Sick of Apologies!

Are there others out there who are sick of hearing apologies? It seems recently that almost every day, some government or public leader, present or past, is apologizing for remarks he or she made. In addition, company CEOs are having to apologize for both their unfavorable actions’ outcomes as well as explanations they are giving initially to us—the consumers—to support these actions.

Has everyone forgotten the old adage, “Think before you speak?” We know one of the critical competencies for successful leadership is strong communication skills, both verbal and written.

Trusting relationships among leadership teams are dependent on consistent, open, honest, and transparent communication. Credibility of leaders depend on clearly-communicated rationale for the decisions, strategies, and vision the organization is taking.

We all know that to be successful in a leadership team, whether at the system, hospital, department, service line, project or task force level, one must embrace the following guidelines:
1. Articulate your position clearly, with consistency.
2. Be open to listening to other positions if they likewise are clearly communicated.
3. Be prepared to maintain your position or have it changed based on the communication of others in the meeting.
4. Be willing to support the consensus of the group, once it is reached, even if it is not your original position.

Clearly, we have somewhat of a void in strong and successful leadership in parts of our federal, state and local governments as well as in some for-profit and not-for-profit industries. Perhaps one of the drivers of this void is that too many leaders are speaking before they think it out. Excellent, successful outcomes will not be led by people who have to apologize for their verbal and written communications and their actions. To avoid such detrimental events, one must thoughtfully reflect on what comes out of their mouths.

In the end, we all know there is no substitute for intelligence that supports excellent communication skills. I would ask us to all ponder if leadership in all aspects of the public and private sectors would not be more successful if many leaders talked less and thought more!

Are you Blind to the Truth?

Over the last eleven years, I have often said that if we are to develop action plans to mitigate the challenges on our Journey to Excellence, we must always seek the truth regarding the challenges we face.

Therefore, I believe that it is important not to be surrounded by a senior team that is loyal to a fault (i.e., people that want to tell you what you want to hear, and not what you need to hear), and why I think it is important to encourage “professional backtalking” among all our leadership groups. This is also why “the ability to have robust discussions” was identified as a critical success factor in creating outstanding teamwork in the teaming exercises completed by leaders in our regions and business units this fiscal year.

All of these messages came clearly in view recently as I read an article in the May/June 2010 edition of CEO Magazine. Entitled, “Are You Blind to the Truth?”, this article articulates “seven strategies for ferreting out critical feedback you’re not getting.” Although these strategies are not new, they are certainly worth a review and some reflection.

They remind us that, as leaders of regions and business units, we are seen as a base of power, and, “in the presence of power, even well meaning people edit themselves.” The article also stresses the importance of getting out of your office, which is clearly visible as we stress the critical nature of daily rounding to our leaders in order to bring about a multitude of operational successes.

There are some moments, while reflecting in my office, that I reaffirm that in CHRISTUS, where we have challenges, we either still do not have the right people in place, or we do not know the truth about the situation. It occurs to me that this could be the case we are facing with some of our current challenges in our patient satisfaction scores, a critical piece of our directions to excellence. Do our Associates feel safe in speaking up? Could our Associates identify their local leadership teams if they saw them? What do they see when they see these groups coming down the hall? Are our leadership teams “talking the talk,” or are they “walking the walk?”

I am confident that our answers to these questions as we lead this scared ministry are mostly positive. But to ensure that someday we will all reach the top of the mountain on our Journey to Excellence, these obvious strategies are worth reviewing, and the questions posed are worth asking periodically. Answering the call to serve in CHRISTUS Health is both an awesome responsibility and privilege, and I continue to be honored to serve as our ministry’s team leader.

Taking a break from reform to talk about bringing CHRISTUS to the next level via team building

I’d like to take a week off of our focus on health care reform to blog about something that will be of the utmost importance as we move forward, regardless of the outcomes of the reform discussions on Capitol Hill.

I firmly believe that CHRISTUS—and all health systems that expect to continue providing care far into the future—will need to ensure that it has the best and most appropriate leaders in place in order to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future.

So earlier in the year, I made it clear once again to our regional leaders that they are critical to ensuring that our Journey to Excellence in the future is even more successful than it has been for the last decade. Our regional CEOs and those with whom they work are the most critical success factor in reaching our benchmark goals.

Even so, while the action of individual leaders are important, what our leaders do with their respective teams is even more critical if CHRISTUS is going to create an excellent experience for all who enter our doors. In these challenging times, the strength of the team is often weakened, and at best, not enhanced. But it is my belief that it is critical that we all focus on a process that has the potential to strengthen our teams, as well as every team, that works within the large CHRISTUS Health family both in the U.S. and Mexico.

Therefore, along with the CHRISTUS Health Senior Leadership Team, we articulated 14 Attributes of Excellent Teams, 10 of which I have used for more than 40 years in developing strong teams both clinically and administratively (which you can read about here), and four of which added in discussion with the other nine senior team members. The additional four attributes include: 1) team purpose, 2) results-driven with recognition, 3) prayerful reflection on team and performance and 4) complementary.

We then requested that our regional CEOs share these attributes with their team members in a face-to-face session and, following a discussion, have each of their team member’s rank – on a scale of one to 10 – where they perceive their respective team is on each attribute.

After calculating the team average for each of the 14 attributes, the regional CEOs and their teams were asked to develop action plans to be implemented through Fiscal Year 2010 to improve all of the attributes in which they scored a seven or less. In addition, we asked these CEOs to take accountability to continue the process so that eventually, by June 2010, every person within CHRISTUS Health, all of whom are a member of some team, somewhere, will be actively contributing to initiatives which are hopefully providing value to our ministry.

These continue to be challenging times in health care, made worse by the global economic crisis. However, as always, we find these times exciting and see multiple rainbows emerging from the clouds. Leadership in health care is an awesome responsibility, and at times, can be very lonely. Therefore, in the best and worst of times, the effectiveness of the team is critical. So in this moment in time, we are making sure that we do everything possible to strengthen our team so our Journey to Excellence continues to not only be successful, but for the most part, enjoyable and rewarding.