Interviews With Peerspectives Participants
What better way to learn about the amazing benefits you can take advantage of with the Peerspectives program than hearing what our current participants have to say. We interviewed two amazing Canadian managers to hear what they had to say about Peerspectives!
Overcoming Life Obstacles To Redress Systemic Health Inequity
Interview with Don Mahleka
As a teenager, Don Mahleka came to Canada as a refugee. He and his single mother faced racism and countless life barriers; but that didn’t deter either of them from aspiring for a better life. For Don, he converted hard lived experiences into shared knowledge to be mobilized lessons learned and a passion for redressing health inequities for those most marginalized in our society. Read more about Don’s passion and path forward.
CIM: Don, thanks for making time today knowing that you are swamped taking on the new challenges of your new job. Tell me more about this role.
Don: Pierre, thanks for inviting me. As Equity Manager for the Guelph Wellington Ontario Health Team region and the Guelph Community Health Centre, I lead the design and implementation of the regional health equity strategy to further reduce health disparities/inequities by centering the experiences of equity deserving priority populations in our system transformation. Health equity is an ongoing journey towards removing structural and interpersonal barriers and discrimination.
As a new role, it aligns with Ontario Health’s new Equity, Inclusion, Diversity and Anti-Racism Framework which underpins the need for mandated standards for disaggregated race-based data collection and dissemination to inform policies, practices, and population-based interventions. This work goes beyond occasional training and focuses on strategic planning and execution towards our collective mission for health equity. For example, health equity includes data sovereignty for Indigenous and Black communities that have the right to govern their own data collection, management, analysis, and use self-determination.
I’ll be working alongside many change leaders like the Guelph Community Health Centre’s (GCHC) board, leadership team, and the Anti-Oppression advisories and patient partner groups within the GCHC and the regional Ontario Health Team. I’ll use tools to foster shared governance like the Health Equity Impact Assessment (HEIA) and Racial Equity Impact Assessment (REIA) which are decision support tools to systematically examine and address impacts on underserved populations by proposed policies, institutional practices, programs, and budgetary decisions. I’ll also be supporting equity-focused evaluations within the region’s health system.
CIM: What interested you in this type of work?
Don: The Guelph Wellington OHT partners' strong commitment towards anti-racism and anti-oppression resonated with me for this particular role and to see the region's health organizations aligned towards this goal is incredible.
I'm also passionate about concrete and transparent change management plans. The equity journey of all the partners, stakeholders and equity champions before me created a strong foundation for continued success and scaling up collective health equity innovation.
This work also hits close to home. I came to Canada as a refugee in Grade 9 with my single mother. Although we were living in a refugee shelter in downtown Toronto, we faced barriers and weren’t connected to mental health and community services. This lived experience inspired me to learn more about how to address health system gaps, which led me to have a passion for understanding social determinants of health. Through this learning, I found a calling to bring awareness of the impacts of socioeconomic factors like facing barriers in education, employment and social support that are some of the most significant contributors to poor health outcomes. Racism had a significant impact on us. This has inspired me to advocate making racism a social determinant of health and identifying it as a public health crisis.
CIM: What are the challenges that lay in your pathway to success within the next 6 months?
Don: It’s been less than a month in this role and this coincided with the Guelph and Area Health team merging with the Rural Wellington Health team. This is opportune to collaborate on providing residents with more accessible, timely, and coordinated care that meets patients, families, and caregivers where they are at. This amalgamation presents the imperative of ensuring that joint strategic priorities reflect the rural health disparities and ensuring that our health services are meeting the needs of rural communities how and where they are. We’ll be prioritizing seamless communication and the improvement of rural and urban health outcomes. It has always been a challenge for health systems to address rural health disparities, and this will be a key focus for us.
