Intro: The following SHSMD Podcast is a production of DoctorPodcasting.com.

Bill Klaproth (Host): On this edition of the Med podcast, we talk about the critical role of leadership development to unlock greater wellbeing at work. This is really important. Usually we think of leaders, results oriented. Get the job done. But no, we should twist this around, paradigm shift people. Great leaders can really enhance the wellbeing of the workforce.

And we have with us, Bridget McCullough and Alice Wheeler, who are going to be speaking on this topic during this year's SHSMD Connections, annual conference in Denver, Colorado. October 13th through the 15th, get registered now. This is going to be an awesome session. Any manager, any leader, anybody that's in charge of other people, you need to come to this session, so let's get more info on it, right now.

This is the SHSMD podcast, rapid insights for healthcare strategy professionals in planning, business development, marketing, communications, and public relations. I'm your host Bill Klaproth. In this episode, we talk with Bridgette McCullough, Leadership Development Advisor at OhioHealth and Alice Wheeler, Vice-President Talent Management and Organizational Effectiveness at OhioHealth about their session, The Critical Role of Leadership Development To Unlock Greater Wellbeing At Work. Bridgette and Alice, welcome to the SHSMD Podcast.

Bridgette McCullough: Thanks, Bill. It's so great to be here.

Alice Wheeler: Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

Host: You bet. I am looking forward to talking with you both. I love talking about leadership. So your session is really going to dive into that. So speaking of your session, Bridgette, can you start off and tell us what can we expect?

Bridgette McCullough: Sure, so this session is really examining the relationship between leadership and employee wellbeing. And I actually come from a wellness background, and whenever you bring up leadership in that space, people usually talk about leaders taking care of their own wellness, modeling it for their teams, and supporting employees in taking care of themselves, which of course is really important and really great.

But what we don't talk about enough is leadership behaviors and the support that leaders have to do their jobs well and the implications for that on the wellbeing of employees. So, employee wellbeing initiatives and leadership development, they're often siloed in the organization, but they're really interconnected as it pertains to workplace outcomes and the impact that developing and supporting what we call human centered leaders can have on the success of teams and the organization overall, which I'll say kind of a spoiler alert for our session is that it's way bigger impact than you might think.

Host: Wow.

Bridgette McCullough: So, yeah, the session is going to have a lot of data. It's really examining that relationship. And then we're also going to talk a lot about what exactly it is that we're doing at OhioHealth, which for those that are unfamiliar, we're a health system with a large footprint in Ohio. We're about 35,000 associates and growing.

So attendees will get to hear how we're making leader support and development really a focal point for building healthy team cultures, for fostering wellbeing for our associates, for keeping each other safe, and then also for driving engagement and retention.

Alice Wheeler: So we really will, I think, make the case for how developing leaders, the human centered leaders is critical to healthy workplaces and a healthy workplace culture. And also leave people with an idea of how they really can begin to make those changes in their own organizations as well. So I think people will be really moved and inspired.

Host: Well, I love what you both had to say there, and I love that term human centered leader. I've never heard that before, but when you say it like that, it makes sense of what you're talking about, how a leader can really impact an employee's wellbeing. And when you think of leaders, you think of bottom line, results oriented, not there to take care of the workforce, right? So, why is it so important for organizations to prioritize mental health and wellbeing at work, Bridgette?

Bridgette McCullough: Well, I think we all figured out what happens when we don't, like during the pandemic years, right? Or the great resignation that kind of followed when people were leaving their organizations in droves. I think it's something like four out of five people say that work is their primary source of stress.

So it's not just like a nice to have perk to support mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. It's actually an organizational obligation, especially in healthcare. Like our mission at OhioHealth is to improve the health of those we serve, and that includes our own people and how we're sending them home every day.

And many of the ways that employers have been addressed, or trying to address this, I guess, mental health and wellbeing, even when they do recognize that need, which I think most do now, research actually shows isn't having the impact that they thought it would. And you can look at data from the University of Oxford about that.

