Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, February is American Heart Month, and I got to say, is something so many of us already have on our minds after seeing Buffalo Bill's safety, Damar Hamlin go into cardiac arrest in week 17 of the NFL. I don't know about you, but it was pretty scary to know that Damar was receiving CPR right there on the field. But thank God the medics were there to do it because they saved his life. That's why today I want to talk to Dr. Holly Anderson. She's a renowned cardiologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital and the founder of the hands-only CPR movement. She is on a mission to make sure everybody knows how to help someone in cardiac arrest, because as you'll hear today, we can save a lot of lives if ordinary people like you and me know what to do when that happens. Unfortunately, most people don't, and it's not easy to create awareness and change that, but Holly is an extraordinary leader. She's passionate about this mission, and she knows how to leverage that passion in order to drive change and action. Now if that's a skill, every great leader needs to master. So let's get to it. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Dr. Holly Anderson. Holly, you were raised in Hamburg, New York, which is 10 minutes away from where the Buffalo Bills play. I know you're a big-time Bills fan, and you've endured four consecutive Super Bowl losses in the 90s. Do you ever think they'll win a Super Bowl? It's so hard to be a Bills fan, and yes, four years in a row is very tough, and their last game was too tough too, but I'm hoping. And speaking of the Bills, on January 2nd, I'm sure you were watching that game against the Bengals when we saw Bills safety, De Mar Hamlin go down. Did you have any idea, Holly, in terms of what was going on, and what were you thinking? I was watching, and I didn't see him initially fall, but I knew exactly what was going on. I couldn't see what was going on behind the wall of people that was around him, but I knew they were doing CPR and trying to resuscitate him. And I was struck that so many people in the stadium and very seasoned commentators had no idea what was going on. They were really bemiffed by this. And unfortunately, I've seen it way too often, and it is the number one cause of death for student athletes, sudden cardiac arrest, and it can strike seemingly healthy people of any age, often without warning. And when I saw the rerun, I saw that he really didn't take a hard hit, right? He just fell down on a helmet right in his chest, and then he passed out a few seconds later, which goes along with something called commotion cordis when you get struck in the chest. And there may be nothing wrong with his heart, and he still wanted to cardiac arrest. But I'm so glad we got him back, and I'm so glad people knew what to do around him. I bet you know, as a doctor watching this, you had to have this tremendous urge to just spring into action. I mean, how did you feel? I was just happy that there was a stadium full of medics that knew what to do. I mean, it wasn't that long ago when I, and I saw a, a Monie League basketball player left face down on the court, unresponsive, with no one in the, in the whole facility knowing what to do. And EMS arrived and took him, but it was too late. You know, he died and, and his mother won a wrongful death suit against the league. And there's just no reason for this. It's a message we have to get out that sudden cardiac arrest is very common, and everyone should know how to save a life. You know, I have a mission to try to increase bystander response to victims of sudden cardiac arrest. Yeah, we're going to talk about that. And when you think about Demar, we were all on pins and needles waiting to find out if he was going to be okay. When we were told he was in critical condition and, and he's now thankfully he 's been discharged from the hospital, which has been a huge relief. What does rehab look like for a guy like Demar now? You know, I was really hopeful he would be okay because they did get to him really quickly. And typically they cool somebody down who's had a cardiac arrest and they sed ate them. So it did take a while to find out if he was waking up and would be okay. I don't know the details. It sounds like they haven't found anything wrong with his heart, which is great . He has a lot of, you know, emotional psychological and physical recovery to do. Physically, he may be totally fine. They may not have found any kind of underlying heart condition, but you have to do a complete heart workout, making sure everything's okay. And some players do return to play after this, but this is football. This is very serious matter. I don't know the details and I'm just hopeful he has a long, healthy life. By the way, as an aside, I have to ask you, did you see the bills kick off return in their very next game? It was amazing. And I was actually in the Buffalo airport because I had just been there and the whole place erupted. You know, Josh Allen, your big favorite here, you know, he was touched afterwards. And he said it had been three years and three months since the bills had returned a kickoff for a touchdown. And of course, tomorrow's number was number three. It's almost like divine providence came into play there. You know, how often do you feel that as a doctor, divine providence coming in and doing what you'd never expect? Oh, there are things I see that I can't explain scientifically or medically all the time. Both wonderful things and also when somebody, they have a terminal illness, they hang on until their son comes home from the army or something and they get to see him and then they pass the next day. So yeah, there's a lot that goes on that we scientists, medical physicians can 't explain. You know, I read where 92% of cardiac arrest victims don't even make it to the hospital because the people around them don't know what to do. You cited the basketball player, unfortunately passed away. And obviously the medical staff knew what to do with tomorrow and they resusc itated him with CPR. How do you know when to take that kind of action? You know, when you see someone have a cardiac arrest, they go just like he does . They go from looking perfectly fine to collapsing on the floor totally out and they're not breathing. They're not responsive and they start to look not good pretty quickly because there's no blood circulating. So we have reduced saving a life to three easy steps. Check call compress. Check to see if somebody's breathing responsive, call 911 and begin chest and compressions hard and fast in the center of the chest. Every minute without CPR, the chance of survival goes down by 10% within five minutes brain cells begin to die within 10 minutes. The chance of survival is virtually zero. So you can't wait for EMS to arrive and you don't have to be certified. You don't have to do mouth to mouth anymore and you're not going to get sued because there's good Samaritan laws and every state to protect you. And the worst thing you can do is nothing because you can't hurt someone who may die without your help. So we just encourage everybody to learn how at handsonly.org in less than a minute and to understand what cardiac arrest is and be prepared to save a life. And 70% of cardiac arrest victims happen in the home. So if you're going to do it, you're most likely going to do it on someone you love. You know, well, I have to congratulate you, Holly, on the fact that you've launched this movement called hands only CPR. You know, tell us a bit more about it and the impetus that you had for starting this program. Yeah, well, I am a cardiologist and I was really sick of resuscitating people brought into our emergency room who had no brain viability. So we could get them back, but we couldn't get their brains back. And I also grew tired of watching whole stadium full of people. There are plenty of soccer victims that had a cardiac arrest and just laid on the field or were carried off the field with whole stadiums not knowing what to do. So it's been a huge kind of mission for me to do this because it's the lowest hanging fruit of saving lives as a cardiologist. