Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: We really wanted to make sure that our mission and our values were embedded within our leadership because we, we wanted to be something that if we truly believe in the mission and the values of our organization, we need to equip our leaders to learn how to lead in that way. And so that's why we ended up developing the mission component so that way we could internalize the things that were important and different for us about our organization that are really important to us.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Welcome to a new episode of the what Works podcast series. Today we have Linda Kerchavel from Sanford Health, a large US Based healthcare organization, sharing her insights on leadership development. In this episode, Kathy dives deep, exploring how Linda's team has worked with Franklin Covey to establish a common leadership framework the Sanford leader built around the mission of the organization and how they make it useful for every single one of the 45,000 employees every day. Let's jump right in.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: Linda, welcome to the what Works podcast. I'm so looking forward to having this conversation with you.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Thanks for having me today.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Let's jump right in because I know we have lots of ground to cover. So Linda, tell us a little bit about your organization and about yourself.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: All right. Well, I work at Samper Health and Samper Health is our largest rural healthcare system in the United States. It's headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Our integrated health system has 48 medical centers, 211 clinic locations, and more than 160 Good Samaritan Society senior living centers. Samford's history has included several major mergers which has helped shape and reshape our organization's culture. During the last 15 years at Samford, I serve as a director of talent and leadership development and I oversee the areas of leadership development, our ASPIRE K through 12 career exploration team, which helps grow our organization's future workforce pipeline as well as educational assistance and scholarships. And I have been lucky enough to be at Sanford for 14 years, so I've had the opportunity to be involved in all of our major mergers.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: Wow. 14 years. Wow. What a journey. And how many employees do you have?
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we have about 46,000 employees across our footprint.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: That's significant. Wow. So really big healthcare system. So you mentioned a lot of mergers. How did that impact kind of the problems that you had?
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah, the mergers have really helped shape our organization. In 2019, Sanford merged with Good Samaritan Society, which included hundreds of long term care facilities across many states. So it really doubled the size of our employees as well as our footprint, which added a lot more complexity to think about the different states and the number of employees that we were adding. Since we doubled the number of employees at our organization, that also meant doubling our leaders, our merger presentatives. With the need to create jointly agreed upon leadership guiding principles, skill sets and behaviors, we are making really good progress in this area. And then as the pandemic hit in 2020, we actually ended up having to pause that work for a little bit. It was really all hands on deck as the team leading leadership development strategy was needed to stop their work because we had to help prioritize a collective effort of supporting our organization's healthcare workforce. Additionally, the pandemic actually added more workforce challenges to our organization and concerns, actually making leadership in healthcare even more challenging. So we had to take that into consideration as we were building things. So after some starts and stops on building our leadership development work, we began again in January of 2022 with a renewed sense of need and urgency to impact our organization's employee engagement and retention.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: So what did you do? What were the solutions that you put in place to help all of those leaders and help employees?
[00:04:01] Speaker A: So we had a lot of different solutions that we built to support that. That included creating our model, a Sanford leader. The model contains principles, skill sets and behaviors that each leader is held accountable to exhibit. They were built using our leader job descriptions as well as focus groups to determine what skills are needed to make a great Stanford leader. Our model is built upon three principles and that's leading self, leading others, and leading our mission. So we custom built our own leader self assessment based upon our model. And so leaders could then assess their strengths as well as areas of opportunity built specifically on our model. So instead of going out and getting a pre built one, we created our own framework. We created our own self assessment so people could use that as a baseline. And then we also included building a leader development plan template so that each leader then could take the results from their leader self assessment and create a custom plan to help them on their personal leader journey. Because we know not all leaders are at the same spot or need the same needs. And so we, we knew that going in. So we wanted to make a system that create a custom plan for each person and meet them where they're at.
[00:05:11] Speaker C: Wow, so much to unpack here. So let me backtrack a little bit to the model first that you established because I think that was pretty unique too. When you said there's the three components, first one is leading self, leading others, and then you said leading the mission. I think that's very unique because I expected when you were saying leading self, leading others, and I'm like, oh, leading the business is going to be next, but for you it's leading the mission. So tell us more about how the mission comes in.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: That, yeah, our mission at Sanford Health is really important as well as the values that support it. And so we really wanted to make sure that our mission and our values were embedded within our leadership because we, we wanted to be something that if we truly believe in the mission and the values of our organization, we need to equip our leaders to learn how to lead in that way. And so that's why we ended up developing the mission component so that way we could internalize the things that were important and different for us about our organization that are really important to us.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: Wow, that's fantastic. That's fantastic. So how does it work when somebody becomes a new leader?
