Tapping the Inner Strength to Accomplish Big Things

Rob Stiers at the start of the Tromso Skyrace

Rob Stiers at the last leg of the Tromso Skyrace

People wonder how you can run 50 miles. It seems insane, right? But you can if you do the training and dig deep for your strength, hope, patience and determination. Fifty miles not your thing? Think about a race that you have run and look at your splits. Although not true for every race, many times you got faster the last leg. You knew that you were towards the end and you activated something inside of you to finish at your absolute best effort. Rob Stiers, AVP Facilities of Capital Planning and Design at White Plains Hospital, shared that he realized his running experience is relatable to real life…

We are capable of doing more than we think. We have the ability to do big things. We just have to realize that strength and tap it.

The Stiers Family

I met Rob at a healthcare conference (when in person conferences were a thing). We were seated at the same breakfast table and I believe that I noticed his running watch. Of course, I immediately had the urge to ask if he was a runner. Not only was he a runner but he was an ultra runner (50 mile reference make sense now?)! [FYI - I’m a Garmin loyalist but I’ll give him a break for using a Polar since being an ultra runner is pretty badass!]

I found out that he and his family go to the hospital that I’ve been working on my whole career-The Valley Hospital. Rob’s wife is British and they have 4 children together. Two are biological and two are adopted (one from India and one from The Republic of Georgia). I was adopted at birth so my heart filled with joy to hear that he had adopted children.

As you can imagine, it was an obvious choice to reach out to Rob when I was thinking of people I wanted to invite to a virtual coffee to share some of their career advice. I’m so thankful for him saying yes! We always hear that “life is like a marathon, not a sprint” but I liked Rob’s different spin on a running analogy.

He discussed this concept in the lens of how he saw healthcare and essential workers react to the pandemic. We had never experienced anything like the pandemic. There was no specific training, rules or guidebook on what to do. These people had to tap that inner strength, past training, knowledge and intuition to be agile and resourceful. They were superheroes, caring for the sick and doing everything possible to fight the unknown.

I remember the first time I crossed the finish line of a marathon. I trained for it, but the FIRST time I ever ran 26.2 miles was that race day. It was not easy and I had doubted my capabilities throughout the experience. Once I crossed that finish line, I realized that I was capable of more than I thought and was so proud. It is how the essential workers may have felt looking back at how things went when the pandemic first hit.

Just as we can’t run races every day, we can’t tap that inner strength all the time. After an exhaustive race effort, we need to recover before we can race again. Rob mentioned another great learning for him was that it is important not to get too far ahead of your team or push your team too hard. It can lead to burn out and lower quality results. This reminded me of how races have a collaborative element to it. The elite runners run in a pack and may even take turns leading the pack. Perhaps instead of us having to have the individual team members tapping their inner strength simultaneously, we can have the team as a whole performing and innovating optimally by utilizing the various strengths and abilities.

There were so many other packets (…Gu packets…get it? Couldn’t help myself…) of advice that Rob gave throughout our conversation and I could literally go on forever with the running analogies. But I’ll leave you with a question that Rob posed that really resonated with me…

Can we consciously (versus wait for an emergency or event) activate that inner strength to accomplish new, innovative, big things?

As I continue to grow in my career, I am going to think about not only how I can personally tap my inner strength but how my team can maintain a good energy and healthy relationship to cross that finish line.

Do you have an instance that you tapped your inner strength?

Is it something you can consciously activate? Or do you find it happen mostly in response to a deadline or emergency?

You can find Rob Stiers on LinkedIn and throughout posts on the White Plains Hospital Facebook page.