Get Results Through the Power of Serious Leadership with Kecia Kelly and Amy Chaumeton

Kecia Kelly:
Make sure you’re not the problem solver. There’s nothing more exhausting than people just opening up trash on your desk and asking you to sift through it and solve it. And so it’s exhausting as a leader. And so I would say that, you know, your success is defined in your ability to develop. Your teams and your leaders.

Katie Anderson:
Welcome to Chain of learning where the links of leadership and learning unite. This is your connection for actionable strategies and practices to empower you to build a people centered learning culture, get results and expand your impact so that you and your team can leave a lasting legacy. I’m your host and fellow learning enthusiast, Katie Anderson. Do you ever feel like you and other leaders in your organization are working on the same problems year after year, or that you’re burdened with the impossible task of solving all the problems that get in the way of achieving the results you need? You’re not alone. This is the crux of the leadership challenge it takes to create a thriving, high performing organization, one where people at all levels are engaged and aligned on what is most important and are capable and confident contributing their best thinking how to get there. But what does it take as a leader, especially as a senior leader, to really create this culture of continuous improvement? As I’ve learned from my leadership development work with executive teams and leading change with organizations around the world for the past two decades, it’s about making a shift as leaders from focusing primarily on the results instead how leaders create the conditions in their organization for their people to get those results while developing their own capabilities to lead at the same time. This requires a shift in mindset and a shift in behavior, and it requires leaders to be serious about both. But by serious, I don’t mean stern, but rather, as Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines serious, requiring much thought or work or relating to a matter of importance being in earnest the topic of being a serious leader, one who is earnest and committed to creating a culture of continuous improvement, is one we’ve been exploring on this podcast.

Katie Anderson:
Toyota leader Isao Yoshino, subject of my book, learning to lead leading to learn, shared in episode 21, why seriousness is one of the most important qualities of a leader. And in episode 20, Brad Toussaint talked about how he coaches executives to develop the mindset and practices of being a serious leader. To explore what it takes as an executive to be a serious leader, striving to apply the principles of continuous improvement and creating a high performing organization in today’s complex work environments, I invited two senior executives in my chain of learning to the podcast to talk about the shifts that they’re making in their leadership style and what impact these shifts are having, not only in their leadership, but on their teams and the results in their organization. In fact, they are two of the executives that Brad highlighted in episode 20 that he’s working with. Doctor Kecia Kelly is Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer for Legacy Health, a health system in the state of Oregon, United States. Kecia began her nursing career as an officer in the United States Army Nurse Corps, where she served in progressive leadership roles from charge nurse to manager. She holds both a doctor of nursing practice in executive leadership and a master’s of business administration in healthcare management, and she’s served in multiple leadership roles in healthcare organizations around the country. Doctor Amy Chaumeton is a board certified internist and serves as the Associate Chief Medical Officer at Legacy Health.

Katie Anderson:
Amy’s held many leadership roles in her over 25 years of service at Legacy, including chief medical officer for Legacy’s level one trauma and burn center and an eleven year tenure as chief medical informatics officer. Kecia and Amy, along with Legacy health chief operating officer Jonathan Avery, join me for my May 2024 Japan study trip leadership program as an executive learning cohort. Together, along with their two leadership coaches, including Brad Toussaint, I invited Kecia and Amy here to the podcast to talk about their perspective and lessons as executive leaders creating a cultural shift in their organization. What has made a difference in how they’re leading? And how have they become more committed about demonstrating their seriousness as senior leaders? If you’re an executive or senior leader or a change leader, supporting operational leaders seeking to be serious about how to create a culture of excellence, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. We started off our conversation with a question exploring what was going on at legacy health that caused Kecia and Amy and others in the executive leadership team to say, we need to do something differently. Let’s dive into the discussion about serious leadership, starting with Kecia’s response.

Kecia Kelly:
You know, I think that, you know, legacy health is, you know, we’ve been a system for quite some time and you know, it’s been around. I mean, I think it’s grown over the years. And I joined legacy health three years ago, a little over three years ago, and what I saw was a very palpable gap between our frontline staff and executive leadership. I mean, it was palpable and there was a feeling of just being out of touch and not understanding what was happening at the front line and when we were making efforts to be at the front line, then there was criticism that we were just being performative and checking the box, you know, like, we’re just doing it. And I don’t think we really had collectively. And when I think of executive leadership, I’m speaking of, I’m a senior vice president, so I’m thinking of senior leadership. What we were really thinking as we were really on this journey prior to even going to Japan was that we were just trying to find ways to have meaningful connections with our frontline team because we knew that if we could have meaningful connection with them where they could feel seen, heard and valued, then we know that that was going to translate into performance. But in all honesty, Katie, I don’t think that we collectively fully understood what that meant and how to do that.

