Are you ready to become a future-ready leader?

While healthcare managers have made their careers out of adapting to constant change in the industry, the ongoing disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic calls for flexible leadership. 

Tasha Eurich, PhD, is an organizational psychologist and author best known for her TEDx talks and more than 15 years as a management consultant. She said the pandemic has made it critical for leaders to better understand themselves and their own motivations in order to provide inspirational guidance for an overstressed employee population.  

For some of Eurich’s clients, that’s meant taking a hard look at their on-the-job behavior. She recalled an executive client who was completely unaware that he resorted to yelling and screaming at staff in stressful situations, leading to high employee turnover. By getting the client to directly confront his own behavior and understand a better way to handle leadership, Eurich was able to help transform him into a practically new person – and turned that business into a success.  

“What I’ve identified as really the meta or foundational skill for future-ready leadership is being self-aware,” said Eurich on an episode of the MGMA Insights podcast. “Knowing who you are, how you come across and how you fit in the world.” 

The path to self-awareness often involves asking a lot of questions, but Eurich said the results can be life-changing. She said leaders need to ask themselves “How am I showing up? What are my values? What are the things I need to hold on to? How do I manage my day-to-day stress by looking at the patterns and approaches that are going to be most helpful to me? How do I make sure I’m having the effect I want on my team?” 

Eurich’s clients now span the business world and the globe, but her first professional work was serving as a leadership development for the CEO of a HCA hospital. She said she maintains many C-Suite contacts in the healthcare industry and said her insight about self-awareness remains especially pertinent in the evolving world of healthcare management. 

“I was talking to a former client of mine, the chair of the medical staff at a large hospital, and what he told me is sort of a metaphor for what I’m seeing healthcare go through. He said, ‘volume is low, but acuity is high.’ There’s this weird paradox, where you have fewer people coming through the door – where’s everybody with the heart attacks?” 

A general session speaker at MGMA's virtual Medical Practice Excellence Conference, Eurich said that understanding personal motivations and building a sense of self-awareness can be especially pertinent to the world of healthcare in an ever-unpredictable 2020 and beyond.  

“The one thing I know about healthcare workers is that they are some of the strongest, most resilient people, just by the nature of what they’re doing. So, I would put healthcare workers toward the top of the list in the long-term impact of the pandemic. We can do anything for a couple of months, because humans are amazing creatures. But over time, the level of burnout, even PTSD for those on the frontlines, is going to escalate. I hope this is an opportunity for us to shore up the support that we’re giving them.”

To find out how self-aware you are, visit Eurich's website and take a free assessment.  

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Thanks to Audi and CareCredit for sponsoring this episode. 

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