Minute Motivation

Over the last several weeks, we’ve been looking at principles of leadership as expressed in the book The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations , by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. The authors’ first principle for leaders is to Model the Way. They suggest that this begins by Clarifying Your Values, identifying those values that are most important to you as a person and as a leader. The authors state: “To become a credible leader, you first have to comprehend fully the deeply held beliefs – the values, standards, ethics, and ideals – that drive you. You have to freely and honestly choose the principles you will use to guide your decisions and actions. Then you have to genuinely express yourself. You have to authentically communicate your beliefs in ways that uniquely represent who you are.” Kettering Health Network has identified five values that drive our organization. These values are: Trustworthy Innovative Competent Caring Col...

The introduction to the Called to Lead manual references the book, The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations , by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. One of my favorite sections in this book is titled Leadership is a Relationship. The authors state: “Personal-best leadership experiences are never stories about solo performances. Leaders never get extraordinary things accomplished all by themselves. Leaders mobilize others to want to struggle for shared aspirations, and this means that, fundamentally, leadership is a relationship . Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. It’s the quality of this relationship that matters most when engaged in getting extraordinary things done. A leader-constituent relationship that’s characterized by fear and distrust will never produce anything of lasting value. A relationship characterized by mutual respect and confidence will overcome the greatest adve...

A recent article on forbes.com looked at Southwest Airlines (stock symbol LUV) and the keys to that company’s success. The article said the airline has been profitable for 45 consecutive years for a number of reasons: “Good management Understanding the lane they want to compete in, and sticking to it A relentless effort to ensure customer (as in passenger) satisfaction An even more relentless effort to ensure employee satisfaction” Focusing on the fourth point, the article sums up a presentation by Steve Goldberg, Senior Vice-President of Operations and Hospitality for Southwest. The writer says: “Goldberg’s wisdom on creating a ‘Culture of Excellent Hospitality’ was…quite simple. He broke it down into three areas: Know your people : Start with your employees. How welcome do you make them feel? Do you genuinely care about your fellow employees? Southwest refers to co-workers as ‘cohearts,’ playing off the word cohorts, in total alignmen...

“A brand is built on memories – and the way to get there is through integrity, relationship and performance.” These words come from a Customer Service Master Class put on by Southwest Airlines. The speaker was Carl Sewell, Chairman of Sewell Automotive. In this one sentence, he captured what his company has focused on, as well as what Southwest Airlines has become known for. Southwest has always worked to create fun, memorable experiences for their passengers, as well as their employees. At Kettering Health Network, we have the opportunity every day to put this into practice. When patients and their families look back on time spent with us, our reputation is built on the memories they take away with them. They remember the compassion, the care, they received during a very difficult time. The same is true of our employees, and how they perceive the workplace. How we are seen as an employer is built on memories – the stories our employees tell about working here. These stor...

I’ve just started reading a classic book, The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations , by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. Now in its fifth edition, the book reports the authors’ findings on leadership from over 30 years of research on the subject. Kouzes and Posner present what they call The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. They suggest that leaders Model the Way Inspire a Shared Vision Challenge the Process Enable Others to Act Encourage the Heart As they introduce these five practices, the authors state that leadership is not about personality or charisma, but about behaviors. “The data show that workplace engagement and commitment are significantly explained by how the leader behaves and not at all by any particular characteristic of the constituents. Statistical analyses revealed that a leader’s behavior explains the vast majority of constituents’ workplace engagement.” The book quotes Caroline Wang, an executive at...

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been meeting with leaders to have conversations about employee engagement. The conversations begin by looking at engagement scores produced from employee surveys, but the truth is there is much more to the issue than scores. The scores are simply a snapshot of a moment in time. The scores give us an opportunity to talk about what our team members are experiencing working for Kettering Health Network. On the surveys there are four questions that drive engagement scores. Those questions are: This organization inspires me to perform my best. I am willing to put in a great deal of effort to help this organization succeed. I would recommend this organization to my friends as a great place to work. I am likely to be working for this organization three years from now. On the Great Place to Work organization’s website, it says this: “In our 30 years of research, we have found that people experience a great workplace when they co...

I recently saw an activity on Facebook in which parents were to ask their kids a number of questions about their parent, to see how well the kids know Mom or Dad. There were questions such as, “What’s my favorite food?”, “How tall am I?”, etc. One of the questions was, “What is something that I say a lot?” As I looked at some friend’s kid’s responses, there were things like, “Go clean your room,” or “Don’t hit your sister.” But my son answered, “There really isn’t a phrase that you say over and over.” His reply made me wonder if I’ve done a good job of communicating to him what things are truly important to me. In Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business , the author looks at the importance of organizational health as the key to success in business. He suggests four disciplines that create this health: Build a cohesive leadership team; Create clarity; Overcommunicate clarity; and Reinforce clarity. In the section ...