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars for a fifth add-on drug with somebody with heart disease and we don't do too much with prevention. So the president of my hospitals, a cardiologist, I'm like, Steve, we've got to make a video that shows people how to do hands only CPR in less than a minute. And then, unfortunately, it became very personal to me because my brother had a cardiac arrest at age 50 after coaching his son's soccer game. And unfortunately, that was when he went in to take a nap at his beach house. So no one was there to see it happen and unfortunately, he wasn't saved. But the difference between life and death is knowing what to do and we want people to know what to do. Interestingly enough, I was talking to Michael Bloomberg today. Oh, you were. Yeah, and I told him that I was going to have the opportunity to do this podcast with you. And he said that check call and compress should be as well known as stop, drop and roll if you ever catch on fire. What's the biggest challenge you have in trying to get a message like this out to an entire country? You know, it's obviously this is a huge undertaking. It's all in distribution. You know, Michael's great. Bloomberg's philanthropy's been helpful. We blanketed the city, New York City with this message, we've partnered with the Department of Health, the Mayor's Office, the Giants, Broadway, the fashion industry. And we've partnered with the PGA of America because golf courses are the fifth most common place for sudden cardiac arrest. And we live on their website and we have a protocol on how to make your golf clubs safe. And we've also partnered with AT&T and we're all across the Pebble Beach Pro Am , clearly I'm a golfer. So, you know, you partner with who you know. But we're working on some more national partnerships. The American Heart Association, you know, is doing some work on this as well. But the reality is it's 360,000 Americans die every year from this out of the hospital, 92% die before making it back to the hospital. And we haven't changed the numbers on that in decades. And I'm all for getting people certified, but that hasn't changed the numbers. So we really need to get this message out and I'm working to do it. You're working really hard at it. You're putting together all these presentations and pitches for all these organizations. And you've testified before Congress. And I understand that you've got a trip to the White House coming up. Tell us a little bit about that, what you hope to accomplish. We think we have a trip to the White House coming up. My other passion professionally is heart disease in women because women's heart disease is under researched, under diagnosed and under treated. And heart disease in women is the number one cause of death for women in the United States and now globally. And unfortunately, heart disease, death due to heart disease is increasing in this country. It's increasing the fastest among young adults. And it's increasing the fastest among young women. And it's not even on their radar screen. And once a woman gets diagnosed with heart disease, she will do worse and be more likely to die from it than a man. So before I retire, we have to move the needle there too. And you're a Presbyterian hospital and Ronald Perlman Heart Institute teamed up with Barbara Streisand and Cedars Sinai in LA and started something called the Women's Heart Alliance, which is cardiologists from all over the country who have joined our mission to decrease the number of women dying from this. And you get an audience when you travel with Barbara Streisand. So it opens a few doors. Besides opening a few doors, what have you learned by being with Barbara? What's really struck you from that experience? What strikes me is that we can get in front of all the female senators and all the female congresswomen and John McCain and the head of the FDA, the head of the CDC and the head of the NIH. We can fly down there and have an audience with them all in one day. But what's important is if you don't do the work beforehand and you don't do the work afterward, it doesn't matter. You know, it's not just a day in the sun. We did a lot of work beforehand. We did a lot of work afterward. We came away with some very big accomplishments. And one of them was that the FDA now has to release something called clinical trial snapshot. So we the consumer know who were the participants in either medicines or therapies that got FDA approval. And also we were very instrumental in getting the DOD, the Department of Defense to fund research and cardiovascular disease and women. It was nice to go down there. It was a really fun day. It was remarkable. I think Barbara is very serious about this. It is her mission. In fact, there's something in cardiology called the Yentil syndrome that was coined by the first female cardiologist out of the NIH. And that is a woman doesn't get treated with her heart disease unless she looks like a man with heart disease. And that's kind of Barbara's movie. So there's synchronicity there as well. Absolutely. And you know, it really strikes me here. Here we are. It's February. It's February happens to be heart month, but heart month pales in comparison to breast cancer awareness month, which is in October. And that seems to be crazy because more women die of heart disease, as I understand it, than all cancers combine. Why aren't more people talking about this? I think it has to do with the fact that in the 1970s and 1980s, no one talked about breast cancer. It was taboo to talk about until Susan B. Coleman, Betty Ford, came out and talked about their breast cancer. Well, every woman talks about their breast cancer, most every woman, and they have a huge community to go to. Women don't like talking about the heart disease as much because they feel they maybe stigmatize, that it's considered a man's disease, that they may be judged. And you can go in and have a heart attack or have a stent put in and leave and not tell anybody. So no one knows it. And so women might also just die in their sleep and people attribute to other things. So women aren't talking about their heart disease, I had to take care of a world-known female actor who had a heart attack and didn't want to come out and tell anybody about it. Susan Lucci is a patient of mine. She is beautiful, phenomenal, thin, athletic, had basically no risk factors. And she had two stents put in. And she's talking about it. And that's what we need. We need more stories. When people can tell their stories of heart disease, then as you know, stories are important in getting the message across and so we're working on that as well. You know, unfortunately, Lisa Marie Presley's death was a big story in the news recently. And I heard you talk about something that really fascinated me, which was broken heart syndrome. Can people really die from a broken heart? People can really die from a broken heart. It was a syndrome that was not even recognized until the 1990s. And it basically, the whole heart looks stunned. It stops beating. And the mechanism is just this whole basically kind of adrenaline outbursts from your body that stuns the heart. