SixSEED Partners

Joy Goldman

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.

SEEDS for Success with New Year Resolutions

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Introduction: Case for Change

Have you given up on New Year’s resolutions because of repeated failures to achieve your goals?  Are you searching for the right way to get sustainable results?  Has the scale betrayed you again in this new year as you struggled to manage your weight amidst a work from home or constant adrenaline rush lifestyle?  You are not alone.  As so many of us do, we look back to our learnings from the past to inform our changes for the future.  We are taking a different spin to a prior post in the context of supporting your wellbeing in this new year.

The Challenges:

As we enter a new year and vow to make changes in our personal and professional lives, we struggle with how best to do that, particularly amidst what we may hear about the failure rate of New Year Resolutions.  In our efforts to find an example that might be universal, 2020 found many of us struggling with weight maintenance given our moving less and staring into a computer screen for 8-10 hours/day.  While there is great literature on successful habit cultivation, they often fail to take a systems’ and mindset perspective necessary in dealing with complex situations.  

2020 has required us to create structures AND be flexible and adaptive; leverage what we know as we advance into what is not known; honor existing familiar traditions as we create new ways of being with each other.  In revisiting our post from May of 2020 on taking ourselves seriously and taking ourselves lightly, we present this spin as it relates to improving personal health goals around weight management.

Leveraging taking ourselves seriously and taking ourselves lightly:  

At SixSEED Partners, we help our clients integrate both/and thinking in addition to traditional problem-solving- either/or approaches.  The elimination of perceptions of “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” helps our clients to take a more systems-oriented approach to complex challenges.  In the polarity map pasted below, you will notice a common tension of a serious/structured weight management approach and a more playful and spontaneous approach to weight management and health. Effective and sustainable weight management requires leveraging both upper poles, and mitigating the risk of overdoing either, to the neglect of the other.  

When we take ourselves too seriously to the neglect of a lighter approach, our inner judgers become active when we find that we’re not meeting our health goals and we’re not enjoying life.  If we overfocus on a more spontaneous approach to weight management (as just one common health attribute), we’re having fun but not meeting our physical health goals.  Using a polarity thinking frame helps us to see ourselves as a system that requires leveraging both poles.

What can you do? (action items and warning signs):

Even as I write this blog, I notice physical signs where my breathing becomes more shallow; there is a sense of tightness and heaviness and I notice my active judger interfering with my free flow of writing.  As I notice my own warning signs of taking myself too seriously, I open my chest more to allow easier breathing; I laugh and put this blog in the context of other problems in our world today; and I take a time out to exercise and move my body which amazingly impacts my movement in thinking.  I also access others more expert than I to help modify and edit, knowing I’m not alone in this work.  See our sample map below for actions you might take for success in weight management and other similar thorny challenges.

Polarity Map of Taking Self Seriously vs Lightly

Let’s hear from you:

What have you found helpful in leveraging taking yourself seriously and taking yourself lightly? In our next blog, we’ll be focusing on our leadership development seed as we discuss a common challenge of holding others accountable AND giving them freedom in doing their job. If you’re interested in learning more about how our team can help yours, contact us today!

Holiday Stories, 2021 Intentions, and Supporting Community

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What a year?!  I’m envisioning many exclamation points for 2020, and also realizing that “What a year?!” can be a reflection of what was, as well as an intention/vision for what is to be.  As a holiday message, our team thought we would offer favorite moments from 2020, share our holiday traditions, present a vision/intention for 2021, and spotlight some nonprofits we’ve supported throughout the year.

Happy Holidays from SixSEED Partners!

JOY

Favorite Story of 2020:  One of my most favored memories from 2020 was pre-Covid when I would see my mom sitting in the lobby of her Continuing Care Community.  As I approached her and she recognized me, she would smile the biggest smile and invite me to “come sit on mommy’s lap!”  She was 88 yrs old and fragile; I was 60 yrs. old and heavier than when I was a child. One day, I decided to ignore any feelings of embarrassment or concern and indulged her invitation, and “silly” became “joy-filled.”

2021 Intention: My definition of one of our seeds, “Well-Being”, comes from what I wrote on my holiday card this year:  “What matters most is someone to love; kindness; laughter; health; a spirit of adventure; inclusion; simple beauty found in nature; gratitude; and enough discontent to take action for a better world.”

