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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Jean Ann Larson, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Development at the Heersink School of Medicine and Chief Leadership Development Officer at UAB Medicine
00:14:45
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- [00:02]
A
Every year, Becker's annual meeting brings healthcare leaders together to unpack the most pressing issues facing the industry. And every year, those conversations shift in profound and unexpected ways. This April, more than 3,500 healthcare executives will return to Chicago for Becker's 16th annual meeting. 795 elite speakers will offer new lessons, new case studies, and predictions about what comes next. Join us April 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right.
- [00:38]
B
This is Laura Dirdo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Jean Ann Larson, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Development at the Harrison School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Chief Leadership Development Officer at UAB Medicine. Jean Anna, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:56]
C
Thank you so much, Laura. It's great to be back having another conversation with you. Happy New Year, everyone. Shout out to everybody who's joining in to listen to the podcast again. As Laura has indicated, she indicated, my title and I serve in a couple of different entities, certainly for the health system, the School of Medicine as well, but my role really spans them. And for both entities, I'm essentially the chief Leadership Development officer and basically my work and my team's work, we're focused on the senior leaders leaders at the various UAB entities. And it's interesting, Laura, and maybe, you know, you can tell me down the road I've become aware of seen very few people who have my type of role as well as my scope. And so it's very, very interesting. And essentially what that means is that we really function as almost an internal consulting team of organizational development consultants to really serve the leaders across the organization, whether that's delivering workshops, programs, all kinds of other types of activities to really help leaders become their best.
- [02:06]
B
That's amazing to hear and what a great synopsis of everything you're accountable for and how you make an impact on the university as well as the health system and those things integrated together. I know you've got accountabilities both on the larger academic system and then for the rural hospitals and healthcare facilities that the system works with and manages too. So that is just amazing to hear and definitely a unique role. I haven't heard a ton of folks that have that kind of scope and integration within what they're doing, and so it's just really cool to hear about that and the investment that UAB Medicine and the University are making into the leadership development and growth for their broader teams. So thank you for your. For setting the stage there. And, you know, looking back at the last. Last year or so, could you tell us about a project or initiative that you ran that was successful? What did you do and what were the results?
- [03:01]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Great, Great question. And again, you know, part of an academic medical center. It's very complex. And then in the meantime, and this will tee up my answer to this question. We've recently acquired five hospitals. And then we're starting to even further integrate some of our existing entities, you know, really more tightly into the organization. So one of the things I think we've accomplished in 2025, and we're continuing to go forward this year, is we were able to reach more leaders and really start supporting them as well as building some relationships with some of those newer entities, which is teeing us up for what we need to do. So I guess it's not so much initiative per se, but it's a theme that's allowing us to grow our reach and extend the network to support UAB medicine and helping us become a little bit more tightly integrated and really to start thinking of ourselves as a system now. A common theme for our workshops and consultations. And this won't be a surprise to you or probably any other healthcare executive, but we're focusing a lot on managing change for the organization, but also in ourselves and in those that we lead. Because again, it's really challenging and it's an interesting thing. I've been at UAB in April will be my 10th year, and one of the longtime executives that works with us in some of our programs and serves as a guest speaker for us. He made a comment noting that we've experienced more change at UAB in probably the past two to three years than in the prior 10. And even though I've only been here 10 years, I would. I would say that's true. For the first four or five years or more, we had pretty much all of us. We had the same bosses, we had the same leadership teams. And then since then, there's been a lot of changes in senior leadership. You know, I've had different bosses over the years. Other people have. We've reorganized a bit. And when you've gone from not having a lot of change to something like that, yeah, I liken it. It's kind of Mr. Toad's wild ride, and it's all good and the relationships are great, but it's just getting used to where we now sit in the organization and who we report to. So. So we're really trying to do a lot to help people deal with that, help them show up in a positive way, and then very importantly, help them lead their teams in change management as well. And oh, by the way, this is not new to 2025 or 2026. We're also implementing EPIC throughout our existing entities as well as our acquired entities. So there's a lot of change around that as well. The other thing that I'm tickled by, and I want to do more of it in 2026, it's always a challenge that we have. Anytime we're doing organizational development, leadership development, whatever is, we've been able to put a little bit more rigor around how we definitively identify and measure our impact on leader retention and the probability of promotion. The current dean and I, and specifically him, has always had a hypothesis that, Jean Ann, due to your role, due to the scope of your team, you help us recruit senior leaders to UAB and you help us retain people at uab. So working with some colleagues in human resources and really using some of their systems that they have in place and putting it up against some of our records, we were able to really prove his hypothesis true. So what's interesting is that the health system recently was running turnovers of basically 17%, which I don't think is unusual for many health systems. However, what we were seeing, all of our programs put together for people who went through our programs, it was more like a 6% turnover rate, which is exciting because it's telling us that, yeah, a. For one thing, we're selecting the right people in our programs, many of which are very competitive and they're people that we want to invest in. We want these people to, to stay with us. We also saw some similar, similar statistics around promotability. Now that often varied more by program. But again, as one of my former bosses said, basically, Jean Ann, if somebody goes through one of these programs and they stay at uab, good things will happen to them. That's, that's probably a great anecdote. So again, something we're, we're very proud of and we're going to continue to watch that going forward.
