectures for many of our talks. And what I've noticed is that when I watch the other fellows in the other lectures, no one's showing their screen. They're all blacked out. And so I don't know what they're up to. And so when I was assigned to give a lecture during the pandemic, for the first time, I asked some of the fellows, just seriously, honestly, what are you guys doing during the two hours blocked time you have? You're blocked out from clinical work. No one's expecting you to be in the hospital. What do you do in those two hours? And I got things from doing yoga, running errands, picking up coffee. Some of them were already in the hospital doing work because they want to get a head start on their hospital responsibilities, which I understand. But I said, look, when I give my talk for two hours this Friday, I'm going to have everyone turn their screen on. And so I just made it a point to send an email in the beginning of the week and said, look, I'm giving a lecture. Everyone needs to show their screen. I don't want to see any black screens. I want participation. I want you guys to engage. Granted, it's a Zoom meeting, and so they can turn themselves on and off to mute and unmute. So it worked out pretty well. But it was a different time. It was a change for them because they had to show their screen. They had to be at least appropriately dressed and in front of a computer or phone where they could actually interact with me. It wasn't one of these things where you say, you call on someone and there's a silence. And you're like, I guess Dr. D is left to go to the bathroom or who knows what he's doing, right? So to your point, I think Zoom is very effective in getting people together, has increased our ability to access, increased access to talks and documentary courses, things of that nature. But there are some pitfalls. And I think we can work around some of them. But like this talk that you just gave, which I think is great, it can be hard to have that face-to-face interaction. Yeah, it is. But you know, even getting dressed, Dr. Kim, you only have to be dressed from the waist up too. You don't even have to do the full thing. But it is hard. And it is. If you've ever, the members who are on this, if you've ever spoken on Zoom, to speak to a black box with white letters in it is very difficult. To see faces does help. I mean, it really, you can get some feedback at least from that. Our medical students do the same thing. They'll sign on and, you know, keep their cameras off. But it is really hard to develop that rapport without a visual image of some sort. And best, of course, a three-dimensional human body in a room. But we make the best of it. I wouldn't, I would never get rid of Zoom. I love the tool. But you got to understand the limitations when you're trying to communicate a message. And it does make it difficult. So yeah. And certainly, as you know, for our industry representatives that are on this call, there is a talk later today at the end of the day by Dr. Keith Opstein on this exact topic. And how best for industry representatives to communicate with physicians in this remote world that we live in now. Because I think Zoom and these remote learning platform, these remote platforms are here to stay. But I think medicine and industry have to figure out the best ways to utilize this. And when to utilize it. And when not to, right? So Dede, there's been a couple of comments that have been dropped since we've been talking. Yeah, I was taking a look at those. Thank you for putting those in there, audience. So interesting, a good point about the talking. Are you talking to an individual or to a group? Yeah, that definitely makes a difference in your tone or mode of communications. Some messages are suitable for a group. And others may be individually focused, particularly when providing corrective type instructions or activity or things that are sensitive topics, things that may be more confidential. And again, as I mentioned, that transparency and vulnerability are real drivers in success, I think. So how do you gauge retention of what you communicate? In marketing, we share a lot of information. It's hard to know what they take out of the talk. Yeah, that I think is a good point. But number one, you wanna know that they got the information. And it's important that they understood what you think you said or what they think you said. And so I think the conversation is what happens is maybe an application. Maybe if it's not, what did I say to you? But what is what I said do you mean to you with respect to this particular product? How will that affect your behavior or your practice or your patients in a way that you can tell by their application that they connected the dots of what you were saying? So it's more than just what did I say repeat back to me, but what does it mean to you and how will you use it? And what difference will this make in your life type of thing or in your practice? Did I get everybody's cover there? I think any others that you see, Dr. Kim? There's just that one last point from Sean Maria Nelson about a great point about using silence as a punctuation. It's something many feel uncomfortable with, speakers and listeners included, which is why we as human beings may avoid it and don't like it, but it's a very powerful tool. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, particularly, and it's very hard for speakers to allow silence. All of you in the audience who've done it before, those silent pauses have seemed very difficult, but when you throw a question out there, you've got to give it time a little bit to sit, let people think about it and then respond to it or process it in a way, and that silence is awkward. It's even worse in Zoom because you're waiting for a written message to show up, but it is important. Let folks think about what you're saying. Let it sink in. Let's see. I agree with the visual. Yeah, reading body language. Another reason for visual and presence is reading body language, how your audience is responding. If they're squirming, if they're digging into their briefcases or purses and distracted, you know you might not quite made the connection you needed to. Facial expressions also. Yeah, that's a good read. Confusion, not understanding what you're saying. Fabulous. I appreciate the feedback. Again, as part of that continuous learning, you're always picking up new ideas and new processes. So, all right. Well, I think we are at my time limit, Dr. Kim. I really enjoyed being present and thank you for the opportunity. Thank you very much for your time and expertise in this topic. I know it's difficult to do over Zoom, but I appreciate your effort here. Very good. I'm excited to hear about social media now. Yes.

communication

leadership

transparency

collaboration

listening

Zoom

non-verbal communication