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,…