By Rand O’Leary, FACHE
Throughout my life, I have seen that it is true that your thoughts become your words, and your words become your actions. I wonder if it is possible to reverse-engineer this adage, using our actions and words to impact our thoughts. As another old saying goes: whatever you feed will grow. How do we feed positive thinking? Through kindness and gratitude in word and deed.
Read MoreI recently had the honor of having an article published in the September/October issue of the American College of Healthcare Executives’ Healthcare Executive magazine. To read the full version of this article, click here.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
The pandemic has changed many things about our culture and daily life. Even with a likely shift to an endemic state and more “normal” days ahead, many things have changed in the past two years that will not change back to how they were. Among them is the old employment model of emphasizing in-person work. In today’s market, if employers want to attract and retain talent, they must offer flexible work options.
Read MoreWith so much bringing us down, what can we do to lift each other up? We must respond to these difficult times with a deep sense of caring, understanding, and support for one another and our communities.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
Over the past 18 months, we've seen burnout strike healthcare professionals and leaders at levels previously unseen. Colleagues are retiring, dedicated providers are leaving, and countless others across the country are taking time away for stress and mental health renewal.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
If there's one thing that 2020 has definitely called for, its resilience. We're living in turbulent times and COVID-19 has impacted every aspect of American life – from health to work to childcare to education and even exercise.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
While individual resilience is important, especially in turbulent times, organizational resilience is also crucial. According to BSI, organizational resilience is “the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper.” This goes far beyond risk management and is in fact a key trait in an organization that not only survives but thrives in times of crisis.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
Creating a solid leadership team is not only key for organizational excellence; it’s priceless in a crisis. We are in the midst of extreme, unprecedented times, especially in healthcare, and leaders and managers alike are relying on their teams to help them keep staff focused and engaged, and to make sure their operations are moving forward. To have a team that’s up to the challenges our current circumstances present, however, takes more than just luck, it takes hard work, strategy, and accountability – to each other and to the organizational mission.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
What makes a good organization great? A strong team working together with a clearly defined purpose. The cohesiveness and organizational might that builds strong teams often begins at the top, with leadership leading by example and focused on achieving objectives at every level.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
While building a culture of trust is essential to a leadership team’s growth and success, the fear of conflict can stop any positive growth in its tracks. Conflict happens, especially in business, and the key is to embrace rather than avoid it. As Patrick Lencioni writes in the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, “All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow.”
Read MoreIn all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, its easy to forget that in just a few weeks most of us will be looking at the New Year and a list of resolutions or promises that we have made to ourselves that we hope to accomplish. Some of our old favorites are bound to make the list, lose some weight, exercise, give more to charity, get back in touch with family or old friends.
But what about including in this year’s list the commitment to be a better leader next year?
Research tells us that when we write our goals down, we are far more likely to achieve them, so begin the year by taking a good hard look at what is means to be a leader, remember, you may have the title but being the leader of people requires these fundamental building blocks, can you complete these?
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
When it comes to building a strong leadership team, choosing top talent isn’t the only priority; building a culture of trust is also essential to growth and success. According to a recent PwC survey of more than 1,400 CEOs worldwide, more than half of organizational leaders believe a lack of trust is a serious threat to the success of their teams and their business. However, if you are aware of the importance of trust, and actively working to make it part of your workplace culture, you can use it as an asset to your organizational function, rather than a liability.
Environments where trust is a key component encourage innovation, increase the pace of decision making, and often team members outpace their competition. The Workplace Therapist Brandon Smith insists, “Trust enables teams to not just take risks but also to move more quickly. There’s little second-guessing in high trust environments because team members assume there’s positive intent.”
It’s hard for teams to move forward effectively if they don’t trust each another. Instead of innovating, they are second-guessing each other, unnecessarily reworking tasks, or relying on one or two key team members to get the work done. I have found that when you have trust, things move much more efficiently. You have the ability to take the risk because your team feels comfortable and supported. Trust is key, and risk, innovation, growth, and expansion can only happen when you have a solid foundation of trust to build upon.
