Sharee Johnson [00:00:13]:
Hello and welcome to Recalibrating with me, Sharee Johnson, where you'll hear healthcare professionals and others sharing their stories of recalibrating life when the Unexpected Happened. As a psychologist and a coach, I've been listening deeply to people's stories for 35 years, and I've come to believe two things about people. The first is having witnessed so many incredible stories of hope, adaptability and human capacity, I truly believe that we are all capable of so much more than we really think we are in times of challenge. Humans have demonstrated that over and over again. Here on the Recalibrating podcast, you'll get to hear amazing stories of healthcare professionals and others pivoting, overcoming and recalibrating their lives. The second thing that the research and my experiences as a psychologist have shown me is that humans need each other. We need people. When we have support around us, when we tell each other our stories, when we connect through the reality of of living our lives, we do so much better than when we pull back and hide what's really going on for us. Together on this podcast, we're going to unearth and amplify what helps us as humans, individually and collectively, to recalibrate in ways that help us change, grow, adapt, even surprise ourselves when life throws us a curveball. This podcast offers you the chance to be inspired and and encouraged to meet the unexpected in your life with grace, skills and a belief in your own human capacity. Life is full of opportunities to recalibrate with agency, the right mindset, the right resources, and the right community. Today, it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Lynn Scholes to the podcast. Lynn is general practitioner. She has more than 30 years experience in the medical world and has a real passion for learning that I can absolutely attest to. She has spent time lecturing and supervising registrars as part of her practice and she combines her general practice work with work as an executive coach, which we are very lucky at coaching for doctors to include her in our group. Lyn's coaching is centered around leadership with a focus on personal growth and resilience. She's been an associate of the Melbourne business school for 17 years, or probably a bit more now. She can correct me on that and has coached people from many varied industries. Lyn is a graduate of the Institute of Company Directors. She supports a vision of a healthier workforce in the health system and believes that when people feel resourced to do their best work, they are able to make the changes that they need to make to facilitate better patient outcomes. Lyn, it's Absolutely. Lovely to see you today. Welcome to Recalibrating with Sharee Johnson.
Lynn Scoles [00:03:09]:
Thank you for having me, Sharee. It's a pleasure to be here.
Sharee Johnson [00:03:12]:
Lyn, you work as a general practitioner and you've been working as a professional coach for well over 20 years, I think. Now, can you tell us a little bit about your working life today?
Lynn Scoles [00:03:23]:
So it's very varied and interesting and I do at least two to three days in the practice every week. The same practice I've been in for the last 33 years, by the way. And I love general practice, but the rest of the time I'm involved in executive education and coaching and it varies. So I can flex up or down in the general practice, flex up and down with the coaching, depending on what's required.
Sharee Johnson [00:03:49]:
It sounds like a lovely balance. Is that your experience of having those two parts?
Lynn Scoles [00:03:54]:
Yes, I think now that I've achieved that after all this time, I have achieved a lovely balance and it's very. It's an interesting balance. It keeps me on my toes and gives me a really lovely flow to the week because I'm not doing consecutive days in general practice, which is quite challenging at the moment. And I have the days in between where I can look after my own health, but also do my coaching work and development work.
Sharee Johnson [00:04:22]:
I wonder if I can just pick up on the challenging in general practice at the moment, you must have seen. Over 33 years, you've seen a huge array of changes, lots of different political climates.
Lynn Scoles [00:04:34]:
Absolutely.
Sharee Johnson [00:04:34]:
What do you notice that's of particular challenge at this moment in time?
Lynn Scoles [00:04:39]:
In general practice, there's plenty of challenges and the GPS listening will understand that, especially if they're business owners. I'm not a business owner. I must say that I've been working for. I have a say in the business, but I've been working with my colleagues for all that time and have not bought into the business. But I think it comes from many fronts. It's not just political. I think patient expectations, the complexity of medicine, the inability. So the growth, just the complexity and the growth of knowledge, understanding, population, all of those things. I work in an area of need in the Outer east, in Melbourne, and I can say that we've got large populations of people with English as a second language, a low social economic demographic, but it's quite difficult to get them into public hospital care. So a lot more is falling on us. We seem less connected to that public care than we might have been 20 years ago. We're less connected to the local specialists. Once upon a time, those Specialists had a good mix of public and private, and so they were more accessible. You could talk to them. It was easier to get what your patients needed. Never easy, but easier. It just seems there are a lot of barriers to care at the moment, and a lot of that complexity and responsibility falls on the shoulders of the general practitioner. And only working a couple of days a week, I feel that. But I think even if you're working full time, people feel that immensely as well. It's just not enough time. There's just not enough resources. And that's not just ourselves, that's the community as a whole and people with more needs and more expectations of those needs as well.
Sharee Johnson [00:06:29]:
They're certainly themes, aren't they, that we hear in coaching as well, particularly with our primary care clients. Can we go back a little bit, Lynn, and learn a bit more about what came before this iteration of Dr. Lynn's goals? You went from high school straight into medical school at Melbourne Uni?