Kecia Kelly:
And so with Brad Toussaint from value capture being our coach and John Calidura, he had been really kind of selling the trip to Japan to us like a year before we even went and really felt that this was going to be a good opportunity for us. And so I think that that was really kind of where we were. And we truly have evolved since that time. We still have more work to do, but that would be what I think was really drove us to really consider this experience.

Katie Anderson:
Amy, how about for you? You know, you’re on the medical side, and what were some of the challenges that you’ve been facing as a medical senior leader?

Amy Chaumeton:
Well, I think legacy has been trying to embark on this journey for really almost a couple decades now, and we’ve had spits and starts along the way. And it was Kathryn Correa who really set that tract and trajectory going forward in a, you know, as you talk about serious leaders, she’s a serious leader, and she seriously had this as an objective for legacy going forward. And I think on the medical side, we struggle to understand how we can do this work and the clinical work as well. And as we go forward and see that if you can embark on this journey as it being part of the work and part of that continuous improvement for the patient, and you center this around the patient, it becomes a ever so slightly easier journey, for sure.

Katie Anderson:
I remember my time listeners tuning in. Brad Toussaint and I worked together for many years. He was on chain of learning, episode 20. And it was some of my ahas in leading continuous improvement in healthcare that the nursing staff and you had the operations staff and you had the medical team and everyone had slightly different silos. But if you could, Amy, as you said, anchor around the patient, really, that kind of aligned everything as well. And for those of you who don’t work in a healthcare environment, it’s really how do you anchor around, you know, the customer, whatever that end customer is, what do they value, what do they need? And how can you align all of the, you know, all the teams and the people around that? Keisha and Amy, you know, I’m curious. So, you know, you had some senior leadership who were truly serious, and they brought this in. And what was it like for you when you said, we’re going to lead in a different way, we’re going to do things differently? What was your experience of that? Like, you’ve been successful up to this point in leading a certain way.

Katie Anderson:
What was, what was that like for you?

Kecia Kelly:
You know, I think for me, you know, and Katie, I think just for a background, you know, I’m in, I’m a veteran, so I served in the military, and I’m very proud of that service as an officer. And I had always believed in, you know, do as I do and not as I say, you know, and I was always, like this champion of leading by example and feeling like if I could set the example, then people will say, wow, geez, you know, then that’s the way to do it. And just realizing that that wasn’t enough for me. What I learned, I think, within this experience was this piece around, and I’ll refer to your book when you talk about this commitment to self development and this commitment to developing your people and providing support and guidance. Right. And for me, the realm of self development was just me getting my education, my certification, and, you know, it was really in retrospective, maybe it was a little more. It’s pretty self centered when you think about the body of work around being a serious leader, because self development and what I’ve learned, it’s really about developing yourself to understand the work that the people that you are serving and what they’re doing and developing yourself and understanding what that work is and what the barriers are and what they’re celebrating and really being intentional about going to the gimba, wanting to understand, like, you know, you want to know what’s going well, that’s great. But you also want to know what the problems are.

Kecia Kelly:
And I think too often I think about, we used to call it, you know, the dog and pony show, you know, when the commanding officer would come by and everybody just wanted everything to look good, spit shine, shiny floors, beds made. But we knew that if you opened up those chests, there was crap in there, you know? Right. But nobody wanted them to see that. And I think that the change here is that, okay, we want to see all the bad things. We want to see the junk. We want to see the muck, because that’s where we can really help and support them, because clearly what’s going well are things that they’ve been able to accomplish on their own. But as leaders, our job is to help when we’re solving problems. And I have a quote that I have by Colin Powell.

Kecia Kelly:
It’s on my LinkedIn page. And it’s about. Leadership is about solving problems. It is about solving problems. And the moment that your team stop approaching you for problems, they’ve either lost confidence and they don’t trust you anymore, you know, or they don’t believe that you’re gonna get it done. I mean, they just pretty much have given up on you. And so that’s been a shift in a paradigm for me and how I’m showing up as a leader. And, you know, and I have examples that I’ve been able to do just recently around that people wanted to tell me about the great things and me being able to say, okay, that’s great, but I want to know how I can help you.

Kecia Kelly:
I want to understand what your problems are. And it’s definitely a palpable shift that you can feel in the room when you change that dynamic with your teams.

