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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Advancing Nurse Leadership and Multi Generational Trust with Dan Collard
00:14:54
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by one of the best leaders in health care and just a terrific individual. We're joined today by Dan Coward. Dan with Quint Stewter, the sort of legendary founder of the Studer Group. And Dan and Quint worked together at Studer for a very long time, are now co founders of Healthcare Plus Solutions Group. Healthcare plus Solutions Group, since launched a few years ago, has grown tremendously. They just recently did an acquisition and we're going to talk about that as well. We're also going to talk about Dan's new book called Gentleness, which is coming out this coming month. So thrilled to visit with Dan. Dan, before we get started in the acquisition and the book and what you folks do, take a moment and just introduce yourself and tell us about Healthcare Plus Solutions Group.
- [00:52]
B
You bet. I always describe myself in two ways, Scott. One, I'm the husband of a nurse and that always gave me a really good lens into healthcare because my wife became a nurse before I got into healthcare and so it was really neat lens to look through. And then when I did get into healthcare, I always introduced myself. I'm an operator at heart and so I continue to look at healthcare through the lens of an operator. Those folks that are in the trenches every day trying to make the very best of some strong headwinds at time and ultimately just provide the very best patient care and the very best place for employees to work and for physicians to practice.
- [01:30]
A
Thank you. It's literally amazing what I've watched the two of you do over the course of your careers and the impact you've had on leadership and in healthcare. I know that you recently acquired hpsg, Healthcare plus Solutions Group just recently acquired an organization entirely devoted to nurse leadership development. You leadership. Can you tell us a little bit about you leadership and why you chose to go in that direction and what does this mean for you and Quint and your team?
- [02:00]
B
Yeah, you bet. You know, when we came back and created hpsg, we call it for short early on with the American Organization of Nurse Leaders and the American Nursing association, and what that research indicated was that there was a greater thirst than ever for development, leadership development, helping someone, especially perhaps some of the newest leaders in the industry post Covid, really feel like they were a better version of themselves on an ongoing basis. We had about 5,000 nurses in the study. It was funded independently, so it didn't look like it was just our message. And so that research had set out there for a couple of years. And it's been very meaningful in sort of helping us craft some of the work we do in focusing not only in the traditional audience of what we would call the managers, the directors, the vice presidents, but also a layer down areas like charge nurses and clinical supervisors. Those folks that while they bear a leadership title, might not have really gotten the development they needed. And so we had gotten to know three ladies that founded a company called you Leadership several years ago. Kay Kennedy and Susan Campos and Lucy LeClaire. And their work started in research as well. And we sort of joke what began as pure research has really become a movement and that became what's known as human centered leadership. We've known them for a while and then last year they came to us and said we'd love to grow the impact of our organization. And we sort of feel like Quint and Dan and the team at HPSG might make the perfect partner to do so. So it really began in its desire on both of our parts, to grow the impact of this focus on nursing leadership development.
- [03:52]
A
Thank you. And talk about what you love about what they do and their group and why they're such a great fit for you folks.
- [04:00]
B
Yeah, they have a catchphrase right on the COVID of their original book, which is called Human Centered Leadership. And that catchphrase is it begins with you, but it's not about you. And what that really means is the three of them decided to put this research into action. They realize that one of the weak spots, and it's been like this for a long time, nurse leaders do a really good job taking care of everybody, but they don't always do a good job taking care of themselves. And so it actually begins with, let's give the nurse leaders a platform whereby they can go through an assessment, sort of understand themselves better, take care of themselves better, so that they can in turn take care of the team better. And you know, as we've always said, the dominoes just keep falling. And if we take care of the team better, ultimately we provide, provide better patient care. So that's the first part of what really drew us to them. The second part was the fact that it's just very evidence based. This research that was done has now been cited in over 30 peer reviewed journals. They're active in the academic world. So it's not just that proverbial, really good idea. There's a lot of evidence, there's a lot of substance behind that. And I think in a day like today where operators have to really make hard decisions about where they invest and how they invest in their people. If we have a body of evidence, it just makes that, that decision a little, a little easier.
- [05:29]
A
Thank you. Just fascinating. And it must be flattering in its own way. I mean, you and Quint are two of the best people that I know, so it makes sense to me. But it must be flattering for people that are looking for potentially a partner to look at you and say, look, we think you'd be a good fit because a pleasure. That must be very flattering.
- [05:49]
B
Well, you know, there's like, it reminds me of a couple things over the course of our time together. You look at the last two, two and a half decades, we've gotten to keep some really good company. You know, every time I come to a Beckers conference, it's really like a family reunion. You see all these leaders that are up on stage talking about what's working well in healthcare, even in the face of challenges, and you think, gosh, we've just gotten to keep such good company. And this is just another example of sometimes it's just as much about things fit and common cause and common commitment to that impact as it, as it is anything. We want it to be a great business decision, obviously, but to think about sort of that we're cut out of the same cloth really made it an even better decision.
- [06:36]
A
That's fantastic. And so, so nice. And Dan, talk about your new book that's coming out, genfluence. Tell us about that and tell us what the intent is in publishing the book, in thinking through some of the subjects.