Lynn Scoles [00:06:44]:
I did.
Sharee Johnson [00:06:44]:
What was that like as a country kid in the early 80s?
Lynn Scoles [00:06:47]:
I think we need to even back a little further. I had a. I grew up in a very small country town in central Victoria, only three and a half thousand people. So I was a little bit unusual even back then because I was quite bright. But I. I tried to hide it, I think, and never thought that. Never had aspirations to do medicine, didn't think that I would actually make it. But also my family are very modest, not a very wealthy family, and I didn't think that they could afford to support me because I'd have to move away for all that time to study. And so I was applying for courses that had bursaries attached to them, scholarships. So I was initially going to be a pharmacist. And it was. It's those little serendipitous conversations that make the difference. And one of my. There were only 18 of us that actually sat our VCE exams in Castlemaine High School. And one of the. My colleagues was residing. So she'd come from the year above and she was repeating so she could get some high scores and there were only five of us doing the straight science subjects. And she looked at my pre. My. The things that I put on my preference list when I was about to submit it, and she said, medicine's not on there. And I said, I never really wanted to be a doctor. I don't think I could. She said, but if it's not on your preference list, you can't even. Not even an option. So I actually put medicine at Melbourne and medicine at Monash on the bottom of my preference list before I submitted it. And then of course the pressure of the exams went away and I started to think about it. A couple of friends and my. An aunt that I respected actually said to me, have you thought about doing medicine? All these people started to see the idea. So I went to my parents and asked them if they would support me if I did that. And they were over the moon. Yep, of course we would support you. Though I changed my preferences and I guess the rest, as they say, is history because I got in.
Sharee Johnson [00:08:45]:
Yeah. And so you went through.
Lynn Scoles [00:08:47]:
What was it like to be from
Sharee Johnson [00:08:49]:
Castlemaine 3 1/2 thousand people to now being in the big city in Melbourne, which wasn't as big, of course, as it is now, but very different environment.
Lynn Scoles [00:08:58]:
Yeah. And Guy was really well supported at home. I had a stay at home mother, very working class family with my dad as a mechanic and two very much older brothers. So they'd moved on and left home before I went to high school. I was used to having things done for me and suddenly I was in the city sharing a one bedroom flat with someone I knew from the country. She was part of my hockey team and it was incredibly cultural, it was amazing cultural shock and it was incredibly stressful and I really wanted. So overwhelmed, I wanted to leave. That first year I actually applied to do nursing at a whole bunch of hospitals in Melbourne.
Sharee Johnson [00:09:38]:
What would have been. What would have been better if you were nursing, you would have been in accommodation. Is that what the. What was the thing that you. Or was it the study that was.
Lynn Scoles [00:09:46]:
I think, I mean, it was many things. It was the overwhelm of all the study. It was the ip, there was a bit of financial stress. It was all of those things. I just thought it would be a little bit easier to do nursing than to do medicine. Alfred said they'd have me straight away. But again, another one of those serendipitous conversations. The matron at the Royal Melbourne actually asked me in for an interview and she said to me, we'd love to have you, but why don't you finish your first year of medicine and then if you still feel the same way, we'll take you in the next intake. The next, the first it take the next year. And of course I did really well so no one would let me leave. But I struggled, I did struggle with it. I found it incredibly overwhelming. So in second and third year I moved into residential college where I was a bit more supported, didn't have to cook didn't have to think about all those other things. And so, yeah, I spent two years in a residential college, which was. Although still overwhelming, it was. I was able to make more friends and I had more support than I had living out by myself.
Sharee Johnson [00:10:54]:
Gosh, I think they're really amazing places for country kids and for kids from other places. I know they're not affordable for a lot of people. They're very expensive in the middle of the city now, the residential colleges, but they're really fantastic for helping kids transition from other places.
Lynn Scoles [00:11:09]:
They were always expensive, but you only paid for the weeks that you were there. Whereas when I was living out, I had to pay for 52 weeks of the year, not just the ones that I was in college. So it actually was comparable at that time.
Sharee Johnson [00:11:24]:
And so what happened? What's happened since then?
Lynn Scoles [00:11:26]:
How did.
Sharee Johnson [00:11:26]:
How. What's. Tell us a little bit about some of the seminal moments, I guess, between then when you started your primary care career and now.
Lynn Scoles [00:11:34]:
Oh, wow, there's so many. So why did I decide to go into general practice? I did three years, three years in the hospital system. Toyed with the idea of being an emergency physician. Didn't have a college back then. Also toyed with anesthetics. Really loved my anesthetic terms. But in the end I chose general practice because of the flexibility I really wanted. Knew that I was about to get married. Wanted. The flexibility was really over intense study and after hours and all that another qualification would entail. And I guess even back then I thought I was brought up in a very traditional family. Mum stayed at home, so marriage meant children and looking after your husband. And from that very traditional thinking, I thought general practice would be a lot more flexible for the life that was going to be ahead of me.