- [07:31]
B
I love that. What a great story. And ability to see change, to understand how you need to pivot, to get used to having that rapid change and then build that into the culture of everything that you're doing and program around that for leaders as they come into the organization or they elevate so they have that similar mindset and mind frame and can embrace what it is that is UAB Medicine's DNA that can help transform the system and really become the healthcare destination for the future. And, you know, looking ahead and digging more deep, deeply into this next year, what are some of your big priorities as well as headwinds that you're focused on for 2026?
- [08:08]
C
Yeah, very good question. I mean, I'm talking about, you know, the new entities, the new whatever. But now we have to really lean into that. Because if I look at my team and I look at all of UAB and we talk about senior leaders across the areas we're serving, roughly, you know, a few hundred people now with some of the entities, it's becoming closer to probably a thousand, you know, supporting them, supporting their teams, helping them lead better. So we are really going to have to focus on some of the new entities, and we're starting to do that. We dabbled a bit last year, but literally bringing them into existing programs. But more than that, literally doing needs assessments and finding out what's unique, how do we serve them? We certainly talk about, and I'm sure all health organizations do, we have similar, similar challenges. So we talk about change management, dealing with conflict, how do I delegate, how do I take care of myself, how do I avoid burnout in myself and my teams? But there's still some interesting nu. So it's not just putting stuff in place that, oh, it worked over here, but it's really listening and understanding what leaders are challenged with and how can we meet them where they are. So I think we need to continue to do that. Now, the interesting thing, I have what we affectionately call a very small but mighty team. But it helps us be creative. You know, we can't just do stuff and say, yes, but literally being strategic and thoughtful about how are we going to engage with folks and how do we prioritize what we do to really provide the most value. So, again, it's kind of more of the same. But now we have to get real from what we were doing last year. So I have to bring them into the fold and literally bringing in some people. And I think I'd mentioned to you even before the official recording started, really making sure one of our signature programs, that I have individuals in that program, it meets twice, it has two cohorts a year that we're pulling people, we're recruiting, if you will, into the program, nominating people from all these different entities so we can learn from each other, so we can appreciate, you know, some of the complexities now that we bring in by simply expanding the organization and really hoping to help Promote systemness and helping people feel like, wow, I'm part of this greater whole and there's a force multiplier for me and for my organization by being part of UAB health system.
- [10:27]
B
That's amazing to hear and you know what a great system you've brought in place. Even with a smaller team being creative and strategic and prioritizing the right things to match, maximize the time that you have together and figure out how you can continue to build a strong pipeline of leaders overall. Now I know there are a lot of factors going into play, a lot of uncertainties in healthcare today. So when you are thinking about the next year as well, what is the hardest thing you'll think you'll have to do?
- [10:57]
C
Yeah, very good question, Laura. And it's kind of something we kind of always have had to deal with in the background, but now it's going to be more. And I think the hardest thing we will have to do, and I mean that stands for every one of my team and I have an awesome team, is we're going to have to say no. We're going to have to prioritize. And the frustrating part of that is we feel our work is amazing. We love doing what we're doing, we love working with leaders. And it, it's sometimes very difficult to say no because you know, wow, if we can engage with this group of leaders, if we can engage and bring them in, we can provide a lot of value. We're going to have to sometimes say no, defer, find other creative solutions for them. But we want to make sure also that we don't over comm. You know, it's frustrating for the team, it's frustrating for the potential clients and we want to make sure that we continue to show up in a positive way. It's very important to us is that we continue to role model, you know, self care, you know, that we don't go into burnout because we do a lot of work in that space in all of our leadership development courses. So I worry, you know, if I, if I'm not careful about saying no, you know, it won't be good for us and it won't be good for our clients. I think that's going to be the hardest thing is having to really sometimes say no when we all want to say yes or maybe a team member really wants to say yes and we just can't.
- [12:16]
B
That makes a lot of sense. It's such a tempting thing to be over committing and especially when there's a lot of opportunities and many things coming down the pipeline. But I appreciate that advice because having that limited and focused view of what's going to be most important, important make sure that you're in a place where you're successful moving forward, I think. Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask, where do you see some of the biggest and best growth opportunities for the organization?
- [12:47]
C
Yeah, great, Great question. I'm very excited and I think a great opportunity for us is really realizing the potential that some of our new entities bring to us. And it's quite exciting. We can certainly learn from each other and we can discover best practices from each other, and also at the same time, making sure that no one gets lost in the cracks. We can better serve the state. We can better serve our communities. We can make our services more accessible at the right time in the right place. So I think that's very important and will help us meet the incredible demand for our services. The other thing I would say is also more partnerships. And that's one of the things that I've tried to do where I can. If we have expertise across the organization, whether it's using someone for a guest speaker or say, hey, would you come in and work with this team and us because you have the knowledge and the expertise anytime we can do that. I look forward to more opportunities because they've been very, very rewarding for us when we do it again, really continuing to help all the leaders that come to us. We were founded basically to develop leaders with the understanding and the assumption that if we did this, UAB Medicine as an organization would remain sustainably successful. And this remains our goal even through unprecedented growth and opportunity, both for the organization as well as, I think, the individuals that come to us.
- [14:12]
B
That's amazing to hear. Jeannan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such a fun discussion. I could really tell you've got a passion for what you do, and it's inspiring to think about everything you've got going on at UAB Medicine. I'm looking forward to seeing you as well in April at our annual meeting. I know you'll be speaking on a panel and really sharing some more details about all of these programs and how you're looking at the future. Looking forward to that. Very much so.
- [14:36]
C
Great. Well, thank you, Laura. It's always a pleasure chatting with you and I look forward to seeing you as well in Chicago.