Exclusive Trusted Magazine Q&A with Carlotta Gabriele, Co-Owner & CEO of Elite Nursing Services
How could you describe your career path in a few words?
Driven by Purpose
My career has been fulfilling. I took pride in rendering direct quality care to patients as a staff nurse. However, I realize that in order to create more of an impact I had to put myself in a position to influence change. Therefore, I returned to school to get a Masters in Nurse Education, and currently pursuing my doctoral degree in Nursing. After receiving my MSN, I obtained a position as a Nurse Educator in Atlanta’s top level trauma center. Simultaneously, I began teaching in one of Georgia State’s top Nursing Program. As a nurse leader I improved quality of patient care through education, effect processes, and facilitated opportunities for nurses to promote and foster excellence in patient quality of care and outcomes.
In all transparency, my first career endeavor was to become an attorney, following in the footsteps of my father, Calvin A. Eversley, Esq., who put together the Law department in the West Indies, a former Chief Magistrate in Guyana, and Legal Counsel to the former Prime minister of Guyana in the 1990’s. Yet, my first survival job as a Certified Nurse Assistant, after migrating to the United States, I fell in love with what I was doing and decided to pursue a career in Nursing. As it was early in my nursing career, it continues now, the more I do, the more I realize what needs to be done, the more my resolve to impact and improve healthcare in general, and in particularly nursing grows.
What is my most challenging experience and how has it changed my mindset?
I consider myself a Human Centered Leader who thrives on placing people “first.” I believe in is imperative to focus on the people we serve by being compassionate and sensitive to the challenges that people are facing. Therefore, to respond with empathy.
The experiences that contribute to my mindset are multiple but they possessed similarities that helped define my purpose. Having served as a Nurse Leader for different institutions, I was just tasked with the role of improving patient outcome, increasing retention and engagement amongst nurses while improving the culture. After engaging with the nursing staff and other support staff, within each experience, it was evident that what each hospital needed was simply a leader that cared about it's workers. One of the greatest challenges was helping stakeholders to shift their mindset and realize that the way to achieve greater profit, was to “Put People First” instead of “Putting Profit Over People.” It is common for organizations to focus on productivity, believing that focusing on profits leads to profits.
Yet, there is a higher price tag associated with approach: unhappy employees, high turnover, low morale, and less productivity. It took me a while to convince executive leaders to believe there is greater gain and greater profit, when we invest more in our greater assets: our staff.
With my emotional intelligence and transformational intelligence, I knew all I needed to apply is what I know being engaging and be an out-of-the-box thinker.
Based on your experience, what’s the key success factor for a female leader/manger?
As an astute nurse leader, Professor, and Champion for the sick, the impoverished, and the voiceless population, I feel it’s imperative that a leader elicits the best from themselves and others when working toward a common goal. Understanding what works, paying attention to people, while improving processes, leads to profits. When we are influential, we create impact which improves outcome.
It is my belief that some of the components to great leadership is having a strategic and analytical mindset, follow trends and be a problem solver coupled with emotional intelligence: being self-aware, knowing why we respond the way we do to different experiences; relational intelligence: being able to understand other people, being able to relate and interact with other individuals in respect to how they are respond and oneself is responding to the same stimuli; and transformational intelligence: the mental ability to create, expand and enhance possibilities. These levels of intelligence combined, indicate a level of self-mastery. As the basic and first rule of leadership explains, we lead first, through example. And in my opinion, not only are these are the pillars and keys to a successful leader, but they enable leaders to provide an example for others to follow, and creates an environment for a healthy, productive relationship to be built upon between a leader and those that follow.