Supported Organization: BUILD:  Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development/ Turnaround Tuesday

“Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) is a broad-based, non-partisan, interfaith, multiracial community power organization rooted in Baltimore’s neighborhoods and congregations. BUILD is dedicated to making Baltimore a better place for all Baltimoreans to live and thrive. For more than 40 years, BUILD has worked to improve housing, increase job opportunities, and rebuild schools and neighborhoods, among other issues.”

The secret to BUILD’s success lies in their commitment to identify and develop leaders in every community where they work. They rely on a radical tactic: We meet people face-to-face and build relationships that help to re-knit the frayed social fabric of our life. We don’t seek justice and social change for people, we seek change with people. We tackle big problems by breaking them down into issues that can be addressed. We build power by building community. Donate to BUILD

CLIFF

Favorite Holiday Tradition: My mom makes a famous Christmas Tree cinnamon roll that is absolutely legendary in my family. Not just for its taste but for the consistency and persistence. I’ll speak for myself that no matter where I’ve been over the past 30 years – that amazing Christmas Tree shows up at my door via overnight delivery. The gratitude I feel for the persistence that gets that tradition of love from one home to mine is something that makes the holiday season what it is, for me. And for which, I’m grateful.

Crazy Holiday Story: One holiday season just before Christmas, I took a bus from the east coast to Colorado for a skiing vacation. On the way, the bus broke down in a major snowstorm in sub-zero temperatures. It was quite late at night, and there were no lights visible in any direction. Within 30-minutes, the temperature inside the bus was the same as outside, but minus the wind. Unsuccessfully, the bus driver tried to contact the bus company and forbade anyone from calling 911. When people began to panic and insisted we get help, he began screaming at the passengers. The passengers then lashed out at the driver and from there the situation started to spiral, when… headlights and flashlights began to appear through the frozen windows. Somehow, the word had gotten out in the small local community, and that triggered a small convoy of trucks and cars that began transporting people to the home of a local person who offered their home as a temporary refuge. There was hot chocolate and Christmas cookies spread out for everyone.  There was holiday music and signing of Christmas carols. A few hours later, a local school bus to transport us to a local Church, where beds and cots had been set up in the basement community room. Santa was there to give out presents. The next morning, a replacement bus from the bus company arrived, and we continued the final leg of the trip.

Supporting Organization: Martha’s Table

Martha’s Table has operated from the belief that every Washingtonian deserves the
opportunity to thrive. They support improving the strength of children, families, and
communities by increasing access to quality education, health and wellness, and family
resources. Between 1989-1998 I lived around the corner from Martha’s Table’s humble
beginnings at 14th Street NW location and I volunteered to support their after-school
meals program.

They’d been operating for nearly a decade at that time and since then,
and it’s inspiring to watch their programs expand to support strong children, strong
families, and strong communities — now operating nationally accredited education
programs that begin at birth; fighting for food justice and increasing access to healthy
meals and fresh produce for over 15,000 residents; and promoting family
success through our no-cost community store and engagement programs. Donate to Martha’s Table

ASHLEY-DIOR

Holiday Traditions: The holidays are always important to me because everyone lives all over the country. It’s a time for us to gather and enjoy each other’s time together. We also play Holiday music and decorate the house.

Supporting Organization: Bread for the City

There are a lot of people living with food insecurity, especially with the pandemic. The mission of Bread for the City is to help Washington, DC residents living with low income to develop their power to determine the future of their own communities. We provide food, clothing, medical care, and legal and social services to reduce the burden of poverty. We seek justice through community organizing and public advocacy. We work to uproot racism, a major cause of poverty. We are committed to treating our clients with the dignity and respect that all people deserve. Donate to Bread for the City

PETRA:

Favorite Holiday Memory: Growing up in Germany, the holidays have always felt like a magical time to me with games, laughter, playfulness, gratitude and making time for each other. My fondest memories are of my mom, sister and I being in our PJs all day, watching classic Christmas movies, eating some German treats like Lebkuchen, and being warm, silly & cozy together.  

There are so many valuable organizations who serve those in need, and in thinking about this year, and my fondest memory, I’m highlighting a local non-profit, Family Lifeline, a member of the United Way efforts, who focuses on serving the ecosystem of individuals and families, from kids to parents to seniors, through 3 Programs:  Growing Well, Living Well, and Giving Well. Their new tagline especially resonates with me:  Bringing Health and Hope into the Home.

Supporting Organization: Family Lifeline

Family Lifeline is one of the oldest non-profit organizations in Virginia and an integral member of the greater Richmond community. They have been supporting stronger lives and stronger communities since 1877.