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah, our team also created our new leader orientation. And so I'm sure that you are not going to be surprised to know that we built our orientation based upon our model. So there are four different sessions that our leaders participate in and they do it in a cohort style. So they are live webinars instructed by senior talent leadership development consultants on my team. The first one is called Getting Started. And it's really the technical aspects of being a leader. So all the things you'd have to do day to day, you learn the systems that you have to use as a leader, talent acquisition and leaves and different things like that. And then we have sessions on leading self, leading others and leading mission. So in totality they do four sessions and they're with other people that are new to leadership roles as well. So we create that really nice cohort experience where they're learning and exchanging from each other. And then we also have several courses, also online computer based training courses also that complement that onboard Nimba leader. But yeah, we've created that leadership experience and then they're able to connect with others that are in the same spot as they are as are growing and developing.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: Oh, that's fantastic. So you basically say, are they, are they together also with people that are in a similar setting? So in other words, if I'm a nurse manager or I'm a person in like the office, it's different, right? If a financial analyst or financial finance director or finance manager versus a nurse manager, the settings are so different. How do you deal with that? Are they together or they're separate?
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah, they are all together. That's one thing that we found at Stanford, that it's Vitally important that, you know, we're a collective whole as an organization and so we should be operating as an organization that's got different facets to it. So the best way to do that is to build that from the very beginning, seeing all the supportive services and different departments that are around that make the organization run in totality. So that's the way that we've also built the leadership orientation is that it's across the organization. So regardless of what role, if you're clinical, non clinical, wherever you are at, you come together and so that you're really starting to see just the different facets of the organization, how we work collectively as an organization to work towards success and then our obviously also like our mission and our business objectives. Except that job.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think that's so useful because in a way it's, it's helping people understand how the organization actually works, as you said. Right. I mean, did you get like, what's the kind of feedback you get on that? Do people realize like how much there is to learn about other functions and, and do they appreciate that?
[00:09:05] Speaker A: They do. And one thing that was really unique as we had new leaders going through, our new leaders were having such a good experience and they were going back to talk to their leaders, they said you should go through new leader orientation because it's not like anything we've ever had before. So we ended up adding to new leader orientation the ability for any current leader too, if they wanted to come through, that they can come back and go through because they probably know the mechanics of how to be a leader. But you know, as we built our new model which included leading self, lead and others and leading mission, it's really helping set up the framework so we would have new leaders going back and telling their leaders what they were experiencing. So we ended up opening up our new leader orientation that if you want to come and you want to refresh your skills or you want to learn and grow and leading self, leading others and leading mission, please come and join us. So that was something unique that just happened organically and it's been great. So it's been fun to just sometimes get a mix as we're talking in the cohort where you might have a seasoned leader next to a newer leader as well, which you know, there's a lot of growth that can happen there and learning from one another as well, of course.
[00:10:12] Speaker C: Wow, this sounds like such a, such a fantastic, like rich and comprehensive model and plan that you rolled out. So how did that change the employee engagement output Outcome. So did you. Whenever you focus on something, does it actually work?
[00:10:30] Speaker A: So excitingly, what we've seen is I think one of our most remarkable changes, like from a data and metrics perspective, is that over that course, the period of time since the implementation of the Stanford leader model and programming, our organization has seen 13 point increase on our employee engagement survey. Our ENPS score, which, you know, ENPS goes from a negative 100 to 100. So when we're talking about 13 points of an increase, that is a huge growth over a three year time period. So we know that we have impacted it because we created targeted programming around things that we know were highlighted as areas of opportunity. So this is how those numbers have changed. Freedom of opinion. We have increased our ENPs and that driver by 9 points. Growth increased by 14 points, recognition increased by 8 points, strategy by 6 points, meaningful work by 6 points, and just overall management support by 6 points. And so we know as we made those targeted interventions and we watch the metrics grow, that we're making impact on that area because we're taking the data that's there. We pour through all of the employee comments, which are thousands of comments around those drivers, and that's how we're curating and creating our curriculum and our content. So we know that we're taking the voice of the employees. This is, and we tell leaders, this is what our employees are saying. So then we create experiences to help our leaders grow in the areas of where our employees are saying that their greatest needs are.
[00:12:08] Speaker C: Wow, these numbers are so massive. I know. It's a little bit easier if you have a small group of people. It's easy to make a big jump. But if you have these like really big organizations, those are over three years. I mean, these are significant increases and accomplishments. So kudos to you and congratulations. What lessons did you learn along the way? What were kind of some of the things that people can learn from as they listen into this?
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for asking. So our first thing that I would want to share is that we took our Samford leader model and our leadership development roadmap and we actually brought it to our CEO and his leadership team for feedback and approval. Before we did any build, we were able to incorporate that feedback and make sure also that we aligned with all of the strategic directions that they were wanting to take the organization.
Now as we've grown throughout the course of the last three years, now we're starting to create more leadership development based upon specific leader development offerings or specific job families. So we started with everybody can Participate. So we had something out there for everybody. And then now as we continue to grow, we've built some more targeted interventional things. And I really think that that's been helpful so everybody can see themselves in the model and see how they could participate.
And a big thing that if I can share with anybody, is another strategy that we used. As we really truly believe in the 8020 rule, we gave ourselves a permission to be agile, to experiment, to innovate and find solutions. It's allowed us to move programs forward, build them to scale and achieve milestones in a short period of time that ultimately led to our continued success as we, as we move forward as an organization and leadership development.