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with a heart, but it's a stuns the heart enough to actually cause a cardiac arrest or make somebody go into terrible heart failure. And if we can support them and if we can get them through this, then they go on to not even have a footprint trace of any of this happening. But yes, people can die from it. And now that it's been described, we see it more and more. So it's really important to protect our hearts from too much emotional stress. I can totally understand that. And Holly, you're obviously a coveted guest on all the major TV networks and you're an on-air medical consultant. And you know, I know you had a flurry of requests with the Demar Hamlin event and then Lisa Marie Presley. How do you get prepared to go on TV and do you enjoy it? Yeah, I don't get the prepared very often because it's usually a newsworthy event. When I do have time to prepare it and I have gone on the morning shows, again, it's very timely because it's usually around the news. I like it a lot. I think it's really important to get the word out because every time we have a chance to talk about heart disease and sudden cardiac arrest and heart disease in women and increase people's awareness and tell them that 80% of this disease is preventable and to take care of themselves. But also if you think you're having symptoms to act on them, I think we save lives. So I've always enjoyed it. I've always felt it's important. I love having the opportunity to do it. Well, you do a great job. And I thank you on behalf of the rest of the world of building awareness of this issue. Hey, you know, because you're listening to this, I can tell you're the kind of person who wants to learn how to lead well. But there's a lot of companies out there who want to take that desire and charge you $500 or $1,000 or heck, even $20,000 to try and show you how to lead. That's just not right. If you want to be a better leader, I believe you deserve to have access to something that will truly help you and it shouldn't cost a fortune. So I want you to go to howleaderslead.com and start my leadership class. It's really and truly free. And after you take this class, you're going to feel more confident in your role and you'll be on your way to getting big things done with your team. Go check it out at howleaderslead.com. I want to get more into how you lead because you are known for being an outstanding leader. But first, tell us a story from your childhood that really shaped the kind of leader you are today. I grew up in a, as you know, Hamburg, New York, which is a suburb, a large suburb in the snowbelt of Buffalo, New York. And my father was a school teacher and my grandfather was a principal and my grandmother was a music teacher and organist. And my father was also a swim coach and a football coach. And so I had academics and athletics and music all stressed to me my entire life. And I had an overachieving brother who excelled in all three. So I think that despite being from a community in upstate New York where many people are born and raised and lived there, I think I was very lucky to have a family that instilled in me the importance of striving in all areas and the benefits one can read from that. You know, when did you have that aha moment when you said you just absolutely knew that you wanted to be a doctor? You know, most people know they want to be doctors very early and I went to Dartmouth and I was really interested in studying the brain and biochemistry and behavior . And to study biochemistry, you have to take organic chemistry. So I was in an organic chemistry class my sophomore year and there about 100 people in the class and I realized that everybody in the class was going to be a doctor and I'm like, hmm, I could be a doctor. I came to the table late so I actually spent a lot more time probably investigating it there and I went down to the NIH and was very lucky to work under a doctor who won the Nobel Prize in medicine studying the brain in central nervous system studies and we had these amazing scientists from all over the world that were studying in the field and they would come back and write up their paper and it was really exciting medical research and that's right when also the HIV virus was isolated and you saw these labs from Paris and the NIH collaborating and competing and then that doctor said, look, an MD is a much better education than a PhD, you should just go get an MD because you can take care of patients and work with them and study them. And so I went to medical school and what I found out in medical school is that I love the science but I love taking care of patients and I loved thinking on your feet and I loved combining the science that you know and translating it into in patient care. And the easy part is the science. The hard part is to effectively communicate with your patients and make them understand what they're going through and motivate them to take care of themselves. So that's the ever challenging part. It's fun and it's important to keep up with the science and be there and be at the top of your game but the more challenging actually more fun part is to translate it into clinical medicine and do it for your patients. What was it, Holly, that made you just fall in love with the human heart? So I stopped being into the brain biochemistry because neurologists, they don't get to do much, right? I mean, it's really fascinating but once you make a diagnosis, there's not what you can do and I fell in love with cardiology, I fell in love with cardiothoracic surgery, I loved operating on the heart, most amazing theatrical setting you could possibly be in, stopping someone's heart, operating on it and then restarting it, you know, and have them be restored back to health. And I thought about cardiothoracic surgery but you're in the operating room all day long which I love but they don't really take care of patients as much. We take care of patients, we work with the cardiothoracic surgery and we get them back. So I love following people throughout the course of their life but I think that cardiology is the scariest part of medicine because people can come and die and if you miss it, that's the thing they're most likely to die from. So you have to be comfortable with that kind of stress and it's so rewarding though because people can come and die and we can work and do procedures on them and turn them around and have them walk out of the hospital. So to me that was the most fun, exciting part of it. You describe it as fun, you just use the word fun, you just talked about people dying in distress but you've been quote of many times saying you went into cardiology because it was fun. It was the most fun for sure. I mean I think that clearly you can't get cavalier, we're used to saving people and we save, you know, thank God we save the majority of people but the losses are tough on that and that never gets easy. So you have to make sure you're doing your best job. Absolutely and when you were coming up in your career Holly, did you have a pivotal moment that really changed the trajectory of your career? You know when I looked into heart disease and women I was one of the very, I mean there aren't that many female practicing cardiologists and when I first started looking into cardiovascular disease women, very few people were