Ep: 015 Next Up Leadership: Building a Pipeline of Leaders

0:16Welcome back to bread to lead the podcast dedicated to empowering leaders healthcare leaders but leaders all over the world, regardless of any sector, to making a lasting impact. I am your host, Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobson. I'm thrilled to be back with you for another inspiring episode. Listen, y 'all, we're a top 50 business and leadership podcast. We've been hovering in the 40s, so we're a top 40-something leadership and business podcast. So I'm extremely excited about us pushing the narrative of developing the importance of developing leaders forward. I think it's very important. It's very critical for us to understand not only just in our country or in countries all over the world, but in every industry, every sector, especially in health care, the industry that can, in fact.

1:09Keep you alive or kill you. I think that leadership is absolutely not only imperative, but it's a we're in dire need of more leaders to be able to rise from the ashes, to be able to take this health care industry and industries abroad. to the next level. So I'm excited. I'm actually excited to be back. Every week I get excited talking about this podcast and even dropping this podcast because I think it's very important when we talk about the necessary need or the lesser of two evils for us to be able to continue to get better. And I say the lesser of two evils, meaning work is work regardless of how you look at it, right?

1:54and although I love doing the podcast creating the content writing the content to make sure that it flows right you get what you need and making sure that we prepare for this podcast no different than a training or a class it does take a lot of work and so yes I'm always excited to I'm always excited to talk about these things I'm always excited to teach and train but I'm more excited on finally getting the lesson out of me so that you can be able to get it. So let's get to it. Before we dive actually into today's topic, I want to introduce a new concept that I believe perfectly encapsulates who you are as our listeners and what you represent in the world of healthcare leadership.

2:35From this episode forward, I would like to refer to you as a bridge builder, are bridge builders. And the reason why I say bridge builders is because that's exactly what you are. In your roles as current and aspiring healthcare leaders, you are constantly building bridges between departments, between administration, clinical staff, between healthcare providers and patients. You're connecting ideas, people and systems to improve healthcare delivery in patient outcomes. Bridge builders are problem solvers, innovators, and agents of progress. You're the ones who see gaps and find ways to fill them, who identifies barriers and create pathways to overcome them.

3:21Whether you're just starting your leadership journey or you're a seasoned executive, you're all working to build bridges to a better future in healthcare. This concept of bridge builders aligns perfectly with the principles I discuss in my book, Bread to Lead. If you haven't picked up a copy yet, I highly recommend it is a companion to these podcast episodes. The book dives deeper into many of the concepts that we discuss here and provides additional tools and strategies for your journey as a bridge builder in healthcare. Let me just be clear. The podcast Bread to Lead is a derivative of the book Bread to Lead.

4:03So the same way you look for the podcast Bread to Lead and you found us, go on Amazon, get you a copy of Bread to Lead, get a couple of copies for your team so you can start having these concepts or these conversations around how can we build an organization where leaders thrive and we're consistently developing leaders moving forward for the long haul of the organization. So these are things that we'll talk about in today's episode, you know, to be able to talk about. So before we get actually into today's main topic, I also want to take a moment to reflect on last week's episode. If you recall, we discussed the importance of emotional intelligence and healthcare leadership.

4:43We explored how understanding and managing our own emotions, as well as recognizing and influencing the emotions of others, can significantly impact our effectiveness as leaders. We received some fantastic feedback from you all, our bridge builders, and I'd like to share a few of our insights. So Sarah, nurse manager from Chicago, wrote in to say the episode on emotional intelligence really hit home for me. I've always known that understanding my team's emotions was important, but I never realized how much of my own emotional state was affecting my leadership. I've started practicing some of the self-awareness techniques you suggested and I'm already seeing a difference in how I interact with my team I just want to say to my bridge builder Sarah thank you for sharing your experience It's wonderful to hear that you've already are putting these ideas into practice and seeing the results Another bridge builder Dr.

5:38James from Atlanta shared how he's implementing a new approach to dealing with conflicts in his department He said after listening to the episode, he realized that he often rushed to solve conflicts without really understanding the emotional undercurrents. So he says, now I'm taking more time to listen and acknowledge emotions before moving to problem solving. It's made a huge difference in how my team communicates and resolves issues. Y 'all, this come these comments remind me of why we do what we do as bridge builders. And it's so important. Your dedication to improving health care leadership is truly making a difference.

6:17If you have any thoughts or experiences you'd like to share about last week's episode or any of our previous discussions, please do not hesitate to reach out. Your insights not only help me shape future episodes, but also inspires your other fellow bridge builders. So you can hit us on LinkedIn. You can hit us on YouTube. You can find us anywhere that SIPP's health care is. You can find me on LinkedIn and Jake Taylor Jacobs, Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs with an ER and even go to bread to lead dot com. You can go to bread to lead dot com and find out ways to communicate with us so that you can be able to share with us your experiences of the show.

