Healthcare leaders are carrying an enormous amount right now. Staffing shortages. Financial pressure. Rising patient expectations. Operational strain. Constant change. The weight is real, and how leaders carry that weight shapes the culture around us more than we may realize. In stressful seasons, it is easy for leadership to become reactive. Even when we have the best intentions, the pressure can get to us. Communication becomes shorter. Patience becomes thinner. Teams begin operating from survival…

(LIVE BLOG from Rewiring Healthcare: Foundation to Future, April 28-29, in Atlanta, GA) If you’ve ever watched someone do their job and thought, wow, they really get it, you know exactly what Lisa Reich is talking about. Lisa has spent nearly 40 years in nursing, and somewhere along the way she became fascinated by a simple question: what separates the caregivers who truly connect with patients from the ones who just go through the motions? The…

For years, I rounded on patients the same way most nurse leaders do, popping in, asking whether things had been done, basically checking the boxes on my list. It was efficient. It was familiar.  And for a long time, it seemed to work. Then I started listening more carefully to the answers from patients. Yes. No. Kind of. No and kind of always pushed me into an uncomfortable spot. I’ve observed many nurse leaders doing…

(LIVE BLOG from Rewiring Healthcare: Foundation to Future, April 28-29, in Atlanta, GA) At the Rewiring Healthcare conference, Regina Shupe, DNP, RN, asked a sobering question during her Well-Being + Caregiver Support (HCE Overview: Resources & Support) session: Are the demands of healthcare work now outpacing the support we provide the people doing it? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. And she emphasized that this is a conversation healthcare leaders need to keep front and center—because the stakes…

I recently had the privilege of delivering the commencement address at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University. I found myself thinking about all the work we’ve been doing around generational issues. In Genfluence: How to Lead a Multigenerational Workforce, which I coauthored with Dr. Katherine Meese, we make the case that while people tend to focus on the differences between age groups, we’re all more alike than we realize. As I was speaking to this graduating class, this truth was really…

(BLOG from Rewiring Healthcare: Foundation to Future, April 28-29, in Atlanta, GA) Generational friction is real. But Dan Collard says we often diagnose it wrong. In his session, Genfluence: Leading a Multigenerational Workforce (Human Capital Ecosystem™: Coworker Relationships), Dan challenged leaders to change the way we think about generational tension. Older leaders might assume younger employees are entitled, fragile, or difficult. But usually, the issue is mismatched expectations, not bad intent. Misalignment, not malice. That mind shift matters,…

As healthcare evolves, we’re all having to rethink, refine, and rewire how we work. But here’s the question for leaders: Are the changes we’re asking people to make actually doable? At the Rewiring Healthcare conference, during his presentation titled Diagnose. Design. Treat. Leading Change That Works, Quint Studer introduced a doability assessment. The purpose is to help leaders determine whether a change is truly viable inside their organization before they try to roll it out.…

When UCLA Women’s Basketball Head Coach Cori Close led her team to its first national championship on April 5, the story was not just about the win. It was about the kind of team that made that win possible. Her mantra, “Sometimes you, sometimes me, always us,” captures something many leaders talk about but often don’t know how to achieve: creating a culture where people care as much about the team’s success as their own.…

Nurses Week 2026 is here, and nurse leaders everywhere have asked the same question: What can I do this year that will feel meaningful to my team? Gifts are thoughtful. Celebrations matter. But when you listen closely to nurses across generations, specialties, and settings, what they want most isn’t something you can buy. They want a leader who creates an environment where they can thrive. They want a Human-Centered Leader. A Human‑Centered Leader models well‑being even…

Nurses enter the profession with a strong sense of purpose—a desire to be useful and helpful, to make a difference, to care for others in meaningful ways. But in today’s healthcare environment, with staffing shortages, rising patient complexity, growing administrative demands, and high levels of burnout, it can be harder to feel that “calling” day-to-day. Right at a time when the work matters most, the meaning that fuels it can begin to get crowded out.…