Sharee Johnson [00:12:27]:
You're giving us some lovely examples of recalibrating that. Testing, I suppose, testing the idea of emergency medicine and testing the idea of anaesthetics and then thinking about what happens if family, if I start to have a family, how does that recover require? What differences does that require in my life? Were you aware then of the choices and that. Did that feel overwhelming? Did the path become clearer as you decided the flexibility was an important factor, yes.
Lynn Scoles [00:12:51]:
And back then, because it wasn't quite as structured as it is now, I could choose my own adventure, which is why I did three years in the hospital system. I did a year in the country of obstetrics and gynae, so that I had that women's health background as part of my general practice training. So I was Yeah, I was creating my own adventure. The other part of that was I get bored quite easily. And so I took on a role in the Department of Community Medicine at Monash as well with John Murtaugh that many of our listeners will know about. He was probably instrumental in some of the things that I did and some of the things that I'm doing now, like the writing, which will talk. Talk about later, that I worked with in that department for three years. And that was. I was with some big names in medicine at that time, because I was with Craig Hassed, Stephen Trumbull, Michael Kidd, John Murtagh. So we were all there in the department at the same time. So I feel very fortunate to have had that experience as well.
Sharee Johnson [00:13:57]:
So for those listeners who aren't in Australia, that some of those names might not mean anything to you, but Michael Kids, our chief Medical officer now in Australia, with the Federal government, advising the Federal government, perhaps, I should say, and John Murtagh, I think a lot of people all around the world know John's writing and his. Have experienced his mentorship. How amazing to have those people working with you and learning with you.
Lynn Scoles [00:14:18]:
And Craig Hassed was one of the formative voices in the mindfulness movement. He's still very active. And Stephen Trumbull was the dean at Melbourne Uni Medicine for some time as well.
Sharee Johnson [00:14:30]:
I'm also noticing no women in that list of people.
Lynn Scoles [00:14:33]:
There were some women, but I think, yes, we were a bit more humble. I think we didn't. Yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:14:39]:
That could be a whole podcast, couldn't it, the conversation. So let's not go there too much. I'm wondering about maybe some insight now, looking back over that decision to go into general practice. Do you feel like that was the right decision? That's been. That's served you well in your medical goals and in the way that you've wanted to practise over the last 30 plus years.
Lynn Scoles [00:14:59]:
Absolutely. Maybe not financially, but in all other ways it has really been. It has given me everything that I had wanted. It really is mentally, academically and mentally challenging. So it's a new problem to solve every minute in general practice. And I really love that. The. The mental challenge, the academic. It's not really academic, but the. The problem solving challenge. It's a great difficult problems every day and when you actually solve some, it gives you a bit of a buzz. So I love that aspect of it. I don't like the way that it's being devalued at the moment by the community at large, the press and the Government. But I know that our colleagues value us, many of our specialist colleagues really value us. And it's. And our patients value us too.
Sharee Johnson [00:15:54]:
Yeah, I think that again, another topic that we could talk for a long time about this value the values. I notice, I'm not sure if you've. We haven't got to your coaching life yet, but I notice with the people that I'm coaching, often this lack of recognition, not just for. Not just general practitioners, that the community really values the skills that you have as doctors. And as doctors, you sometimes wonder if what you're offering is that valuable. I think that's a really. It's a very interesting gap there. Let's talk about your coaching life, because when you started coaching, that would have been really a very unusual thing for a medical doctor to start to add into their portfolio of skills and interests. Can you tell us a bit about what brought you to coaching in the first place?
