Lessons from Trina Geyer, PhD, RN, NPD-BC, NEA-BC

Ulemu Luhanga: 00:02

Hello listeners, welcome to Educational Landscapes, Lessons from Leaders. On today's episode, we are going to learn from Trina Geyer. Welcome to the show, Trina.

Trina Geyer: 00:13

Thank you Ulemu.

Ulemu Luhanga: 00:16

So to get us going, what is your educational leadership title or titles?

Trina Geyer: 00:23

My title is Director for Nursing Leadership and Development at Emory Healthcare.

Ulemu Luhanga: 00:29

What do you do in this role?

Trina Geyer: 00:32

So it's a broad role, and thankfully my work aligns with the actual title. I do intentional professional development and continuing education for nurse leaders at all levels and across all practice settings of our organization. That intentional professional development, it includes assessing and understanding the professional development or growth opportunities for our nurse leaders. It includes content development, being very reflective of the knowledge, skills, and abilities and performance expectations of our nurses. It also includes being really considerate of the context in which our nurse leaders perform, including the complex situations and practice settings and includes creating or developing and planning evidence-based and evidence-informed teaching and learning experiences based on leadership science.

Trina Geyer: 01:38

Implementing our courses based on principles of adult learning, creating inclusive learning environments where our participants, our nurse leaders and their diverse experiences and perspectives can be shared in ways that they feel safe and seen and heard and valued, and certainly evaluating all learning programs for outcomes and continuous improvement. But I love when people ask me that question because my work actually, or my title reflects the majority of the work that I do.

Ulemu Luhanga: 02:15

I'm so delighted to hear that because that is not common for a lot of people. You spend a lot of time going, "This is my title, but this is what I do." So I appreciate that. The breadth of work that you do, as I was listening to you talk about this professional development of nurse leaders and all that you're putting towards it, there's a part of me that's like, "I'm not a nurse, but I kind of want to do this."

Trina Geyer: 02:45

Wonderful, wonderful. There's always a seat at the table for individuals who are drawn to nursing and certainly based on their lived experiences feel that they can contribute to nursing leadership, and everyone, particularly when I talked about perspectives and inclusive learning environments, when we think about the diversity of our learners in our workforce, we're not always talking about just race, ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation or gender identity, but your lived experiences, your cognitive abilities, age, all of those diverse perspectives add value and can contribute to learning in such a way that it serves and gets us closer to our mutual or common goals, which are the best possible outcomes for our patients, our families, our communities and all of the people that we serve, including our workforce.

Ulemu Luhanga: 03:52

Wonderful, thank you. So given the breadth of things that you do under your role, what skills do you use in order to be able to do those different things?

Trina Geyer: 04:06

Yes, that's a great question. I think, first, connecting with people. When you think about leadership competencies, that's phrased a number of different ways. Relationship management, communication and relationship building, emotional intelligence, being able to connect with people, not just what they do but who they are is really important when you think about skills and leadership competencies. A lot of that comes through active listening, being very present and listening with the intent to understand as opposed to wanting to respond. Certainly in the last three and a half, nearly four years in healthcare, being agile, being nimble.

Trina Geyer: 05:03

That's not just in terms of working within education, but being flexible with our teaching-learning strategies, being flexible and nimble and fluid with course and curriculum development. I know for many educators, particularly depending upon how long you've been an educator, you have a way of doing things, a way of being. If we've learned anything in the last three years, the importance of being agile, the importance of being flexible is so, so important in terms of your outcomes as an educator.

Ulemu Luhanga: 05:48

Thank you. I really appreciate you highlighting that because I still think of myself as pretty early in my educator career, but the pandemic, boy, did that push me in terms of expanding what I can do and how I can do it. Yeah.

Trina Geyer: 06:06

I agree. To add on to that, as an educator, the importance of our own professional development and being committed to and intentional about our own continuous learning. So whether it was becoming more adept at online learning, ways to engage learners in virtual platforms, any number of things where we had to adapt to the situations at the time in order to still be able to meet the needs of our learners and recognizing, I'll circle back to the principles of adult learning and diversity within our workforce, making sure that to the best of your ability, you are engaging your learners in a way that helps them to be successful, helps them to gain the knowledge and the experiences they need in order to be successful at whatever they are intending.

