Rockstar: Magnify Your Greatness in Times of Change for Healthcare Leaders

By Sarah McVanel

How to lead with heart and run an effective healthcare organization!

 

Sarah McVanel empowers you with the ROCK leadership behaviours that will produce STAR results both right now and post-change. Written in a practical, non-nonsense style, ROCK STAR provides advice and guideliness to help you focus on what matters most - your people.

 

Healthcare leaders want to embolden their staff, deliver quality care, meet standards and create a great reputation for the organization. But these goals are challenging during times of turmoil.

• Your workforce is tired and burnt out
• You don't have enough resources
• You care but may be unsure of what to do

With 20+ years working in and with essential services, Sarah has seen the challenges and barriers within the healthcare system. But putting her ROCK leadership behaviours into practice, you will empower collaboration, elevate quality, and reap STAR results.

 

Thrive or survive - it's your call. ROCK STAR is about thriving!

• Language: English
• Publisher: GO Publishing
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780995157231

Sarah McVanel

Sarah McVanel helps individuals leverage the exponential power of recognition to retain top talent, fuel healthy teams and sustain healthy bottom lines. She speaks nationally on the topic, leads workshops, coaches leaders, and conducts organizational recognition program reviews. Sarah specializes in working with service-based organizations and “helping professionals.” Sarah is a Certified Speaker Professional (CSP), Certified Senior Organizational Development Professional (CSODP), Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Certified Human Resources Leader (CHRL), and president of the Toronto Chapter of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS). She has a BA in Psychology, MSc in Family Relations, and Diplomas in Human Resources and Healthcare Administration. Sarah has over 18 years’ experience including at a senior leadership level and now owns boutique firm Greatness Magnified. She is an author of peer-reviewed journals, articles and four books.

Book preview

How Do I Keep My Rock Stars Through This?

This is a question I’ve been asked, in various ways, by dozens of essential services leaders at the start of COVID-19. Great question – no – essential question.

Okay, full confession. I never planned to write this book. I was perfectly happy hitting the stages to speak at conferences and do training with you. And I’d have carried on doing that until retirement.

Then, COVID-19 hit.

And I had no audiences to speak for. It was my first crisis where I wasn’t working in a hospital where I could help in some way. I found myself saying, What can I do?

Having worked most of my career in hospitals, I found a way to be useful during SARS and H1N1 and hundreds of organizational changes, restructurings, redevelopments and various operational crises. Since I’d started my career, this was the first time I had no role. (Enter, stage left: Identity crisis.)

I wondered, What is something I know about and could share that would not burden busy people, but would help, and I could do it physically distanced? That is where ROCK STAR was born.

We pay a lot of lip service to the old adage, The only constant in life is change. Hearing that is like nails on a chalkboard for many, and it doesn’t make things any easier. We also hear repeatedly, We don’t do change well,[1] and that our healthcare system needs to change.[2] This book is not about shame and blame. (It doesn’t work in patient safety, so why would it work in healthcare leadership?) This resource is designed to help you – busy healthcare leaders doing the best you can – to focus on the most important issues that would help people in your organization through change, uncertainty and strain.

We know engagement survey results in non-crisis times generally aren’t good. Resource constraints, pockets of incivility and shortages chip away at satisfaction and self-efficacy in providers. The same is true for middle managers with huge spans of control, death by meetings and competing priorities. What if I could help harried healthcare leaders focus on the most important work to help already strained providers feel hopeful and proud of their contributions?

ROCK STAR is designed to help you show up resourceful and resilient for your staff so they too can remain resourceful and resilient, even during the most challenging times.

When I started writing, I was surprised to find that this book didn’t already exist. We still talk about change management as if it’s something to be done to people and our best hope seems to be mitigating the negative impact and moving people along to acceptance and adoption. But what about those unplanned events with a huge, far-reaching, life-threatening and potentially catastrophic impact on both the providers and patients, as well as the providers’ families, neighbours, friends? What about when that change is both protracted and out of control with no end date?

I know you don’t have time to read this book. That’s why it’s also available in an infographic, audiobook, e-book and worksheets, all available at greatnessmagnified.com/healthleader. I’ve made it a mini-book because I know even taking the time to review 50 pages right now is a stretch. Yet, the consequence of not taking seriously the advice in this book is redoubtable.

This book is designed to give you practical tools to maintain strength – in your people, in your culture, in your own well-being – and weave in key factors that insulate against negative long-term effects as much as possible.

So if you’ve found yourself locked in your office or in a bathroom stall or on mute during a conference call with your head in your hands thinking, Am I actually up to the job? I am here to tell you that yes, you absolutely are. The strategies here (some of which you are already using) will prove that. And fast, as they will assist in magnifying your greatness.

You don’t have to wait. This is not work to be done after a crisis or change is over. This is yesterday’s agenda.

ROCK STAR is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of healthcare and essential services frontline staff, leaders and those who work behind the scenes to keep our direct care and service organizations going 24/7, 365 days of the year. Heroes don’t always wear capes. Heroes deserve to feel appreciated and valued and needed both during and after the crisis is over.

We get through the tough times because that is the type of people we are. Together, we can make it through anything.

Chapter 1: The Other Side of Crisis

When It’s Over

Imagine with me for a moment.

The crisis has passed. The change has been completed.

You leave your office and the first person you see smiles