One of the biggest challenges in embarking on a paradigm shift in addressing structural racism and oppression is ensuring culturally informed practices are embedded in all areas, especially ethically and appropriately collecting data to forge new pathways for advancing health equity. It won’t be an easy task to ensure data sovereignty for equity deserving groups to uphold their right to control access, disclosure and security to their data. Our work is to authentically engage with diverse voices of various ages, gender identity, sexual orientation, races, religions, and people with disabilities, to name a few dimensions of social exclusion, also called equity stratifiers or socioeconomic factors. It’s imperative to focus on intersectional identities, for example when Black or Indigenous women are subjected to sexism and racism, or when class status, disability, gender expression, or sexual identity intersect with other minoritized identities. Focusing on only one axis of diversity or a singular approach to anti-discrimination won’t work for everyone. It’ll require trust and relationship building to value lived experiences truly. There are significant barriers to ensuring equity, but we must intentionally recruit, provide opportunities, and enact practices to retain diverse voices at decision-making tables and more leadership roles.
Covid 19 recovery is one of our region’s key priorities and there are mental health and substance use impacts that we’re reckoning with as a result of the pandemic, especially for youth, seniors, racialized, and 2SLGBTQI+ communities. The pre-pandemic situation was already fraught with a national health system that was already in need of a Mental Health and Substance Use parity act to address wait times, underfunding and structural stigma and inequities.
It’s also going to take a lot of work to build equity capacity for the region with organizations in different stages of their equity journeys and evaluate where the sum of all parts support each other in a cohesive roadmap towards health equity. We’ll also need to understand the historical threats to health equity initiatives and implementing shared practices to optimize change. The most critical element is the authentic engagement of diverse communities and supporting community-led health initiatives that create more accessible and inclusive pathways to wellness.
CIM: How has your past work or life prepared you for this role?
Don: Part of my new role will be leading and supporting training. I’ve recently supported the development of the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s (MHCC) Structural Stigma e-training module for healthcare leaders. Earlier this year, I was a Steering Committee member for Addictions and Mental Health Ontario (AMHO) and we developed Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression Operational and Service Delivery Frameworks for its member organizations. I’ve also led city-wide health equity initiatives. As an Executive Advisory Committee member for the Mental Health Commission of Canada, I supported developing and implementing national mental health standards for post-secondary institutions and psychological health and safety for workplaces. I’ve also led community-based research projects on racial equity and served on several not-for-profit boards.
My long tenure as Operations Manager will also serve me well, as will my frontline mental health crisis support roles for various hospitals and community agencies. Providing consulting services for several agencies like the Public Health Agency of Canada has also been instrumental in preparing me for this new role. I strongly believe in collective impact, innovation, and mutual accountability, which I’ve seen as imperative in prior systems change work.
I’m currently completing my MBA and an executive certificate in Operations, Technology, and Value chain management in terms of education. I also have an educational background in social work, knowledge mobilization and other related fields.
CIM: What kind of work or role do you want to have after this role?
Don: My future role will focus on applications of health economics to equitable health policy and data analysis. I’d like to use more economic modelling to tackle our pressing health issues and create more health business cases focusing on social return on investments. I also plan to work on designing and running larger-scale equity-focused evaluations.
Another long-term plan involves using my current certifications in data science and human-centred artificial intelligence in healthcare more practically towards health innovation. It’s my dream to use healthcare analytics to predict trends, better manage prevention, and reveal paths to improvement in patient-centred quality, data, diagnosis, and process management. The future is about turning big data into smart data for descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics to avoid analysis paralysis, especially given the push for more data collection. I also believe in transforming the healthcare system; through blockchain’s decentralized principles to improve accessibility and security of patient information while addressing the healthcare hierarchy and giving patients more control.
CIM: What is your passion at work, and in life?
Don: I’ve been fortunate to learn from Indigenous mentors and friends about diverse Indigenous cultures and garner a better understanding of what truth and reconciliation needs to look like. In the past month with the ongoing discoveries of over 1,000 unmarked graves of Indigenous children in Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops), Cowess First Nation, and at several other former residential “school” sites across Canada it has brought more attention to the vital work done through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I’m passionate about supporting their calls to action. It’s also been a priority to keep advocating for implementing the “Joyce Echaquan principle” for antiracist, equitable, and cultural healthcare access for Indigenous populations. The Atikamekw Nation created the principle after Joyce died in hospital due to mistreatment and while she live-streamed hospital staff making racist and derogatory remarks. The “Jordan's Principle” is also significant towards ensuring that all First Nations children receive all services required to close the health equity gap. In honour of Jordan River Anderson, it was named after a 5-year-old First Nations boy from Norway House Cree Nation, who spent his whole life in hospital due to jurisdictional dispute between governments. The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report also has calls to action for the healthcare system to help stop the violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people and support healing. I’m looking forward to supporting the decolonial and Indigenized healthcare that focuses on Indigenous relationship building, continuous learning, participatory-based research, and cultural safety and humility.
