Cory Geffre, Executive Vice President of Hospital Operations and Chief Nursing Officer at Altru Health System

Summary

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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast — Episode Summary

Guest: Cory Geffre, EVP of Hospital Operations & Chief Nursing Officer, Altru Health System
Host: Scott Becker
Date: October 31, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode spotlights Cory Geffre, a hospital operations executive and author, discussing his experiences in healthcare leadership, the core framework from his book "Lead Your People," and the pressing workforce pipeline issues facing American healthcare systems. The conversation blends Cory’s personal leadership philosophy with practical advice for emerging leaders, culminating in reflections on talent development, self-awareness, and industry challenges.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Cory Geffre’s Background and Book

• Introduction: Cory is introduced as an executive from Altru Health System in Grand Forks, ND and author of "Lead Your People".
• Location Context: Altru Health is near the Canadian border, often experiencing “occasional” cold winters.
• On Writing ‘Lead Your People’: Cory turned hundreds of “doodles” and sticky-note lessons into a book to help other leaders (04:03).
  • Quote:

    "Maybe I want to spend a little bit of time feeling sorry for myself, I'll just write down, like, what did I learn today?...I realized that I started to develop hundreds of those." — Cory Geffre [04:09]

The Five-Part Framework for Leadership

[01:56–03:23]
Cory shares the core pillars outlined in his book — a robust, memorable framework for healthcare leadership:

1. Developing People:
   • “That should be the first thing that you're really focused on doing."
2. Managing Performance:
   • Ensures employees are supported and guided toward improvement.
3. Building Teams:
   • Focused on dynamic, engaged, diverse group dynamics.
4. Improving Operations:
   • “Sometimes we spend too much focus too early [on this]. How do we make the work better?”
5. Achieving Results:
   • “If you want to keep your job and don’t want to have to be constantly updating your resume...you have to find a way to achieve results with your team.”

Timestamped Quote Recap:

"Developing people, number one. Number two is managing performance. Number three is building teams. The fourth one is improving operations. And the fifth one is achieving results." — Cory Geffre [03:23]

Motivation to Publish

[04:03–05:05]

• The book began as a personal project: Cory tracked daily leadership lessons, eventually recognizing collective value in sharing with others.
• The COVID-19 pandemic postponed the book’s completion, but reignited determination:

  "2020 was the year that I was going to publish the leadership book. And being a healthcare executive, 2020 definitely changed the course of my priorities..." — Cory Geffre [04:33]

Current Leadership Focus: The Workforce Pipeline

[05:36–07:12]

• Cory is deeply committed to “increasing the size of the workforce pipeline,” moving beyond a “race to the bottom of sign-on bonuses.”
• Emphasizes academic partnerships and hybrid apprenticeships — “bringing it back into the hospital with academic partners.”

  "We have to accelerate the rate of innovation around education, which means we may have to challenge some academic mindsets and academic arrogances..." — Cory Geffre [06:08]

• The vision is to make healthcare “awesome again” and lower “the high threshold to entry.”

Host Reaction:

"If they've got enough capacity, then you could spend the time, the momentum and people aren’t so burnt out..." — Scott Becker [07:12]

Advice for Emerging Leaders

[07:49–10:57]
Cory breaks down actionable advice for new leaders:

• Continuous Self-Improvement:
  “Always work on becoming a better version of yourself...None of us are as good as we can be and we likely never reach our maximum potential. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.”

• Painful Self-Awareness:
  "Developing a painful level of self awareness...This means understanding your dark side of the moon...what triggers [negative reactions] and how you can work through them."

  • Cory tells new teams explicitly what he’s working on:

    “I actually have a list that I share with my new leaders to say, hey, here are things about myself that I need to get better at. But until I get better at them, I want you to know about these blocks.” — Cory Geffre [09:20]

• Taking a ‘Public Opinion Bath’:

  • Inspired by Abraham Lincoln, Cory advises leaders to seek direct feedback following difficult decisions:

    "Please do not hide in your executive suite, don't hide in your office, don't make a large announcement and then take the next week [on] PTO...”