talking about it. So I got invited as a first year faculty member to give a talk to all cardi thoracic surgeons in the tri-state area and they say can you talk about the socioeconomics of treating a female patient with heart disease. I'm like can I just talk about heart disease and women they're like okay. And so I was the youngest faculty member there, I was the only women and I was talking to a huge audience of cardi thoracic surgeons and I knew that I was going to get them because I put up this slide that said of the three major trials from which we learned who should benefit from bypass surgery of the 2,700 people enrolled in those three trials, 47 were women and I knew they didn't know that and you know their jaw has dropped and I kind of had them and the head of cardi thoracic surgery said you know Holly you should really devote part of your career to this. We need to hear this. So that was the first year of my career and I respected him a lot and I did and it's also been tremendously fun. You're not only known for being a great doctor as I mentioned earlier you're also a great leader in fact you were the second female chief resident in the history of NY Cornell which is a huge honor, I mean that's a big honor. Tell me about that role and all you were responsible for. Yeah the chief resident is picked at the end of our training or the last year of our training which in internal medicine is three years and one of my best characteristics as far as being a leader is like this job is so hard right. I mean you have to love it because the hours are unbelievable and that year I was on call every third day for 24 hours but I was really responsible for the whole house staff for a year so you're really on call 24/7 and you have to motivate people. You know you have to lead I think it here with inspiration and keep reminding doctors and training and doctors around you of what's important and what's important is patient care and what's important is learning medicine and there's nothing more important or fun than that like yes you run into problems and yes things can distract you and yes things happen but we get to take care of patients we get to help them and we get to learn about what I think all of us found is incredibly fascinating so I think it's about you know inspiration optimism motivating others and reminding them of how lucky we are to get to do this and it worked you know it worked I think we all had a great time. You know you've said when you're a doctor it's your duty to educate other doctors and you know when I think of doctors this may be unfair but I think of doctors as being individual contributors. I don't really think of doctors being leaders sharing their knowledge with others. Where did you develop this desire to really reach out and share what you know with other doctors? You know the whole medical school education the whole residency training program it works on the Socratic method right you learn while you're doing it and you teach we kind of see you see one do one teach one you learn as much as you can and then your job is to teach fellow residents and younger doctors and that never stops you know I've been on the faculty for a long time so I taught the second year pathophysiology course to the medical students and you're constantly teaching while you're working in the intensive care unit as you're rounding with patients so you kind of get used to doing both. You have to kind of think out loud and you're definitely asking them questions all the time because people remember things if you ask them questions which is why we use this Socratic method but when it comes to preventive cardiology when it comes to cardiovascular disease and women when it comes to that part I think yeah it's our duty to teach emergency room doctors and OBGYN doctors and pediatricians and everything else and I learned from them as well so I do think it's part of our profession to continually to learn and continue share knowledge and give back. You know people come from all over the world celebrities royalty to get your care as a doctor describe what it's like to be in a work environment where excellence is so expected and what are you doing to drive that part of your culture into the rest of the hospital? Well I'm very lucky to be in a place where there's really excellence across the board and I love working there and I love working with the surgeons and the other specialists because I can feel so comfortable sending my friends and colleagues to them and know they're going to get the best care. We have all people from around the world who come to our hospital and I remember once when I was an intern I think I'm Alda Marcos was my patient and I was running into seer and the guards stopped me because she had guards and again to be able to talk to anybody about their health care to be able to have them get your trust and certainly when you're younger that you have to try harder I think when you 're looking very young and fresh and you don't have a reputation you have to work extra hard. I think that the more you're in there the more confident you get and the better doctor you are so that comes across as well. Well you're still very young but you have been practicing medicine for 35 years . What's the wildest diagnosis that you ever made? One of them was I was still in my training when I remember and that was I was in the cardiac intensive care unit on call at night and I noticed this patient who everything looked fine on him but he didn't look right to me like all his numbers looked fine. He said he was fine. He did not look right to me and I started watching much more closely and I noted on his monitor that his rhythm started looking funny so I didn't EK G on him and he had something where the EKG was telling me that his heart was kind of bobbing around in his chest and that's something called cardiac tamponade where there is fluid building up around the heart and it can build up so much that it just totally collapses the heart and it's a medical emergency and that's what I thought he had so I kind of jumped on him and what I did is I underneath his ribs I put a needle into his heart to extract the fluid and what you want to see when you go in there is clear fluid because you know then do you have the fluid that's surrounding his heart that's compressing it and when I went in it was bloody fluid and you're like hoping that you didn't just go through the heart and by the way right when I was starting to do this he was crashing right his blood pressure was going down its heart rate was going up and as I pulled out all this fluid all of a sudden you know he looked fine his blood pressure came up you know everything stabilized so it was one of those times where you had a truster instincts and I didn't really have other people around but I got them there very quickly then and we saved him because he would have died otherwise so that kind of sticks in my mind because again you know you can know all the medicine but you have to kind of trust your instincts and act on them I'm just glad I was right. Well speaking of that over the years I'm sure with all the diagnoses that you 've had to do you I'm sure you've missed at some point in time and everybody in your field misses at some point in time and when you do that as you mentioned the stakes can't be any higher how do you coach yourself and your team to think about this and to work through failure? Well as you know you learn the most from your failures right you learn the most when things go wrong not when things go right and so when something