Their tagline: Bringing Health and Hope into the Home.
Their mission & vision: We partner with families and individuals, delivering intensive home and community-based services to achieve an equitable, resilient community where families and individuals are connected, safe and living a healthy, meaningful life. Donate to Family Lifeline

From our team to you, we wish you a happy holiday season with best wishes for a healthy and prosperous new year!

Team Spotlight: Meet Joy

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Joy Goldman, began her career in healthcare at the Massachusetts General Nursing School over 35 years ago. Out of Nursing School, she began a career as a psychiatric nurse and from there pursued Masters’ degrees in Community Health Education, Strategic Human Resources, Organizational Development, and a certificate in Leadership Coaching. Since 2008, she has been practicing as a Leadership Coach and OD facilitator. 

As a natural big picture thinker, Joy gravitates towards systemic interventions that can multiply impact on a variety of levels such as individuals, teams and systems. Joy finds the most rewarding part of her job partnering with individuals that provides the space to do profound work impacting their thinking and behavior in ways that align with their highest values and purpose. Also rewarding to her is working with her partners and combining their unique talents to create something powerful that exceeds what they could accomplish individually. 

When asked how she imagines the future of healthcare, she hopes to see an integrated system that promotes health for all. In Joy’s words, “I envision individuals taking responsibility for their own health by making better choices and having access to healthy food. I see payors, providers, investors, technology experts, and administrators creating collaborative systems where health is a foundational element of all workplaces. Healthcare is more than fixing what’s broken. Creating health is multidimensional and includes economic, social, and environmental influences.”

Beyond being the CEO of SixSEED, Joy loves to travel, dance, take photos and spend time with her husband.

Maximizing Team Development: Leveraging Theory & Application

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The Forming & Norming Team:

SixSEED Partners was invited to facilitate an executive council retreat for the Heart and Vascular Institute (HVI) of a community-based medical center. The HVI recently re-structured their roles and leadership within the institute to better meet their mission. The Chief Physician Executive of the Institute, in partnership with the Business Strategist, wanted to provide a day of learning and development where the members could build trust, align around shared objectives and engage in establishing accountability. Amidst Covid-19, the leaders felt these objectives were so important to warrant an in-person gathering.  It was clearly as important to the executive team members, who showed up engaged and fully present during the full day team development process. As several of the members are also clinical physicians, it highlighted to us that proper planning can facilitate the space for them to join in this work, which is also important to them. 

Can we learn multiple tools and apply them in 1 day?  YES!

Do you believe it is possible to deliver four different tools in three hours and have participants feel they learned them and could immediately apply them for their benefit? Thanks to Petra Platzer, our COO, we know we can! In less than three hours, the administrative and physician leaders were introduced to Thinking Environments, DiSC®, the Team-Work Cycle®  and the Three Vital Questions®. Petra also facilitated experiential activities that had  participants immediately applying what their learnings to their own work and team dynamics. Joy Goldman further facilitated application of these tools through the team beginning to draft their team charter. Elements of focus were their interaction rules around meeting practices, communication, decision-making, communication, feedback and evaluation.

But was it effective? Yes

We modeled creating an environment for feedback & evaluation by dialoguing on feedback for us within the session. Each participant said the day was effective for them, some surprisingly so, in fact, as they often are skeptical about “these things”. Each also named how one or more tools were new and powerful for them, and immediately applicable in some way. Some spoke about their insights into their own behaviors and styles as compared with others on the team. Others especially enjoyed the powerful visuals by physically going through the team work cycle. They quickly identified gaps, and possible solutions, to some of their self-identified needs for moving more efficiently from ideas to execution. The visual exercise provided the gift of addressing these topics without  blame or personalization, which fostered trust and new understandings together. The best gauge for how effective they rated this was their assertion:  “we need more of this from you.”

How is your team developing together?

Whether your team has been working together for a while, is newly forming due to a re-structure, or is somewhere in between – how are they working together? Is there a benefit to focusing on their ways of interacting and learning additional ways for navigating what seems to be never-ending change together? Making the effort on this work is what makes teams perform higher and more productively, with much less wasted energy and re-work along the way.  Like this HVI executive team experienced, it is often a pleasant surprise and energizing to spend time developing together.  And, without doing this kind of work, teams can often experience side conversations, wasted energy and good, but not great performance. 

What are your experiences in teams for creating clear agreements on how you’re interacting so there’s greater productivity with less wear and tear on the system?  We’d love to hear from you about your experiences and challenges.  

To learn more about applying these frameworks with your teams, contact us at: www.sixseedpartners.com or by tagging us on LinkedIn or Facebook.