  • Be visible and open to course-correction.

• Mentoring a Replacement:

  • Leaders should immediately “start looking for and mentoring your replacement...We are not developing healthcare leaders at a fast enough rate to keep up with what we need..."

Lighthearted Localism & Personal Roots

[10:57–12:37]

• Cory shares his Midwest roots (Aberdeen, SD; Ames, IA; Grand Forks, ND), as well as a stint in Texas.
• Playful regional debate:
  • Q: “Who is the greatest wrestler ever to come out [of your region]?” — Scott
  • A: “Brock Lesnar.” — Cory [11:40]
  • Scott jokes he was expecting Dan Gable, not Brock Lesnar, and the two share a laugh.

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Notable Quotes

• On Leadership’s Role:

  "Leadership is the highest calling that you can get as a human being to have the opportunity to lead others." — Cory Geffre [01:59]

• On Workforce Development:

  "We want to make working in health care awesome again and something that you can do without a high threshold to entry..." — Cory Geffre [06:28]

• On Transparency in Leadership:

  "It's important that you talk about that...long term it's liberating for them to know that when they see one of these flashes that I'm working on it and that it, you know, doesn't define our relationship." — Cory Geffre [09:37]

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Segment Timestamps for Key Content

• [00:45] — Cory Geffre introduction, Altru Health, “Lead Your People” book
• [01:56] — 5-part leadership framework explained
• [03:23] — Framework recapped for note-takers
• [04:03] — Why and how Cory wrote the book
• [05:36] — Current priorities: workforce pipeline, academic partnerships
• [07:49] — Concrete advice for emerging healthcare leaders
• [10:57] — Cory’s roots and a local wrestling legend debate
• [12:37] — Closing remarks

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Tone & Closing

The exchange is candid, warm, and energizing, reflecting both Midwestern camaraderie and a tough-love, practical approach to healthcare leadership. Cory’s humility—admitting his ongoing struggles and inviting feedback—is matched by his urgency about workforce issues and leader development.

Final Words:
Scott concludes by enthusiastically congratulating Cory on his book and thanking him for sharing both insights and Midwest humor with listeners.

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Transcript

[A]

This is Scott Becker with the Becker Healthcare podcast. I am thrilled today to be joined by a great leader. We're joined today by Corey Geoffrey. Corey's both a leader. He's an executive at a great not for profit system. He's also an author of a recent book, and we're to talk about sort of how he sees things and so forth. I know that I'm going to love talking to Corey because not only is he Midwesterner or somewhat a Midwesterner, but he's also a Michigan State Spartan. And not that we're a huge Michigan State Spartan fan, but we love them a ton more than we love the University of Michigan Wolverines. So we cheer for anybody from Michigan State and Ohio State. Corey, can you take a moment, introduce yourself and tell us about your new book?

[B]

Of course. We'll start off with go green, Scott. That's the way to go. My name is Corey Geoffrey. I'm the executive vice president of hospital operations at All True Health. We're located in Grand Forks, North Dakota, so we're tucked in the northeast corner of North Dakota. It's less than an hour's drive to the Canadian border, so it occasionally gets cold here. Excited about a lot of things we have going on here and really excited to talk to you. I did publish a leadership book. It's actually last October already called Lead your people, which is really a framework to tell leaders the things that they need to be working on every day. We know that leadership's really tough, but how do I know what chainsaws I need to be juggling every day? It's a pretty simple read. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I share my experiences of what I've learned over leadership career in that book. So thanks. Thanks for our time today.

[A]

No, I love that Corey and I will echo the ghost party, go Green and so forth. Absolutely. But talk to us about, maybe give us a few examples of thoughts from the book on leadership and give us the title of the book, too.

