Today in the house, it, we finish out our. Three-part series on leadership, three episodes where I talk about. Leaders building out your team of leaders. And excited to share this stuff with you and to get your feedback. So if you have an opportunity, shoot me some feedback on it. My name is bill Russell.

I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health. Set of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare. One connection at a time. Today's episode is brought to you by chromo S imagine a healthcare system where technology works seamlessly in the background, keeping your data secure your teams connected, and your patients at the center of care. Visit this week, health.com/google-chrome O S to learn more. As you heard, we are excited about that golf tournament in Las Vegas, March 2nd. We are. Taking over there. Those are Pines.

Love to have you be a part of it. If you're a healthcare leader, just showing up and being a part of it, golfer non golfer. Love to have you be a part of it directs and Sarah has made sure. That Hey, you can ride in the cart and that would add value in help us to raise money for Alex's lemonade.

Stand love to have you be a part of it. One last thing shows podcasts with a friend or colleague uses his foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you and the industry. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Alright, here we go. We're talking about leadership to start this and I find that no other characteristic. We'll We'll demonstrate the, how far an organization will go, then the quality of their leaders. And I do these 2 29 project meetings all throughout the year. And just in meeting the the CIO or the CTO or others, I can. Almost draw a map. Of exactly what is, what are the challenges of what's going on at that organization without ever even going to that organization? Like they'll tell some stories and some challenges and things that are going on and I will put it through this grid and I'll go, okay, this is a leader who has these challenges, whatever they have this challenge within their organization. And it's just, it's the leading indicator.

The leaders are that leading indicator of what is going on at that organization. John Maxwell has this quote everything rises and falls on leadership. And I found that to be a truism. I read that book 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. I read that book when I was, oh gosh. In my twenties for sure. I don't know if it was earlier than that. But I remember everything about it just resonated with me.

I read it. And I'm like yes. I've had good leaders in my life. I've had bad leaders in my life. I had good coaches. I've had good teachers. I've had bad teachers. I've had bad coaches. I've had a good managers. I've had bad managers I've and we've all had those kinds of I've had toxic managers.

We've all had those kinds of experiences. If you make it to my age. You've had those experiences good and bad, and they can have a significant impact on your life. And this is why I talk about leadership as much as I do and why I focus on it as much as I do. I do believe everything rises and falls on leadership.

Your personal leadership will dictate how far you go. As as an individual, I don't determine how effective you are as a parent at all, determine how effective you are as a community leader. Determine how effective you are in your role, even if you don't have a team that reports into you today. It's important to develop these skills leadership of self.

If you remember, we went through the four quadrants and we're on quadrant four. We'll talk about that in a minute. Leadership, self integrity, discipline self-awareness growth mindset, accountability, resilience. And again, there's going to be gaps. There's gaps. For all of us in these things, but to develop those and to be cognizant of where you're at and have a plan. To develop those things as you move forward.

So leadership of self leadership of others in a one-on-one capacity. Empathy collaboration, active listening. Emotional intelligence, conflict resolution. And I threw you melody in here as well. And these first two quadrants are important, but you can see if you can lead others. If they can, if they feel like you value them and you hear them and. You can relate to them. Then you're ready to lead a team. And and actually as you develop, your kids is not bad. To have those things.

Why do we give them chores so that they develop. Accountability so that they develop discipline. And and integrity around those things. And leadership self-leadership of others. Leadership team. What I'm looking for in my team leaders is adaptability resilience, inspiration. The ability to motivate others decisiveness. Communication skills. Written and verbal and then problem solving skills, chief problem solver. And as when you're, when you get to be the CIO, you are the chief problem solver in so many different areas. So that's what we're looking for.

Leadership, self leadership of others leadership team. Let me talk you about talk about the magic quadrant. And this is where I find that a few people ever get to, but when they do get there, it is a beautiful thing. When you learn how to lead other leaders, it's one thing to learn how to lead people to lead followers. It's another thing to learn how to lead leaders. Lead leaders are looking for something else from their leader. And they are looking for things that are. Beyond what they personally can do and what they hope and aspire to develop. There's this concept in the 21 airfield. Irrefutable laws of leadership. I think it's called the law of the lid. Where he talks about the everyone has a leadership number assigned to them. Your leadership ability is one through 10. And so if I'm a my leadership development, if I'm a three or five, let's assume I'm a five liter. He said a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 liter is not going to report to a five liter for long. Leaders will only report to. The leader that is higher than them.