They've done a lot of research about it. But it's really for two big reasons. So one is that a lot of what's being done is focused on how to support people when they are already struggling versus addressing the workplace related stressors that can lead to both mental and physical health issues. It's also mostly individually targeted, focused on what employees need to do for themselves to support their own wellbeing, versus addressing anything that might be happening through the workplace environment, through the culture and behaviors that are causing stress or harm. And if you think about your own wellbeing, a good portion of it is actually relational. Whether or not we are thriving really stems from the support and the connection or lack thereof that we have with others.

So it's not that those things that I mentioned aren't needed, it's just really missing a huge piece of the puzzle.

Alice Wheeler: Yeah, and if we're educating individual employees on how to deal with their stress while we aren't dealing with the stressors, the environment around them, we're missing a key part of the puzzle, right? We're not doing nearly enough. And when leaders are promoted because they're great at doing business and we're not providing them education on how to really lead humans, how to serve the humans in their care, then we aren't equipping them.

We aren't giving them the tools that they need to be able to do the work that they as leaders are uniquely positioned to do. And particularly in this time when machine learning and artificial intelligence has become able to do a lot of the things that leaders used to be asked to do. The part that remains is caring for the humans in this uniquely human way.

And so that's where we have to double down on the things that we do to care for the humans, which ultimately are an organization's unique assets. Take care of the humans and they will take care of the business results and that bottom line you led with.

Host: Yeah, so let's follow up on that. Take care of the humans. So when you take care of the humans, when you have effective leadership, Bridgette, how does that play a role then in addressing employee wellbeing? How do those two work together?

Bridgette McCullough: Well, it actually, I mean, it plays a huge role. And I'm honestly kind of amazed at how overlooked it really is. If you ask anyone to compare their wellbeing when they've had a really great leader and a great team culture versus when they didn't, they could tell you how much it matters. We spend so many hours at work and that relationship with our leader can have a profoundly positive impact on us or a profoundly negative one.

And I think most leaders want to have a positive impact on employee wellbeing. They don't want to cause unnecessary stress, but the job of a middle manager is hard. And when you're put into that role because you were a great individual contributor, which is usually what happens, and you're not given any support or development on how to be a really effective and great leader, it's going to be even harder.

So you've got this two pronged issue of someone who's maybe causing stress because their leadership style or approach is not putting the human first, but then if they're also overwhelmed themselves, that puts additional stress onto the team. But what we've seen firsthand, when you pour into your leaders to give them the skills they need to build trusting, psychologically safe teams, to show up with empathy and compassion, and to learn how to set boundaries and build resilience for themselves, it has this tremendous ripple effect on their teams and their team members.

Alice Wheeler: Right, and that's where you get that culture of health, the culture of engagement, the culture of results that you're looking for.

Host: Yeah, so I love what you had to say there. So usually we take really high performing people and we say, Hey, you'd be a great manager. Or you'd be a leader, right? And you shove them into this role. This is what I'm getting from both of you. But really there's no training on really how to be an effective leader.

And you said we need to, I love the term, we need to pour into our leaders empathy and compassion. I love that phrase. So can you share with us how OhioHealth has leveraged your leadership academy? Obviously you work on training your managers to support employee wellbeing and what outcomes have you seen as a result of this?

Bridgette McCullough: Yeah, so you know, Alice, you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but when I got introduced to the team, I joined this team about a year ago, I don't know that you were talking about what you were doing as an approach to support associate wellbeing. What you were doing was doing that, but I think saying the words is really important so that the health system, like our senior leadership, understands how impactful what we're doing is.

So our leaders understand how impactful their role is and their participation in our experiences is. And we offer a lot. I'll try and cover a couple things and Alice you can jump in as well. So we have cohort based multi day sessions that are really rooted in emotional intelligence and empathy, like we spoke about.