7:00OK, great. Now let's turn our attention to today's topic. Next up, leadership. This concept is at the core of what it means to be a bridge builder. It is a crucial strategy for ensuring the long term success and sustainability of our health care organizations. Next step, leadership is a proactive approach to leadership development that we've cultivated within our organizations and in organizations all across the country. As we continue to rehabilitate, reestablish and restructure health care departments all over the country. And it's based on the principle that the best organizations build leaders from within their system.

7:43Rather than relying primarily on external hires, it's about identifying, nurturing, and preparing the next generation of bridge builders at every level of the organization. As a bridge builder, you understand the importance of creating pathways for growth and development. Next step leadership is about intentionally creating those pathways within your organization to ensure a steady pipeline of capable leaders ready to take on future challenges. And I'm going to be honest with you. If we were to talk about the current state of leadership in health care, you know, and before we actually dive even deeper into the next step leadership concept, we have to take a moment to consider the current state of leadership in health care.

8:30Currently, the health care industry is facing an unprecedented challenge from the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 pandemic to the rapid pace of technology changes from shifting patient expectations to to evolving regulatory requirements. The demands on health care leaders have never been, never been greater. And at the same time, we're seeing a significant leadership gap emerging in the health care space. A study done by the American College of Health Care executives found that 70 percent of hospital CEOs are planning to retire in the next 10 years. And similar trends are seen across other leadership positions in various health care settings.

9:13What does this mean? It means that this impending leadership vacuum presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Organizations that fail to prepare for this transition risk immense instability. lost of institutional knowledge, and potential declines in performance and patient care. On the other hand, those that invest in developing their future leaders can create a powerful competitive advantage, ensuring continuity, fostering innovation, and building a culture of continuous improvement and excellence. This is where NextUp Leadership comes into play, and where you as a bridge builder, You have a crucial role to play in our concept that we implement all across the country.

9:56But something I want you to implement into your heart and is understanding what next step leadership is. Next step leadership is a strategic, proactive approach to leadership development that focuses on preparing individuals at all levels of the organization for future leadership roles. It's about creating a robust leadership pipeline that ensures your organization always has the right leaders in the right places at the right times. So we're going to go over some key principles of next step leadership. Listen, if you're new to the podcast, welcome to Bread to Lead the podcast. If you have not noticed, we have already started teaching.

10:37You're going to hear me yelling. You're going to hear me screaming. You're going to hear me singing. You're going to hear me monotone. You're going to hear me excited because this is really my emotions that are coming out because I'm really passionate about changing the tide, specifically in health care with businesses. If you do not know me, I've trained more than 15000 business leaders all across the world, over 22 countries to be exact. And so when it comes to this thing of leadership and developing skill sets to transcending organizations long term, everyone starts with technology, operations, sales, marketing and all these other pieces that make up the organization.

11:14But they fail to start with the very thing that can tear an organizational organization down. Leadership, developing the soft developmental skills to be able to take an organization to the next level. When we talk about leadership, we also have to also consider this. It's easier to learn hard skills than it is to learn soft skills. What do you mean, Dr. J? Everyone focuses on the skill of the job, whether it's putting papers in a filing cabinet or doing a surgery to save someone's life or picking up a camera and recording the content as a marketing person. All of these things are what we consider hard skills.

11:52But what takes an organization to unprecedented levels, taking an organization to becoming the top cream of the crop of what they do, it all lies in the leadership and how well the organization from the lowest level of entry to the highest level of leadership buys into the leaders that are at place. They feel a sense of calling and you can't feel a sense of calling to a leadership group or an organization that has leaders that are not as. How do you say people friendly, customer centric? They're not as team focused, people oriented. They're just straight, rigid on hard skills. And you create an organization that, yes, you may get highly skilled people, but no one wants to work with them.

12:37No one wants to be around them, nor do people want to go see them as a patient in the hospital system. So we have to start looking at things. And then also, if you're new to the podcast, I want you to know this. This is a podcast that you take a pen and pad out and you write notes because the goal of this podcast is to give you something that you can actually apply into your life long term and into your organizations for the growth. whether you're an entrepreneur or you're a leader that's on the precipice of becoming or the next up, as we say, to a promotion. The concept of next up is whatever you feel like you're next up at as a bridge builder.

13:14You're next up for leadership. You're next up for a promotion. You're next up to be a director. You're next up to be an executive. You're next up to be a C-suite. You're next up to become an entrepreneur. Whatever your next up is, that's what this podcast is to do is to build up your soft developmental skills to realize how ineffective we've been as an industry and across all sectors, how ineffective we've been as leaders. Leadership is a thankless job, but it's the only job that can take an organization to the next level. So we're going to talk about a couple of key principles in the NextUp Leadership.