- [06:50]
B
You know, it seems like everything gets woven together as we think about these newer, younger nurse leaders that Kay and Susan and Lucy have been reaching in their work. And then you think a couple years ago, ACHE was nice enough to publish a book with Quint and Dr. Kathryn Meese called the Human Margin Building the Foundations of Trust. So you think of newer leaders, you think about how important trust is in an organization. Katherine and I were talking one day and it just occurred, occurred to us that there have been so many things published about the multi generational workforce, but oftentimes it ends up being almost too stereotypical. You know, here's what the boomers are like, here's what the Gen Z's are like, and here's why they don't work together well enough. Here's why there's not as much trust between the generations. And so we decided to write a book that does a couple of things. One, it serves as a mythbuster. Let's, let's not continue down the path with some of the myths that have sort of evolved over time. And, and you know, in the absence of fact, we tend to make up our own stories about people. And so let's, let's bring that sort of to it to a halt. Let's also rely on a good body of evidence that talks about what impacts each and every generation. And the evidence suggests that it's not necessarily the times they lived in, but the technology that surrounds it. So we take a look at the body of evidence around technology and then finally we wanted the book to be useful for operators. We wanted the book to be useful for leaders in the trenches. And so we wanted to create a framework of really the ABC123 how to lead a multi generational workforce. So that was sort of the base of it. And then we were, you know, you try to think of what do we call this thing. And we were talking about this whole term influencer. If I get on somewhere and say oh, he's an influencer or she's an influencer, we always think of, you know, TikTok, Instagram, several social channels, we think of products, perhaps we think of their followers, etc. So I sort of put forth the question, could we create an environment where leaders could become professional workforce influencers? So we took the two concepts, we mashed them together and that's where the, the name genfluence came from.
- [09:13]
A
So I love that the book is coming out in December and where could people purchase the book or can they get the book?
- [09:20]
B
Yeah, we were fortunate again to partner with ache, which is really, you know, it's really neat when you think about an organization like ACHE. 51,000 members, you know, the largest leadership organization in the country and quite a, quite a bookstore on their own part. A lot of those books are textbooks, some of those are thought leadership. And the idea that they would really get behind this book is, is really an honor in itself. So there'll be really three places you can find. It's already at pre sale on Amazon. As a matter of fact we got the neatest news a couple of weeks ago when it debuted at Presale. We debuted as within about four or five days, the number one new release in the healthcare administration section of Amazon. You can also buy it at ACHE on their bookstore. And then of course you can also come to our website and go to Resources and choose books and find it there. We try to make it really easy. It ships on December 15th. So for those of that are listening to this podcast, if they've ordered it already. It'll ship out December 15th and we're just excited about it. We've gotten some really good feedback early on as Katherine and I have been been out in the field, sort of testing the message because we just want to make sure it's a helpful message.
- [10:38]
A
You know, in my sense, quite frankly, from you and your team is you are so abundantly constructive that the book will have that tone and be helpful and practical and useful. I'm going to go on Amazon and order my copy right now. That's my next step. Talk to us for a second. Dan, you're also doing a revised version, a second edition of your last book, which was Rewiring Excellence. Talk about the motivation for that and the motivation to do a, a newer version.
- [11:09]
B
Yeah, you know, I, I always go back to the original motivation. We would have folks, every time we speak across the country, we'd have folks running up to us with their original copies of Hardwiring or some of the other books we published previously. And it was really sort of a sentimental feel because the books would be dog ear. They'd have little post it notes and bookmarks in them because they've been using these books for about 20 years. And somehow the conversation always found its way back to outcomes. So how are your outcomes? How are the metrics that you're focused on? And sometimes people would all of a sudden sort of the look on their face changes and they're a little frustrated because they're still doing the work, but they're not getting the outcomes that they had wanted or perhaps they had gotten before. And so instead of writing a sequel, instead of trying to replace a book like Hardwiring, that was just the quintessential textbook for healthcare for so long. We said, well maybe let's look at it a little differently. What if things are working? We don't want people to change horses in the middle of the stream there. So if things are working, keep them hardwired. But if things aren't working, maybe it's not a matter of 18 new to do's. Maybe it's just a matter of looking at the work that you do and, and tweaking and fine tuning that work. And so we decided to write a book called Rewiring Excellence. But we also wanted this book to again represent sort of the new us, if you will. And that really is listening a lot to the market, being out in the field every chance we get and maybe by chance not doing 12 new things, but bringing that number down to where the work that people are Doing when they're already busy in healthcare leadership becomes even more doable. So we made a promise when we wrote Rewiring a couple years ago.
- [12:53]
We said, this is going to be a living, breathing book. And the reason it's going to be living and breathing is we're going to continue to find what's best in the industry and ask people if we can use their examples in the book. So that's what this is. We got to a point where we had seen a handful of what I would call new or new and improved things, things that really had a less is more theme to them. And then we even got out on channels like LinkedIn and said, hey, in the world of things like behavioral based interview questions, when we go to select folks to join our team, are there, are there maybe some new questions out there that people are finding helpful? And the responses were just great. And so we were able to pluck some of those responses directly from the field where they're being used. We added it to the book. It added about 25, 26 pages. So again, the book's a real easy read. But it was fun to really sort of keep our promise after 15,000 copies of the first book being in, you know, circulation to come back and say, you know what? Promises made, promises kept. It's a living, breathing book and we're just going to kind of try to keep that tradition. So, you know, who knows, in a year maybe we'll be ready to have the third edition. But it's been really fun, fun to have the industry weigh in like we have.
- [14:12]
A
That's fantastic. I actually, I've been following you and Quint for a long time. I hate to tell you how long because it dates me, but it's been incredible to watch. Just the way that you handle yourself, the way that you interact with people, the way that you guide and help health systems in their workforces and work with them. I just love it. Dan, I am so thankful for your support, for your joining us again on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. You and Quint And Catherine here, Dr. Mies, have just a wonderful message and I'm so excited about your acquisition as well and the growth of Healthcare plus Solutions group. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
- [14:50]
B
Thank you, Scott.