Mental wellness sustains my purpose, and I enjoy practicing mindfulness and promoting cognitive behavioural therapy skills. I also prioritize bringing a trauma-informed lens and restorative justice to all my relationships to foster healing and recovery.
CIM: What barriers did you encounter along your career pathway? How did you overcome these, or at least move beyond barriers or challenges? What worked; what didn't?
Don: I encountered barriers to health, education, employment and mentoring as a homeless refugee teen. I overcame many of these barriers by volunteering which created a sense of community and belonging for me. This also created an immediate passion for health advocacy for refugees and immigrants with similar experiences. I began volunteering at Jamesville Community Centre in Hamilton Ontario and right after completing my high school volunteer hours I applied for a job to run their youth programs.
I also overcame the lack of mentorship through volunteering. I met local mentors through my various volunteer capacities such as an Advocate Ambassador for the Children’s Mental Health Ontario, and Program Director for Empowerment Squared not-for-profit. Earlier this year, I applied to the Civic Action mentorship program. I’ve been connecting with Som Seif, CEO of Purpose Financial, an inspiring leader and innovator to learn from.
CIM: What can you share about your learnings that others might benefit from knowing about?
Don: I’ve learned that focusing on collective impact is critical in reaching a big vision that tackles big problems. The status quo is filled with red tape and power struggles which are the main distractions when working in silos. Transformational leadership has been my go-to strategy because I’ve found that it focuses more on emotional intelligence to read complicated situations by analyzing individual needs and motivations. It also intersects with values-based leadership that prioritizes leading by example and being innovative.
CIM: Organizations in the last year have become much more aware of the need to have Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategies and programs in place. Why do you think this is so? What do you really think about this shift in organizational attention? Is this pervasive across the country? Or do you see that organizations are looking at this as the next "flavour of the month"?
Don: Many organizations have been bringing EDI to the forefront with the right intentions, but sometimes there’s a lack of appreciation for the history of liberation and civil rights movements which show centuries of oppression and the organizing by many equity deserving groups like Indigenous, Black, and 2SLGBTQ+ communities. Like I mentioned before, equity is a long journey and I hope that organizations are in it for the long haul. Anti-racism and anti-oppression work needs to be at the core of organizations and personal development for all staff because they’re not just values but also actual skills to build on. Sometimes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are not incorporated as the core of the mission and the long-term strategic directions of organizations, which needs to change. There’s been some positive frameworks to give anti-racism a more equitable focus so that it doesn’t get lost in the term, DEI. Cultural competency isn’t really a thing; it’s more of an ongoing process where we’re all always going to be learning and unlearning. We need more allies from every sector supporting long-term accountability in every place of influence.
CIM: You participated in CIM's peer-to-peer learning program for managers. What was your experience in this 4-month program?
Don: I had a transformational experience during CIM’s peer learning program for managers, which was a great platform to network and hone leadership skills together. I enjoyed sharing knowledge and exchanging insightful advice regarding the current challenges we were facing in the workplace. It was led by a dynamic facilitator and presenter who guided us through in-depth topics like Change Management, Business Negotiations and Mental Resilience. I vividly remember the support and encouragement by Dr. Matthew Jelavic, President and CEO of CIM, Chartered Managers Canada and my negotiation role-play with CIM Board Chair, Bob Fisher.
CIM: How canother up-and-comers benefit from this program? Why?
Don: Up-and-comers can benefit from this program by learning from experienced industry-leading professionals through a participatory platform and accessible content that’s founded on adult learning principles. The conversations are always meaningful and practical. Participants garner wisdom from some of the best managers with a breadth of experience. The most significant area of my transformation was in the boost of self-confidence, drive and assertiveness.