13:53And there's five of them, so we'll go ahead and get into it. One, write this down. Early identification. The key to NextUp Leadership is recognizing leadership potential early in an individual's career. And as a bridge builder, you have the opportunity to identify and nurture potential in your team members, helping them see leadership possibilities they might not have recognized in themselves. And there's a there's a there's a portion in scripture that talks about how King Solomon. I mean, not King Solomon. Jethro was a training Moses. And he told him to look for three things with people that you're going to invest your time and energy into.

14:32The first thing he said, you want to find people who are capable. And it's crazy that he said capable and not willing people that are willing to take a job, willing to do the opportunity. willing to get a promotion, willing to do overtime. Those are not always necessarily people that are capable of doing it. People that are capable of doing a job have the ability to do the job efficiently and without as much extra energy or wasted time or resources. They already have the innate ability to execute the job or they can figure it out quickly without it causing a lot of costs and resources and time.

15:09And what you're going to see is that there's a lot of people get a lot of attention because they're willing to raise their hand first. They're willing to speak up first. They're willing to show themselves available. But it doesn't always mean that they're capable of actually executing that job or that position, which is why when it comes to looking at who to identify, the first rule is to understand and ask yourself, are they capable for their next step? Before you start seeing CEO in their life, are they capable of actually being a great leader within the organization, whatever that next promotional track is?

15:47Are they capable? Have they already shown you examples that exhibit that or do you just have a great feeling in your stomach? There's a difference. Having the good feeling in your stomach about somebody is not the same thing as seeing it for yourself. Are they showing leadership capabilities now? Are they being a team player now? Are they staying out late to make sure that their team member is not being left behind and they're helping them finish their jobs now? Are they educating now or are they thinking selfishly of themselves? That will let you know if they're willing or capable. The next thing you don't want to focus on anyone that isn't that that doesn't believe in order and structure.

16:28Now, I do believe in the beauty of my favorite book being on Beyond Zebra. I do believe in the beauty of people coloring outside the lines. But what I do not believe is people that don't enjoy or do not recognize the importance of accountability. So when scripture actually talks about people who have a healthy fear of God and what this simply means is you have a healthy fear or a healthy acceptance of accountability. Are they somebody that wants to be held accountable or do they always come up with excuses and point fingers and create reasons as to why they can't get a job done? That's the question because if that is their answer, they're always making excuses about somebody did this and I didn't get that done because I didn't get that or I didn't get this done because I couldn't execute that.

17:17That will let you know that I they may not be capable or have enough in them for me to invest my time into. But if there's somebody say, yep, my fault And matter of fact, what I've done is I've implemented this So it never happens again Accountability is not saying, yeah, you're right You got me, I did that wrong It never fixing it Accountability is never having to be repeated To have to repeat the same offense to the same person again That's accountability If they say, hey, this is a problem You're never going to have to deal with me again They can have other issues, but this will never be one And so you have the first one, which is, are they capable?

17:50The second one is, are they accountable? And the third one is, oh, I cannot wait to tell you. The third one is they don't take easy bribes. They're not there just for money. If you find someone that's always asking how much you get paid, what's the next promotional track? How much money do I make if I do this? They're making decisions for their careers and their abilities based on the money that's out on the table. And people that are chasing money are always typically the people in most cases that are actually shortcutters. They're the ones that don't want to put in the time if the money is not paying the dime.

18:22And when you're looking for a leader to develop, they want to lead and develop and grow and be the best, regardless of what that paycheck says, because they know for a fact that when they become the best, the paycheck is going to handle the risk. Hello, somebody. So you want to find them. Are they accountable? Are they capable? And are they in it to be the best or are they in it just for the check? Once you identify they have all three, bingo, I got somebody that I should be thinking, hey, you're next up for leadership. The second thing, continuous development. The key principle of next up leadership is continued development, providing ongoing opportunities for growth and learning.

19:05This aligns perfectly with your role as a bridge builder. As you're constantly building bridges to new knowledge and skills Ask yourself, am I providing an organization that allows and invests into their continued education? Because as an organization, I cannot allow or wait for you to go and do it Because a lot of people don't even know where to go A lot of people don't even have resources or may not even know what resources are actually the best resources for their career to make them better And a lot of people are living on old skills and old talents that they've learned in order to get them to do a new thing for new promotions And if you want new promotions and new opportunities, you got to develop new skills in your tool belt You got to be able to say I don't do this how I used to matter of fact There are so many things that I thought I did great when I was younger in my career That as I sit in my seat today and I look back and I was like man, I was mediocre to say the least And not only was I mediocre, I was outpacing everyone in my class and still looking back like, dang, there was so much more I could bring to the table.