Katie Anderson:
There’s a section in my book talking about how Mister Yoshino asked the senior president of Toyota, Mister Fuji Ocho, to come visit his failing business. And he, you know, Mister Cho made the point of going out, you know, made the time in his busy schedule, which was incredible. He’s showing that he really cared. But then Mister Yoshino started telling him all the good things that were going on. He said, no, no, no. I didn’t come here to see all the good things. I came here to hear the bad things so that I can help you. And it sounds like that was a real shift for you as well.

Katie Anderson:
And, you know, I love that quote from Colin Powell. Leadership’s about solving problems, but it’s not about you solving all the problems, right? It’s about help creating those conditions for.

Kecia Kelly:
Your team, creating the conditions where people can do that. Right. And that’s a role for us as leaders. You know, we’re not there to fix all the problems, but we are there to create the conditions to where people can solve those problems on their own, because either way, if we fail to do it, it is a failure in leadership on our part, and I take that very seriously.

Katie Anderson:
Amy, you’ve shared that you had some ahas as well about this concept of go to Gemba or go to the place the work is happening. Really was an aha for you on the most recent trip that you joined me on my Japan study trip program. What was the shift for you, and how has that impacted how you’re going out to see?

Amy Chaumeton:
Going to the gumbo for me, prior to the trip was very much about checking on the work, validating the assumptions, trying to recognize problems, and making sure that the people doing the work understood the why behind it. And what you couldn’t tell me in a lecture or you couldn’t tell me in a book is how the leaders that we saw in Japan actually go to the Gemba, how you can tell from their every interaction, their eye contact with their employees, their interactions with their employees, the respect that’s going back and forth. I don’t think you can parlay that or express that in a way that people can really understand until they see it. And it was really beautiful. I mean, we were in one of the manufacturing companies, and the CEO pulled the Andon, and you could see the employee roll their eyes, but yet smile, knowing that this was part of the tour to show what occurs when the Andon gets pulled, that people come to help people thank the worker for having noticed a problem, and we saw that in a couple different ways. And so, at one of the companies, really fun music played when the Andon got pulled. And, I mean, I think this will resonate with Keisha, but when you walk through the halls of the hospital, there’s this beep, beep, beep, and it’s annoying. And it’s annoying to get people’s attention.

Amy Chaumeton:
And I don’t think it necessarily celebrates finding a problem or an issue that we can then celebrate, because we can solve to root and make a difference in those people’s day. And I think that was just eye opening for me as we went through the different locations that we went to in Japan.

Katie Anderson:
Happy music. When a problem so and on is, you know, the signal that someone needs help or there’s an issue, and, you know, there’s. There’s different sort of joyful music that plays or melodious music rather than, yes, when you’re in hospital, it’s the eh, eh, eh. Or it’s almost like a punitive sound. Right. Yeah.

Amy Chaumeton:
And we also saw that at the school that we went to in Japan, where going into lunch or coming out of lunch and going into recess, and then I coming back to actually clean the school by the students was all fun music. It wasn’t a beeping or a horn to indicate it was in some ways a celebration that we’re moving on to something new.

Katie Anderson:
And the next thing, not like the school bell, puts you in a wrong mindset. Thinking back to even before you came to the Japan trip with me, because I want to explore some of your trajectory as more maybe traditional healthcare leaders. Some of the things that you were trying and some of the maybe successes, but also some challenges you were having. And then we can talk about sort of more of those ahas that you had and how you’re continuing to evolve and make impact in your organization. So, Kecia, what were some of those shifts that you were starting to make, how to support problem solving with your teams and the shifts that you were starting to make in the organization?

Kecia Kelly:
When I think about kind of just my ascension to being a senior healthcare executive, you know, I had been rooted in some form of lean, in some form of way. I’ve been trained as an equivalent to a green belt. Learned about six sigma. You know, I had learned about these different lean principles, PDCA, and. But everything was really in a space of rapid cycle improvement. Right. You know, it’s all about, you know, plan, do check, act, put the plan together, put some things you’re going to do. How are we going to check? And we had the term act, but not necessarily adjust, which is a different, which the check and adjust, which is something I learned at legacy.

Kecia Kelly:
What I really have learned, just really being here at legacy and really being kind of steeped in the operating system that we have at legacy, it’s really about how do we create sustained improvement? Because a lot of times the rapid cycle improvement is where we need a quick turnaround on something, but never really fully understand. We could never really sustain. We achieve improvement. We all celebrate, and then we moved to something else, and then whatever we fixed and made better, it falters because we never really had systems in place to actually sustain what that improvement was. Just kind of my evolution here with legacy and then also eventually with the trip is really this creating. How do we create that sustained improvement? You know, and the piece for me that I continue to go back in is that it is rooted in the people who are at the front line. It is literally the key to anything being successful and being sustained. It is absolutely tied to the people who are doing the work and how do we create the conditions and the process.

