#151 - How Knowing Yourself Builds Stronger Teams

The ASHHRA Podcast

🎙️ New Episode: Leading from Your Best Self with Kapri Ames

In this powerful episode of The ASHHRA Podcast, hosts Luke Carignan and Bo Brabo sit down with Kapri Ames, Vice President & Chief Nursing Officer at Indiana University Health, to explore what it truly means to lead with self-awareness, energy, and intention.

With over two decades in healthcare—and 17 years in leadership—Kapri brings more than experience to the table. She brings heart, humility, and a bold message: you can’t lead others well until you know how to lead yourself.

🔑 Episode Highlights:

💡 Know Your Magic
Kapri challenges leaders to discover their “magic”—the unique strengths that allow them to lead with passion and clarity. From Enneagram to DISC to StrengthsFinder, she shares how self-awareness creates more effective, empathetic, and aligned leadership.

💡 Modeling Work-Life Integration
Forget work-life balance. Kapri models integration—giving her team permission to take meetings outside in the sun, adjust their schedules, and care for themselves so they can care for others. Because if leaders aren’t well, their teams won’t be either.

💡 Build Strength-Aligned Teams
Kapri is unapologetic about not managing to weaknesses. Instead, she’s built a high-performing team based on complementary strengths, open collaboration, and radical psychological safety—where people don’t compete, they multiply one another’s impact.

💡 Culture That Wins Awards
This isn’t just theory. Kapri’s leadership has helped IU Health earn its third Magnet Designation with Distinction—an elite recognition for nursing excellence, collaboration, and patient outcomes.

💡 Live for Today. Lead for Tomorrow.
Kapri leads in the moment but plans with intention. She surrounds herself with visionaries who see the road ahead—while she ensures the team is delivering excellence today. As she says: “Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow. Sufficient is the day.”

🧭 Leadership Lessons You’ll Take Away:

• Why real leadership starts with self-care and personal wellness
• How to create psychological safety by owning your strengths (and weaknesses)
• What happens when leaders give permission to unplug, recharge, and re-engage
• How to build teams that want to stay—and love coming to work

📣 Kapri’s Call to Action:
“Reflect on your own journey. Be your best self. And then look around—who can you lift up the way someone once did for you?”

🎧 Listen now to unlock a blueprint for values-driven, people-first leadership that fuels culture, performance, and joy.

The ASHHRA Podcast Team

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