CIM: Do you think more senior managers would benefit from this program as well? Why?
Don: Getting real results is always the bottom line and this program primes senior managers with in-demand skills development to achieve just that. Senior managers would also benefit from how the program caters to different learning styles, goals and skill levels. This program also gets you to challenge cognitive biases and group-think. As a senior manager it’s crucial to get honest feedback as senior managers may not be used to hearing. Most importantly, this program provides custom-curated leadership development that’s unparalleled for identifying individual strengths and areas for improvement.
CIM: So, Don, what's the next big hurdle or challenge for you in your work that you are passionate and excited about?
Don: I’m excited for my long-term goal of supporting development economics to help address global poverty and poor health outcomes through community-centred evidence-based policy development. This will entail many years of rigorous training in impact evaluation and statistics to hone my analytical skills. Still, I hope to support the innovative initiatives underway in low-income countries, especially African countries. I plan to work internationally in global health because we've got a lot to learn from each other as a global community.
Leading A Legacy Into The Future
Interview With Lesley Brown, Executive Director, QCC
As a transformational leader with a great reputation across the not-for-profit sector, Lesley Brown has courageously created new pathways of value for organizations and their stakeholders. As a values-driven leader, Lesley passionately creates and advocates for constructive cultures with staff, boards of directors and stakeholders. Her C-Suite tenures, humility, kindness, and extensive leadership roles on various boards of directors makes her one-of-a-kind. Read more about Lesley’s journey, challenges, successes and transformation management lessons learned.
CIM: Lesley, you participated in CIM's Peerspectives program. We are intrigued by your background and transformational challenges that you have had and continue to deal with in your current role as the Executive Director of Ontario's Quarter Century Club serving over 30,000 members across Ontario. You are leading a large and important transformation for QCC. What is driving this transformation and what are the greatest challenges for you as an executive? Why?
Lesley: The Quarter Century Club is a well-established institution with a 76-year-old history in Ontario, first as a program of the government of Ontario, and then moving outside of government, to form a non-profit association 27 years ago. So, the transformation needs to reimagine itself for the future without losing some of its integral historical importance.
The transformation needs to achieve a future state of sustainable revenue, which is not solely dependent on affinity program revenue. Previously, our membership was automatic to employees who were reaching their service milestones. With privacy regulation changes, this was no longer possible, so we needed to find new ways to inform and attract members. Because our history was long service, our membership tended to be a demographic of those serving at least 15 years in the public sector. Recognizing that we cannot be all things to all people, we need to strike a balance of programming and services that will be attractive to a range of ages and career stages, and into retirement. And most importantly, we need to have a unique value proposition that is attractive to new and current members.
Like many transformations, it is a long and often difficult road to achieve the desired future state. The most appropriate analogy that I liken it to is sailing. Sail boats do not move in a straight line, they weave. There is not a straight path, the winds blow from many directions, sometimes it is clear sailing, and other times the water batters the boat around. As you transform you envision a future and drive towards it, but you often do not have a clear map to follow. You need to think carefully about your route, and keep an eye on weather patterns, depend on your team, and be willing to discover new lands along the way.
Change is the only constant; so, although there are many challenges along the way, there does tend to be consistencies that all transformations face. In our case, we needed to understand who our members were. The first step was cleaning our database. Although this was an arduous process with the thousands of members we had, it was foundational to all the other transformation work that followed.
In my opinion, transformation needs to be data driven, not opinion based. To this end, we employed an extensive membership survey, undertook focus groups, and conducted individual interviews with our Board of Directors, Staff, and members. Most recently, we performed a competitive analysis to find out what other like organizations offer and where our unique value proposition lies. We are researching not only current members, but potential member groups to find out where we should play and what our best service offerings would be, as well as determining revenue models that will sustain the organization.
Transformation is never easy, and it is not for the faint of heart, but it is well worth it when you can look back. We had a fairly fresh staff, so there was consistent alignment with the future. Our Board of Directors recognized the need for change, so they were supportive. We took a slow and collaborative approach with our membership, so that we could bring them along on the journey - engaging them through surveys and focus groups, and then reporting on the findings as we go along.