Ulemu Luhanga: 07:13

Thank you. No wonder you're in your position right now. I'm like, "Yes, I'm engaged. I'm excited about my professional development as an educator listening to you." So I recognize that you probably didn't just start in this particular role you're in right now. So I would love to hear what was your journey that led to this current role?

Trina Geyer: 07:39

Wow, that's another really great question. I'll tell you, I had quite a non-traditional path to nursing leadership. In some ways, I think I've always been somewhat of an educator. I think back to my childhood and when we played outdoors and I seemed to be the one who was always organizing the activities and making sure we had what we needed for the games and making sure that folks did what they were supposed to do and making sure that people were included. So it's really interesting how that translates into and across my now nursing career, over 30 years. So like most new graduates during that time, I started in medical-surgical nursing. I started on a nursing unit at one of our local hospitals on night shift.

Trina Geyer: 08:40

I was really, really passionate about nursing and wanting to do my best. I never really thought intentionally in nursing about becoming an educator nurse and certainly never really thought much about a leader. However, I think there's some things that are innate and there are some opportunities that present themselves where other leaders see something in you and invest in your development through mentoring and providing opportunities for professional development. So I had an untraditional path in that I did not start out as some do who they know during nursing school, I want to be a pediatric nurse, I want to be an OR nurse, I want to work in the emergency department.

Trina Geyer: 09:38

I was one of the nurses who needed to find my niche, if you will, and that came about through a non-traditional path of many varied experiences, and in hindsight, reflecting back on my career, all of those varied experiences I think helped me, where I am now and were incredibly good for me because they gave me multiple sources to draw from in terms of my knowledge, my understanding, my application, and my ability to relate to and care for learners.

Ulemu Luhanga: 10:21

That is great. As I listened to that and when you talked about the importance of perspective and how because you've had these multiple experiences, you bring that multi-perspective lens as you're listening to people engage with you. Yeah.

Trina Geyer: 10:40

Yes, for sure. I think, again, and I'm of course focusing on nursing, as I said, I started out the bedside, which most nurses did at that time, but being able to have opportunities to shadow and then become a charge nurse, relief charge nurse, being able to develop in-services for our nurses around a particular piece of equipment or a new procedure that we were expected to do, being able to work in various practice settings. So I started in medical-surgical, but that's broad. I did some orthopedics. I also did some work in cardiovascular nursing. One of my favorites areas that I served in was telemetry. So being able to draw from those multiple experiences.

Trina Geyer: 11:42

I also had the opportunity to do work in public health nursing, and actually my graduate work focused on public health nursing, which was incredibly enriching. At the time, 20 years ago, I did not have the foresight, although I had the passion for it, I did not have the foresight to know fast forward 20 years the importance and the relevance and the intention around social determinants of health. Social determinants of health are not new. However, the intentionality around making sure that we understand the needs of our populations in order to get them to, again, the optimal outcomes that we hope to achieve.

Trina Geyer: 12:33

So social determinants of health and the emerging sexual orientation and gender identity and environmental scanning, being able to make sure that we are doing really good assessments, planning, implementation evaluation, making decisions based on data and metrics, how relevant all of that would be in the work that I'm doing now in predominantly acute care practice settings, I did not know. I wish I could say I had the genius those years ago to know that all of the things that I learned in public health nursing were so many of the lessons that I learned and the experiences and the skills that I developed through my graduate work in public health nursing would be so applicable to the work that I'm doing today as well.

Trina Geyer: 13:27

So my path was non-traditional, however, I have come to value greatly the diverse experiences that I've had professionally as well as personally to bring me to where I am, and then I can in turn impart those two other leaders at all levels of the organization, and again, across all practice settings.

Ulemu Luhanga: 13:54

Wonderful, thank you. I'm curious, as you were talking about your experiences and you were practicing nurse, you're a charge nurse, at what point did you decide and go, "I want to go into grad school"?

