Coaching for Healthcare Leadership | E. 97

The Healthcare Leadership Experience

Healthcare is in a time of radical and rapid change. Alan Weiss explains to Lisa Miller why coaching is a sign of strength and how all healthcare leaders can benefit from it in an ‘’age of great transition.’’

Episode Introduction

Alan explains why the best time to start something is always now, and how the most successful people in every field of life engage a coach to help them achieve their goals. He also explains why there are only ‘’new realities’’, rather than a ‘’new normal’’, why innovation has to come from the frontline, and shares his predictions for the healthcare sector in 2024.

Show Topics

• ‘’If you want to start something, do it’’

• There are only ‘’new realities,’’ not a ‘’new normal’’

• Coaching is a sign of strength

• Private sector versus healthcare: one key difference

• Innovation has to come from the front line

• The top three skills for successful leadership

• Healthcare predictions for 2024

02:58 ‘’If you want to start something, do it’’

Alan said the key to success is resilience and agility, not waiting for all the information you need.

‘’Well, if you want to start something, do it. Because nobody has all the information they need before they begin. I've been consulting for 35 years with Fortune 500 companies, and then, as you said, with consultants and entrepreneurs around the world. And I've never started with all the information I'd like to have. And even the information you start with that seemed perfectly helpful, turns out to be either untrue or it shifts or some new development occurs. So the first thing is if you want to start, just start, and have the confidence in yourself that you can be light on your feet and adjust to the times. The second thing is that even if you think you have a long-term project, you still have to start today. And so I've written 60 some odd books and they're in 15 languages. But I've never said to myself, "Well, I'm going to create a book next year. I have a publishing contract and I have a deadline." If I get a publishing contract and the deadline, I start writing the book now. And so there's no time like now. And there's no time like the present, is the old hackney phrase, but the fact is it's true. And the fact is the key isn't having everything you need to start, the key is resilience and agility as you move forward.’’

05:46 There are only ‘’new realities,’’ not a ‘’new normal’’

Alan said today’s leaders need coaching to make clear discriminations in an age of great transition.

‘’….. There's no return to normal. There's no new normal. What you have are new realities. And the new realities are going to change every day. We're in an age now of great transition. We invent things more rapidly than we can intelligently use them. Nobody really knows about ChatGPT. There are some people lined up out there behind Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall. We're all going to be eliminated by AI. And of course that's ludicrous. But we do have to understand what's effective for us or what isn't, so what leaders have to do is decide. And this requires discrimination. It requires a clarity of purpose. What is appropriate for their organizations and what is not? For example, I'm on a computer right now with you. And I probably use 20% of this max capability, 20%, but to 100% effectiveness. The other 80%, I don't care. My iPhone here can edit movies, for God's sake. I'm not ever going to edit a movie. But I am going to take pictures. So we have to decide as leaders, what is best for our organization? What's best for us? And that's no easy job. And that's why people need coaching. And they don't need technical coaching. They're not going to delve into the innards of a computer or code. What they need is coaching about their profession and about their own capacities so that they can make these clear discriminations about what is best for them personally and what's not.’’

08:42 Coaching is a sign of strength

Alan said people who reject coaching are generally fearful of appearing vulnerable or in need of help.

‘’The best people in the world, the best athletes, the best entertainers, the best business people, the best academicians, you name it, all have had coaches or multiple coaches. Marshall Goldsmith and I wrote a book together called Life Storming, and he very graciously said he is the best executive coach in the world and I'm the best entrepreneurial coach in the world. So I readily agreed to that. That's fine. But the fact is, between us, we've observed a hell of a lot. And the fact is that people who reject coaching are generally fearful. They don't want to be vulnerable. They don't want to be seen as needing help, and so they get worse and worse because they don't get help. They breathe their own exhaust. That's the volition part. But people who do see coaching as making them stronger and stronger, get better and better. And so I think while the medical community has come a long way from the time when doctors were Gods and nurses for example couldn't talk to them, while they've come a long way, I still wouldn't nominate them as being on the leading edge of innovation and accepting coaching and being light on their feet.’’

14:03 Private sector versus healthcare: a key difference

Alan explained why the medical sector can learn a lot from the private sector about customer service.

‘’This is the difference between medical and the private sector, last night we flew home from LA. Well, it was one 30 in the afternoon, but we got in here at night in Boston. And we fly JetBlue. JetBlue has superb service. They have these nice little pods in first class. We love it. In the waiting area, about 30 minutes before boarding, a JetBlue employee says, "Look, folks. I'm sorry to say..." And I'm thinking, oh my God, a delay. "I'm sorry to say we've learned that this plane's internet is working properly. It landed and they told us that. So why don't you download anything you need now while you're here, because we have free wifi, so you'll have it on the plane." Now, normally you get in the plane, the wifi doesn't work. You say, oh God. What'd they do to it? But that's how you handle people. You tell them, we know we have a problem. Let us try at least to ameliorate some of the effects of it. Nobody comes out in a doctor's office, any kind of specialist's office and says, "Listen, your wait time is 42 minutes." They don't do that. If you're on the phone, if you're on a damn phone line waiting for talk to somebody at AT&T, they'll at least tell you you're number six in line, or whatever it is. But this is still the godlike thing with doctors. So they've got to overcome that.’’