Lynn Scoles [00:16:38]:
So, yes, I often refer to the coaching journey as my productive midlife crisis. So it was when a whole lot of things converged at the same time. So there was quite a bit of stress. I had two young children, a marriage that was not as supportive as I'd hoped it would be. And I felt. I did even feel back then that it probably wasn't going to make it hadn't called it at that point. And I had a patient death. So that was really the whole. It was this whole lot of stuff converging at the same time and culminating in the death of this patient. And why was that so significant? Because our patients do die. But this is one of the. What I would call a difficult, challenging patient always challenged me. I was earlier in my career, a lot of sleeplessness. My youngest was about 18 months at the time. And we didn't have. We'd only just started to use computers in general practice, so I couldn't log in and check notes, all those sorts of things. And I remember it was. I vividly remember the moment that all this came to pass. It was a Monday afternoon and at that time I was working Monday mornings in the practice. I'd come home, picked up one child from. From kinder and the other one was there and I was giving him dinner. It was about 5, 5:30 at night. And the phone rang. Landline. Cause we didn't really have mobiles back then. And it was the practice saying that the local police station was trying to get in contact with me. So I rang them and they were asking whether I could fill out the death certificate for this person. And this person was only in her late 30s, it was clear it was a coroner's case. But of course I wasn't back in the practice for a couple of days. I couldn't check on when I'd last seen her and my mind started to go crazy around what did I miss, what was going on, was there something that I did all of that self searching and I started to realise that I felt quite unsupported in general practice we all work beside each other and we often weren't having conversations with each other about patients. And so I felt quite unsupported and alone and thought I cannot cope with this amount of stress, do a good job and continue to raise my children and have time for them. So it really was a pivotal moment. I was pretty low at that point, I have to say. And so the searching started. I thought, if I'm not going to do general practice, what will I do? I didn't know, didn't again serendipitous conversations where people seeded the idea of coaching and I didn't even know what coaching was at the time. So I started to have a look and research it and at the time it was really just a whole lot of franchise courses coming out of the States and the uk. There was really nothing in Australia. Then one of my psychology friends, she's still a really good friend, suggested I speak to Tony Grant in Sydney. He just set up the coaching psychology unit and at Sydney Uni. And so I did. I actually had a conversation with Tony Grant. He's no longer with us unfortunately, but his course at that time was a four day course. Again, I could not envisage changing my career based on a four day course, given how much I invested in my medical career. So he put me onto some people in Melbourne who are running a Cert 4 in coaching. It was business coaching at the time. I remember saying, I don't know anything about business but the people were saying you might know something about people and really it's all about people. They do the business, you're not teaching them the business. And so that's where it started. I did that. I signed up for that course. It was much more meaty. I got my cert 4 but one of those people running the course had an association which with Man Eliza Executive Education, which has since become part of Melbourne Business School. And so I started working down at Man Eliza Executive Education. I accredited to work in their open programs. And so the journey began and I feel very fortunate to have fallen on my feet that way because back then and still now I'm still learning how to sell myself. But back then I couldn't. In a consulting world, it was quite challenging to sell myself as a coach. When I didn't, I felt I was just had my training wheels on. And so because consulting was up and down and it wasn't consistent, I stayed in the medical practice. But because I had a dual pathway and I didn't feel as locked in anymore, I, I enjoyed my practice a lot more because I knew I had an escape route if I needed it.
Sharee Johnson [00:21:25]:
And how did your medical colleagues respond? Were they saying, what's this thing coaching? Or are you not talking about it? How was that?
Lynn Scoles [00:21:31]:
I think they all thought that I was crazy. And I, and all of my business colleagues would say, so are you teaching? Are you coaching doctors? And I would say they wouldn't buy it yet. That was 20 years ago. And I think I was right. It would have been a really hard sell to sell coaching to doctors back 20 years ago. So most of my coaching clients are in the business world.
Sharee Johnson [00:21:55]:
Some might argue it's still a hard sell, Lyn.
Lynn Scoles [00:21:57]:
Yes, I think it is. I think there is a lot of cynicism about it because people don't, still don't really understand it in medicine.
Sharee Johnson [00:22:05]:
No, that's right. Maybe somebody can listen to this and find something that's useful to them. So what mind shifts did you need to make in your own mind? Because you were coming out of that space too, out of the medical world and being focused on science and being able to fix problems or nut through problems at least. And how did you make them? What mind shift did you need to make?
Lynn Scoles [00:22:27]:
I, I'm actually quite good at going back to being the learner and I think I had to go back to being a learner. It was a new profession. It was, the whole thing was new. And I think keeping an open mind, being able to look at things differently. And I think some of the stuff I did in those early days was really pivotal to how I am now. And one of the things that I did, there's three levels of NLP coaching, which was probably the most useful thing I've done in my entire life because it's all about mindset. It's all about how we can recalibrate our minds to, to change outcomes. And it was really cool. I think it's, it was one of the coolest things that I did and I still use those lessons today.
Sharee Johnson [00:23:16]:
I really, I really love, I find myself feeling very happy when we, whenever I have this part of the conversation with you or something like this. I love the idea that you were exposing yourself to lots of different professionals, that you now had all these professional colleagues who weren't in medicine. And I just wonder about the perspective that gave you and what that's done for you going forward for the next 20, 25 years in your thinking about medicine that you had this necessarily so perhaps narrow view of. Because I think medicine is a very strong culture. It does teach a particular set of ways of being, it does encourage some behaviors and disc actively discourage some other behaviors. And then you went and stepped outside of that into a very different kind of culture in working with other industries, in business, in defense, in other places. Being in the academic space of the Eliza, what I knew as the Eliza Business School, Mount Eliza Business School, training in nlp, which must have seemed woo at some stages with you, this changing your mindset, what's this psychology business all about kind of stuff.
Lynn Scoles [00:24:22]:
I think my friends were waiting for me to get over it. I think they were waiting for me to wake up and come back and just toe the line again because I was the. One of my, I was my. I was the first one to get an email address. My co. My medical friends thought that I was crazy that I had a computer and an email address. And they why would you do that? Was quite peculiar actually. And I think that was sitting on the sidelines waiting for me to fail at something. That's how it felt.
Sharee Johnson [00:24:55]:
It was very counterculture to.