Trina Geyer: 14:13

Yes. So let me get my timeline here in my mind. Give me a moment. I started graduate school and I worked in public health nursing about six years into my nursing career, which by today's... The way that individuals come to nursing now may seem like a slow path, not only non-traditional, but a slow path. But I entered grad school about six years after I completed my bachelor's. Again, I thought about community, I thought about the best ways to serve. I think as leaders and educators tapping into, and there are many ways to be able to do this, and it'll tie back to an earlier statement that I made about connecting with people, helping them to identify their strengths and what they feel drawn to and how they can best serve is really key.

Trina Geyer: 15:31

I think it's key for their own personal sense of fulfillment and value in the work that they're doing, and I think it's key to organizations to make sure, to the best of our abilities, that people are the right fit and that they're aligned in order to achieve the goals that are set by the organization. So for me, at that time in my career, I felt particularly drawn to opportunities in education and public health nursing. As public health nurses, public health nurses have a great deal of responsibility and autonomy as it relates to education, patient education, educating depending upon your practice setting in the various ambulatory or public health settings that you may be in, opportunities to develop policies and protocols based on still regulatory requirements and accreditation requirements, being able to tap into resources, being able to collaborate and communicate with various individuals and organizations in order to achieve your outcomes.

Trina Geyer: 16:58

So there were lots of opportunities to learn, but it was based on what I identified at the time were some significant needs in marginalized populations and how could I best serve in order to, to the best of my ability, help to decrease the disparities that we were seeing in healthcare? How could I best serve marginalized populations so that we have today, again, we have the focus through the national academies around health equity and charting a new path? Public health nursing gave me an opportunity to tap into that based on those same underlying concerns about individuals, populations who are not as well represented or served in our various healthcare settings, and how could I help to improve that and improve those outcomes.

Ulemu Luhanga: 18:01

Wonderful, thank you. As you think about the journey that you've had and you're in this current role, what do you wish you knew before stepping into your role?

Trina Geyer: 18:21

It's interesting. So I'm thinking about Benner's Novice to Expert, which we refer to a lot. Even though I've been a nurse now for over 30 years, in every new position, you feel like you start a little bit back at novice and you don't always know what you don't know. So what do I wish I knew before stepping into the role? In hindsight, having a clearer picture of all of the various resources within an organization, and particularly all organizations may not be the size of my organization, Emory Healthcare. However, making sure that I'm just not skilled and knowledgeable about leadership science, but also all of the people connected to leadership science. Who are my internal and external subject matter experts? What is the evidence behind what I'm doing?

Trina Geyer: 19:29

Much of that I had or was able to draw from, but creating that big picture and being able to then align my work within that big picture was something that I had to develop. So what I wish I knew was all of the pieces that I needed, if you would, to put the puzzle together. But then there's also fun in that. For some, it can be a little bit challenging on the front end, but given the time and given the support and the resources, it can also be fun to develop and chart a new path, whether it's again, around your educational goals, whether it's around your objectives, whether it's around developing the actual content, again, tapping into subject matter experts, recognizing that even in education, it's really great to have collaborative partnerships.

Trina Geyer: 20:37

I love our intentionality and focus around interprofessional education and collaborative practice because being able to recognize how we, in our various disciplines, still have a common mutual goal and how do we support one another in order to help our learners, whether we're talking about medical students, nursing students, public health students, any number of our specialties, of our disciplines, how do we come together and create teaching learning experiences that, again, help us with our shared common goal, which is optimal outcomes for our patients and our populations.

Ulemu Luhanga: 21:35

Thank you. So important. Something you just said there, talking about getting the puzzle pieces and putting the jigsaw together made me wonder, are you the first in this current role, or did you step in after somebody?

