The Degree Did Not Make Me
Beyond the degree: How experience, relationships, and personal growth shape true leadership success.
There is a lot of pressure attached to success, especially for women who are trying to grow professionally while carrying everything else life requires of them. Get the degree. Work harder. Build your résumé. Find a mentor. Network. Get promoted. Earn your seat at the table. Keep moving.
I believe in education. I have invested in mine, and I continue to do so because learning has absolutely helped shape the professional I have become. Education has expanded the way I think, strengthened my understanding of healthcare and business, and given me tools that I did not have earlier in my career. But after more than 20 years in healthcare, I can also say with confidence that a degree is only one piece of what makes someone successful.
You can have an impressive education and still not know how to lead people. You can understand theories, policies, and organizational structures and still lack common sense. You can know every regulation and still walk past an employee who is struggling because you never learned how to pay attention to people. You can have an impressive title and résumé and still lack empathy, judgment, humility, and the ability to connect with another human being.
Those things matter, particularly in healthcare. Much of what has made me successful did not come from a classroom. It came from experience. It came from working directly with people, making mistakes, having difficult conversations, learning how to navigate conflict, dealing with families, staffing shortages, regulations, budgets, employee concerns, resident needs, and situations where there was no perfect answer. It came from having to make a decision and then having the integrity to stand behind it or the humility to admit when I needed to make a different one.
There is no degree that can completely teach you that.
I did not begin my career sitting at an executive table. I know what it feels like to be the person doing the work, trying to take care of other people while also trying to build a life for yourself. I have worked while raising a family. I have gone back to school while working full-time. I have changed positions, taken chances, learned new responsibilities, questioned whether I was ready, and sometimes figured things out while I was already standing in the middle of them.
I think people sometimes look at someone's current title and assume there was a straight line between where that person started and where they are today. My journey has not been a straight line, and I do not know many successful people whose journey has been. There were times when I knew exactly what I was doing and times when I absolutely did not. There have been opportunities that excited me and opportunities that scared me. Even now, I can walk into a room prepared and confident and still have a moment when I wonder whether I am ready for what comes next.
I have learned that confidence does not mean you never have those thoughts. Confidence is being able to have the thought and keep moving anyway.
Being a Black woman has also shaped the way I have experienced leadership.
I do not believe every challenge I have encountered has been because I am Black or because I am a woman, but I would be dishonest if I pretended those things have never mattered.
There are situations where I have been very aware of how I am being perceived. Am I being too direct? Is my confidence being interpreted as arrogance? If I disagree, am I being viewed as difficult? If I speak firmly, will someone hear anger instead of leadership? If I advocate strongly for someone, will I be labeled confrontational?
There comes a point when constantly evaluating yourself through someone else's level of comfort becomes exhausting. Professional maturity has helped me understand that I can be respectful without shrinking. I can be compassionate and still hold people accountable. I can disagree without being disrespectful. I can ask difficult questions. I can say when something does not make sense. I can acknowledge when I am wrong. I can lead without constantly apologizing for having a voice.
Professional growth should refine you. It should not erase you.
Healthcare itself can also be unforgiving. It is an industry built around caring for people during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives, but the people providing that care are often carrying extraordinary pressure themselves. Staffing shortages are real. Burnout is real. Expectations continue to grow. We ask healthcare professionals to be compassionate, dependable, efficient, clinically aware, emotionally resilient, and available, sometimes while offering very little space for them to simply be human.
Healthcare will take everything you are willing to give it if you let it. The dependable person gets called because everyone knows she will answer. The person who fixes problems gets handed another problem. The employee who always stays over gets asked to stay again. The leader who never says no eventually becomes the leader everyone expects to always say yes.
I know that person because I have been that person.
One of the most important things I have learned is that burnout does not always look like falling apart. Sometimes burnout looks like continuing to function extremely well. You answer the emails, cover the problem, attend the meetings, encourage everybody else, take care of your family, meet the deadline, and come back the next morning to do it all again. People tell you how strong you are because you are still producing, while privately you are wondering how much longer you can keep doing it.
There is a difference between being strong and being healthy.
There is also a difference between dedication and self-neglect.
I still believe in hard work. I believe there are seasons when you have to push yourself. I believe sacrifice is sometimes part of growth. But I no longer believe exhaustion should be worn as proof that you are committed. There is no prize for reaching every professional goal while becoming miserable in the process.
Self-care became important to me when I finally understood that everything will never be finished. There will always be another problem, another call, another employee who needs something, another email, another assignment, another goal. If you wait until everything is done before you take care of yourself, you may never get around to doing it.
Another lesson I have learned is that success is not simply about what you know. Who you know matters too.
I used to struggle with that because I wanted to believe good work should speak entirely for itself. Good work matters tremendously, but relationships matter too. Someone has to know your work. Someone may speak your name in a room you are not in. Someone may recommend you because they have watched how you lead and trust what you can do.
There is nothing wrong with that.
Networking does not replace competence, and relationships cannot sustain someone who cannot perform. Knowing the right person might get your name into the conversation, but eventually, people are going to experience your work for themselves. That is why I believe in developing both.
Build your knowledge, but also learn how to deal with people. Get the degree if that is part of your journey, but get experience too. Find mentors. Build genuine professional relationships. Listen to people who know things you do not know. Pay attention to the employees who have been doing the work for years.
Do not walk into a room believing your education automatically makes you the smartest person there. Some of the smartest people I have met in healthcare do not have the most impressive credentials. They understand people. They notice things. They know when something is wrong before a report tells them something is wrong. They have years of experience and judgment that cannot be reproduced in a textbook.
A strong leader recognizes that kind of intelligence instead of being threatened by it.
I am proud of my education, but my education did not make me. My experiences contributed. My failures contributed. My family contributed. The people who believed in me contributed. The people who challenged me contributed. The situations I never want to repeat contributed. My faith contributed. The times when I had to get back up and try again contributed.
All of it came with me.
That is what I think about now when people talk about having a seat at the table.
I do want the seat. I have worked for it. But I am not interested in sitting there simply so I can say that I made it. I want to contribute something. I want to ask questions. I want to challenge ideas when they need to be challenged. I want to understand the people who are affected by the decisions being made in that room, including the people who may never be invited into it.
And when I have the opportunity, I want to help someone else grow. Success cannot always be about how far I can go. At some point, it has to become about what I can do with what I have learned.
I am still learning. I am still growing. I still have goals that make me nervous. I still make mistakes. I still have days when I question myself. The difference now is that I no longer believe uncertainty means I am unqualified. Sometimes it simply means I am growing again.
If I could tell another woman anything about building a career, I would tell her to pursue education if it is part of her path, but never believe another degree will automatically turn her into the person she wants to become.
Learn people. Learn yourself. Develop common sense and sound judgment. Get experience. Listen. Ask questions. Learn how to communicate with people who are different from you. Find mentors. Build relationships without using people. Take care of yourself before your body forces you to. Protect your integrity. And never confuse having a title with knowing how to lead.
When your opportunity comes, bring your education with you. Bring your experience too. Bring your empathy, your judgment, your common sense, your mistakes, your lessons, your confidence, and even some of the fear that reminds you that what you are doing still matters.
The degree may help open the door. It is the whole person you have become who has to walk through it.