The best learning for me was to realize that not everyone will get on the bus with the change, and that is normal. You need to try your best to work collaboratively with all the stakeholders and use evidence so that there is a strong understanding of why change is needed and the best approaches to transform, recognizing there will always be those who are contrary minded and may not be willing to step into the new future with you. If there is integrity built in the process through transparency, various methods to engage, listening to all ideas, you need to accept you will not be able to please everyone.
Patience is also required. I go into every transformation knowing this is a five-to-seven-year endeavour. There is no easy fix; you need to take the time to get it right if you want it to stick.
CIM: As a change leader with over 20 years of experience leading organizational transformation, what have you learned about this transformation that you did not from other change initiatives? How has this tested your leadership?
Lesley: This transformation has been a slower process from the previous one that I undertook. My previous experience was in a federated model, moving the Ontario Literacy Coalition (OLC) to Essential Skills Ontario (ESO). The environment had changed around us, where we had been the coalition that represented the literacy field, with partners including school boards, colleges, and community-based programs. Then these organizations started having a larger role in representing their own interests and did not see the need for the OLC to do it for them. As well, for them both, we were their provincial organization yet competing with them for the same government funding. When this transformation began, we undertook an extensive research initiative to ask the question, “why do we exist? and “what would be lost if we didn’t exist?”
Recognizing that at the end of the research there was a particularly good possibility that we might have had to close shop depending on the results. Fortunately, we landed at a place where we could do what the other agencies were not doing, including: government relations on behalf of the organizations; informing public policy; and research to build a greater knowledge base for the literacy field. In this case we started the transformation with research, and it directly guided the change process.
With the QCC, we needed to put our house in order even before we began the research. Even though it was a long-standing organization, there were many areas that needed renovation. Through the first two years of the transformation vision, we did not change our programming substantially, but rather began adding new programs and services to the mix. When the pandemic struck, and our lives changed we needed to pivot quickly, and we added webinars on a variety of subjects. We installed programs for our senior members that were retired. Fortunately, our members responded very favourably to this new programming. Although we did not have research to guide us at the beginning, it was in a way action-based research that did give us some intelligence for moving forward into the future.
This did present challenges. For the first couple of years, we did not have the kind of research that we needed to properly inform our decisions with unmistakable evidence. It was incredibly difficult for our staff team because we did not have a sharp vision of the future. Our staff team continued to grapple with – who are our members? What do they want? Who are we targeting? What is our value proposition? We knew we needed to undertake an extensive research initiative to find those, but the very year that we were going to invest in it, Covid hit and with it our revenue, making it difficult to invest in a new initiative when we just had to put our resources into stabilizing the organization.
Although it was incredibly disappointing and frustrating for me, I often recognize that everything happens for a reason. Although it delayed us for a year, it allowed us to do something we might not have done otherwise had we started with the research earlier. We engaged our members in different programs and services, we switched more quickly to digital communication then we had anticipated before the pandemic which resulted in greater engagement with our members. As I mentioned earlier, we tested our different programming and did surveys for every event so started building knowledge of our members that eventually enriched our research.
CIM: What are the challenges that lay in your pathway to success within the next 6 months?
Lesley: We are currently at a significant point in the change process. The board and staff have the results of the research to inform our decision making and we are moving into developing a new vision, mission, and mandate for the organization. For me this is the scariest part – what if there are big chasms within the board and agreement is hard to reach. What if this process divides rather than unifies the board in the change journey? Time will tell, but I trust the process, so I am confident that we will land in the right spot for the organization.
I think because we took a slow process, and really engaged our staff and board and members, it has allowed us to put our own feelings aside and enter this process using the intelligence we have gathered, being respectful, and working for the betterment of the organization.
CIM: You have been the CEO/Executive Director for many organizations now. How has your past work or life prepared you for this role at QCC?
Lesley: Yes. As an executive director there is somewhat of a playbook that makes it easy to follow. You must understand governance principles and models and know how to apply them. Human resources practices are essential, ensuring that there is an HR framework in place to establish clarity in roles, good onboarding processes, and supporting and encouraging satisfactory performance. Policies are a staple to ensure that there are ground rules and procedures to follow. Budgeting and revenue development, government relations, partnership development, member-centric attitudes are all key ingredients. These I learned both through training and on the job. I learned several of these things the hard way by living through mistakes and missteps. I also learned through goals realized and having many excellent learning moments and mentors along the way.
