Plenty of capable people learn to lead by copying whoever's already in charge. It works for a while, right up until it leaves you running on someone else's fuel and still not quite yourself.

Ruth Andermatt is a Canadian self-leadership coach who has spent more than two decades working with executives and emerging leaders, most of them introverts. She was often the only woman in the room, and she has thought hard about what it costs to keep conforming to a style that was never going to fit.

If you're in a non-titled role wishing you had more influence, or eyeing a step into management because it looks like the only way to have impact, this conversation is for you. Ruth draws a clean line between managing people and leading them, and she begins where most leadership advice skips ahead: how you lead yourself. Expect plenty on holding your ground without conforming, guiding the people above you, and what to do when the version of success you've been chasing quietly stops fitting.

We Explore

• Why conforming to get into leadership tends to run out of road
• The difference between managing people and actually leading them
• Leading the people above you, not only the ones who report to you
• What self-leadership asks of you long before any title arrives
• The cost of staying in survival mode and calling it dedication

Timestamps

01:15 Being the only woman in the room and the pull to conform

05:45 Masculine and feminine leadership, and why most workplaces pick one

08:48 The exhaustion of dancing to someone else's tune just to get hired

13:40 Why a title doesn't make you a leader, and what self-leadership actually means

16:44 Hitting a plateau and shifting your perspective instead of walking away

29:05 The blind spot that holds capable people back, women especially

33:08 Leading the people above you, not just the ones who report to you

41:25 Survival worn as a badge of honour, and the price every choice carries

45:09 Untangling your identity from how you got here and redefining success

55:48 Outgrowing your manager and repositioning without burning the bridge

About Ruth Andermatt

Ruth Andermatt is a self-leadership coach and consultant and the founder of Andermatt Consulting Experience (A.C.E. Inc) in Canada. A former national-level paddler and UBC graduate, she has coached executives, business owners and emerging leaders for more than twenty years, with a particular focus on women and introverts who lead quietly but effectively. Her view, useful for anyone in a hierarchical field like healthcare, is that leading yourself is the foundation everything else is built on, title or no title.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachruth/
• Website: https://andermattconsulting.com

Career Cliniq Resources

If this conversation has you wondering where your influence and interests actually sit, the StreamAhead Assessment maps your experience across the full spectrum of healthcare work, not just the path you trained for: https://careercliniq.com/streamahead

Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn or Instagram

Bree Murray has never seen a patient. She'll still put "dietitian" on every form she fills in.

She's spent 15 years in professional associations, food industry, health profession regulation, and a job-shared CEO role and has never once questioned whether that makes her a real dietitian. This conversation is for anyone who has.

• Building a dietitian career entirely outside clinical practice
• What personal life seasons reveal about what you actually value
• How a project officer becomes a job-sharing CEO
• The real cost of a portfolio career when you've come from a for-purpose background
• The difference between a career compass and a career plan

Bree Murray is an Australian dietitian with over 15 years of experience spanning professional association work, food industry consulting, health profession regulation, and executive leadership. She currently serves as executive officer for a Council of Deans of Nutrition and Dietetics, supports governance work with self-regulating health professions, and sits on the National Alliance of Self-Regulating Health Professions board. Her career has been built through relationships, referrals, and a consistent willingness to move into unfamiliar territory when the fit is right.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bree-murray-44193528/

If this conversation got you thinking about what's actually guiding your career decisions, the StreamAhead Assessment maps your interests and experience across the full spectrum of healthcare work - not just the path you trained for. 👉 Take the StreamAhead Assessment

What's the moment you realised the shape of your days didn't match what you actually cared about? I'd love to hear it. LinkedIn | Instagram

You're halfway through a degree or deep into a career you're not sure you'll stay in and the loudest fear isn't about what's next. It's that everything you've already invested might be wasted. Keagen Hadley finished an entire OT doctorate he wasn't sure he'd use and it was the very thing that gave him room to build a completely different career.

Keagen Hadley is a regulatory medical writer for a large biotech company. He holds a doctorate in occupational therapy and has spent over a decade in the biotech and pharmaceutical space.

We Explore

• How geographic limitation can become a catalyst for unconventional experience
• Why the financial variable in career decisions deserves more honesty in the helping professions
• How your cognitive wiring reveals itself early and what to do when it doesn't match the clinical path
• Why "regulatory medical writer" misrepresents the actual work of the role
• How credibility gets built in an industry where your healthcare credential doesn't automatically count

Chapters

00:00 Meet Keagen Hadley - regulatory medical writer and OT

03:22 How a small-town CRO in North Dakota opened the door to biotech

08:50 $96K in student loans and the decision to finish anyway

14:14 The lecture that reframed scale and patient impact

19:25 Remote work, flexibility, and family life in biotech

24:48 Starting before you feel ready and selling yourself as a novice

35:56 Why recruiters matter more than applications in this field

45:10 Wrangling physicians who disagree

47:28 AI and regulatory writing

57:25 Why clinicians won't say the money part out loud

Connect with Keagen

• LinkedIn: Keagen Hadley
• Newsletter: https://cliniciansguide.substack.com/
• What Regulatory Writers Actually Make - https://thecliniciansguide.myflodesk.com/uegisjcpq9
• 6-Month Roadmap to Becoming a Regulatory Medical Writer - https://thecliniciansguide.myflodesk.com/nx48w16db8

Career Cliniq Resources

If you're trying to get clearer on what actually drives your next step, the StreamAhead Assessment will map your interests within healthcare.

👉 Take the StreamAhead Assessment

Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn and Instagram.