Beyond Leadership NEW SERIES Inspiring Others | Driving Results with Gina Cronin and Brian Bolwell MD

Podcast Transcript

Welcome to Beyond Leadership, at the intersection of leadership and everything else. In this Cleveland Clinic podcast, we will commingle with extraordinary thinkers and explore the impact of their ideas and experiences on leadership and management.

Gina Cronin: I am Gina Cronin, Chief Talent Officer at Cleveland Clinic. I am very glad to be back today with Dr. Brian Bolwell to kick off this new miniseries, Inspiring Others | Driving Results--all about how great leaders really balance and master leading their teams, while also driving results for their organizations. Our podcast has now been live for just over a month, and we certainly hope that you have found the content so far to be valuable and really impactful in your everyday working life. So, Brian, what is this miniseries, Inspiring Others | Driving Results, really about?

Brian Bolwell, MD: We are hopeful, Gina, that a lot of fundamental leadership principles are applicable to healthcare professionals and really, all leaders. We wanted to expand upon them and talk about a lot of things we do at the Cleveland Clinic that seems to be effective and work, and some of our philosophies about leadership, which I think are similar to many out there, but also have their own unique flavor.
Gina Cronin: I know when we think about this topic at Cleveland Clinic, we focus on capabilities; and certainly within inspiring and driving, that's about earning followership, providing vision and direction. How do you think that plays into that first part of inspiration?

Brian Bolwell, MD: Well, I think that's very, very important. I think that one of the more recent leadership books is by a gentleman named Simon Sinek who says, "Start with why." I think that in healthcare, it's pretty easy to do that, because our mission is to try to help people who are sick, fundamentally, as well as to try to learn more about diseases and to educate people who are aspiring to be in healthcare. Generically, I think that's pretty clear that people are here to try to help other people, but it turns out that sometimes things can get somewhat muddled. I think, clearly, some people are more effective at being inspirational than others.

I think that there's two real keys to that. The first is to realize that if you've got a compelling vision, you can change the world. Almost anybody can, but certainly if you're a leader in healthcare, you can. I think that getting that fundamental message out, that you can achieve pretty much anything as long as you surround yourself with good people, you support them, and you stick to it. I'm a huge believer in grit, and nobody always wins. You always have defeats and losses, but you got to get up and persevere and keep at it.

I think the second part of it is you've got to be consistent, and you've got to message this over and over and over again. At the Cancer Center here, one of my biggest messages is about access, because new cancer patients are scared, and the quickest way to alleviate that fear and anxiety is to get them in quickly. I think probably all of our listeners who've had a family member diagnosed with cancer knows that they want to get in to be seen very quickly. We obsess about that here, but it's something that I message all the time, several times a week, so therefore it becomes part of the culture.

I think consistency about that is important, but one of the techniques to effectively do that is the art of preaching. I didn't really realize this fully until a few years ago; how preaching becomes essential to transmit your vision. You've got to tell stories. You've got to tell stories about somebody who's, in this example, just diagnosed with cancer, and maybe they had to wait a long time, and the sort of negative consequence of that. But the ability to preach and to connect with people is, I think, really important. I think storytelling is one way to do it, and I think authenticity is the other way. I have found that to be very, very effective.

I'm pretty open about who I am, what I do, my flaws, which unfortunately are a lot, but it tends to resonate with people. I like to say, "I don't know a lot," because I don't know a lot. But also I think it's somewhat connecting to people. I think that authenticity and that kind of sense of humanity has carried the Cancer Center throughout the pandemic.

I've been very open with my own anxieties and concerns about leading in the pandemic, but also my personal life, and that really seemed to connect with people. Preaching as a general topic to be able to articulate a vision is, I think, important.

Gina Cronin: Brian, you have really led that masterfully in Taussig Cancer Center in creating the why. Not the why of only curing cancer, but the, why access is so important for that. Once you've got the why, you kind of also think about what we need to do as an organization around delivering results. Can you share how you have leveraged diversity on your teams? As the strengths of the teams and all kinds of diversity--diversity of thought, diversity of gender, race? How has that strengthened you to deliver results?

Brian Bolwell, MD: I think that's essential, Gina. I think that step one is I'm a huge believer in psychological safety and trying to draw out diversity of thought, of ideas, of admitting that I don't have all the answers and I need input from people, from everybody. It's fascinating. I was just on a conversation 10 minutes ago with another leader who was talking about the challenges that she had with kind of authoritarian leadership--level one leadership--in which a leader basically orders people to do things and doesn't really listen very well. I think listening is absolutely essential. If you receive diversity of thought, inevitably you come up with better decisions. I think to be able to hear and to have diversity of thought, you need a diverse group of people. That means from a gender perspective. It means from a race perspective.

It's something that we've been very intentional about here. For the past seven years, well over 50% of our hires have been women. We're working very hard on racial diversity, as well. I think that the quickest way to do that is to look at our educational programs. But ultimately, Gina, I agree entirely that diversity is very important for many perspectives. I think it elevates the culture. I think it leads to better decisions, and it certainly helps you to come up with better tactics to drive results.

Gina Cronin: Thanks, Brian. I think it's going to be really fun to hear you dive deeper into these topics over the next coming months. Who can we expect to hear from in this miniseries?

Brian Bolwell, MD: Well, we can expect to hear from a lot of different leaders at the Cleveland Clinic. A couple of women come to mind, the Chief of Staff, our first female Chief of Staff, Beri Ridgeway, and our leader of the Lerner Research Institute has done a superb job, Serpil Erzurum. We potentially would like to reach out to others outside of healthcare. But I think that our listeners will, hopefully, hear from a lot of people, both internally and externally, with their own flavor of not just leadership, but again, how to actually get things done in frequently, very challenging times.
The other group of leaders that we'd really like to feature in this podcast are nursing leaders, so we're going to do that, as well, Gina. I think this will be fun. I think it'll be entertaining. I want to thank everybody for listening. I think, I hope, you'll find our series of podcasts coming up to be useful, and informative, and educational and interesting. I hope you all have a great day. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Beyond Leadership. We welcome any topic ideas, comments or questions about this or any past episodes. Email us at executiveeducation@ccf.org or by clicking on the link in the show notes.