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Leadership Levers
This podcast spotlights leaders' actions so they may enhance their organization’s performance and culture.
We feature CEOs and industry-recognized Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who share their experiences and insights on three key challenges: people, performance, and profit.
If you are a leader who wants to learn from your peers about improving performance and financial returns, please join us.
Leadership Levers
Nurturing Strong Leadership Behaviors & Culture with Lara Burnside
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Lara Burnside, co-founder of CSE Leadership, LLC, who brings three decades of leadership in healthcare to discuss the integral role of culture in organizations.
Lara shares her wisdom on the complexities of cultural change, addressing its direct implications on workforce retention and recruitment.
The episode uncovers strategies leaders can employ to cultivate a culture that not only drives engagement and retains talent, but also ensures the well-being of customers and team members.
Lara shares the concept of 'power skills,' a re-imagined term for 'soft skills' for leaders. She discusses how these power skills – from inspiring a vision to fostering strong relationships – are fundamental for exceptional leadership.
Further, Lara highlights the role of strengthening human connections, supporting employee development, and building a sense of community within an organization...all of which are crucial ingredients for a productive and loyal workforce.
Whether you're an existing leader or one in the making, this episode promises invaluable insights and practical advice on navigating the ever-evolving cultural landscape.
Connect with Lara Burnside on LinkedIn
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Welcome to the Leadership Levers podcast. I'm your host, will Gladhart, ceo of Connect2Metrics. At Connect2Metrics, we help organizations strengthen their culture, one action at a time. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is Laura Burnside, the Chief Experience Officer and Executive Coach at CSE Leadership. Thanks for taking the time to join us today. I thought we would start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself and your organization, or your background.
Lara Burnside:Sure. Thank you so much for having me. It's always an honor and a privilege to get to talk with people who have the same heart and soul and mind for helping drive outcomes in organizations, so I'm very grateful to be here.
Lara Burnside:I am the co-founder of a company called CSE Leadership. We are a boutique global consulting and executive coaching firm and have the privilege of working primarily in the healthcare space, as is our backgrounds as co-founders, but certainly mine. I have worked as a Chief Experience Officer for almost 30 years, which is really hard to even believe, and have had the joy and honor and privilege of working with a couple of hundred organizations across the country over the years, helping them really build cultural foundations that allow them to perform and be their best, and I continue that work to this day and look forward to seeing where this next future chapter takes us, as healthcare specifically has just changed and adjusted so much in the last few years, and we have so much work to do and so much to celebrate, as well as we continue to look for ways to honor and value those who come through the doors of our healthcare facilities.
Wiliam Gladhart:Yeah, that's fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing that. So we will be discussing three questions today. S, As a warm-up to start our conversation, would you share why you believe that a healthy culture is critical?
Lara Burnside:I think it's the most critical thing that you have as an organization. For one thing, it's a definition of what your values are, what your beliefs are, what your behaviors can look like as an organization, and we find so often that those we work with can't really define who they are. And so, as a leadership team, if you can't define who you are organizationally and what cultural standards you have, it's really difficult for your frontline team members to be able to explore and explain that and really behave in a way that is consistent with those values and expectations. So it's not just about defining who are we and what's our purpose, but it's also an ability to attract and retain people, and in today's I think we'll talk about this in a minute but number one problem these days is workforce. Even up to the point where yesterday I was out to breakfast with my business partner and there's clearly no one to work, to be able to even take care of the basics of what's going on.
Lara Burnside:Well, healthcare is no different, except that our stakes are really high and that when we don't have the best of the best working for us or we can't seem to retain that talent that's so necessary, our stakes are much, much higher and people either don't get better or, in worst case scenario, they die, and so there's a real importance to really understanding and defining who you are so that you can attract and retain those top talent. Now there's also a part where there are ethical standards and behaviors that are necessary in order for us to be who we say we are, and when you begin to really define what that culture is and what's important to you, you can actually do that in a much better way. And again, people can. They can comply with expectations and what the path is if they understand what that is. So, overall, corporate culture just really helps define what the dynamic is, it helps drive performance, it helps us really establish and identify and create what our brand is in the marketplace, and I don't know a better way to do that.
Wiliam Gladhart:I think you touched on this, but we'll begin with question one. What do you see as the biggest challenge leadership faces for cultural change within any organization?
Lara Burnside:I think it's two parts, but they're so intertwined it would be really difficult to speak to one without the other. I mentioned earlier workforce retention. That is critical. It's critical for all of us.
Lara Burnside:My background is healthcare, that's what I know the most.
Lara Burnside:But you see it in every organization that you work with or that you talk with. And it's not just the retention aspect of it, but there's a whole thread that seems to be missing or broken and that is the communication aspect of who we are, what we do, where we're headed, what's important, how do we answer questions, how do we help to, as leaders, help answer those crucial things that our employees are wanting to know the answers to so that they can align with who we are organizationally? And there seems to be a missing thread in that communication which then creates dissatisfaction, it creates disengagement and it creates a higher level of turnover or burnout rates, because people can't they just can't latch on to who you know, what they're supposed to be doing, or who we are organizationally and how do I fit? And that piece of how do I fit is what allows the retention factors and the engagement factors to improve and increase so that our customers and those we serve within the team and outside of that are best taken care of.