As I began preparing to write these Minute Motivator emails a few weeks ago, I asked some leaders in the network what books they have found to be most valuable, what books they think all leaders in our organization would enjoy learning from. One book that was mentioned by multiple leaders was The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business , by Patrick Lencioni. Lencioni suggests that the key to success in any organization lies in its focus on organizational health. One of the first things he looks at in the book is the idea that all leaders need to be working towards the same goals. “When it comes to how a cohesive team measures its performance, one criterion sets it apart from noncohesive ones: its goals are shared across the entire team. This is not just a theoretical way of saying that people should help one another. It’s far more specific, and far more difficult, too.” Lencioni gives the example of a young soccer player: “After a recen...

A couple of weeks ago we looked at a story from the book Great Work: How To Make a Difference People Love , by David Sturt. Sturt shares another story with direct implications for employee engagement: “The conductor of a symphony is given great power over an orchestra (some might even say absolute power). This is due, in part, to conductors’ extraordinary gifts, abilities, and training. But it’s also a practical matter in order to get 100 or so creative musicians to perform with the same vision and the same feeling – at the same time. “Besides, it’s tradition. It’s pageantry. It’s how classical music has been interpreted and performed for hundreds and hundreds of years. In fact, it’s stunning to watch how the all-knowing baton is wielded with such supremacy and honored with such obedience. Each conductor’s role is defined by the right to command but not to converse with players. When it comes to contributing great work ideas, violinists and cellists and oboe players are not i...

As I listened to Dr. Peter Bath in his devotional at Leadership Meeting last week, I was impressed by what an important moment this is for our hospitals. It is always sad when a neighboring facility closes, and the recent news leaves a hole in this community. As Dr. Bath spoke of the current circumstances, he stressed that we will have an opportunity to serve a growing number of people in the months and years to come. Both Grandview and Southview can expect significant growth opportunities as we move forward. The opportunities are exciting, yet can also be overwhelming. How do we serve those in our community whom we haven’t had the opportunity to serve in the past? In the 1986 movie Hoosiers, a small-town high school in Indiana brought in a new coach who, through some unorthodox methods, created a winning team against all odds. After a season of struggles which turned into a playoff run, the team finds themselves in the game for the state championship. As the young men walk into ...

A couple of years ago I saw a video at an HR conference that has stuck with me ever since. It’s the story of Moses, a hospital janitor, who brought hope to a child struggling for life, and his family. https://www.octanner.com/insights/videos/great-work-stories-moses-and-mindi.html In the video, Mindi says, “It was Moses who treated us like a person, and gave me encouragement on those days when I had real fears and doubts, and didn’t know if my child was going to walk out with us or not.” She says, “Moses saw himself as part of the healing team…as critical, as important, as doctors and nurses…he understood the impact that he could have.” In his book, Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love , David Sturt looks at this story. He says, “Matt and Mindi looked forward to visits from Moses because as he made their hospital room clean, he also gave them hope.” Sturt continues: “Moses was a good janitor. But he also added something extra with his job that made a differe...

Last week we looked at some ideas from the book Patients Come Second: Leading Change by Changing the Way You Lead , by Paul Spiegelman and Britt Berrett. The theme of the book is that a leader’s focus is on employees, working to engage them in the mission of the organization. They contend that when leaders put employees first, even before the tasks of the department, the employees will be engaged, and provide the outstanding care that our patients and their families want and need. With this in mind, the authors address how to identify engaged employees. They quote Steve Rector, CEO at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point: “I think leaders sometimes mistake someone who has a good attitude or personality for an engaged staff member. Be careful not to jump on that bandwagon. For me, it’s fairly easy to notice engaged staff. They are usually the ones who are coming up to you in the hallway, the cafeteria, your office – wherever! – and providing insight on how you can improve, gro...

One of the best books I read in 2017 is Patients Come Second: Leading Change by Changing the Way You Lead , by Paul Spiegelman and Britt Berrett. In the first chapter, the authors talk about the patient experience. “What does ‘patient experience’ mean, anyway? A group of patient experience leaders across the country, whose research was sponsored by The Beryl Institute, coined the following definition of patient experience: ‘The sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perception across the continuum of care.’ Here is a less MBA-like explanation: The patient experience centers around the story you tell your spouse when you get home from your appointment. Nobody comes home after a surgery saying, ‘Man, that was the best suturing I’ve ever seen!’ or, ‘Sweet, they took out the correct kidney!’ Instead, we talk about the people who took care of us, the ones who coordinated the whole procedure – everyone from the receptionist to the nurses to...