1065: Steady Hands: Leading Public Health Teams Through Chaos Without Losing Your Cool

JOHN SHEEHAN: 

This is Public Health Review Morning Edition for Monday, February 9, 2026. I'm John Sheehan with news for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials today.

What does calm leadership actually look like when everything feels urgent, political, and on fire? John Auerbach, senior vice president of health at ICF, will give us a preview of ASTHO's upcoming 'Insight and Inspiration' webinar, 'Steady Hands, Steady Teams: Leading with Confidence and Composure,' on February 11, and he'll dig into the real-world skills behind steady leadership in volatile times. He's hosting the webinar with Dr. Manisha Juthani, ASTHO's president and Connecticut commissioner of Public Health. I thought we'd give Dr. Juthani the first word on the event.

MANISHA JUTHANI: 

We're really looking to explore how leaders foster stability, build trust, and maintain composure as a core leadership function. One of the things that we all have to struggle with is, what strategies can we use to avoid reactive cycles, manage the pace of the work that we are asking our teams to be involved in, and inspire confidence within our organization and beyond our organization?. And one of the ways that I try to do that personally is through leading with clarity, with enthusiasm, with a positive spirit. And I hope to share some of the thoughts that I've had leading our agency in Connecticut on this panel. One of the thoughts I often share with my team is, Covey has a principle, it's a four-square box where we think about work that is important and not important, versus urgent and not urgent. And you can think of four quadrants with that work. And as public health officials, we are often left with dealing with the important, urgent crisis of the day. Sometimes it's the important, not urgent, that is actually where we want to spend a lot of our time. We actually want to spend our time on the important, not urgent. It's just that the urgent ends up distracting us a lot of the time. And so, I think part of what I'd like to focus on in this session is how do we empower our teams to continue that important, not urgent work. So, then when we as leaders can come back to it, the work has continued, and we can continue to push it forward, while we have to deal with the urgent crises of the day. And unfortunately, in government, sometimes we're left with dealing with not important, urgent topics of the day that are important to somebody else may be less important to us, and so I think it's really critical to think about the work that we do every day, how we can inspire people to do that work, to feel pride in the work they do. We know that we have a workforce that was pretty downtrodden with COVID. Many people retired, many people left the industry, and we have people that were just starting to emerge and feel reinvigorated by their work, when we are now dealing in another crisis. And for somebody like me who's been in this job now for a little over four years, I came in in the middle of COVID, and now I am leading through another crisis in public health. I think many people have said to me that I'm an outlier in some ways, that to have made it through one crisis and still sticking it through another. I think of it more as how can we really inspire people that even within crisis, we can find light at the end of the tunnel and do good work and be there for the rebuilds that is sure to come in public health. And so, that's what I hope to focus on in this session. And we hope that people come and join us to listen in.

SHEEHAN: 

Dr. Manisha Juthani is ASTHO's president and Connecticut commissioner of Public Health.

Now, let's hear from John Auerbach, senior vice president of health at ICF, who's co-hosting the webinar.

JOHN AUERBACH: 

Right now, we're in an operating environment for public health that is simply more volatile. There are faster information cycles now than there used to be. There's more visible mistrust from different sectors, including at the community level and policymakers. There's more misinformation that's coming from lots of different sources. I think there's heavier political pressure. And you know, maybe finally, just, you know, we have a workforce at this point that is stretched thin and exhausted, and so given all those circumstances, it is more important than ever to focus on emotional composure.

SHEEHAN: 

And the webinar will go through a number of strategies, one of which being just small acts, microbehaviors. Could you give us an example of what that means? What a microbehavior might be that could help instill that calmness in an environment?

AUERBACH: 

Well, I think one microbehavior is having a moment every day, and for me, what worked was the beginning of the day to sit with my most trusted advisors and just spend a few minutes talking about, here's where we are, here's what we know about the issue we're dealing with. Here's what we don't know yet, and here's the next decision point, and who among us owns it. I think that level of continual communication orienting the key people in your staff at the start of the day can keep you focused, and some way keep you calm, because you know that there's going to be a single vision for how to get through that day.