does go wrong and it does you have to go over it with a fine tooth comb and learn as much as you can from it and that's how I get young doctors through it who might be terribly terribly emotionally upset maybe wanting to quit medicine and you say look we've all been through it we all make mistakes we all learn from mistakes and we learn the most from our mistakes and we learn the most from our disasters. I remember the face I remember the name of a woman came in when I was a resident in the emergency room and she came in looking like pneumonia and sounded like pneumonia and the acestics rate that all seemed like it was pneumonia so we treated her for pneumonia and she died from a heart attack because it was a heart attack and I still remember missing that one and yeah you know the losses aren't easy but you have to know to learn the most from them. I also remember having a great resident in the ICU and she told me at the end of the year she goes I'm going to go into radiology and I'm like what you're going to go into radiology you're so good she goes I go home and cry every night before bed I'm like you should go into radiology. So you know it's not for everybody. And you mentioned this at some point every leader has to deliver bad news it's just part of the job of every leader. How do you show up in those moments and can you share with us one of the most challenging messages you've had to deliver? Well one is to other doctors so when you are in charge of other doctors and taking care of them and clearly somebody is not performing it to the level they should we tend to be very supportive and give time you know give a lot of supervision a lot of support in medicine but yeah I just sit down and talk to somebody that we had to leave our residency program and a lot of that you know you just have to be honest and you have to again we put patients first you have to think of patients and in this profession you need to have we need to graduate doctors we need to train doctors who we feel comfortable putting out there in the world to do a wonderful job in taking care of patients and despite the investment not everybody can do that not everybody should do that. You remember Ollie the first time you had to tell a patient's family that their loved one had passed and what did you learn from that? I don't mind doing it because I feel like I can be pretty honest and strong doing it's very it's very painful very emotional but you have to be so present you have to be their forum and you have to be there and tell them exactly what happened and tell them you did everything and sometimes cry with them and know that you know you're going to continue to support them. What I think is difficult is that you spend your time doing that and then you have to go back into the next patient's room and be there for them. I was on the phone once when I was talking to a wife of my patient and you know he was this famous chef and he arrested at home and she's talking to me on the phone well where I heard EMS was working on him and they were trying to get him back and I knew at some point they weren't getting him back and I'm on the call with his wife and the guy's like 38 years old with five kids and she was crying and I was crying and I you know I had to hang up and go and see the next patient that was there and just be there for them that's hard. Yeah I can only imagine you know you know I talked to a mutual friend of ours Bill Aquabella and you know he's a renowned art dealer who's been a guest on this podcast and Bill said that there's no one more empathetic and compassionate than you. Where do you think this really comes from Ollie and how do you spread those behaviors to the people around you? Well first of all Bill is one of my favorite people ever he's the best. I could be pretty tough and competition too so I have a game face but you know I was very lucky to have a very affectionate loving mother and very warm and affectionate and caring grandparents my mother's parents and I think that it's okay this is a human job we're not supposed to be robots you know a distant and communicating things in a non- personal way I mean this is the most human job there is and I think that's wonderful about it and you know if you're going to be getting emotionally involved with your patients which I don't know how you're not then you're setting yourself up to some pain but that's the only way I know how to do it and it's been so rewarding. Well Bill's not the only one who feels that you're compassionate not sure all your patients feel that way. In fact one of your patients the famous poet Frederick Seidel wrote a poem entitled For Holly Anderson and here's a couple of the verses she lost a very sick patient she especially cared about the man died on the table it wasn't a matter of feeling any guilt or doubt something about a doctor who can cure or anyway try but can also cry. What does that poem mean to you? I love Fred Seidel I think that he saw in me especially probably what prompted him to write that that yeah it's more than just a job and that you're involved on every level personally and professionally and scientifically and yeah that's what makes it kind of beautiful too. You know I even heard that you've made special arrangements for one of your patients to watch his daughter's wedding by video in the hospital room when he couldn't be there and held his hand while his daughter walked down the aisle tell us that story. Oh boy this guy he was having such a horrible year of surgery after surgery to try to save his leg and it was quite complicated and his wife she never left her husband's side she finally was going to leave to go to her daughter's wedding and he went back into another emergent surgery and I said like look you go I'm going to stay here with him and I actually was the only time I canceled my patients that afternoon I like you went to the operating movement with him I came out that was a Friday here it was Saturday he was going to miss his daughter's wedding and yeah we got the hospital to set up and it was not just to see it was back and forth so she got to talk to them and they got to talk to him and yeah that was a very special important moment. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Dr. Holly Anderson in just a moment you know Holly is so empathetic she can naturally just put herself in another person's shoes for other people empathy doesn't come as naturally but it's a vital leadership skill because we just can't lead well if we don't understand other people's viewpoints and how they're feeling fortunately empathy is a skill that you can develop that's a big takeaway I got when I spoke with Johnny Taylor the president and CEO of Shurm the Society for Human Resource Management. We did some research just recently at Shurm 93% of employees said they would leave a job that they like okay a job we're imperfectly fine to go work for a more em pathetic organization so if that doesn't make the case that this empathy is a business imperative and not just a feel good moral imperative I don't know what does. Johnny has a lot of practical ideas for how you can develop more empathy and build a stronger team go check it out episode 52 here on how leaders lead. I mean how do you get stubborn patients to do what you want them to do. I don't always. I mean I once had this guy like I remember he had a heart attack he had a stroke on Mother's Day because I remember this and I spoke to him for years he sat on the computer and I ate ice cream basically all day long and his wife came in and she was this beautiful