Lynn Scoles [00:24:57]:
It was. It really was. And I didn't understand the world of business and they certainly didn't understand the world of business. I understand it a lot more now because I've worked with a lot of people at high level too. So I've worked with CEOs and lots of GMs and so I, I understand that world a lot more now and I think that the medical world would do well to understand that itself. Why do I say that? Because when I started in medicine, a lot of the leadership in the hospital system was actually medical and good or bad, some of they weren't all good. But there was a loud medical voice at the top and over time I've seen that markedly reduced. And it is one of my dying wishes, I think, to get more leadership and medical people in leadership in the decision making places at the top of the hospital system, in the health department. There are too few of us out there now at those levels.
Sharee Johnson [00:26:04]:
Yeah, I think we agree on that. I think we've come to that conclusion from very different places. I arrived here starting to coach doctors Saying doctors want to be in those leadership positions, but they don't have the skills. And I still believe that the doctors coming out and doing the things that you're doing. There are more Doctors now doing MBAs and doing coaching, learning to coach and these kinds of things that broaden their perspective and their horizons. I think those people bring a lot of skill that, exactly as you're talking about that can really add value in our system. But having that, only that narrow clinical view perhaps isn't enough. What's your reflection now looking back and looking at that younger you thinking, wow, that was, I don't know, maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but that was really brave.
Lynn Scoles [00:26:47]:
That was the word that came to
Sharee Johnson [00:26:48]:
mind to launch into this other pathway. What do you notice looking back on that journey now?
Lynn Scoles [00:26:53]:
I think so. It was quite courageous. I had never thought of myself as bright or smart or intelligent. Never thought of myself as that. And in medicine you feel pretty ordinary. It's full of really bright people. And so I always felt pretty average, even though I probably wasn't and my colleagues tell me I wasn't, but I felt average. I always felt pretty average. In awe of what people are doing, still do. Had my 40 year anniversary last year and the reunion and still looking at what people have done from my year and how they're changing the world. In many ways I'm still in awe of those people, but I'm more in awe of myself a little bit now these days and the things that I've managed to do that I think I was breaking the mold a little bit and getting out of medicine. I realized how much intelligence we do have and how we can make a difference that is in other ways, not just in being clinically good and helping our patients. We can actually start to influence systems and do things more broadly.
Sharee Johnson [00:28:08]:
I feel like I want to say here,
Lynn Scoles [00:28:11]:
I think that you're reminding me
Sharee Johnson [00:28:12]:
of the research around proximity that we know that the people that we spend, the five people that we spend the most time with, you know, that's uplifting for everybody. But medicine has that from the beginning where people are bringing their intelligence together and able to really lift and push and encourage each other to keep lifting, which is an amazing thing that happens in medicine. And that second part that you're talking about wanting to harness that particular potential in some other ways beyond what we will harness it. Can we move now from thinking about coaching and these cultural kind of changes and the recalibration of your identity? Really? I think that talking about to talking A little bit about your family. You mentioned before that there were things not going so well in your marriage and all this change was happening at the same time. What was happening with your family or for you in your. The family life of that time?
Lynn Scoles [00:29:04]:
Look, I think it all. I think I said this to you before we even started the call that I grew up, I've got two much older brothers and I was be seen not heard upbringing. Mum didn't work, Mum was a stay at home mum, my dad was a mechanic. So my values of hard work, conscientiousness, being honest, being kind, excellence, all those things were really instilled in me. But as a family female growing up in the 60s and 70s and in a small country town, I was the help mate really. I was brought up to be the good housewife, but I was smart. So then I went to uni and no one else in my family had gone to uni. So it was, it really played with my head. And I think the biggest learning because that's. You choose what you choose because of the values you were brought up with and the models that you've been given. So I chose someone who, who was quite young. I think at the time we were quite young when we got married and we had children and he was happy to let me do things and didn't notice. So I didn't feel very seen or supported. But I think the biggest learning over all of this without going through any of the messiness, is that I still value those things of hard work and conscientiousness and being honest and kind of. But my big mantra now is not at my expense, it's to be those things. But to. I say it was the getting of my self esteem. I finally grew into my self esteem, stood up and said no, not at my expense. And I don't want this to be the model that my children see as a good marriage. I used to call it soulless certitude, which is as much on me as it is on anybody else because I was doing that. But it was the values that I'd been given, it was the models that I'd been given. I didn't know anything else, but I've grown up and I've learned that that wasn't the way to go.
Sharee Johnson [00:31:05]:
So during all of that kind of adapting and learning and changing of your identity and even just recognising that you could change course that you didn't have to stay on the track, I think people talk to me a lot about being on the train track, finishing Training and just carrying on that same track. And you've stepped off the track in a number of ways. You've stepped out of your marriage, you've stepped into coaching and out of only having medicine as your, your professional identity, what have you learned? What would you share with the younger doctors about all of that, about learning and adapting and changing?
Lynn Scoles [00:31:40]:
You can.
Sharee Johnson [00:31:41]:
Yeah.