[B]

Yeah, the title of the book is called lead your people. Pretty simple. I think that leadership is the highest calling that you can get as a human being to have the opportunity to lead others. And so in here, I really talk about five pieces of a framework. And the first piece is developing people. That should be the first thing that you're really focused on doing. And then once you're working on developing people, then you have to be sure you're a great manager of that performance. So managing performance is the second part. And then building teams Dynamic, engaged, diverse teams. And then the first three are really about people. We've talked about developing people, managing performance, building teams. And then we move into really business side, where sometimes we spend too much focus too early. That's improving operations. How do we make the work better? And then the last one is achieving results. If you want to keep your job and don't want to have to be constantly updating your resume, the realities of the world are you have to find a way to achieve results by working with your team. So that's really the framework in a nutshell, Scott.

[A]

So again, I'm going to ask you again. So just to give us. So for people taking notes, I've got developing leaders, building teams, developing your people. You have to achieve results. I know I've missed a couple there. My quick summary. Could you just listen for me again, the five or six points you just made for people taking notes, because I love this. Lead your people, please.

[B]

Absolutely. Developing people, number one. Number two is managing performance. Number three is building teams. The fourth one is improving operations. And the fifth one is achieving results.

[A]

And what inspired you to take pen to paper or hand to the computer? Hands to the computer to actually go ahead and write the book? Because, you know, we're in this world where everybody talks about writing a book, but it still is 1% of people that actually make the effort to do it right. What inspired you to go ahead and actually do the project and finish the book?

[B]

Well, I've always kind of been a doodler where I just kind of make myself notes. There are sticky notes all over here. And usually at the end of a hard day when maybe I want to spend a little bit of time feeling sorry for myself, I'll just write down, like, what did I learn today? The lesson, good or bad. And I realized that I started to develop hundreds of those. I had a notebook with hundreds of those in there. And I was like, wait a minute, these might be valuable to somebody other than myself. So in 2019, at the very end of 2019, I made a New Year's resolution that in 2020 was the year that I was going to publish the leadership book. And being a healthcare executive, 2020 definitely changed the course of my priorities. So it got set on a back shelf. And then a couple years goes by and I'm like, you know what? Now is the time to get back in there. This book probably only uses about 50 of those near thousand leadership lessons that I've developed. So I'm looking forward to writing more books. I think that's what I'm saying, Scott, that's fantastic.

[A]

And I see the COVID here. I see that you literally the star rating on this on Amazon, 4.9 out of 5. That's phenomenal. With a bunch of different reviews. Fantastic. Love the COVID of Framework Leadership Success lead your people. Corey. If you're okay with it, we'll post this cover with you on LinkedIn today so people could see what you've done and done this phenomenal. What are you as you get into this last part of the year, into next year, what are you most focused on and excited about?

[B]

Yeah, I would say that I'm really focusing on how do we increase the size of the workforce pipeline? Can we stop fighting over the lack of resources that exist and have this race to the bottom of sign on bonuses, all those things, how do we really better develop the pipeline? So I'm really focused on academic partnerships and apprenticeships. So if we think back 40 to 50 years, all of the nurses and technicians were trained inside of a hospital and then they moved to all being trained at or inside academic universities. And now we're starting to see some hybrid where we're bringing it back into the hospital with academic partners. I think that we have to accelerate the rate of innovation around education, which means we may have to challenge some academic mindsets and academic arrogances that live on both sides, both the clinical side of what we need and also the academic side to say how do we really solve the workforce crisis? We want to make working in health care awesome again and something that you can do without a high threshold to entry, which is collegiate cost of secondary education. So that's really where I'm pouring a lot of effort, Scott, because I think that it's not going to get better unless we increase size of the pipeline of our workforce for all the allied health, nursing, physicians, providers, advanced practice professionals, every asset of this needs more people in the pipeline.

[A]

We could not agree with you more because at the end of the day, trying to take care of leadership, take care of people, develop people, if they are so overwhelmed by what they're doing because there's not enough capacity, you really can't do any of those things or they're very hard to do. Whereas if you've got enough capacity, then you could spend the time, the momentum and people aren't so burnt out and so forth. I could not agree with your perspective more on the pipeline, how important it is. Talk for a second, Corey, what advice would you give to evolving leaders? What do you tell an evolving leader who's moving into leadership Besides read the book, what do you tell emerging leaders?

