9 leadership lessons from Dr Beverley Rowbotham AO

Dr Beverley Rowbotham AO has achieved remarkable success in her career, opening the doors for other women on boards in the health and medical industry. Recognised with an Order of Australia for distinguished service to medicine, she shares her journey and nine leadership lessons learned.

Lesson 1: Pursue a purposeful career

Choose a career that gives you purpose and meaning. “I decided to do medicine because I wanted to be of use, and medicine seemed to be a good meeting place of science and being human,” Rowbotham explains. Her career choice was influenced by this fundamental desire to contribute positively to society.

Lesson 2: Embrace your background and influences

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia, Rowbotham’s upbringing significantly shaped her career. Her father was a journalist and her mother, a nurse, transitioned to being a stay-at-home mum.

Despite societal expectations of that era, her parents encouraged her and her sister to pursue education and supported their ambitions. “My parents couldn’t have done more for my sister and me in terms of getting us launched. They really believed in education and supported us in whatever we wanted to do,” she reflects.

Lesson 3: Invest in help to support the work-life juggle

Juggling a demanding career and a young family was a significant challenge for Rowbotham. With four young boys and a husband who was a neurosurgeon, she made the difficult decision to move away from acute care. “The idea of both of us in cars going to hospitals in the middle of the night was not going to work,” she recalls.

Rowbotham worked part-time while her children were young, enlisting help from family, local student babysitters and nannies. “I gradually built out all the support I needed, including my mother, who drove everybody to cricket,” she says. Her husband still cooks their meals.

This balance allowed her to continue her professional journey while managing family responsibilities. She recommends that women with young families invest in the support they need rather than trying to juggle domestic duties with their jobs “because it’s a long game, and you need to invest in yourself”.

Lesson 4: Learn how to influence at the highest level

Rowbotham’s move from practising medicine to executive roles was a combination of timing and opportunity. After transitioning from bedside care to diagnostics in pathology, she joined the board of a disability charity and the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. Sitting on a board offered an ‘aha’ moment as she realised that all the critical decisions affecting how doctors practised were made in board rooms, from funding to resourcing.

“What I learned was that being on a board required a different language and set of skills, so that if doctors were going to make that leap to get up there with the lawyers and the accountants who typically sit on boards, they would have to learn the lingo and the rules of play, just as we’d learned it for practising medicine,” she explains.

Joining a board can also open the door to additional director roles, including in other sectors. Since becoming a director on the disability charity’s board, Rowbotham has sat on numerous boards, including with aged care provider Bolton Clarke.

Lesson 5: Make an impact through leadership

Rowbotham’s involvement in leadership roles, such as Chairing the AMA Federal Committee and as a ministerial appointment on four federal government healthcare policy committees, allowed her to advocate for significant advancements in the medical field. One of her proudest achievements was her role in the early days of genomics, where she advocated for the necessary infrastructure and training to support this vital area of health care.

“We were enlisting the health minister at federal and state levels to say genomics is coming, it’s vital to health care, and we’re not ready for it,” she explains.

Lesson 6: Seek support from mentors and champions

Throughout her career, Rowbotham benefited from having mentors and champions who supported and guided her. One such mentor was John Fahey, the former Premier of New South Wales and President of the World Anti-Doping Agency. They had worked together on another board, and when Rowbotham was elected Chair of the prestigious Australian Medical Association (AMA) Federal Council, she sought his advice. “He was more than happy to talk me through how to manage a large group of opinionated people,” she says.

Rowbotham at the AMA women’s breakfast.

Lesson 7: Female leadership offers different perspectives

As one of only two women on the 32-member AMA Federal Council, Rowbotham understands the unique challenges and opportunities of being a female leader in a male-dominated environment.

“We were the outliers. And I think everybody needs an outlier — somebody who sees the world differently,” she says, explaining that women bring a different tone and perspective to conversations at this level.

Rowbotham was elected as chair of the AMA Federal Council five times. Under her leadership, the Council voted on initiatives to improve healthcare policies and practices, including supporting same-sex marriage (“People who suffer from discrimination, it affects their health”). Another groundbreaking initiative was the establishment of the AMA Equity and Diversity Committee, setting a target of 50% women on the Council. Not all members were supportive. “That took some advocacy and persuasion,” she says. Today, the target is close to being achieved.

Lesson 8: Establish opportunities for others

Rowbotham wants more medical professionals operating at the board level, where policy decisions influence how doctors practice medicine and what funding they receive. To support this goal, she established two scholarships for final-year medical students, funding training with the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ board directors course. However, she noticed distinct differences in how men and women approached the application process, with rarely more than two women applying annually.

“It was a revelation for me,” she says.

“Women do not see themselves as somebody who might benefit from having a set of learnings that prepares them to be head of the radiology department or Royal Brisbane Hospital,” she says. “They just don’t envision this in their career.”

She wants to encourage more women to step into leadership roles and bridge the confidence gap.

Lesson 9: Share your life lessons

For other women seeking leadership roles, Rowbotham draws on her lifetime of experience to recommend the following:

• Find a purpose worth serving: leadership requires courage and effort, and having a strong purpose helps justify the sacrifices and criticisms that come with the role.
• Be attentive to opportunities and changes: be aware of the world around you, including noticing when doors of opportunity open and close in your career.
• Learn and move on: not everything you attempt will be successful. Failure is part of the journey. Learn from setbacks and continue to strive towards your goals.
   

*Laini Bennett interviews successful career women about their leadership lessons learned. Visit lainibennett.com to read more stories about inspiring women.