Lynn Scoles [00:31:43]:
And it's very liberating. Sometimes stepping out of your own paradigm is a useful thing to do. So having friends that can help you do that. I still have a wide ranging friendship groups that are not just medical, but people outside of that whom I can chat to, reality test with and people that will challenge you to be a better version of you. I think it's been helpful hanging around with all of my. I've got lots of coaching colleagues now that I value very much and they're all into helping each other to develop, to grow, to notice what's working, what's not working and to ask those powerful questions that get us thinking. That's what coaching really is all about. And I've had people around me who've been able to ask those challenging questions and to remind me of who I am at times because sometimes you get lost. So those. I, I'm very introverted and very introspective, but I have three very close friends who don't have any trouble at all getting me to look at myself. And one of those people, this is interesting because I think people are surprised at this. One of those is a high school friend who left high school at year 10 and I'm going on holidays with her shortly, in a few weeks time to Central Australia and she more than anyone is able to step in and tell me some hard truths if I need them. She's been my biggest supporter and she left school at year 10. She's not educated to the level that I am, but she's honest, she's open, she's salt of the earth and she's been by my side all that time.
Sharee Johnson [00:33:32]:
And she cares about you. I think the trust is evident in the way you're talking.
Lynn Scoles [00:33:36]:
Yeah. So the three people that I'm talking about really are people that I would trust with my life. But they would, but they don't hold back. If I'm, if I need to be have a talking to, they will talk to me.
Sharee Johnson [00:33:50]:
That's very good. I think as coaches, we people want high accountability. They want a mirror that's going to help them see more clearly. And that's what you're describing. Just because we're Here, can you say anything about the coaches or the supervisors or people in. I suppose the more those formal roles that have you've worked with, what's the impact of that? Or has that been important in your learning or your pivoting along the way?
Lynn Scoles [00:34:12]:
I have a lot of ongoing supervision type coaching environments, not formalised ones that I pay for, but groups of coaches that I meet with regularly and we regularly reflect on what we do and how we do it. I do often think that medicine could value from some similar sorts of forums and I've tried to set one up in our own practice and I run that every month now. But I think it's important to reflect on what we do, how we do it and get outside views of that as well. So people looking from the outside who can give us a different perspective. And I think that's what supervision is because sometimes we're medical people can be very hard on themselves. It's part of the training. I think you have to be hard on yourself to get through and so we can be exceedingly hard on ourselves. But to have an outside, somebody outside the system looking in and recalibrating our own head around, it can be very useful.
Sharee Johnson [00:35:17]:
Yeah. I was going to ask you something about the themes that you see. I think you've probably addressed those a little bit. Is there anything more you wanted to say about that? The themes that you notice in your coaching clients who are doctors?
Lynn Scoles [00:35:27]:
I think it's that we're really good at sacrificing ourselves for the benefit of others and not stepping back because we can push on often we can keep pushing and that's where the self care part comes into it. Being able to step back and appreciate what we do and how we do it and what we have done and the achievements that we have made. And again, I reflect back on what I said earlier about you feel very average amongst all the brilliance that is in medicine, it's not often that you step back and acknowledge your own successes. And we're very good at seeing our failures. We're very good at seeing things that we miss. And so one of the things that I do is help people to step back and see what they are doing that's valuable and start to appreciate themselves and what they bring to the situation. So that's one of the themes is that sacrifice for the benefit of others. And I go back to my earlier statement around not at our expense.
Sharee Johnson [00:36:29]:
Yes, I love that last year you moved house. So let's think about the more recent kind of recalibration. So we moved house after living in the family home for a long time. It's really common for people when they move house, isn't it? To say it's the most stressful thing they've ever done. You continued your clinical work, I know you had some little breaks, but you continued your clinical work, you continued your coaching work with your adult children about their packing up of their family home.
Lynn Scoles [00:36:54]:
Oh, yes. What's your children to take their stuff.
Sharee Johnson [00:36:58]:
What's important to notice about that recalibration or that change that decision?
Lynn Scoles [00:37:02]:
Well, I think it's to think about what. What started it all. And it was. I took a long holiday, my mother passed away and I got my inheritance and I took a bit of a holiday and realised that I should be taking more holidays and then realised that one of the reasons I wasn't was I was working to pay my income protection for those overseas. If you're all working as contractors over here, there's no holiday or sick pay, so you need income protection so that if something happens to you, you can pay mortgage. And I thought, all I'm doing is working to pay all these hideous expenses. So I loosened it all up. I had. I bought the family home that I grew up in in the country as my plan to retire at some point, but I needed to renovate that and I needed money in my super. Anyway, long story short, decided that the only way that I would do all of this was to sell the house and rent for a while, which is what I'm doing. And so that was a whole year of packing up, cleaning out, getting my children to take their stuff, all of that, and then getting it ready for sale. Huge thing. Just kept on and again, supported by friends, but a huge thing. 31 years of clean, of detritus in a large house that I needed to declutter and prepare for sale. And I actually thought I'd miss that house more than I have, but I've not looked back. The sale went through. I had to find a rental. That in itself was stressful here in Melbourne and I found a rental, then had to pack and move and last year was settling in, finding my feet in a new suburb, in a new house, but I really haven't looked back. I missed the neighbors because they were very supportive, especially through the divorce. They helped with the kids, so I keep in contact with them, but the rest of it I haven't looked back.