Trina Geyer: 21:53

That's a great question. I stepped in after someone, and as you probably know in your own practice right now, there are things that are handed to you and then there are things that you create and you make your own and there are things that you develop based on your environmental scanning and assessment that do not connect to anything that was before, right? So again, in healthcare, we have learned so much and still have so much learning to do. I'll use some of the words that you hear a lot of people using now, restructuring, redesigning, reimagining, because the conditions, the situations, the complexities surrounding healthcare and healthcare delivery have changed so much as a result of the COVID pandemic and everything that we learned and everything that we try to anticipate moving forward.

Trina Geyer: 23:05

For some of this, there wasn't a blueprint. For some of this, there was. Going back and reassessing what may have been before and how do we reimagine it, redesign in order to meet the current needs of our learners and our end users. So there was some elements of my work that was handed to me. There was quite a bit that needed to be developed based on me understanding the needs of my learners and making sure that what I am delivering is relevant, it's appropriate, it is timely based on the complex situations and environments that they're working in now.

Ulemu Luhanga: 23:49

Thank you. So you are very involved in the nurse leaders' professional development, but I would like to know a bit more about what you do for your development. So what continuing professional development do you do in order to keep up with the needs of your role?

Trina Geyer: 24:06

Yes, and another great question. It's really important, as I said, to be intentional about your own professional development. So for me, being connected to professional organizations that generate and apply nursing leadership science is really important. So I'm a member of a few leadership professional organizations, so I'm able to get continuing education through that. I have two certifications, one for nursing professional development, one for nurse executive leadership, and also connecting and being intentional about mentors for myself and learning from others and relationships and observing.

Trina Geyer: 25:01

Lifelong learning for me is important as well, and I'm able to do that through, really I'm very fortunate to have several great mentors that I stay in contact with in addition to staying connected to the evidence and research and also staying connected to individuals in our various practice settings, the learners who are actually doing the work, whether it's through direct observations, through giving them opportunities to give me feedback and input, through other leaders across our organization, being able to get input about what they are seeing, learning and doing. So all of those enrich my professional development to make sure that I stay relevant, that I stay prepared, and that I'm continually growing.

Ulemu Luhanga: 25:57

Thank you. Can you give some examples of names of some of those organizations that you've tapped into?

Trina Geyer: 26:05

Oh, sure. So the American Organization for Nursing Leadership, the Association for Nursing Professional Development. I'm a member of Sigma Theta Tau International, for those of you that know it's Sigma. Now, so those are three of the very strong professional organizations that I'm a part of, I do work in, I contribute to in very meaningful ways.

Ulemu Luhanga: 26:38

Thank you.

Trina Geyer: 26:39

You're welcome.

Ulemu Luhanga: 26:41

So what advice would you give someone interested in doing the same type of leadership role that you have?

Trina Geyer: 26:49

Yeah. So what I would suggest, definitely there's formal academic preparation, of course, through master's programs, doctoral programs, which focus on leadership, whether it's executive leadership, whether it's organizational leadership or professional development. So formal academic education, but also connecting to mentors, requesting if not being offered opportunities to be mentored, to shadow, to observe, to listen, serving on projects if you have the opportunity to do so, councils, committees, and ask questions, ask plenty of questions. There are no crazy questions.

Trina Geyer: 27:56

Questions that are I hear people say, "Oh, this is a stupid question. This is a silly question." Don't do that. Ask your questions. Because as I said earlier, sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and individuals might make assumptions about what you don't know. So if you don't ask questions, if you don't seek clarification, it can hinder your growth and stagnate your growth opportunities. So I would definitely encourage individuals through formal and informal relationships and opportunities to connect to leaders.

Ulemu Luhanga: 28:39

Thank you. So building off of the discussion we've had about your role and how it involves professionally developing nurse leaders, can you talk a bit more about how you go about supporting and expanding education in your profession or through your role?

Trina Geyer: 28:59

Yes, that's really great. So we've talked a lot about leaders and leadership development, and one of the things that I love about where we are in nursing now is the recognition that all nurses are leaders. Regardless of your title, your position, your role, your practice setting, you bring leadership capabilities to the work that you do. So starting there and recognizing that and identifying and helping individuals tap into what their strengths are and how their strengths best align with the work and the organization, mission, vision, values and outcomes of your practice setting are really important.

