SixSEED Partners

Diane Scott

Leveraging Polarities to Create Sustainable High Performance: A Physician and Nurse Leadership Academy Day of Learning

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In April of 2019, WellSpan Physician and Nursing leaders were brought together for a transformative Day of Learning conducted by SixSeed Partners.

Dr. Larry McEvoy presenting the background of polarities.

For over a year SixSeed Partners worked with system senior leaders to increase the capacities for transformational change and leveraging polarities to create and measure sustainable performance. As the work of polarities had begun to permeate throughout the system, the was an expressed need to increase nursing and physician leadership knowledge about the power of polarities.

Educating Nursing Leadership AND Physician Leadership

Polarities are interdependent pairs of values or points of view that may appear as opposite, but when leveraged together can produce powerful outcomes. Prior to the workshop,

WellSpan choose four polarities to concentrate their work:Joy Goldman, RN, MS, PCC discusses the mindset shift to AND thinking.

Joy Goldman, RN, MS, PCC discusses the mindset shift to AND thinking.
  • Centralized and Decentralized- Focus on the independent business units needs AND systems opportunities;
  • Continuity and Transformation- Keeping the legacy and traditions of the past AND transforming for the future;
  • Tactical and Strategic- Increasing leadership capacity to think tactically AND strategically at the same time; and
  • Margin and Mission- Optimizing the financial health AND mission goals for individuals, systems and teams.

The physicians and nursing leaders learned that each polarity was not a problem to be solved, but a mindset to embrace, thus the “AND” mindset was put in motion for the group.  Interactive practice tools were given to help mobilize teams toward forward movement when they experienced repeated cycles of interdependent tension.

Perhaps the most significant take-away was the provision of language for the leaders to hold and invite numerous perspectives, which support AND thinking and leading within complexity.

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Individual leaders start to map their own polarities.

“It was so helpful to hear what others have learned. I’m a new director, so to hear from other directors and doctors was so helpful for me in my new role.”  — Nursing Director

 

“To mention the elephant in the room, it was pivotal to our success today to bring nursing and physician leaders into the same room, to encourage dialogue around our common polarities.” — Chief Medical Officer

 

“I am going to go back to my team tomorrow and integrate eight minutes of dialogue into our meetings instead of our usual one-way conversation and problem solving.”  — Physician Leader

Rethinking Succession Planning for Incumbent Leaders

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While succession planning traditionally has a focus on increasing the capacity of emerging leaders, there are often overlooked, but very personal and fulfilling benefits for the incumbent leaders.

Legacy can be overrated.

Some look at succession planning for incumbent leaders as a time to create a legacy. This can be an opportunity to leave a mark on an organization that survives far past their years of employment. However, the term legacy has different connotations for different leaders.

Thinking that legacy is a far-reaching goal for a fast-changing healthcare environment, legacy today can be seen as difficult and a rarely experienced event. A concrete legacy example is buildings named for past leaders, yet whose actual contributions are much harder to remember, making this kind of legacy an allusive concept. If memories of actual contributions and influence on the system are more easy to forget, what is the incumbent leaders’ best result from their succession planning?

The ultimate benefit: self-strategy

Shifting mindsets from legacy to self-strategy as an outcome for succession building can be the ultimate gift for incumbent leaders. This self-strategy will give an incumbent clarity about what they truly care about and what they want to spend their remaining time working on.  It is a transformation from what they want to do, to who they want to be.

When leaders start to formulate what they want to be in their next chapters, they can start to focus how and what they spend their valuable resource of time on. With a clarity of what they are passionate about and who they want to become, incumbent leaders can be more selective on what projects to choose and what to distribute to others. They can focus on truly enjoying their work with activities that bring personal engagement. Perhaps most importantly, the time during succession planning can give incumbents choices they may not have allowed themselves in previous times.

Self-strategy and organization strategy

When incumbent leaders start to make shifts in their mindsets, the benefits of these shifts extend to the emerging leader and to the organization at large. People will start to witness what happens when leaders are at their best. When people witnesses incumbent leaders who are passionate about ideas or projects, they also see incumbent leaders at the pinnacle of their careers. That is not only inspiring, but outcome generating as well.

