By Rand O’Leary

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 adage says: whatever you feed will grow. How do we feed positive thinking? Through kindness and gratitude in word and deed.

By 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.

With 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.

By 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.

By 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. Add to that a fragile economy, a smattering of natural disasters, and widespread political and racial unrest, and you've got all of the ingredients needed to keep most people in a state of near-constant stress.

By 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.

By 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.

By 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.

By 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.”

by Rand O’Leary

In 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?

By 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.

By 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.

By 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.

By 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.

By 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.

By Rand O’Leary

Leaders 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:

by Rand O’Leary

oday’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.”  My response, “Of course they are. They are trained to take charge, assess situations quickly and be right, every single time.  And If I’m critically injured, that’s who I want taking care of me.” But yes, when we ask them to take on the mantle of administrative leaders, they need our help. 

Over the years, I’ve heard many stories inspirational stories on leadership, one of my favorites involves President John F. Kennedy and his first visit to NASA in 1962.  As the story goes, the President was touring the facility when he came across a janitor carrying a broom down the same hallway as the touring President.  Kennedy, a great lover of people stopped the and asked him what he did for NASA, not missing a beat he replied, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

by Rand O’Leary

Many high performing companies have discovered the value of servant leadership, which simply defined is serving others first.  When leaders make this simple, but fundamental mind shift, the culture and the organization will follow as will bottom line results.  Employees working under leaders who put their needs first, build self-confidence, make decisions more autonomously, have greater job satisfaction and engagement, and are more likely to practice this same style with their direct reports.

How does servant leadership build organizational and team performance?

By Rand O’Leary

Healthcare has been in a tremendous period of change, mergers, acquisitions, leadership restructures, and new and improved strategic plans and priorities fill the time of most leaders.  During this time of change, many leaders may wonder privately, does the mission of this organization still matter? Or is it only about the bottom line?