Physicians are often asked to lead—but are rarely prepared for the role. Promotions can happen overnight, often with no formal training and little support.…
Getting to a culture of always is an elusive outcome for organizations. Achieving excellence with every process, behavior, and customer interaction—is hard. It separates great organizations…
How employees perceive things often depends on their leader. I often speak to organizations that are undergoing a merger or consolidation. (This is happening…
Like most other healthcare organizations, post acute staffing shortages have created real challenges. Abby Spence, who has been a nursing home administrator for the…
We all know finding and keeping great employees is one of the top priorities in healthcare. What we may not realize is the process starts the first time a candidate interacts with our organization: the minute they read the job description. That said, how much time and thought do you put into yours? Many organizations just use a template. They see the job description purpose as conveying the position’s main responsibilities, expectations, and qualifications. They figure We can…
For Immediate Release For more information, please contact Dottie DeHart, DeHart & Company Public Relations, at (828) 234-7483 or Dottie@dehartandcompany.com. Healthcare Luminary Quint Studer Honored With 2025 Baldrige Foundation Leadership Award Pensacola, FL (March 2025)—Quint Studer, co-founder of Pensacola’s Healthcare Plus Solutions Group® (HPSG), has been named one of the 2025 recipients of the Baldrige Foundation Leadership Excellence Awards. The award, given by the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Inc., recognizes leaders who embody Baldrige leadership…
What we permit, we promote. I learned this phrase from speaker and author Liz Jazwiec. If new ideas and challenges are permitted and celebrated, more of each will take place. On the less positive side, permitting can reinforce actions that are not good. For example: A person regularly shows up late, and nothing happens…a leader repeatedly misses goals, and nothing happens…a person gossips, and nothing happens. The results are lateness, missed goals, and increased gossip. This…
“We need to eat our own cooking.” This is a statement that resonates with me. I write and speak about customer service, employee engagement, creating cultures of high performance, and building foundations of trust. I feel it’s important to practice what I advise others to do. This includes measuring how we’re doing in these areas. When I was at Holy Cross Hospital in Chicago, we became well known for having excellent patient experience. I spoke at…
Why does a good decision or action end up not going well? Was it the decision itself or how the action was taken…or was it a communication issue? My experience is that leaders put a lot of time into making thoughtful decisions. The “miss” occurs due to how things are communicated during the rollout. Micromanagement can get a bad rap. Yes, there are certain actions in which it makes sense: making sure a recipe is correct,…
Last week’s column covered suggestions on how to not create a we/they culture. Today’s column is about the power a person has when he or she positions individuals and the organization in a positive way. I am focusing lots of time on helping organizations build trust in senior leaders. In my work, I share that a new employee’s coworkers hold the early key to trust. In the new employee orientation, the person hears about the mission and…
There is a place for we/they communication, but it’s not in the business world. We/they motivates individuals and groups when there are two sides to the equation. It is commonplace in politics and sports. A coach may use comments from the other team to motivate their team and win the game. A politician may use we/they positioning to get out the vote. However, inside an organization where everyone is on the same team, it is…
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” This quote is most often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. It comes up in conversations with groups to which I am presenting. In these conversations, I often share that research shows that when a person receives three compliments for every one criticism, they feel more positive about the sender. Two compliments per criticism creates a neutral feeling about the sender, and a one-to-one ratio creates a…
My writings come from life experiences. As I reflect on my recent experiences in the field, here are a few items that come to mind. Silence can be interpreted as support or agreement. At times, that is correct, but not always. A person may say to their coworkers, “We never know what is going on around here.” While the coworkers may feel that statement is not accurate, they remain silent. The person then believes the others…
My last column was on uplifters. By this I mean people who lift others up. When I wrote the column, I was not aware that the week it was published, I would be uplifted by spending two days with the leadership team at Loma Linda University Health (LLUH) in California. This organization is well regarded for many reasons. One is that Loma Linda has the world’s first proton unit used for cancer patients. Another is…