We have sessions focused on our first time people leaders, people just coming into leadership roles. We have a Courageous Conversations Program, which is very well loved and much needed. We also have leader and executive coaching, including spot coaching for those one off issues that our leaders are trying to work through.

We have our leadership learning forums. Which is one of my favorites. These are like one hour virtual, very interactive sessions where leaders from all over the system come together to discuss topics like building trust and giving feedback, the power of recognition, psychological safety. And it's a really great quick hit option for leaders to connect and to learn both from us and also each other.

We also have assessments like Enneagram and the Predictive Index to help people take a look at themselves and how they interact with others and how that influences team dynamics. And then we have a whole bunch of on demand opportunities too that we create in house like short videos and we have a monthly newsletter style email with articles and resources and a podcast which,

Alice Wheeler: I was going to say, we have our own podcast.

Bridgette McCullough: Our own podcast!

Alice Wheeler: Come back for more.

Host: I love it.

Bridgette McCullough: Yeah, we do, and it's rightfully so. It's called Leading to Wellbeing, and it features our Leadership Academy team, so Alice and I are on there. We also have leaders at all levels of our organization that are sharing their challenges and their experiences and their successes, and the cool thing about that is it's available to anyone, so our internal leaders really love it.

But it's also searchable on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, you can find it. And it's not totally healthcare focused, though we do, of course, talk about healthcare a lot. Um, but we have leaders from all industries that listen to that and enjoy it. And even some non leaders, we get some feedback that I think even those people who are interested in leadership or just in about having a human centered approach to interacting in the workplace really, really enjoy it.

So Alice, anything I missed before? Because I know you asked about outcomes as well.

Alice Wheeler: Yeah, I was gonna say that we didn't initially start knowing that what we were doing was addressing employee wellbeing. We started with emotionally intelligent leadership, knowing that we had a human centered approach, knowing that we wanted our leaders to lead differently, to lead from the heart, to lead with empathy, because we intrinsically knew it was the right thing to do.

And during the pandemic, we really stepped that up and shifted. And the language we used at that time was about emotional support for leaders and about building a resilient workforce. And I think it's morphed now into us really having a position around this being, how how we live out our mission of improving the health of those we serve broadly.

It's the fabric of our broader organizational mission, and this is how we in the Leadership Academy do that.

Host: That's fascinating. I love how you say you started out, Alice, with the program, you just wanted emotionally intelligent leaders, and that turned into employee wellbeing. Do I have that right?

Alice Wheeler: Yeah.

Host: Really neat.

Alice Wheeler: It's what we were doing all along, but like Bridgette said, being overt about what we're doing and why and how it fulfills our mission is really important and that it extends beyond employee wellbeing to really improving the health of our entire community. That is really important to us.

Host: Yeah, so as far as I would imagine the people that you're training, the people that you're pouring into, if you will, I'm sure they come back to you and say, wow, this is great. Thank you for equipping me and giving me the tools to be a better manager. And how about the workforce? So what other results or outcomes have you seen?

Alice Wheeler: So we do have data from our engagement surveys that lets us know that our associates are experiencing a better workplace environment. They, we have been able to measure on our question around my manager cares about me as a person. We've been able to measure significant improvement in that, which tells us people are having a different experience than they were before we started really focusing on this.

And we went in one year up 6.2 percent in positive response rate on that. And we know that we're tracking 5.9 percent higher than the healthcare average, which is hard to do in an industry full of caring and compassionate people to start with. And we've just actually gotten some fresh results that at first glance are very exciting from our newest survey that we'll be ready to share with the audience in Denver.

Host: Wow. Impressive.

Bridgette McCullough: Yeah, so Alice, I love that you brought that up because I saw something from the Workforce Institute, they just released some findings from a survey, which I think was with a lot of people, it was like 3400 employees in 10 different countries, and they found that a manager that cares about them on a personal level was the number one criterion for job retention.