Kecia Kelly:
And that’s a whole thing that we saw in Japan around creating standard work, celebrating those small wins. I mean, it was just a constant continuum of just celebration and improvement. And I creating venues for people to submit ideas and those ideas not going into a vacuum. I mean, so I think that’s the evolution that we’re trying to really do here at legacy. And we’ve seen some pockets of excellence of where people are actually doing that, where they are engaging the front line, where they feel like. Because I think that’s just a piece. I mean, I think that there’s a feeling a lot of times that the senior executives are going to solve all the problems for the organization. And it is an incredibly heavy burden to carry.

Kecia Kelly:
It is heavy. It’s heavy. And the reason why it’s heavy and it’s burdensome because it’s virtually. It’s impossible. It is. But what we can do is create the conditions for and create a venue for our frontline to be successful. And how we do that is by creating a space where they have a voice, they have a say, we’re listening to their ideas, but we haven’t really gotten that down to a way that I think is sustainable, because sometimes the ideas are pretty grandiose and almost difficult to achieve. So they become what we call the slow no or the no.

Kecia Kelly:
Never. But it’s the small things. And I think about some work we saw at one of our SPD departments where they basically have a problem of the week and the staff identify what it is and how they want to track it. And so that’s just kind of an example of it.

Katie Anderson:
So it’s about how, you know, how you’ve been really the tipping point for change and what you’ve been trying and trying to do as well. And, Amy, there’s been so much burnout, especially for physicians, and feeling overburdened, that probably this even, like, asking them to come up and solve problems is like, whoa, don’t even come to me. I just need to get the job done. How have you been thinking about this could be for both of you, but how do you think about supporting your people in this really pressured environment to get results and to help cure people and help them in day to day, and then. And then you’re adding problem solving on top of it. Amy, how have you been thinking about that from the medical side, as we’ve approached this?

Amy Chaumeton:
What’s fascinating is, as we do have this culture currently still in place of the leaders are the ones who are supposed to fix the problems. And as we’ve approached our patient flow, work that we’ve been working on for the last, really, two years now is trying to affect change where we can actually make a difference for the providers and the nurses so that they can see the change, but trying to engage them in helping us guide that work. And part of that is using these processes, but then showing them the success and trying to celebrate that success a little bit, telling them the why. I mean, the lights that go on when you explain to somebody why you’re asking them to do one additional step, which is, I mean, if you think about it, if you’re seeing twelve to 15 patients a day, it’s 15 additional steps in their day, which is already overburdened. But there’s been a couple times where I’ve been talking to providers about the expected day of discharge that we’re asking them to populate so the whole team can see and understand what their thinking is around when the patient might be discharged from the hospital. And they’re like, oh, it’s not just an administrative piece that you want. It actually has a reason behind it. It actually can help others.

Amy Chaumeton:
It will help them because of the communication cascade that occurs from it. And just trying to take little wins slowly to our frontline workers so that they will start to engage in the process. When you start talking to them and explaining the why, you actually get a lot back. And if you can ingest that and then take those problems to root and start to solve them, that’s when we’ll start to see, I think, some success and some increased engagement in our problem solving closer to the front line and.

Katie Anderson:
Starting to build the successes, like try a little bit and then see what happens. And how does that both serve the patient or the customer, but also serve the people doing the work? How does it all connect together? One of the topics that I know well, we’ve explored on the Japan study trip and that Brad Dussaint has also been exploring with you over the last year since he first heard Mister Yoshino talk about it on a previous trip, is the concept of the serious leader and how leaders really, truly have to be serious about leading this type of change. I’m curious to explore with you what have you discovered about what it means as a senior leader to truly be serious? And what steps are you taking to sort of embody that seriousness in your organization? Kecia, why don’t you kick us off?

Kecia Kelly:
You know, I continue to. And Katie, I’m not trying to market your book, okay? But I will tell you that there are books that I have read over my career that just leave imprint in my head. And there is a book that’s called just break all the rules. And it’s a book about managing people according to their strengths. Let me get to your book now. And so it really is learning to lead, leading to learn and this whole concept around serious leadership and those three fundamental statements around, you know, providing, you know, you give direction and support and continuously self develop and developing the people that you serve. So for me, the seriousness around that is understanding that as a senior vice president, there’s only nine of us, but there’s 14,000 caregivers in this organization. And being a serious leader makes me, first of all, I can’t do all the things for 14,000 caregivers.