Sharee Johnson [00:38:57]:
Attachment's a very interesting thing, isn't it, that you feel attached or we are attached to so many things because of history or Memory or sentimentality or love or lots of good reasons and then actually loosening the attachments often is liberating, is different to what we anticipated it was going to be.
Lynn Scoles [00:39:16]:
It's been very liberating financially and possession wise. I've got rid of quite a lot of stuff, although I had to get a garage so that I could store all my children's stuff that they wanted me to take with me so that they get somewhere to live.
Sharee Johnson [00:39:31]:
Still a work in progress.
Lynn Scoles [00:39:32]:
Still a work in progress.
Sharee Johnson [00:39:34]:
Okay. You like many of the other people that we've already recorded, we haven't released them all yet, but have many other doctors that we've talked to have a creative life as well. I wonder if you'd share a little bit with us about that and some things like how difficult has it been to prioritize or has that ebbed and flowed over. Over the course of decades once what are the things that you can notice about your creative life and what that why that's important.
Lynn Scoles [00:39:59]:
So I've always been a crafter. I think that was from growing up not having much in the country. My mother was quite handy. We used to make our own clothes, do those sorts of things. So it came out of that. But in it was about 2:18 I did a drawing weekend. My mother painted and drew. So just to give background. And I used to do it a little bit when I was younger but didn't think I was very good. Tried to do things along the way. Wasn't happy with what I was producing. So I did this weekend in 218 discovered that I actually can draw and paint and that I do have this artistic streak. I've always been creative in a craft sense and always needed to do something. One of my friends says that when you've got a family and they're growing, it's one of the things you do that doesn't have to be redone. You don't have to wash it, you don't have to clean it, you don't have to cook it and it gets eaten. It's one of those things you can do that stays there. So I've always made things and crafted that I also had now learned that I can paint. And it's amazing. I've always called it my occupational therapy. But this is more, more important to me and I've prioritized the art in the last six or seven years. And because it allows my brain to switch off and relax when I'm creating, it's a different part of my brain. I actually find it very rewarding.
Sharee Johnson [00:41:24]:
I see Dr. Wendy Suzuki, who's a neuroscientist on Instagram, actually just earlier this week talking about the benefits of crafting for our brain and exactly to that point that it gives us a chance to use different parts of our brain and to switch off some of those parts that are on high alert all
Lynn Scoles [00:41:41]:
the time and you don't have to actively think about what you're doing. So with a lot of the craft that I did, it wasn't something that I actively had to think about while I was doing it. There's a lot of repetition when you're designing and things you do have to think about it, but that's not a large part of it. The doing is more repetitive and very good as a mindfulness type of activity. But the painting I find very mindful. And if I'm overdone or I need some space, going out into my painting room helps me to switch off and get my creativity back again.
Sharee Johnson [00:42:17]:
And I wonder, does it help you then with your problem solving in other domains?
Lynn Scoles [00:42:20]:
Absolutely, Absolutely. I'd recommend it. And I think that's why people exercise too. I've not been as drawn to exercise as I should have been. It's not one of my first loves, but it's the same deal when you go off and do some exercise, you often become more creative as well.
Sharee Johnson [00:42:36]:
Yes. You might be being critical just in this moment, but I know you do have some quite good routines about going to the gym and so exercise. Yes. We won't let you get away with that. You've been writing a book which you referenced before, and we're very excited to see it come out sometime later this year, hopefully. We've been watching on the sidelines as you go through that journey. Can you tell us a little bit about your book?
Lynn Scoles [00:42:58]:
It's the book that I felt had to be written from all the experience that I've had over the years. I think I mentioned before that I'm very introverted. One of the journeys to the introvert is managing your personal energy. I when I first started in the coaching world, I was asked to speak around work, life, balance and resilience. And so I started to craft. I have a, what I call my party piece that I would roll out from time to time. But in the researching for that and I worked with a couple of colleagues way back when on a model for managing energy. And it's roughly based on the work of Lauren Schwartz, who wrote a book called the Making or they wrote an article for HBR called The Making of a Corporate Athlete. Their book is the Power of Full Engagement. And the whole book really revolves around that premise of managing your energy and not your time. And so this, I call this the 21st century re make of the Powerful Engagement. It's called Renewable or Renewable Creating Energy to Live and Lead. And it's really how to manage your brain in a very overdone world, really.
Sharee Johnson [00:44:04]:
We're really looking forward to being able to get hold of it and read it and share it. Good luck with the last steps in getting that into the world. How have you found the experience of the actual writing? Has it done something for your thinking?