So I feel like it could sound like kind of a fluffy question, but it actually does have business impact. And something else that we also learned is that the group of leaders at OhioHealth that are most highly engaged with our development, they also are outperforming their peers on our engagement survey. They all rank in the top 15 percent for survey scores. So, there's definitely, I know Alice mentioned, we're looking into the data more and more, but we're already seeing some really great impact from this work.

Host: You've got to be proud of the work that you've done. Those are great stats. Obviously, the results are showing, and I think you kind of summed it up there when you said that you found that when you have a manager that cares for an employee, that's the number one thing for employee retention. That just makes sense.

That just drives home that whole human centered leader approach to leading. So I know you have a podcast. I think it's really cool. I love that you do the Enneagram. I love that. So Bridgette, how are you partnering with other organizations to elevate the work? I mean, is this available to other people and healthcare organizations?

Bridgette McCullough: Yeah, so, I know I mentioned it before, and I think Alice did as well, that we see this work really as part of our mission at OhioHealth. We've mentioned it, I think, three times now, to improve the health and the well being of those we serve. So, we're taking it a step beyond the impact that we're having on our own associates and their families, but we're also taking our leadership development experiences to market now, partnering with other organizations to bring that human centered support and development to their leaders so that they can have a positive impact on the wellbeing of their teams, positive outcomes for their organization like we're seeing, and really sending that ripple effect out into the community.

And I think I said it also, like, way at the beginning so much of our stress comes from work. So, to me, it only makes sense from a prevention standpoint that the workplace is a point of intervention for us. And the really cool thing is, is that we actually have a division at OhioHealth already called Employer Solutions that's already been working with employers for years to bring them other health and wellness services that you might expect from a healthcare system, like onsite clinics and fitness centers and wellness programs.

So we're really just adding this in as another way that we can support organizations, both healthcare organizations and all employers cause it really, it doesn't make a difference. And in our region, people really look to us not just for clinical expertise, which they do, but also as a large employer. When they see us doing something that's really cool or innovative or really impactful, they're pretty excited to bring it to their own workplace.

Host: Yeah, that's really interesting. Love the work that you're doing. Well, I want to thank you both for your time. Before we wrap up, I'd like to get some closing final thoughts from each of you. Bridgette, anything else you want to add?

Bridgette McCullough: And just that we're so excited to be bringing this session to the conference, I think whether you're in leader development or wellbeing or the DEI space or safety or you're just a leader yourself, I think anyone could really get something out of the content that we're going to share.

Host: Absolutely. Alice, how about you? Final thoughts?

Alice Wheeler: Yeah, really excited to have this opportunity to speak with you and to look forward to connecting with everybody and talking about how we can make a positive impact on wellbeing and culture.

Host: Well, this is going to be a great session. Thank you both for your time today, and everybody should go, if you're a manager, a leader, somebody that's in charge of a workforce, or any type of position like that, it sounds like this is a must see, must do session at SHSMD Connections 2024 in Denver. You've heard the results.

Better managers lead to the health and wellbeing of the workforce. And that leads to better outcomes for patients, too, because a healthy workforce leads to better patient outcomes, too. Would that be correct?

Bridgette McCullough: Dead on, Bill, that's, that's exactly right.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Wow. Amazing. Good stuff. Well, thank you both for your time. Again, I appreciate it. Thanks again.

Alice Wheeler: Thanks, Bill.

Bridgette McCullough: Thank you.

Host: And once again, that's Bridgette McCullough and Alice Wheeler. They will be speaking at this year's 2024 SHSMD Connections conference in Denver. Their session is Monday, October 14th at 1:00 PM. Make sure you are there. And make sure you get registered now at shsmd.org. That's S-H-S-M-D.org./Education/annualconference. It's going to be a great session.

Make sure you're there. It's going to be a good one. And if you found this podcast helpful and of course, how could you not please, please share it on your social channels and please hit the subscribe or follow button to get every episode chock full of goodness. And to access our full podcast library, make sure you visit shsmd.org/podcasts. This has been a production of DoctorPodcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth. See ya.