To maximize your organizational potential and lead in your sector and community, you have to create a climate of trust and transparency.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” - Steven Covey
Diversity and inclusion are top priorities in many organizations today, and there are plenty of benefits that come with implementation. First of all, there’s an increase in profitability. A McKinsey & Company report found that companies with leadership in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have financial returns above their industry median, and those with leadership in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity were 35% more likely to do the same. On the other hand, McKinsey also found in a follow up that companies with executive teams in the bottom quartile for both gender diversity and racial and ethnic diversity were 29% less likely to achieve above-average profitability.
There’s more at stake than immediate profitability. Through my own experience, I’ve also seen improvements in:
Retention - Diverse leadership communicates that leaders cannot all look and sound the same, and a diverse leadership team helps create an environment where people of all races, genders, sexuality, religions, socio-economic backgrounds can thrive. It creates an environment where employees can see their path to advancement and leadership positions within the industry.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
Gallup’s State of the American Workplace reports that while the U.S. has more than 100 million full-time employees, only about one-third of them could be considered engaged at work. These are the staffers leaders dream about - they love their jobs and just make their organizations better. At the other end of the spectrum, 16% of employees are actively disengaged and generally miserable at work, and the remaining 51% of employees are not engaged at all – they’re just there.
For a leader, those are some sobering statistics, and should serve as a wakeup call. While engagement is important, chances are, you don’t just want your employees to engage, you want them to be inspired. Suze Orman once said you cannot inspire unless you’re inspired yourself. That means as a leader you should have passion – for the work, for the mission, and for what that means to people and the communities you serve.
Inspired employees impact an organization’s bottom line too, and studies have shown that inspired employees are more than twice as productive as satisfied employees. Inspiring behavior unleashes the energy within people to do their best work. It also helps them connect with an organization’s purpose and meaning.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
The healthcare environment continues to undergo rapid and profound change with mergers, acquisitions and new business models forever changing the landscape of how we lead and deliver healthcare for the next millennium. In my previous article, I discussed the concepts of leading your team through complex problem solving. Today the focus is on you, the leader, how you successfully navigate yourself through new relationships, complex reporting structures and multi-entity healthcare business models.
Read MoreBy Rand O’Leary
Leading and working in healthcare has always been complex, never more so than in today’s healthcare environment. Increased regulations, government reforms, alternative based payment models, rising consumerism and expectations have come together in a perfect storm swirling around the industry. On top of this, the world economy has become a destabilizing factor as we realize now more than ever how interconnected we are to our world partners, almost a giant game of Jenga, where one false move by a world leader could topple the whole tower.
Read MoreLeaders are expected to be creative problem solvers, challenge the status quo and visualize problems before they occur. Your success as a leader is largely dependent upon how quickly you seek improvement in broken processes, develop new procedures and maximize efficiency and effectiveness.
Below are three tips to help you stay in front of the curve when managing your people and organization through change and drive results:
Read MoreToday’s healthcare environment is shifting at an ever-increasing pace. The transition to community health focused care is both daunting and challenging for most organizations. Now, more than ever physician leadership can play a crucial and important role.
Setup Your Physician Leaders for Success
Before we begin, it’s foundational to understand how physicians view leadership.Physicians are trained to work independently, they value their autonomy and can be reluctant to delegate authority.All good qualities if you’re the patient.My colleague once said me, “these trauma surgeons are sure difficult to work with.”
Read MoreWhen everything seems to be going against you, remember the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it, Henry Ford.
Ask any pilot if they remember the first time they flew the airplane alone. And you’ll get a resounding yes! The solo flight is a milestone in each pilot’s life, it’s the time when preparation and opportunity all come together. You are alone in the airplane, no instructor by your side correcting mistakes, keeping you safe, it’s all up to you.
Read MoreSo, we’ve closed the books on another year, and it’s time to review your performance. Maybe you’ve completed all your goals -- congratulations you’ve failed. Failed? How could that be, I’ve completed all my goals? And therein lies the problem, you didn’t set your goals (or the bar) high enough for your own performance. Goals by definition are aspirations and should be set high enough to stretch the organization and yourself in new directions. If you are constantly beating your goals, you’re not stretching enough.
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