[B]

Yeah, there's really just a handful of things that I would tell somebody who is developing or as a leader who's looking at taking the next step. And the first one would really be always work on becoming a better version of yourself. Too many of us graduate from college or get a license or certification and are ending learns there outside of what's required by our CEUs. Become just dive into books and try to become a better version of yourself because the success of your team is really going to depend on how much you're continuing to improve yourself. None of us are as good as we can be and we likely never reach our maximum potential. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. So that's probably number one. And I would say the second one is what I call developing a painful level of self awareness. Now we all talk about self awareness as being a great leadership characteristic. I agree with that. But painful levels of self awareness are a little bit different. This means understanding your dark side of the moon. Those situations or things that over anger you or over make you emotional or you know, disappointment. Understand where those come from, what triggers them and how you can work through them. Because if you don't understand the dark side of the moon and enough to really have these open conversations with your teams when they see your dark side of the moon, it's going to become a problem for everybody, potentially set the the the team back. It's important that you talk about that. I actually have a list that I share with my new leaders to say, hey, here are things about myself that I need to get better at. But until I get better at them, I want you to know about these blocks. And it's interesting to see the looks on their face, but long term it's liberating for them to know that when they see one of these flashes that I'm working on it and that it, you know, doesn't define our relationship. It's just something that I need to get better at. Next, I would say taking a public opinion bath often. I love this from Abraham Lincoln who basically says when you make a change or a tough decision, you need to go out and receive that feedback directly. Please do not hide in your executive suite, don't hide in your office, don't make a large announcement and then take the next week pto. You need to go out and take that feedback. And when people see that you do that, one, they know that you have confidence in the decision and two, that you're brave enough to take feedback. Sometimes you may need to pivot. You might hear something, you're like, you know what, we got this wrong. Let's pivot. But if nothing else, it's shows them that you're not afraid of the decisions that you make and you don't hide behind a wall. And then the very last one that I would say is from day one, start looking for your. Start looking for and mentoring your replacement. We are not developing healthcare leaders at a fast enough rate to keep up with what we need. And the gaps getting larger and the work's getting harder and the failure rate's only going to increase. So that was me just going for a minute and a half straight. Scott?

[A]

No, Corey, I love it. I'm going to ask you a couple more questions. I know you spent time in Texas. You spent most of your time in the upper Midwest. Where are you from originally?

[B]

Aberdeen, South Dakota's home. So I'm as Midwest as Midwest can be. I've been in Ames, Iowa as a leader. I've been in Grand Forks as leader. And I started as a leader in my hometown in Aberdeen, but I did spend about a dozen years in Texas elementary, junior high and the first couple of years of college.

[A]

Now, you are a younger vintage than me, but I'm going to ask you the question for somebody from your area of the world. Let me know if you're ready. Who is the greatest wrestler ever to come out that rig of the world?

[B]

Brock Lesnar.

[A]

Maybe I was going to go with Dan Gable. Maybe it is Brock Lesnar. I'm going to look up Brock Lesnar and see if that's the greatest. Whatever.

[B]

Brock Lesnar really grew up about 60 miles from my house. There's a chance that I would see him. There's a less chance that he would hear this. But just in case I'm covering my basis by saying Brock Lesnar, I, I.

[A]

Think that is very smart. And he's a professional wrestler, the beast incarnate. I see a Canadian American wrestler, I'll give you that. A former mixed martial artist, professional football player, professional wrestler, an exciting, interesting GU Ultimate Fighting Championship and so forth. I was going for, if you're an Ames guy, an Iowa State guy. We're going for, you know, in University of Iowa. Again, we're going for Dan Gable. But I'll give you Brock Lesnar today.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

You stumped me. It is what it is. Corey, what a pleasure visiting you. Congratulations on your book. Just absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on the Becker southcare podcast. What a pleasure. Thank you.

[B]

Thanks a lot, Scott. Have a great day.