SHEEHAN: 

And this might be related, but can you talk about the difference between reacting to a, say, a chaotic environment or an unpredicted circumstance, the difference between reacting to it and responding to it?

AUERBACH: 

Sure, I mean, people do use those words sometimes interchangeably, but I'll, I'll try to distinguish between two different approaches. I think, in this context, reacting is, is sometimes when you're in an urgent situation and that can undermine some thoughtful action. You're responding maybe quick, most quickly to the loudest critics, or the people who you're afraid will be your loudest critics, and that can allow them to frame the issues that you're trying to answer your communication may be inconsistent or responding to false information rather than getting ahead of an of the policy and and that can lead you to decision making simply to relieve the immediate pressure, rather than to reduce the risk. So that's under the heading of reacting, particularly reacting without an opportunity for thoughtful consideration. Responding, on the other hand, I would say, is more purposeful. You slow down a little bit, or at least just enough, to make sure you've got the problem defined. You set your top priorities. You can make sure that you've assigned roles and division of labor, you can get a communication rhythm going, and you can ideally make the best decisions by consideration of the facts and the real circumstances that you're facing. I would say to be more in the responding rather than the reacting mode. It really helps to have plans developed ahead of time that can anticipate as much as possible, but you might be facing it helps to conduct tabletop or other kinds of exercises so you kind of play out the situation that might occur, and you think then about how to avoid that, and also that you have discussions with your key stakeholders ahead of time, because you don't want to be in a situation where you're doing catch up in the midst of an emergency. So planning, training, communicating ahead of time is more likely to make it easy to respond rather than react.

SHEEHAN: 

And lastly, could you, could you set the scene for us regarding the webinar and make the case why it is useful to hear about these strategies and hear your arguments for them live, rather than maybe reading a TL;DR summary afterwards?

AUERBACH: 

Well, first of all, I'm so delighted that I'm doing this with Dr. Juthani. I mean, she's amazing, a wonderful leader, and very thoughtful, both in terms of the work that's gone on in her state, relative to staying calm and composed and making the appropriate decisions, but she's also made an impact on the national level, as the president of ASTHO. So, just being able to have a conversation, I think, with her, is a treat. My guess is it will also offer us to be much more informal and, I suspect, frank about our own experiences, because I know my own experiences have not always been the positive ones. I've made lots of mistakes, and I can share when I got things wrong and when I got things right, and what I learned from that situation. My guess is that she can do the same, and sometimes having that kind of a frank discussion with each other. It doesn't make it into, say, a journal article where somebody is doing their best to fact check, and you've got editors rewriting things, and maybe you have second thoughts about, should I have mentioned that or not? So I think, I think this kind of conversation can be often a little more honest, a little more informal and a little more applicable to people who are in the field.

SHEEHAN: 

John Auerbach is senior vice president of health at ICF. Earlier, we heard from Dr. Manisha Juthani, ASTHO president and Connecticut commissioner of Public Health. They're co-hosting the upcoming ASTHO 'Insight and Inspiration' webinar, 'Steady Hands, Steady Teams: Leading with Confidence and Composure,' on February 11.

Join Manisha Juthani, MD, commissioner at the Connecticut Department of Public Health and ASTHO president, and John Auerbach, MBA, senior vice president for public health at ICF, for an 'Insight and Inspiration' webinar that examines how clear, purposeful leadership strengthens both internal and external trust through discussion and reflection, we will examine how leaders embody steadiness amid uncertainty, set a sustainable pace, and provide calm direction that builds trust and drives performance. This conversation aims to inspire participants to recognize their composure and capacity, not as a personal indulgence, but as a fundamental leadership function that shapes the overall tone, focus, and confidence of their organizations. Join us for this 'Steady Hands, Steady Teams: Leading with Confidence and Composure' session, happening February 11, at 4 p.m. Eastern. The link to register is in the show notes.

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This has been Public Health Review Morning Edition. I'm John Sheehan for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.