Lynn Scoles [00:44:17]:
You have to think when you're having a conversation with somebody. It's much easier to qualify what you mean. Easier to explain things when you're putting it down on paper. It can be misconstrued. So it's been an exercise in mental torture, really. Writing is not my first love either, but Professor Murtagh was encouraging of that and other people have been encouraging of my writing along, along the way. But they were small articles that I would have written a long time ago, not a whole book. I did get a book coach. I had a cohort of people that I was writing with. And I still have a writing buddy that I meet regularly to keep me honest around the process. But I keep working through it. But persistence, perseverance. I've learned a lot of that because I started this two years ago and now it's in the final editing stages.
Sharee Johnson [00:45:10]:
Do you feel like you've embodied the identity of writer or author yet?
Lynn Scoles [00:45:15]:
Not yet, but I'm working on it. Awesome. Awesome.
Sharee Johnson [00:45:18]:
Okay, coming to the end of our conversation. Couple more questions. I'm wondering. We've talked about crafting, we've talked about two, two track work, life. We've talked about kids. Now we're talking about writing a book. I'm wondering if you have any pearls of wisdom to offer those listening about how to prioritize or work out these competing demands. What are the kind of lessons or the things that you use to try and determine what gets priority?
Lynn Scoles [00:45:45]:
When I think there's a quote from the book, the power of full Engagement, that I think sums everything up. It says, is the life you're living worth what you're giving up to have to have it? So is the life you're living worth what you're giving up to have it? And I think it is all about prioritisation. And I think it's also connecting into ultimately what we feel our purpose is, making sure we're clear on our values and what supports that purpose and then prioritizing accordingly. And I think. And that's it. I've got all that in my book as well. My purpose has always been to make a difference, but not at my expense. And so it's how am I doing that? In what aspects of my life am I doing that? How am I doing it? What does it look like when I'm doing it and what's a priority for me this year? And I regularly each year. I guess this is a recalibrate as well. I do a little bit of a reflection on what I have achieved in the last year or what I where I am and where I hope to be when I started that year. And then I have some reflections around what I would like to achieve, where I'd like to be in the coming year and have some focus areas for that particular year. So it keeps me on track and looking after myself is part of that. If I don't look after myself then none of it works. Does that really answer your question?
Sharee Johnson [00:47:09]:
Yeah, I think so. There's a lovely balance in the whole conversation. I think about noticing the serendipitous moments, noticing that other people are seeding ideas or encouraging you that perhaps you could look at something beyond what you're looking at or beside what you're looking at. This lovely balance between serendipity and letting the other seed, letting the seeds around you germinate a bit. And then this other strong thread of active choice and agency and responsibility for your own life that it's not just all about kind of luck and who you bump into. It's about being aware and alert to notice those things and then to be. You said you found your self esteem. I can't remember exactly how you said it. You grew into your self esteem really becoming more and more empowered to say I've noticed those seeds or I've noticed that support from that other person that I'm going to activate something to do with that. So I hope that's what I'm going to take away. I hope the listeners have been noticing this, this noticing the noticing, noticing that you are available and alert and aware. I think that's your learner's mindset that what else is happening around me or what other opportunities are here or what do other people see in me that I might really take hold of and do something about and that ultimately is your responsibility and your accountability. I think there's lots of those lessons in what you've talked about today and
Lynn Scoles [00:48:35]:
often it's the stuff we can't see ourselves. I think what others see in us is important and particularly the ones that we respect and are around us and are looking out for our wellbeing sometimes listen to those people and what they have to say about us as well.
Sharee Johnson [00:48:52]:
Is there anything else you've noticed that you want to just put a pin in before we finish or you feel like we've come to a natural kind of close of the conversation?
Lynn Scoles [00:49:00]:
Yeah, I just try. It is what I'd say is just get out there and explore. We've got a large. There's lots of opportunities out there, but take the ones that will help you grow, that will help you grow into what you need to be and keep making the difference that you're making. I'm assuming that a lot of the people listening to this will be medical, know that you are have more agency than you think you might have and go out and make that difference because people do respect what we do, even though we don't always feel it. There are a lot of people and I that was the other big learning from when I stepped into the corporate world. Most of those executives do respect and are really respectful when they find out that I'm a GP as well. They're just blown away that a GP would be doing what I'm doing in the corporate world. And there is a lot of respect for the quality and the depth of the education that we've had.
Sharee Johnson [00:49:59]:
Thank you so much for your time today, Lynne. I think there's a lot that we can all learn from your example and thank you for your generosity in sharing it. And I will share the details at the end of our conversation with everybody about how they can come and work with you if they think they'd like
Lynn Scoles [00:50:12]:
you to be their coach.
Sharee Johnson [00:50:12]:
So thank you very much for your time and your wisdom today.
Lynn Scoles [00:50:15]:
Thanks for having me, Sharee. It's been a pleasure.
Sharee Johnson [00:50:18]:
Thank you for listening. I look forward to sharing our next conversation with you next week. And in the meantime, may you be well. The content in this podcast is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified healthcare professional. This podcast represents the views of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect those of any entity we work with or for.