Trina Geyer: 29:47

So being able to, whether it's through structured frameworks that help individuals along their career path, their career trajectory, we have some of that, whether we incorporate personality inventories and assessments, it starts with being able to do that and working one-on-one with individuals to help them identify their strengths, to help them identify growth opportunities, to help them align the work that they're doing with the strategic mission, vision values of the organization, and helping them to see the value of their voice in decision-making and professional governance, and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and teamwork and collaboration and nursing excellence outcomes.

Trina Geyer: 30:42

Helping all nurses at every level of the organization and across all practice settings to be able to understand their value and the significance of what they bring to the table and what they bring to the profession in terms of helping us to achieve common outcomes is really key, and I consider all of that is foundation for professional development and continuous learning opportunities.

Ulemu Luhanga: 31:09

So powerful. Just listening to you talk about the importance of voice and seat at the table and that you are a leader wherever you are is so powerful. Thank you.

Trina Geyer: 31:21

You're welcome.

Ulemu Luhanga: 31:22

Building on that and some of what you're talking about, can you tell us a bit about how you view succession planning?

Trina Geyer: 31:30

Sure. I view it as essential, particularly as I said, in light of what we've experienced in healthcare over the past three and a half years and what I saw reflected in leadership, I've been with my organization for 12 years now, and I would say within the last three and a half years, to see the upstream and downstream impact of leadership and responses to leadership, leader behaviors and complex situations, leader abilities, leader burden, leader burnout, leader transitions, whether through retirement or seeking other opportunities, again, because of burden and burnout.

Trina Geyer: 32:33

I think thinking about succession planning and the recognition that life has come at many of us fast in unexpected ways over the last three and a half years, and we all should be developing other individuals such that if Trina Geyer were not able to do this work today or tomorrow for whatever reason, that we have other individuals that we have been intentional in recognizing and identifying and then developing and mentoring such that they could take our place is really key. It's always been important, but the intentionality around it has become increasingly important, and the value in it has become increasingly important, I think in light of many of the leadership changes and transitions that we've experienced in the last several years.

Ulemu Luhanga: 33:47

Indeed. Indeed. Thank you. That's so important. What would you say as you reflect on your work to date, what contributed to your biggest successes thus far?

Trina Geyer: 34:03

Yes, I will go back to having really great leaders myself. I've been very fortunate in my career to be developed and mentored by really strong leaders and leaders in different practice settings. So being able to observe, to sit, to listen, if you will, their leadership styles and learn from their lessons in leadership have been incredibly important. So my mentors for sure have contributed if I've had any successes. Being fortunate to have some really exceptional mentors, people that poured into me on various aspects, whether it was through academic education, through professional leadership experiences, has been so key.

Ulemu Luhanga: 35:06

Thank you. Thank you. I think it ties in so beautifully when I think about, as you talked about, succession planning and being a leader at different levels. Now, you mentioned you are a lifelong learner, and so what would you say are your biggest growth opportunities right now?

Trina Geyer: 35:25

So for me, thinking about nursing, but also remembering a context because I am a nurse regardless of my position or title, I am nurse and I care about the work of nursing. So being able to contextualize that with what is happening in healthcare as a business is really important. So staying connected to the business of healthcare and all of the contexts that impact nurse leaders and leadership development so that whatever I am doing and delivering in the way of professional development is relevant, it's timely, and it's appropriate to help, to the best of my ability, our leaders to be successful.

Ulemu Luhanga: 36:21

Thank you. So important. I think when I think about education and healthcare and educators, we are sometimes so caught up on the education side and we don't think about the business side of what we do and how important that is. Thank you. What would you say you love most about your work and what you do right now?

Trina Geyer: 36:48

Oh, wow. So that takes me back to my first, or one of my first responses, definitely connecting with people. Despite any challenges that we may have, being able to develop nurses, being able to see them, whether it's coming through our courses or me mentoring others and watching them grow, seeing through many challenges them walk away from our experiences together, feeling better, feeling more prepared, feeling empowered, feeling more certain that they can do whatever lies ahead is so personally and professionally rewarding. It warms my heart to be able to connect with individuals, to give to them what was given to me, and sometimes give to them what wasn't, right?