In an Executive Director role, you need all these tools at your disposal and be awfully familiar with how to use them, but like all management roles, there is the magic and the human element that makes each role and every organization unique. The greatest, and constant learning for me is ‘relational.’ How do I practice collaborative leadership without being run over roughshod? How do I encourage and create a space that enables people to bring their whole self to work and feel creative and rewarded in their roles? How do I continue to make directors feel engaged and excited about the work of the organization, while drawing the lines between operational and governance roles? How do I manage the inevitable conflict when I am so uncomfortable with conflict?
CIM: Every leader thinks about their legacy. What do you believe is yours? Why?
Lesley: People focused. I try each day to co-create an organization where the board and staff team feel respected, engaged contributors, bringing passion and creation to building great organizations. I do not always succeed, but it is what I hope I am remembered for.
CIM: What is your passion at work, and in life? How has that guided your role as a leader?
Lesley: Making something better than I found it. I have a penchant for fixer-uppers. I love a good challenge. I am very creative, and I like to find the potential in everything. My passion at work as in life, is imagining a positive change and going through the steps to make that change possible.
I want to be the kind of leader who can assemble a leadership team, who all bring enthusiasm, intelligence, and imagination to the task at hand. When you have an amazing team, there is nothing that is not possible.
CIM: What barriers did you encounter along your career pathway? How did you overcome these, or at least move beyond these barriers or challenges. What worked; what didn't?
Lesley: The challenge I still grapple with is being a woman leader who can be authentic, lead with her heart and head, in a world that does not have a lot of examples of this type of leadership. I want to lead by influencing and bringing people on the journey with me. It is sometimes more comfortable for me to lead from behind, but sometimes this is not a respected leadership style in the larger business community.
As someone who is a people-pleaser and shies away from conflict, it can get you into trouble. My leadership style works wonderfully with people who are self-motivated, share your vision and work collaboratively. It does not work with those who take this leadership style as weak. I had an incredibly challenging time several years back with an employee who at one time I worked tremendously well with, and then started to build alliances with the staff against me, undermining my authority and sabotaging my efforts. It came at a particularly tough time as the organization was facing a loss of substantial revenue with the loss of a major funder. At the time I did not handle it well, and I lost the room.
This was one of my hardest experiences, but one of the best learning opportunities that I ever had. Nothing teaches like that kind of pain point. I have learned that although I do not want to be autocratic, I need to be clear with my expectations, and manage performance to ensure those expectations are met. Greater conflict resulted in not catching it early and establishing clear rules of engagement.
CIM: What can you share about your learnings that others might benefit knowing about?
Lesley: Find mentors and be a mentor, we all need to learn from each other. Use a career journal where you can write down your challenges, and work through them. It really helps to articulate these things in writing so that it gives you some distance from the problem. In this way you can come back to it with a more agnostic perspective and examine the issues without being so emotionally attached to it as you are in the moment that you are actually experiencing it.
CIM: You participated in CIM's peer-to-peer learning program for managers. What was your experience in this program?
Lesley: It was a wonderful experience to dig deep into topics that are part of most manager’s day-to-day work with peers that could share their insights and act as a sounding board for the issues that I was grappling with. Pierre Lebel was the Executive Advisor, and he comes with substantial experience in corporate and non-profit management and provided excellent facilitation and multiple resources.
CIM: How can other up-and-comers benefit from this program? Why?
Lesley: Several ways – learning in a peer-to-peer environment that is a safe space for discussing issues and problem solving. Access to insightful resources and accelerated learning that covered a breadth of new knowledge in a fast-paced and interesting manner. Because the program was very participant centric, we were not wading through a lot of generic material. It was really targeted to our group and the issues that we were all grappling with.
CIM: Do you think other executives like you would benefit from this program as well? Why?
Lesley: Absolutely. It is not a big-time commitment, and the time is well spent. I learned a lot and I appreciated learning how other leaders approach similar problems and challenges at work.