17:57 Innovation has to come from the frontline

Alan said the only way for leaders to understand what’s happening in their business is to find out for themselves.

‘’Well, recently the new head of Uber decided he would take a car out and be an Uber driver for a couple of nights. And he was in San Francisco and he got a fare to go over to Oakley. He crossed the Bay Bridge. And the Bay Bridge is a disaster, and it took him an hour and a half to get back. And he realized that his drivers, who were not allowed to pick up in Oakland, just deliver people there, couldn't make much money that way. They wouldn't take fairs to Oakland. So he changed the rates for them. But he had to find that out by doing this himself. I was on a Delta flight once in first class, and the guy across the aisle from me had three flight attendants helping him out. Now, normally there were two flight attendants in all of first class. So I call went over and I said, "This guy's an executive on Delta, right?" So he's the CEO. I said, "Really?" I said, "So what's going on?" He said, "Well, he's wonderful. He flies Delta to see how the service is." I said, "Give me a break. If he wants to see other service is, you're got to be sitting in the back, and you got to be incognito. Do you know his schedule?" They said, "Oh, yeah, they tell us what he's coming on board." So that's worthless. Absolutely worthless. He was treated like a king. He doesn't know anything about Delta service. ….And I think that innovation comes from the front line. You have to have people interfacing people.’’

21:01 The top three skills for successful leadership

Alan explained why making hard decisions, a sense of humor, and exceptional communication skills are vital for leaders.

‘’Well, you can read forever about leadership skills and traits and needs. And if you go on LinkedIn, you find all these bizarre charts. I mean, if a leader consulted the chart, the leader wouldn't be able to lead. The leader would be spending all day looking at the chart. So here's what I've found. I have found that you have to be willing to make hard decisions. You need to fire people. You need to say, "We're not doing this." You need to say, "This isn't working, and so despite our investment, we're going to end it." You need to make the hard decisions, because nobody else is. The second thing is you need a very pronounced sense of humor. Because humor relieves stress, and it helps keep things in perspective. And with rare, rare conditions only, nothing that's going on is going to mean the failure or success of the business. And so you need to keep things in perspective and don't panic. You can't become Chicken Little and say the sky has fallen. And the third thing is you need superb communication skills in writing and orally, and therefore, you need a very, very excellent vocabulary. You need to be well-read. Too many people can confine themselves to their fields. The world is too integrated right now. The world is too reliant on a variety of factors. And so you cannot just sink yourself, drill down into your specialty. You have to know what else is going on.’’

25:05 Alan’s healthcare predictions for 2024

Alan shared his top three predictions for the sector in the next 12 months.

‘’I'd say that you're going to find more and more reliance on different kinds of people and different kinds of interventions. People going to storefront clinics, people going to nurse practitioners, people talking to their pharmacists, people going on telehealth, and so forth. That's going to spread and spread because it's easier, it's somewhat less expensive, and so forth. So we're going to see a lot more of that. I mean, that's a great opportunity. But the problem with that is you have more and more variety and chance for bad results. I mean, not every pharmacist, for example, has been schooled in how to deal with somebody on a patient kind of a basis. They can give recommendations about things. That's one. I think the second thing is that there is a lot of skepticism about healthcare right now because of Covid and because of the combination of medical disagreement and political disagreement that went into Covid, people are not as faithful. They don't have the same faith in the medical establishment that they used to. They think that some of that was guesswork, and they think that some of it was unnecessary. Some of the advised restrictions were too great, both by physicians and by politicians…,And so I think the medical community has lost some respect that might take a while to regain. And I think finally, we're going to have to see changes in the bureaucracy of the system. In other words, I have seldom talked to any doctor, either one of my doctors or a doctor I was dealing with for other reasons, who has not complained about the reimbursement system. Who has not complained about the paperwork system. Who has not complained about spending more time on filling out forms than meeting with patients. We're smart enough to change that.’’

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You’ll also hear:

How healthcare is changing radically, and for the better. ‘’And so you have this wide variety of options today, as opposed to quote-unquote the old days when I was young, either a doctor came to your house for about $6 and with his black bag. There were no hers then. It was his black bag.’’

Why the medical community needs to accept coaching. ‘’I think that the medical community hasn't accepted coaching as it should. I think that's changing. But I think it needs to change a lot faster because the medical profession is changing a lot faster.’’

The place of doctors may be usurped: ‘’Doctors better watch it. Because of what we talked about a few minutes ago, there are others who are going to use their practices, and they're going to find themselves in tough straits.’’

Innovation has to be looked at in terms of risk and reward. ‘’There's no decision that we make that's an important decision that doesn't have risks that we have to take care of and manage. But William Penn said once, "No cross, no crown." So if you're willing to take prudent risk, you're likely to get a good return.’’

Why healthcare has to deliver the care that patients are paying for: ‘’I'm not a doctor, but I will tell you that I think we have to be careful that the system is providing the kind of healthcare that we deserve and that we're paying for, and not frustrating people who are in the system from providing it.’’

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