you know well kept fit woman and finally she came to see me as a patient I'm like you know your husband's bad behavior might not kill him but I could tell it's killing you but I think the trick is how do you motivate somebody to take care of themselves you have to find out what drives them right maybe they're trying to stay alive for their grand child's wedding maybe they're just trying to you know bend over to tie their shoe I mean I think that I take care of some of the luckiest people in the world and they have no idea they're lucky so I try to also impress upon them that yes they might be suffering from such and such and such but I said like come around with me in the hospital because some of those people are not leaving that hospital need kill to be in your shoes that you're complaining about all day long so I can be I can be pretty tough my patients I'll do whatever it takes to motivate them by the way it's also so rewarding because I get the best feedback from my patients too and you know and and they're grateful and they share stories with me of their success stories and that's really important to me too. That's something when you look back Holly something that you've learned from one of your patients that's had one of the biggest impacts on you. One of my patients who is a pretty well-known actress she said every day I get up I look myself in the mirror and I say I forgive you. No matter what happens no matter what you do I think you got to forgive yourself and move on and learn from it so that was motivating but I get to learn so much from my patients you know I sit there I mean it's like the being in the front row of the theater of life and I really I've learned Irving Penn you know was talking to me about how he does photographs and and what he thinks about and and Andre Previn is talking to me about how he 's composed and Sophia LeRan shared some recipes with me I mean I think and I also I had this woman and she and her two sisters and cousins were in Auschwitz they were on three death marches if one of them got separated the one had to go find the three not vice versa and that how she met her husband in the detention camp after the war and that she got married in a wedding dress made out of a German parachute and that wedding dress is now in the the Jewish Museum and so I learned so much about the world from my patients and it's always so fascinating I feel so lucky and grateful to be doing what I'm doing you know I 'll tell you something Holly you know we've talked about this with your hands only movement you know how to bring awareness to what you're doing and that's a skill that every leader needs to learn how to do what can you share on this front that other leaders could apply whatever it is that they're trying to make happen in the world you know I think you got to be passionate about it I think you got to love what you're doing if you're passing about a message you find a way to make it work and we're all busy but if you're busy doing things you don't like then you're busy and unhappy but if you find things that are important and these things are important to me then you find ways to get them done and you find people are also willing to help you get these done and I've had so many fantastic you know Nicole Kidman was the first person to help me with the hands only CPR campaign because you know her father died of son cardiac arrest having lunch with her sister and he probably shouldn't have died if someone knew what to do in the restaurant and so so many people are touched by this and so many people are willing to help you that I think if you're motivated get things done doors open but I got to get more done yeah well I'm sure you will you know and to truly have an impact as leaders we have to stay healthy and I'd like you to get super practical with us for a minute here being that heart disease is the number one cause of death what can we do to avoid this you know I think goes back to what your grandmother told you get a good night's sleep sleep is under appreciated sleep is so important get a good night's sleep eat your fruits and vegetables have a diet that's replete with whole foods particularly a lot of plants the Mediterranean diet be physically active you know go outside run around play with your friends physical activity is the fountain of youth do something get your heart rate up but it's not just okay to exercise for 45 minutes be active in your non-exercise time it's not okay to sit in front of a computer all day long prolong sitting predicts cardiovascular risk and survival get up and move and yes get your blood pressure get your sugar get your lip it's checked we can help you with that but the more I'm a preventive cardiologist the more I really also believe that what we choose to think about directly impacts everything about our health so I think that people who are able to see part of the glass that's half full people who are grateful people who have a sense of humor live longer and are happier than people who don't I've also heard you say focus on your waistline not your weight you know why is that and and I've also heard you say that having that such a humor you just mentioned at least a healthier way of life talk about those two things yeah so the fat around your waist is metabolically active and it will make your blood pressure higher it is make your sugar levels worse it is pro inflammatory and inflammation is the gateway to disease heart disease brain disease and cancer so anything that you can do to make your waistline less is going to make you healthier with respect to all of those things but liposuction doesn't count because it's the fat around your organs that's bad not underneath your skin so yeah that's much more important measure I think then your overall weight and yeah we've we've shown that studies you know the the healthy parts of laughter laughter has been linked to the healthy function of blood vessels such that like 10 minutes of laughter is equivalent to 20 minutes of aerobic physical activity and that's just respect to you know your blood vessels and heart rate clearly we know a lot more is going on when we laugh there are cancer clinics that start laughing sessions just because it's so healthy so yeah having a sense of humor being able to not take everything too seriously being grateful hugely important with respect to our health you worked alongside a noted cardiologist the late Isad ore Rosenfield who was whose father-in-law actually came up with the first stress test describe that relationship and what did you learn from him what I learned from him you know he was quite a bit older than I and I was his fourth and final partner I think I had a natural tendency to be this way anyway but he certainly advanced it to treat your patients like they're human to have fun you know to be humorous to joke around when you can with them and he was famous he had Danny Kay one time was his patient and he had Danny Kay dress up as a doctor and put a really like gloves on and had a really long needle and sent Danny Kay into a patient's room with this huge needle so I think you know one time my son was coming home from preschool you know he used to stop by my office and see me and he was like you know three feet tall and I had a little white coat from so I put a stethoscope on him I put a white coat on him I sent him into one of my patients expecting to see me and you know she just roared with laughter so I think you know to be human to joke around and to be also you know put your hand on their arm when they're going through something