Archive: Leadership

Expectations vs Suggestions

Is your healthcare organization setting expectations for standards of care or giving suggestions?  Last week I was speaking to a large group of healthcare leaders about culture and the leader’s role in creating it. At one point, I stopped to ask ...

Policies and Procedures vs Compassion

Every organization needs policies and procedures to ensure high-quality, safe care. Yet, policies can get in the way of being reasonable if we aren’t careful. When to follow, and when not to follow, policies can be difficult, especially when trying ...

Listen With Your Eyes and Ears

Even the youngest patients know when their healthcare workers truly listen to them. When my youngest daughter, Hillary was nine years old, I told her I’d be scheduling her back-to-school physical with the pediatrician. She stopped me and asked, “Will ...

Balancing Skill With Patient Experience

Many healthcare positions require a high degree of technical skill, but balancing skill with patient experience is a skill unto itself. This is especially true in direct patient care. After all, if you mess up an important technical task, you could hurt ...

Who’s Exempt from Living the Company Values?

It can be hard to take an honest look at your company values and what needs to change in your culture. Especially when doing so requires that you change your own behavior. And yet, that is exactly what happens when, ...

Smart Hiring = Lasting Impact

In today’s talent market, smart hiring often goes out the window, and it can be tempting to hire the next applicant with a pulse. Regardless of a dwindling talent pool leaders still need a crystal-clear picture of their ideal candidate. ...

I’m Just Here for the Food

I’m Just Here for the Food, By Angela Fieler I was coaching an executive recently who was complaining that staff are “just not engaged.” I asked how he was defining employee engagement. At the root of his complaint was the fact that ...

Leaders as Change Agents

Change is a constant, but the past two years have put that adage on steroids. The pace of change has been unprecedented. While change places stress on everyone, middle managers are impacted the hardest. They need to translate issues from ...

Don’t Ask if You Don’t Want to Hear

The topic of rounding is nothing new for healthcare leaders. For years we’ve talked about purposeful rounding. It's important to ask questions that focus on what is going well and what they need. But be sure you are ready to ...

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