I Started as a Chemist. Here's What My Thinking Profile Revealed About 25 Years of Leading in Health.

This is the first in a short series I'm exploring over the coming weeks — blending what I've learned across two decades of health operations leadership with some new thinking. It's about how we think, how that shapes the way we lead, and what becomes possible when we understand ourselves a little better. I hope it's useful.

I didn't plan to work in health operations. I planned to be a scientist.

In fact my vision at age 11 years old, was to cure HIV/AIDS, as back then it was very topical and Freddie Mercury had just been diagnosed

I chose chemical pathology because I loved the science and loved the idea of supporting clinical outcomes through diagnostics. I also did not feel like i would be good working directly with unwell people so this was my way of supporting them indirectly.

So for years I worked in pathology labs. I loved the process. The SOPs. The manual tests, the equipment, the rhythm of a well-run lab. There was something deeply satisfying about that precision.

But under pressure? That was a different story.

When urgent results came through and something looked abnormal, I wouldn't just check once. I'd run the test again. Then again. Sometimes I'd even request another sample to be sure. I'd do everything I could to either confirm or disprove what I was seeing — because the thought of giving a wrong result, and what that could mean for someone's life, was genuinely distressing.

I never gave a wrong result.

But the energy it took to get there was enormous.

I didn't have the language for it then. Now I do.

The accidental manager

A few years later, I accidentally fell into operational management the way a lot of health leaders do. I applied for a role managing the very laboratory I was a scientist in.

Suddenly I was organising work, covering shifts, making sure urgent work was out on time, checking logs, solving problems before they became crises.

And I loved it.

Not just liked it. Loved it. It felt natural in a way the bench work never quite had. The people, the systems, the rhythm of keeping something complex running well — that was where I came alive.

That role started a career in health operations leadership that has now spanned more than two decades.

I never went back to the bench.

The profile that explained everything

Earlier in June I had the opportunity to complete the HBDI Whole Brain Thinking practitioner certification.

When I saw my profile, I wasn't surprised. I was validated!

Article content — Hermann Whole Brain Thinking ©️

Strong zone D -Vision & big picture, and zone C - people & connection. That's where my thinking is most alive, its where I prefer to be. That's where I have the most energy, the most confidence, the most natural flow. I also have a strong preference in B, being able to plan and operationalise strategy

Quadrant A - data, analysis, precision, logic, is where I need to be more deliberate.

Once I knew this, suddenly those anxious lab days made complete sense.

I wasn't bad at the work. I was capable. I proved that every single day. But I was working in a thinking preference that wasn't where I preferred to be.

Of course it cost me more energy. Of course I second-guessed myself. Of course I needed to check twice.

It wasn't a capability gap. It was a preference gap. And there's a profound difference between the two.

What this means

Knowing your thinking preferences doesn't just explain the past. It shapes how you design your present.

I do my deep analytical work in the morning, the quadrant I least prefer to be in. That's when I have the most energy for the thinking that takes more of my energy - the data, the figures, the analysis, the careful conclusions. I use my best hours for my hardest thinking.

In the afternoon, I'm in my natural zone. People conversations, strategic thinking, big picture problems, creative solutions. That's where I have energy to spare.

I've been doing this instinctively for years. Now I understand why it works.

The thing I most want you to take away

This is not an invitation to compare yourself to anyone else.

Comparatonitis - and yes, that's a real thing - is one of the biggest barriers I see in health operations leaders. We look at how others think, how others lead, how others seem to handle pressure, and we use it as evidence that something is wrong with us.

Nothing is wrong with you.

You have a thinking preference. It shapes how you see problems, make decisions, communicate under pressure and build teams. It is not your ceiling. It is your starting point.

And if you're a health operations leader who started in a clinical or technical role — nursing, allied health, science, pathology - there's a good chance you were trained to think in one set of quadrants and have been leading from another for years. Without anyone ever telling you that was a different cognitive mode entirely.

That gap is not a failure. It's just information. With information you can adapt.

The leaders who grow fastest aren't the ones who are naturally strong across all four quadrants. They're the ones who know where their energy lives - and design their work, their teams and their days around that knowledge.

That's whole brain thinking in practice.

And it starts with knowing yourself well enough to stop comparing yourself to everyone else.

I'll be sharing more about whole brain thinking and what it means for health operations leadership over the coming weeks. If you're curious about your own thinking preferences, I'd love to hear from you.