it's okay to just be there comforting them in a very human way and so he would come in the middle of the day knock at my door he'd say excuse me can I borrow Dr. Anderson a little bit and then he had me come out and he's like I got to tell you this joke I heard so in the middle of a very busy day when you're pulled in a thousand directions and you're just trying to get through the next patients he never had trouble stopping to have a good laugh or enjoying his day and I think I think that's why he was there a practicing for as long as he was and I think that's important you know you have to be enjoying the moment not just thinking about the future he wrote a book called live now age later what do you mean by that yeah I think that you have to live in the present take care of yourself now and a lot of that book is also about preventive cardiology and preventive medicine what you can do to stay young and feel good and yeah put off aging till later and it's a mindset too right mr club champion at your age I mean you're like a big kid and I love your laugh and I think that's so healthy so yeah live now age later I love that you know oh this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my lightning round of Q&A are you ready for this oh yeah I'm ready all right what 's one word others would use to describe you energetic what would you say is the one word that best describes you optimistic if you could be one person for a day beside yourself who would it be and why I think I would be Cleopatra I mean nine languages she rolled over eight countries she seduced two emperors with her intellect and charm it would have been an amazing interesting time period to live your biggest pet peeve gossip do you have a daily ritual you couldn't live without I do now and that is I meditate every morning and I and since uh covid I've journaled every morning and I found that so insightful and it's helped me grow and I stretch and I do some core work every morning so yeah that's my new routine and it's great now I know your husband Doug is a great friend is an avid golfer as well who be too oh it's so fun to have competition with Doug and and I think that right now I'm beating him a little bit more often but I would say we played in the husband and wife yesterday and we're still married so that's a good thing what's harder cardiology or golf golf you know and I was playing a lot of golf back in the day because I don't you know would be a mother of two I didn't get to compete as much but when I was somebody asked me once you know where do you practice seriously they said where do you practice and I said Hudson National and they were clearly talking about medicine and I was talking about golf but golf is definitely harder I was just inconsistent in cardiology as I am in golf then I I'd be in jail do you have a hidden talent I used to play the violin so I'm still I'm pretty musical and sing and play a little with piano probably not too many people know that your most treasured gift from a patient I had a guy who is a composer and he was probably 80 years old he wrote a concerto for me by hand he came into my office on Valentine's Day with his handwritten concerto dedicated to me and flowers and he had a younger friend bring him in so that was probably the most romantic amazing gift I also had Irving Penn gift to me a photograph that I so admired and I was so touched by that because I know that's not something he ever gets involved with but I was so touched by that as well if I turn on the radio in your car what would I hear you'd probably hear audiobooks I like nonfiction biographies Catherine the Great the splendid in the vial I also am getting into philosophy a little bit the Douda Chang and physics but I'm a collective music taste to Peter Gabriel David Byrne Led Zeppelin Stravinsky so any combination of that what's something about you that few people would know yeah I think few people would know that I'm I'm also a physics nerd and I think quantum physics right now is so fascinating okay that's the end of the lightning round and just a few more questions we'll wrap this up I understand you once won a club championship in golf and you were eight and a half months pregnant is that really true or is that folklore oh it's absolutely true it was the hottest summer in the middle of August but you know it's actually it's not that hard to play golf pregnant because it happens slowly and you have a big you know center of gravity and you can make a good rotation and I had a nice co-pilot with me and I had lost to this woman three years in a row so there's no way she was going to beat me four years in a row so it didn't matter if I was pregnant or not it's just hard to play golf after you deliver but that was a thrill yeah well I'm glad your child didn't kick while you were in the midst of a big putt there you don't now as you mentioned you'd lost to the same person for three straight years and you'd lost to that person in the finals what had to shift mentally for you to to get on top well the first year she was much better golfer than I was for sure but you know that's what's so great about competition because it's so painful to lose that it makes you become better right so you work on it more I mean I think I remember every single hole that I played when I lost to her I don't remember all what I want but when I lost her I remember everything so I think I lost on 14 or 15 the first time and then I lost on 17 and then I lost on 18 and so I just knew that next year I was coming I just knew I was going to win I just was confident I think you have to have confidence when you're playing you know you have to have confidence on those tough short shots and I had confidence that day and it was so fun I think I got her on on 15 and it was a fun day you're like every sick golfer you remember all those holes you know just down to the last detail you know now in addition to everything that you're doing in the heart world you're on the board of the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's research how do you lead with hope when you're up against a disease that hasn't been cured yet because I think we're making so many great strides and our successes are have translated into other things so when we first when I first joined the board of the Michael J Fox Foundation we thought Parkinson's disease was this pretty simple disease where one cell line in something called the substantia nigra in the brain dies and if we could figure out how to replace this one cell or what it makes then we share Parkinson's we were so naive the more we learned the more difficult it became so now now we know that it's much more like Alzheimer's disease in that Parkinson's patients make a protein that stays inside the cells that kind of mucks things up but we have understood the pathophysiology of that much better our strides have helped other neurodegener ative disease we organize Michael J Fox Foundation has organized Parkinson's research across the world and so and also we set up a model where we call for research to give us their ideas and then we give them money and then we hear back from them in a real time like three six six months 12 months later to see how they're doing and if they're doing well we give them more money and if they're not doing well we either help them when we stop the money so we are sharing this information real time with every other scientific researcher in the world and and that's really transform things and like forward the progress and right now we have some really exciting drugs in the pipeline