Trina Geyer: 37:53

On occasion, sometimes we lead based on what we wish we would have received. So being able to pull all of my lived experiences together, personally and professionally, and share that with other individuals and watch them grow from it, and partner and collaborate with other internal and external subject matter experts in order to grow our teams. Again, it warms my heart because this is challenging work, these are challenging times and we don't quite have all of the pieces put together.

Trina Geyer: 38:36

But I believe with my whole heart and the opportunities around, that we have a nursing professional development practice model, and there's six key areas that the kind of encapsulate work of professional development, onboarding and orientation, education, role development, collaborative partnerships, inquiry, and I think competency management, being able to help individuals see themselves in the work, strategically connect their work and their value to align with the mission, vision, values of the organization to achieve outcomes. It's pretty special.

Ulemu Luhanga: 39:29

It sounds it. I can even hear the warmth in your voice as you're reflecting on that. Thank you. So as we're coming towards the end of the interview here, I would love to hear, overall, as you reflect on your experiences to date, what are your passions around education right now?

Trina Geyer: 39:52

I think definitely creating inclusive learning environments. It's not new to teaching learning methodology, however, I think the intention around it, the intentional focus on making sure that we meet the learning needs of diverse workforce is so important. As I mentioned earlier, taking into account people's lived experiences, their cognitive abilities, all of the various perspectives that they bring to the table, race, ethnicity, any number of cultural traditions or perspectives that influence how they see the world, how they make decisions is really important because it ultimately impacts their experiences related to the work that they do. So being able to create those inclusive learning environments where people feel safe, safe to share, where they feel seen and heard, and that their perspectives are valued is really important. I think it transforms the teaching learning experience.

Ulemu Luhanga: 41:14

Indeed, indeed. Thank you. Thank you. So I know I've spent a lot of time talking about your career, but you are more than your career. So what are some things you do outside of work to help maintain joy in life and practice?

Trina Geyer: 41:32

Yes, that's a great question. So travel. I love, love, love to travel. Anyone who knows me or spends any length of time with me will say Trina loves to travel and she feels that she never has enough opportunity to do that. But domestic, international travel takes me and brings me a great deal of joy. It helps me to tap into my joy beyond just a happy place, which is mostly based on external experiences. Being able to travel helps me to tap into true joy. Certainly some other fun things because the budget doesn't always allow for the level of travel that I enjoy.

Trina Geyer: 42:20

But definitely I'm an avid movie goer and unapologetically so. Prior to COVID, and now we have all sorts of things that help us with that, but in certainly connecting with individuals, the relationships that we build and the time that we spend in those meaningful relationships and nurturing and cultivating those meaningful relationships with other people, not letting that get lost because of our commitment to work, because those are the things that fill us up, keep our cups full so that we can come to work and, to the best of our ability, show up as our best selves. So meaningful relationships with friends and my sorority, and certainly travel. Did I say travel?

Ulemu Luhanga: 43:20

Clearly, you love to travel, and I love it too. So I fully understand. So which sorority, by the way?

Trina Geyer: 43:29

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated.

Ulemu Luhanga: 43:32

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Trina Geyer: 43:33

You're welcome.

Ulemu Luhanga: 43:33

So thank you once again, Trina, for your time. Those were my core questions, but before I let you go, any last words of wisdom to share with aspiring educators or education leaders?

Trina Geyer: 43:51

Wow. So first, thank you. I've really enjoyed this opportunity to share parting words of wisdom. I think if individuals can tap into something that they love and are passionate about early and then develop that over time, that's great. But if you cannot, that is also okay. Life will present many opportunities, and as long as you are learning, you are always winning, you are always growing, and eventually you will be on a path to get you to where you are supposed to be.

Ulemu Luhanga: 44:31

Thank you. Those are amazing words to end on.

Trina Geyer: 44:35

Thank you so much for the opportunity.