20:13But because of my continuous development, I began to incrementally get better so that I can see that change in my life. OK, so continuous development is something that's important. The third thing that you want to look at with the next step leadership is practical experience. What real world leadership challenges and responsibilities are you creating or giving them the opportunity for them to solve, to stretch and grow them? Or are you as a leader, are you stifling the growth of your team so that you don't have to deal with the time and energy you have to spend in developing them because you just want to get it done quickly because you didn't prepare for the worst stuff happening?

20:49As a bridge builder, you have to be proactive, not only in the worst coming, but also in the development of the people that are coming behind you. It's very critical and it's very important and it's very important for you to understand that as a bridge builder It's okay to make leaders that are better than you It actually shows who you are Internally if you can develop people that can even do things that are even better than you I mean my favorite man of all time jesus christ did it when he was passing away He said you would even go and do even greater things than I so if jesus could do it Why can't I these are the things that I look at the fourth thing that you want to look at as we are talking about key principles of NextUp leadership is mentorship and coaching.

21:29Are you pairing people up to work with different leaders to learn different skill sets? Yes, you may have somebody in your department that may be really great at the hard skills, but they're terrible at soft developmental skills. So you may pair them together and say, hey, you're not good at soft developmental skills, so I want you to learn that by teaching this person. Then you tell the other person, you may be good at soft developmental skills, but you're not good at doing this job better than that person and you edify both of them and not tear both of them down. Now you're using what they have best to each other to teach each other and cross train the things that they do best.

22:04Yes, you may be good at the job, but they're better at leading people. If I can get y 'all to work together, you both can teach each other something through action and mentorship and coaching because it goes both ways. And then the fifth thing that you want to look at is alignment with organizational goals, ensuring that the leadership development supports the overall organizational strategy. This is about building bridges between individual growth and organizational success, something that you as a bridge builder are uniquely positioned to do. Organizational strategy and success along with growth and looking at that.

22:42It makes no sense to develop talent in people that doesn't benefit the department, the organization or the hospital system in itself. So all things have to congruently work together. And this is actually what we do with our next up leadership program. When we work with facilities, we build up using our curriculum, our technology, our instructors and our in our SIP standard framework, our SIP leadership standard framework to build in hospitals their own version of their next up leadership program so that they can matriculate people and develop their skill sets. The moment that they see they have team leadability, now they can operate and opt into our Next Step Leadership Program and be on a fast track in leadership development within the organization.

23:29The more you develop the talent within and the more that people see that you're willing to invest in them, the harder it is for them to want to leave you because they're going to remember how much time you spent with them and they're going to compare that. Even when someone's giving them a higher paycheck They're going to literally consider Okay, if they're giving me a higher paycheck But with no training and development But here, I can literally become the best leader I can be And the next time I hit the market I can even get a better offer than this Those are things that they're going to look at Okay?

24:03I'm glad that we talked about that I'm going to take a sip of my tea

24:13all right y 'all y 'all y 'all y 'all can tell I was excited I can tell you I'm excited and I'm excited simply because I felt like I was holding my breath that whole time too my abs are tight um I'm excited because I y 'all I live I if you can't tell I live for this I live for talking about leadership and why next step leadership is important so I'm gonna slow down my pace a little bit because my excitement is kind of bubbling now I've been working on this for a week and I've been wanting to get this information out to you. So I'm going to slow down my cadence a little bit. But but I hope you can tell and see why this stuff is important.

24:51So now I want to segment into my next section session talking about next step leadership versus battlefield promotions. To fully appreciate the value of next step leadership. It's useful to contrast it with the common alternative, which I typically deem as battlefield promotions. Battlefield promotions, borrowed from military terminology, refers to situations where individuals are rapidly promoted to leadership positions out of immediate necessity, often without adequate preparation. And in health care, this might occur when a key leader suddenly departs or when a crisis demands quick decision making.

25:39While battlefield promotions can sometimes uncover hidden talent, they often come with significant risk. Lack of preparation. The newly promoted leader may lack the skills and experiences needed for their new role. Increased stress. The promoted individual may feel overwhelmed and unsupported. Team disruption. Our other team members may feel resentful or uncertain about the new leadership. And four, performance issues. The lack of preparation can lead to poor decision making and suboptimal outcomes. Next up, leadership, in contrast, ensures that when leadership needs arise, you have a pool of well-prepared candidates ready to step up at a moment's notice.

26:28Here's a couple of advantages. One, smooth transitions. Leaders are prepared and confident when taking on new roles. Number two, continuity, institutional knowledge and cultural values are preserved and enhanced. Number three, improved performance. Well-prepared leaders are more likely to succeed in newer roles. Number four, enhanced morale. Team members see clear paths for advancement and field value. Number five, reduce cost. Developing internal talent is often more cost effective than external hiring. As bridge builders, your role in implementing a next step leadership is crucial. You need to implement a next step leadership program.

27:17You need to work with this. You're you're the ones who can build bridges between current and future leadership needs, between individual aspirations and organizational goals and between potential and performance. Implementing next step leadership.