Wiliam Gladhart:I appreciate that you've identified that specific challenge, especially around communication and connectedness, because we specifically look at, connect a metrics Connect at Metrics pieces of connecting and distancing. Or do you understand your role at the organization or has it been communicated effectively and clearly to you? So you know, I think that is that comes from the very top, you know that comes from leaders, that comes from, you know, So when that is not there, it's really difficult for employees to understand where they fall and why should they even be there. And that again, as you said, reads back to that retention, recruitment, you know productivity piece, which is so important in that healthcare sector. So what do you think that leaders can do to address this particular challenge that they are facing?
Lara Burnside:Yeah, but you know, first of all you need to define very clearly who you are as an organization and what your leadership strategy is to make sure that that penetrates throughout the organization. So building mechanisms that cascade communication from that C-suite all the way to the frontline team members is critical, and what we find so often is that the C-suite understands what's going on and they seem to do a decent job cascading it to a VP or a senior director, but then it hits and it doesn't go any farther.
Lara Burnside:And the frontline team members and those who are leading on the front lines are the ones who really drive your organization to be excellent. They're the ones who are interfacing with each other all the time. They're really the ones who know what's going on, and so if we can't get those communications penetrated all the way through to that frontline team member who ultimately is at the bedside or at the customer side, where they're taking care of those that we serve externally, then there really is a difficulty in making sure that we're doing all we can as an organization to be the best that we can be. There are multiple areas that leaders need to excel.
Lara Burnside:We've called them soft skills for a really long time, and the reality is they're the hardest ones to learn, and so I heard them recently referred to as power skills, and we've been using that word to describe these, because they're things like inspiring a vision and having empathic communication with each other and being able to engage people and be kind of that chief engagement experience officer for your internal and external customers.
Lara Burnside:It's allowing people to grow and develop within their space, and our number one job as leaders has always been to develop our team members and succession plan, and effectively, but we don't always know how to do that, and then there's always these how do we get the right people on board?
Lara Burnside:And once we get them, then what do we do with them? And listening and all of these things that are so critical to leadership every single day that we so often take for granted but we really can't, because those are the skills that allow us to be able to do things like let me share what our data looks like. Let me share what our bottom line metrics look like. Let me share what our financial situation is, but without all of those other behaviors that lead to building of trust, it doesn't matter to a frontline team member what the hard data looks like they don't trust. So there's this whole aspect of leadership that has got to really embrace who we are now culturally as a community at large, and then really make sure that our team members are feeling safe and valued and honored and respected for who they are individually. That allows us to collectively be the excellent organization that we are.
Wiliam Gladhart:Thank you. That was really impactful. I think it reflects back to executives and leaders who, hearing you talk about all the components, it can feel very overwhelming. We're not taught how to have effective communication strategies, how to consider employee well-being now, which is a big component of culture out there as well as how anxiety impacts the workforce both in and outside. I also love that you touched on the frontline worker and that person that's engaged most with your biggest asset, which is your client, your patient, your customer. It makes such a huge difference in that experience of when someone is seeking care or at a care facility. I think it's really great that you brought for our audience that piece to the forefront because it is so critical. So, as we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to share or touch on to help leaders address this type of challenge, but also maybe some tips or insights that you have learned along the way that might be helpful?
Lara Burnside:Yeah, thank you for asking. I think at the end of the day, as leaders, we have to remember that human connection is what drives happiness. There was an entire 80-plus year study that was done by Harvard and came out last year. So talking about what makes people the happiest down the line and at the end of the day, it had to do with human connection and relationships. A lot of the employee engagement survey tools measure that. I certainly Gallup measures that. And do you have a best friend at work and do you have that connection point with your manager that allows you to be the best that you can be?
Lara Burnside:There's a lot of organizations that study and really pay a lot of attention to what does that human connection point look like From the clinician side when they're working with patients?
Lara Burnside:There is direct correlation in its research quite extensively, that when we are able to function in the compassion zone and with empathy and we're able to connect with our patients in a way that is meaningful and that allows us to reignite that passion of why we came into this in the first place, we start to see well-being increase, we start to see burnout rates decrease, we start to see retention rates increase.
Lara Burnside:What that means for a clinician is that, instead of the unfortunate data showing that there's a large percentage of physicians who would not practice again given the opportunity to do so, we're trying to change that, and one way we do that is through a program that we offer called CSE cares for clinicians, and it's really around mastering the art of human connection with each other as colleagues, building collegiality and a sense of community with each other, but also building on and teaching and educating on what are those basic fundamentals that patients are wanting in their care interactions.
Lara Burnside:And we find when we do this, we start to see that collegiality and community improve, which improves retention rates and well-being rates. But we also start to see that patients experience as they describe it becomes much better than when they go to a health care facility and they don't feel that connection with their position. And ultimately, all we want to do is have every patient who has an interaction with their doctor say, oh my gosh, that's my favorite doctor, that's all we're looking for, and the energy that comes from that on the clinician side is really, really palpable.
Wiliam Gladhart:Laura, I've enjoyed having you on today. Thank you so much for your insights.
Lara Burnside:Thank you, I really appreciate it and thank you for what you're doing and making connections and connecting data in the way that you do. I really appreciate your efforts.
Wiliam Gladhart:Thank you for joining the Leadership Levers podcast. You may find all our Leadership Levers episodes on our website at connectthenumber2metricscom. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture, one action at a time.
