Healthcare has spent years talking about belonging for frontline employees, and rightly so. But there is a version of the belonging conversation that gets far less attention: What happens when the leader is the one who is new?

It’s a timely question. With the average CEO tenure now at 3.8 years, leaders are moving between organizations and stepping into new teams at a pace the industry has not seen before. Every culture they enter already has a heartbeat, a history, and a set of unwritten rules. Those leaders need to “belong”…and it needs to happen quickly.

In a recent episode of the Healthcare Plus Podcast, Dan Collard sits down with Corrin McCloskey, vice president of heart & vascular and oncology services at Tanner Health, to talk about what it takes to walk into a new environment and lead well. Here are five principles, drawn from the conversation, that any leader can put to work.

Belonging is not about being liked. It is about being connected to the work. Belonging in a leadership context is easy to misread. McCloskey is direct about what it actually means: Does my team trust me? Do I understand their day-to-day? Are we connected in the work that we’re doing?

Leaders who stay too separated from their teams tend to reach for strategy before they have built the relational foundation that makes strategy executable. “We all know that strategy is not going to be effective in a broken culture,” she says. Belonging, in her framing, is an operational discipline, not a social one.

Silos shrink when leaders share. Belonging doesn’t stop at your team’s edge. The same trust and connection that makes a leader effective within their team has to extend across the organization. Cross-functional trust starts with personal security. “When you have security in who you are and what value you bring to the organization, and you’re willing to share information and share best practices, that builds trust and breaks down those silos,” says McCloskey. Leaders who protect their turf tend to find their influence shrinking. The ones who lean into peers for support and expertise tend to grow.

Sponsors matter more than mentors. Belonging also means feeling like there is a place for you in the rooms that matter. McCloskey draws a clear distinction between mentors and sponsors. “A sponsor is that person who’s going to put your name out in the room, who’s going to talk well behind your back, who’s really going to elevate and lift you.” She also names a dynamic that can hold leaders back, particularly women: “Sometimes we’ve bought into the lie that maybe there’s not enough room for all of us.”

It’s crucial to get inside the ecosystems that matter. For leaders in non-clinical roles, McCloskey has direct advice: Get involved in medical colleges and physician organizations. “It’s not just buy-in,” she says. “It’s genuine co-creation.” Understanding the physician ecosystem from the inside is what makes real partnership possible, and it is one of the most overlooked ways a leader can build belonging across the full organization.

Expanding your scope means expanding your trust in others. A leader who hasn’t found their footing in a new domain can’t belong there, and can’t lead effectively there either. When McCloskey took on the oncology service line in addition to heart and vascular, she did not have deep oncology expertise. She is clear about why that was not the barrier it might seem. “The further up you go in an organization, it’s a lot less about what I know, and it’s about how I connect the teams and support the individuals who need to do this work.”

She also names a second trap: getting so focused on the result that you lose track of how you are getting there. “A lot of times, it’s right thing, wrong way,” she says. Getting there by alienating people is not really getting there at all.

Put it to work now…

• Walk into a new role focused on trust first and strategy second.
• Seek out sponsors, not just mentors. Find people who will put your name in rooms you are not in and do the same for others.
• If you are in a non-clinical role, get involved in medical colleges. Understanding the physician ecosystem is not optional for leaders who want real alignment.
• When expanding your scope, resist the expert trap. Your job at a higher level is to elevate the people who have the expertise.
• Measure your growth not just by outcomes but by how you are achieving them. Right thing, wrong way is still the wrong way.

Walk in Ready: How New Healthcare Leaders Build Trust, Break Silos, and Lead with Confidence shares more insights on leading in new cultures and building the trust that makes everything else possible. Click here to listen!