and we didn't have any in the past so we're very excited about what's going on then we're we 're very excited and very enthusiastic and the momentum is just picking up that's fantastic and you know holly with all the things that you have going on in your life I know that your family is number one in your life and I'm not just saying that I mean it is number one in your life how have you kept your family your top priority while you're juggling such a successful career where you have all kinds of demands and and so much responsibility and what you do I think you just you have to be present you know my kids are both in college now but when they they were home I would get home and spend as much time as I could with them we go out at night we go out on the weekends we travel together I have had so much fun being with my kids I I learned how to surf with my son hasn't helped my golf game one bit but we had so much fun on you know going out to surf my son said something to me last year that was really touching he said you know mom I'm college now everybody always asked me about mom being a doctor and they're saying like they just expected me to say that you know you were not you weren't around as much and you know you were always around you were always around so that was that made me feel great that that's great I love that you know when you when you think about cardiology and in the next five to ten years what's going to be possible that isn't today you know what we do today for typical coronary artery diseases we bypass the disease and we stent the disease right those are mechanical fixes of a blockage a mechanical problem but it doesn't at all change of the disease but we're getting much better at drug therapies to try to melt that atherosclerotic plaque those blockages and the arteries that supply the heart with blood and in some of the new technologies are based on genetic research and right now we have a drug that you may have heard of some of your on rapatha which is a pcs canine inhibitor for cholesterol lowering which does dramatic amounts of preventing this disease and causing regression of the disease but now with something called small interfering messenger RNA drugs which people are aware of because of the vaccines but using that technology we're now able to have the same results of huge cholesterol lipid lowering by a twice a year injection so if we can make therapy that easy to melt away this terrible disease I think we're going to have tremendous strides and you know cardiologists study of plumbers and electrics and some medicine and that's the plumbing part on the electrical part our understanding of electrical parts in the heart and our ability to manipulate it is also changing and you know we're going to be able to fix rhythms of people that we haven't been able to in a much easier way so cardiology continues to be incredibly exciting field of medicine to be in because of the scientific advances if you could go back holly and you've had to celebrate a career but what would you tell your younger self I would tell myself to enjoy the moment more and enjoy the beauty before you and the now more and be present instead of always working so hard to achieve to get to some future goal I think that's important I still tell myself that now so I think that's words of advice to younger people I have so many stressed younger people that come into my office and sometimes I just say to them like you know don't take life so seriously and they look at me but I think it gives them a little bit of reassurance especially coming from someone who is in such a serious job so holly what would be one piece of advice you would give to aspiring leaders oh I think communicate communicate your mission communicate your your message do so with optimism and enthusiasm tell the truth be honest and learn as much as you can from everybody around from the lowest person to the highest person in your company listen learn from them and recognize them if you could holly I'd like to close this podcast out with a story that would really highlight why it is that you do all that you do I took care of this woman for years trying to take care of her heart fixing the blood pressure fixing the blockages giving her all the medicines we had to treat her heart and her heart just kept failing and and we couldn't get it better and we couldn't get it better and sometimes we don't but this woman was otherwise so alive and with it she was only 70 years old she had a family she had children and she wanted to live so much and she was in the intensive care unit and we were doing everything we can to kind of restore her heart and then we transfer her up to Columbia University where we have a heart transplant program and I didn't know if I'd ever see her again because she was really so sick and she went up there and she got a heart and I remember the day she walked back into my office and she walked back in and she was dressed and she was living and she brought her son in just to introduce her son to me and she said like I want you to meet Dr. Anderson this is the woman that saved my life and she was she's back with her family and that that was such a thrilling important moment to have her walk in that room after we've been through so much well holly I have to tell you I've done a lot of podcasts and I've talked to a lot of leaders but I have never talked to someone that is multi-talented as you I mean you've touched so many different things in such a powerful way it's just amazing you know and there there's a superman and you are the Wonder Woman there's no doubt about it so I want to thank you so much for being on this podcast well David you're very kind and I love your podcast I think how leaders lead is fantastic and and thank you for all you do and you've done and your wife Wendy too and how much work and how much how charitable you are with your lives and in your good fortune so it's been my pleasure well there's no doubt about it holly is a phenomenal person and her leadership is literally saving lives she's so passionate about these vital issues of cardiac arrest treatment and women's heart health and it's the kind of genuine passion that only comes when you really understand the depths of the problem and you can empathize with the people who experience it here's the thing people are drawn to passionate leaders and when you can bring genuine understanding and empathy to a mission people are going to follow you so this week I really want you to think about and tune into what you're really passionate about what problems really trouble you what kicks your empathy into overdrive tune into those passions big and small nurture them that's how you're really going to get others on board with you and make big things happen and hey there's one more thing I want you to do I really want you to learn the three C's of hands only CPR check call compress it only takes you 30 seconds and it can save a life I'll make sure we link to the youtube video in the show notes or you can just go to hands only dot org and watch the video there so do you want to know how leaders lead what we learned today is the great leaders use passion to drive change coming up next on how leaders lead is get this the one and only doctor konda lisa rice the important thing in leadership is to recognize leadership characteristics in other people it's the same if you're a ceo it's the same if you're a university leader it's the same if you're in government you have to inspire others to lead so be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be [ Silence ]