Coaching for Results.

Coaching for results: Expert guidance can help leaders set priorities, make the right decisions and improve results.

The leadership labyrinth: leveraging the talents of women to transform health care.

Women have had a transformative influence on the health care field as highly effective leaders known to produce superior results. Women make up the vast majority of the health care workforce as well as health care graduates. Women also make most health care decisions on behalf of their families. Yet, despite this omnipresence in health care, there is a dearth of women in chief executive and governance roles. A lack of leadership development and succession planning in health care and other obstacles to career progression make it challenging for women to advance to top leadership levels. The traditional linear career ladder that has existed in health care is not conducive to women's advancement. Women have taken a different pathway to career development referred to as the leadership labyrinth. This is a development process leading to wisdom and insights essential for today's health care challenges. This crucial stage in the evolution of health care calls for new models of care and leadership. The most abundant resource at risk of being overlooked is the optimal engagement of women. Women leaders are the backbone of the health care workforce but have yet to be strategically deployed in key leadership positions. The talents of women leaders can be a significant factor in the transformation of health care.

Minding your manners. Don't overlook the importance of CEO-board etiquette--it's a pillar of good governance.

Brushing up on CEO-board etiquette strengthens the relationship.

Clearing the pathway. Health care leaders are working to bring gender parity to the C-suite and board room.

C-suites and boardrooms are missing a critical element: female leadership.

A framework for patient safety, part 2: resilience, the next frontier.

Last month in Part 1, the authors discussed the critical aspects associated with building a safety culture and holding staff and leadership accountable through measurement and expected performance. Sustaining a safety culture begins with the human aspects but must reach beyond the underlying systems and processes, which enable resilience and error prevention in today's complex healthcare environment.

Framework for patient safety, part 1: culture as an imperative.

Nurse leaders play a critical role in patient safety. They are essential in building a culture of safety and engineering resilience into workflows and patient care processes enabling healthcare organizations to progress toward high reliability. In part 1 of this 2-part series, the authors discuss the critical nature of a safety culture: why trust and respect lead to teamwork and collaboration in preventing serious safety events. Part 2 will introduce the emerging healthcare concept of high reliability, described through examples of health systems that have successfully adapted models from other industries. Use of technology and other advancements provides a context for advancing patient safety. Aligning culture and engineering technology for safety, when coupled with effective leadership, can provide a long-term approach for safe and effective care.

The board's role in technology advancement.

Technology is the foundation for a robust health care system, and trustees can help move the agenda.

Leadership in innovation: life beyond the hospital.

This article describes leadership in innovation opportunities for executive nurse leaders seeking a change from the traditional hospital setting. Concepts of disruptive innovation underlie the challenges in today's healthcare field. Recommendations for nurse leaders include developing a versatile portfolio of experience, establishing collegial partnerships, creating cultures of innovation, and being passionate about innovation to inspire others to a more creative approach to work. Many opportunities are available in healthcare for leaders committed to innovation.

Connecting governance culture and hospital performance improvement.

Fluctuating financial health, continuing demands for better and more consistent care quality and patient safety and a dwindling capacity to meet increasing service demands from patients are just some of the pressures motivating hospitals to focus on performance improvement.

Hospital governing boards: a study of their effectiveness in relation to organizational performance.

This article describes the development and evolution of governing boards and summarizes critical findings from a research study on hospital governing boards. The purpose of the research was to examine factors that measure performance of governing boards and the relationship of governing board effectiveness to the organizational performance of hospitals. Board leaders from 64 nonprofit hospitals across the country were surveyed using the BSAQ tool, which measures board effectiveness in six areas of competency. Board competency scores of this group were compared with those of a previous group, which consisted of more than 300 nonprofit boards, and demonstrated significantly higher scores. A factor analysis conducted to compare the six competency factors between study groups revealed a strong single factor in this study. The factors that measure governing board performance were found to be consolidated into one single factor of collaborative board functioning consistent with emerging governance theory. This may support the concept of the importance of governing boards as collaborative, socially dynamic networks of leaders. The hospital performance was assessed using data from the nationally recognized program, Solucient's 100 Top Hospitals. The results demonstrate that higher performing boards did have better hospital performance in several dimensions, most notably in profitability and lower expenses. Lower expenses were related to higher scores for the BSAQ total score. Hospital profitability was positively correlated with all seven BSAQ scores. A more favorable Solucient ranking was related to hospitals that had a lower BSAQ political score. This was also found in a multiple regression model that predicted a favorable ranking when the BSAQ political score was lower. This may mean that these boards do what needs to be done to maintain excellent performance and do not let politics get in the way of their work. Although governance and its effect on hospital performance is a complex concept to study, this investigation yields findings of interest to leaders in the healthcare field.

Leading tomorrow's healthcare organizations: strategies and tactics for effective succession planning.

Hospitals and health systems today are challenged by the lack of consistent workforce planning which has resulted in a significant dearth of effective succession planning strategies and tactics for the executive suite as well as middle management. This article discusses how the healthcare industry lags behind other corporate organizations in creating a succession plan and in retaining top leadership talent. It also provides practical approaches for succession planning in healthcare and identifies the key elements of succession planning for the chief executive officer and other senior leaders.