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Archives for March 2021

How to Hire a CEO: Neglected Attributes

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Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC:  CEO SixSEED Partners

Introduction: Case for Change

Turnover at the CEO position remains high: According to the American College of Healthcare Executives, CEO turnover was 17 percent in 2019.* (ACHE: “Hospital CEO Turnover Rate Shows Small Decrease.” – press release. In Development Dimension International’s 2021 Global Leadership Forecast, that polled close to 16,000 leaders across the globe, 55% of CEO’s indicated developing the next generation of leaders as their top challenge. These statistics and personal experience working with clients who have been traumatized by making a wrong choice, motivated Dr. Larry McEvoy, Dr. Kevin Mosser and I to offer healthcare boards a webinar through The Governance Institute  called “How to Hire a CEO: A Guide for Ensuring Effective Selection at the Most Important Position.”  

For SixSEED Partners, we see the hiring of a CEO as only one part of our sixth seed: Leadership Ecosystem Capacitation.

 

Current Process:  Strengths and Gaps:

Whether in our country or within healthcare, we continue to look to the CEO as a heroic leader and in doing so, often place great emphasis on the CEO’s accomplishments and experience.  It was fascinating to us that the participants on the webinar placed low importance to the role of experience in their candidate selection yet, in practice, it was one of the top three attributes that they assessed. (see graphs below).  Bob Anderson and Bill Adams, in their book: Scaling Leadership: Building organizational capability and capacity to create outcomes that matter most” dispel the myth that leaders that prioritize results and technical expertise have the greatest impact on business results.  To the contrary, after culling through hundreds of thousands of 360- degree -feedback assessments and comments from around the globe, these skills were shown to be non-differentiators for high performing leaders.  Their research identified ten attributes, six of which were people-related.  Some of these include developing others; empowering people; team-builder; leads by example; and good listener.  

We were also surprised with the time paid to assessment results and interviewer ratings, given neither interventions were rated as having great importance to the participants.  In our experience, we agree, in part with this assessment, given our observation that this process is often incomplete, where the personality profile results remain with the search firm and are not used by the hiring company to integrate into designing behavioral interview questions targeted at possible gaps, nor using as development once the candidate is hired.

The Neglected Attributes:

If you’ve read this far, you are probably guessing where we believe you need to focus to have the greatest chances of success for the candidate; your executive team; and your organization.  The two attributes least assessed yet deemed most important to the CEO’s success is their ability to scale leadership, and to leverage and manage paradox (seeming opposite tensions).

Experience matters less in rapidly changing and volatile situations.  What matters more is the degree to which you’ve built leadership and thinking capacity in your organization.  As an example, SixSEED Partners was asked to offer change leadership training to a cohort of internal medicine physicians.  In partnership with the Chief Quality Officer, we designed a workshop where we introduced both/and thinking as an adjunct to traditional problem-solving thinking.  If these physicians have the thinking capacity to leverage individual AND team; mission AND margin; decentralized AND centralized needs; candor AND diplomacy; advocacy AND inquiry among others, then collaboration is strengthened and we increase their ability to lead sustainable change.

The Leadership Ecosystem Capacity Approach to Hire and Develop

What does this mean for you?  Here are several steps you can take make a better CEO hire:

1. Elevate talent development as THE FIRST Strategic priority- for the board; for the executive team and for each leader.

2. Ask your CEO candidates a question similar to the following:  “If your current organization were to give you a grade of A to F in relation to how well you’ve prepared them for your departure, what would they say?  On what would they be basing their rating?”  You want to listen for details around the use of development strategies like rotational assignments; creating a learning environment; internal promotions; and prepared successors.  You want to listen for a blend of “I” and “We” statements.

3. Assess for their thinking capacity to manage paradox:  “Give me an example of a decision you had to make where you felt torn between two or more competing perspectives.  Who was involved?  What was at stake?  What did you consider in your decision-making process?  What did you do?  What was the outcome?  What did you learn through the process?

Let’s hear from you

We’d love to hear your perspective as you and your board plan for your next CEO hire.  Please post your responses on our LinkedIn page or send us an email here.

Caring for the Organization & Caring for the Workforce

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Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC:  CEO SixSEED Partners

Introduction: Case for Change

  • “Joy:  (as told by a hospital CEO)  “I am having a spiritual crisis.  I have dedicated my life to this work and I am exhausted.  I am getting emails from our system CEO at all hours of the night and weekends.  And when are our senior meetings?  Mondays.. so if we want to take a long weekend, we have to wrestle with missing those meetings or attending them on our time off.”
  • From a dear friend:  “My son (nurse in ICU) called me yesterday and told me he lost another patient.  He commented that this is a daily occurrence and he sent me this very poignant video illustrating the journey of his fellow nurses and care-providers.  He doesn’t feel that he can talk to anyone for fear they will think him “fragile” and unsafe.
  • From a senior leader whose position was eliminated:  “I was informed via a 10- minute zoom call that my position was eliminated and that I would be cut off from all communications as of that moment.  I could only go to my office to clean out my belongings with an escort.   I’ve worked for the organization for over twenty years and this is how I’m treated.  I understand the need to re-organize but why wouldn’t they allow me to transition my projects to others?”

The stories above are direct quotes from clients and/or friends.  As we reach the one- year mark for Covid-19 lockdowns and the now 500,000 deaths in the United States, more and more of these stories are surfacing.  SixSEED Partners is committed to providing integrated solutions to heal healthcare and there is no greater time of need than right now.

Crisis in the Making:  Grief, Trauma and Vicarious Trauma:

McKinsey & Company, in a December 2020 publication: “Grief, loss burnout: Talking about complex feelings at work” discuss the unparalleled levels of exhaustion and loss that have become “routine” for healthcare workers.  Provider burnout was a concern before the pandemic- it is only magnified now in the constantly “on stage” demands of taking care of patients and trying to recoup financial losses due to fewer elective surgeries.  The authors of “Healthcare Coaching Through Crisis and Trauma” (February 2021), published through Harvard’s Institute of Coaching, describe the experiences as passing even “severe burnout,” into the realm of trauma, vicarious trauma, and moral injury.”  How are we challenging ourselves to slow down enough to put resources to this significant need?  In many ways, we are reminded of our nation’s tension of leveraging individualism (each person responsible for their status/ wellbeing) with communal good (how are we caring for each other).

The Leadership Ecosystem Capacity Approach to Resilience and Restoration:

SixSEED Partners asserts that we each have a role in better leveraging caring for the workforce as we strive to keep our organizations afloat.  Without workers, we have no margin.  What’s in our control to do?

Please see the polarity map pasted below for some ideas of action steps and early warning signs to address this tension.  

SixSEED Partners recently partnered with an academic medical center to offer a polarity thinking workshop to sixteen internal medicine faculty.  These physicians were learning about leading change in patient quality and safety and we chose to help them expand their thinking to support their leading in complex and unpredictable environments.  They voiced appreciation for the safe space where they got to share with their colleagues and learn that the challenges they were dealing with were not unique to them. They were also able to acknowledge that they needed to assume individual responsibility for self -advocacy and health as they worked so hard at taking care of others- whether that was at work or at home.

Let’s hear from you;

We’d love to hear your perspective as you and your organizations better leverage caring for your workforce. Please post your responses on our LinkedIn page or send us an email here.