Now they might stay in that position. If somebody gets promoted above them and they might stay in that position for a period of time. But you will not often find a seven liter reporting into a five liter that just doesn't happen over a long period of time, unless there's extenuating circumstances of some kind. And so that's called the law of the lid in order to lead leaders of seven or higher, you have to become a seven liter or higher. And conversely if I'm a seven leader and I'm leading a bunch of people who are three liters, I know I can really elevate my entire organization if I can move those people to five from three to five.

And so that's what I strive to do as a leader. Leader of leaders. What do they have looking for? Again, I have a forwards here. There's probably more, but the conceptually. These are the characteristics. And if there is a fifth, I'll start with the fifth would be that they have proven and demonstrated leadership of self leadership of others in a one-on-one capacity leadership of team. These people who are leader of leaders are doing these three things and they're doing them effectively. Don't they are able to lead self others and teams. CIO's by definition, by role as a leader of leaders. You're going to have a ton of managers underneath you. You could do this by role, but if you're really going to be an effective leader of leaders, You have to demonstrate self others and team. Then you need to start to demonstrate these other characteristics. Let's start with the first one, which we've talked about earlier, which is countability.

This is accountability on a different level. When you are. A person, like I was a CIO over 750 people and there's an outage in it. That's my responsibility. I'm accountable. And not only am I accountable, but I promote responsibility and accountability, but I'm accountable. I take ownership of that. And I don't push that down to the team, although I hold the team accountable and we improve that.

But at the end of the day, I'm accountable. If there is an issue with all 750 people is including the contractors, including the machines, quite frankly, when the machines fail. That accountability is on me and I take ownership and I take accountability and that's at a different level. You will find people that have no problem taking accountability for themselves. Who struggle with this taking accountability for some knucklehead in their organization. But a leader of leaders is able to say, look, I'm either going to develop that person so that they don't make those mistakes, or they're not going to be a part of my team. And that in of itself is decisive.

It's saying, look there are people that are going to be good for my team. There's people that are gonna be bad for my team. This is really hard from a culture standpoint. Sometimes you have great individual contributors. Who are phenomenal technology-wise but they are bad for the culture. And I find people struggle on this one right here is doing something about that account of taking accountability for that. All right.

So accountability at a different level and then vision. And this is a person vision. I say this on this show. I have over the years, a lot fishing is to see. And a leader of leaders is a person who has vision. They're able to articulate. Clear, articulate, clear goals, clear objectives, clear direction.

So they have vision. They're able to see things. And again, this isn't mystical and actually goes with another one of these characteristics that I have, which is foresight. They can see and articulate what's next. They almost have this aura about them that they can see the future. They can't see the future. But they're able to do, they're disciplined enough to spend enough time thinking through the things that are happening today to envision a future and to be able to articulate that future. So if you imagine somebody who looks at it and says, look, There is a nursing shortage. And there is an AI advancement, do these two things intersect and they develop a point of view and they're able to communicate that point of view they're able to, because of their collaboration skills. Sit down with nurses and have a constructive conversation around this and say we know that there's a shortage.

We know that there were, there's a burden on you to do more work than you've ever done before. And we know that it has given you some of that burden. Is there a way that AI can take some of that burden back? And let me tell you what AI can do. You tell me? What you're comfortable with AI doing in your capacity?

Because they have those conversations because they have a point of view, they've had those constructive conversations, then they're able to stand up on a stage or they're able to stand in a leadership meeting and say, I believe that AI offers this capability for nursing. Or I believe that blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank, whatever it is, but they have gone through that cycle. Of taking the various trends and identifying how they intersect with the. Technology and the potential. And then saying, these are the things that we are going to be working on just this morning. I read a quote from the CEO of Nvidia. And the quote was extremely fascinating to me. And it was, let me pull it up here.