Wow.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: So like so many lessons and such, such great lessons for anybody who wants to think about a leadership development program.
This is really, really exciting. So what's next for you? What are you doing next? Where are you taking this next?
[00:14:13] Speaker A: So we've recently finished building our curriculum for our senior leader Academy. So this academy is for our long term care administrators, our directors, senior directors and commission leaders. And our academy just launched in October, so just last month here. And our academy will run for the next nine months. It includes three cohorts comprised of 92 leaders across our footprint in that leader level. And then throughout the academy, our cohorts meet in person and they complete self paced learning. We meet monthly with smaller groups that are led by our executive leader mentors as well as a few times throughout the experience they come together as a complete group. And so the custom content and the experience that we created is around these areas. Leader mindset leader, approach leader, dialogue leader, messaging leader strategy and adaptive leadership. And we determined what that content was once again by using our Stanford leader model as a foundation. And then we did a skills gap analysis. And the way that we did that was kind of unique. We took the executive leaders and we asked them your high potentials to get them to the next level. We use the model and our pathways to help cultivate the conversation. What do you think our greatest opportunities are for those leaders to get to the next level? And then we also did some focus groups with the people who are currently sitting in that level. Was your, what's your perspective? What do you think you need the most? And then we did a skills gap and then we built the content based around those two different voices. So the voices of the executive leaders as well as the voice of the people who are currently sitting in that role. So that's really exciting. So for 92 holders across our footprint. So that's going on currently. And then we also are offering our nursing job family as our largest job family at Sanford. And so we know if we want to impact large populations within the organization, we believe that targeting leaders that have the largest number of people within them is super important to impact our organizational culture. So we are rolling out our series for nursing leaders on seven habits of highly effective leaders and that specifically targeted and nursing leaders. So that way we can really target that nursing leader population. So as I said, we started off by building something for all, and now we continue to build different programming based upon different leader levels and different subgroups within our organization where we feel we can really make some big impact.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: Wow. Yeah, that's really fantastic because I know, especially in healthcare, that the nurse leader job is such a tough one. I mean, it's such a hard one, of course, because you have hugely huge spans of control. Right. Lots of people reporting to you and, and clinical stuff, but then also people stuff coming in and all of that. So it's obviously a very important role. And as you said, the biggest population is probably in that area. So doubling down on that is really key. And then the other program, the executive program that you mentioned, love how you're doing this as an academy to make sure that people kind of. It's not just courses, but it's really connections as well. Cohort based, really immersive experience where people can kind of get to know each other and learn together. It makes a huge difference. We're big believers in the academy concept as well.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: And then using. And then using our executive leaders too, as mentors along the way is just really, we felt really important to us because you can learn something as a part of a cohort. But then also when you go back into your environment after you complete your cohort, how do you create those unique connections within your departments and within your executive leaders to help you continue to carry out the work beyond when your cohort finishes up is really important to us in building those strong relationships that continue forward after the completion of a cohort or a learning experience.
[00:18:18] Speaker C: Wow. Really fantastic. Well, I think we covered a lot of ground. Thank you so much. Linda. Anything that I forgot to ask you that you wanted to mention? I think we covered so much ground. What a fantastic program.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the only thing that we probably didn't mention is one other thing that we do is we do a leader strikes workshop built upon CliftonStrengths. That's the only thing that I feel like we didn't mention, but that's something that we feel like it's important too, is like leaders understanding how they can use our strengths to lead is the other thing that we've created within our leadership development team that's really been instrumental in helping everybody see that they all have innately built things inside of them that they can capitalize on from a strengths perspective to help them lead.
[00:19:04] Speaker C: Oh, that's fantastic too, because I think strength based leadership assessment is really key. Sometimes we're more looking to for the deficiencies right where we're not good at, but rather than amplifying the things that we're great at and identifying that. And oftentimes we as leaders might not even know where we're strongest in because we take them for granted. So making sure that people can discover them and then amplify them is really key as well.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: Good. Well, Linda, thank you so much. This was fantastic. I think we could have gone for another few hours, but thank you for joining us and all the best and congratulations to this fantastic program.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: All right, thank you.
[00:19:48] Speaker D: Thanks for listening to this episode of the what Works podcast. You heard from Linda Kurchevel, Director, Talent and Leadership Development at Sanford Health. Her organization has grown through four big mergers, and with that, there were so many different leadership models and cultures that needed to be integrated. Linda explained how developing leadership capabilities at all levels has been critical to that journey. In partnership with Franklin Covey, she's built an amazing program called the Sanford Leader and worked very hard to make it part of everyday work life. The program is centered around the mission of the organization. It's built on the belief that everybody is a leader. In just three years, they've accomplished some amazing results and learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way. I hope you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did. We'll be back soon with more episode of what Works in the world of Work. Until next time.