How to create this shift

Incumbent leaders, those who are planning for retirement or promotion, have the unique opportunity to create a self-strategy for self-transformation: one that is filled with the potential of the greatest engagement period of their professional lives, while increasing the capacity of the next tier of leadership.

In order for this transformation to take place, a skilled leadership coach can help shift succession planning to a polarity approach that is strategic for both the incumbent and emerging leaders. Skilled executive coaches are needed for this kind of multi-pronged approach of individual and team coaching that helps leaders visualize the next chapters for themselves, their teams and the organizations.  While incumbents may be able to get there on their own in time, partnering to create an optimal self-strategy in the most effective and efficient ways is highly recommended.

SixSeed Partners offers a suite of inter-collaborative, interdependent and custom-designed services to increase leader and system-level capacitation within the healthcare industry. Email us at info@sixseedpartners.com to learn how we can help you drive sustainable, transformational change within leaders, teams and entire organizations.

Want to Transform? Get the Top 5 Tips to Prepare You to Transform Your Organization

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The term “transformation” is used to describe the paradigm shifts that organizations and individuals need to do in order to meet the desired goals for a more preferred future. Transformation can be allusive, but obtainable, with optimal mindset shifts needed for success.

In order to prepare the mindset shifts needed for transformation, here are five valuable tips to best prepare for optimal transformation for individuals, teams and organizations.

  1. Transformation is multi-layered and integrated across multiple levels of leadership, sponsors and strategic partners.

Although mission, vision and strategy are often directed by the top levels of leadership, transformational culture involves a multi-layered and integrated approach. From the top-level leaders to strategic teams, changing mindsets to a transformational culture is a team sport.

  1. Supplementing “either/or” unilateral thinking with “both/and” polarity thinking.

In many cases, thinking in polarities and using a polarity approach to certain challenges can provide leverage and sustainable results that “either/or” thinking alone can provide to address complexity, culture, change and conflict. Like yin and yang, polarities are interdependent tensions “margin AND mission” (an “AND” not an “OR). Organizations need to have optimal focus on reaching the epitome of BOTH, not choosing between both or merely “balancing” the poles.

  1. Transformation requires vertical development of leaders.

Think of horizontal development of leaders as skill acquisition. This can help increase a leader’s situational effectiveness, but is less likely to result in the capacity to think more systemically and effectively handle ambiguity or increasing complexity. Developing those capacities, which lead to sustainable transformation, requires vertical development. Consider a physician that treats a single disease, as compared with population health. Disease management requires horizontal learning. Long-term wellness requires thinking about patients in a more complex and system-oriented manner and being aware of patient population health management that may transform a community.

  1. Human resources is a necessary thinking partner.

All too often, HR is included after visions are planned, strategy is set and decisions are made. Transformation and delivery of results happens through the people in the system. Shifting the mindset of human resources as merely executing the decisions to being a trusted advisor upstream in thinking through the strategy and decisions is vital for true transformation.

  1. Outside assistance is necessary so choose wisely.

Outside consultancies and strategic partnerships are necessary for optimal transformation and perspective, and not all are created equal. Choose wisely and engage partners with a depth and breadth of healthcare leadership experience that have been certified in the ability to transform teams and, who themselves, are proficient in systems and complexity thinking.

Agility is necessary for an outside consultancy to tailor to an organization’s unique needs. They need to contain credible experts in the fields of individual, team and organizational development and transformation.

Most importantly, you need to have a relationship with the people that you will be working with, and not just the face of the organization that sells the service. Outside assistance is necessary, so choose wisely for the most effective results.

SixSeed Partners offers a suite of inter-collaborative, interdependent and custom-designed services to increase leader and system-level capacitation within the healthcare industry. Email us at info@sixseedpartners.com to learn how we can help you drive sustainable, transformational change within leaders, teams and entire organizations.