Here. It is. AI, the it department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI.

Thinking about that. The HR department of AI agents. Okay. So we are going to be the ones. Who who bring these AI agents in to. Into healthcare. Now, this is one of those statements. It's foresight it's vision. Now it may or may not be true. But it's a point of view. And that point of view can then be discussed. And a leader of leaders. Is, it is always having those kinds of conversations.

And I say always always having those kinds of conversations. Of, Hey, I see this happening. I. I see a a difficult financial time for healthcare organizations. I see the advent of AI. I see how it's being utilized. I see H antic AI coming down the pike. I see a. Clinician shortage. I'm piecing these things together.

And I'm thinking that this is a potential path through this. This is a potential outcome through this. I would like to have that discussion. They have foresight. They have vision. They have a point of view. I used to start the year with the, I believe statements. I don't know if you remember this, you could go back and listen to some of these. But every year I would come into the year with a set of, I believe statements.

Cause I would take. I w I have for many years taking the last two weeks of the year off. Mostly because things don't happen then anyway. And secondly, it get two weeks is a good amount of time for me to just let my mind wander and think about things I'd come back with. I believe statements and the, I believe statements where my point of view, it's I believe this is going to happen because of these things that are happening.

And I'd be able to tie these things together and communicate them in such a way that they would foster conversations. And those conversations would lead to advances. In things. And our organization could trust me because I was spending time in the future, thinking about what the future might hold. And giving us the opportunity to actually craft that future. All right.

So leader of leaders, they have accountability at a different level. They have vision. They're able to articulate things clearly and they have foresight. They can see and articulate what's next. I think the other thing that a leader of leaders have is. Empowerment. They're able to nurture and grow other leaders. And we see this, there are legacy teams legacy. I think specifically a football coaches. There was bill Walsh was the coach for the 49ers through the Joe Montana years had all these successful. Years.

And you could look at his coaching legacy. There was all these coaches throughout the NFL that had come through the 49ers program and they were successful coach and not all of them were successful, but a lot of them were successful coaches elsewhere that came through that 49ers program. He had a program, but he was also, he gave people. He created a program where leaders became better leaders, where they grew as leaders. And he empowered them to do their role, but also to see how the whole system worked and they were able to go somewhere else. And to do that, he was able to empower them. Leaders are looking for a leader of leaders, is someone who does this and leaders are looking for somebody who does this. They're looking for somebody who's going to make them the next the next CIO.

I remember early on in my career, I sat down with somebody. Who was in my charge. And I said where do you see yourself in five years? And they said, I see myself in your chair. I see myself as the CIO. I said there's somebody in that chair right now, but who knows? Five years is a long time. But if that's where you want to be, I'm going to take the time to to invest in you. To make sure that you are ready in five years to step into that chair.

And by the way that person is in that chair today. And probably was about five years later that person was in that chair. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that. But once you make that commitment, you start to look at alright, let's evaluate your leadership of self others team. Let's give you opportunities to step into those. Step into those areas to develop those skills, to learn some skills that you don't have to do some projects to get some experiences that you haven't had. And in the course of the certified healthcare technology manager course that I put together, I talk about how a framework for developing those leaders. And I'm not going to go into it now, cause I'm already over time, but the how to develop those leaders and how to give them the the skills and. And capabilities to step into those roles. And that's one of the things that differentiates a leader of leaders is that they are constantly thinking how can I elevate my team, every individual?

How can I elevate those individuals? How can I elevate my team? So that's the, so what you really want to elevate things this year? Elevate your leadership of self, your leadership of others in a one-on-one capacity leadership team. And then become a leader of leaders and you will see pretty amazing things happen around you.

We have seen explosive growth over here at this week. Health. And a lot of it is due to the fact of, we have a great team of leaders. Cherice Megan. Amazing leaders. We have a Trex and Sarah amazing leaders. And and gosh, there's others right behind them as well who are amazing leaders and they are. Doing incredible work. Hopefully. That inspires you to go out and build your, a team of leaders. That's all for today.

Don't forget to share this podcast with a friend or colleague. We want to thank our partner, Google Chrome, O S for investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Check 📍 them out today at this week, health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.