Kecia Kelly:
So what I’ve been trying to do as a senior leader is really how do we cascade that building that capability with my own direct reports? My direct reports, because if I can build that capability with them around the providing direction and helping them to understand what it means to develop your people and develop yourself, it’s more than just in developing the people, it is around that problem solving and creating that capability for them to really get in that space. Developing yourself is really that learning to understand their work and understand their problems. And so I’m trying to build that capability with my direct reports. And part of my direction around that is creating the expectation that I want you to carry this forward with the leaders that are under you so that they in turn carry that forward. And you talk about that whole chain of learning. That is a chain of learning and that’s how it happens. Right? You know, I can’t just go to Nancy on the front line who’s delivering patient care and I can help her to be a fantastic nurse, but she’s one of 5000 nurses that I represent in this organization. But what I can do is create a chain of learning that allows that to happen where we can impact 5000 nurses.

Kecia Kelly:
And I can tell you, Katie, that it has taken a lot of pressure off of me as a senior leader because you can feel like you just want to boil the ocean and save the world and you can’t do that. But you can do that by creating that intentionality with the people that you serve. So that’s kind of been my reflection around becoming a serious leader. And it is a journey. And I’m just kind of, you know, we just got back in May, so we’re still, it’s a journey and it’ll be a continuous journey that I’m committed to.

Katie Anderson:
So powerful and that concept of intention, it’s like, what’s the impact you want to have? And then what behaviors align with that? And it maybe is counterintuitive, that actually unburdening yourself with the responsibility of solving all the problems and instead creating the conditions actually solves more problems and gives you more space for that. But it can feel counterintuitive when you’re used to being the directive leader who’s sort of stuck in this firefighting mode and getting things done. Amy, how about yourself?

Amy Chaumeton:
There’s two things I see about being a serious leader that I really learned in Japan, to be, frankly, honest. One is around their 1000% conviction. When you have that alignment in the senior leadership team that we saw in most of the companies that we engaged with and watch, it becomes so clear with everything they do that they are aligned in that 1000% conviction for respect of people. And it goes beyond that. Right.

Kecia Kelly:
What was it?

Amy Chaumeton:
I was at one of the companies he talked about, it’s about being not doing and how that was bred into him over generations. And so they’ve been a thousand percent convicted about respecting their employees, taking care of their families, and being there for the community for so long. It’s just. It’s clear in everything that they do, how they follow that line of thinking. So that I think that piece and that, for me, is sort of that intent piece. We had some interesting reflections as a group, and I think that was the other really powerful piece for me, as we do personal reflection on different meetings and thoughts and things that we’re doing, but hearing reflections from our senior leaders, Kecia and Jonathan, on the trip, we embarked a little bit on talking about our mission, how, and that’s where we should be 1000% convicted, around how we interpret it a little bit differently, because we come from different walks of life, we come from different experiences, and that group reflection and how powerful it is to then pull us in together to talk about our mission. With sepsis up for incredible success, which is our people, our patients, our community, our world, above all else, do the right thing, which is very much in line with what we saw with the leaders in Japan. Yet I think we’ve lived it a different way, and so we can talk about it in such a different way now.

Amy Chaumeton:
But I think the main piece being that that group, collective reflection, which is aligning us and creating clarity of that goal so that we can set those expectations and follow through with our organization, is the goldmine right there. So creating that intent and then that respect for people being the most important.

Katie Anderson:
Pieces, so powerful, it’s really pulling together those three parts of what I call leading to learn. And Kisha, you referenced this that came out of my book from a comment Mister Yoshino made, that a leader’s role is really set the direction, that clarity of mission purpose. Where do we need to go? Provide that support and then develop yourself, which is more than just reading a book, which can be helpful as you shared, but really applying that and developing yourself through intentional practice and more. Maybe it’s a good time to transition to talk about the power of coming on this Japan study trip, executive program as a leadership team. So you had three of yourselves as executives. So this chief operating officer, Jonathan Avery, the two of yourselves, and then your two external consultants, who are your coaches and guides on this, you know, this learning journey. Brad and John, you know, a lot. I have a lot of people who come as individual leaders or individual consultants, but the power of coming together was really strong.

Katie Anderson:
You’ve already talked to Amy about, like, being able to have those shared reflections. I’m curious for you. What was you, what was it that led you to make that investment as a leadership team to come together? And then what was the impact on you and the organization of being able to have that experience?

Kecia Kelly:
It was very esoteric and abstract at first. And I’ll be very honest with you, I was like, oh, Japan, it’ll be cool. And, you know, and I, and I literally had this mindset. We’re going to learn about lean, you know, and this is a lean experience. And so that was really the space I was in initially, you know, but thankfully, lots of reading. We had lots of reading assignments. And Brad may have told you, I think that, you know, there was a, you know, I think coming together as an executive team with our coaches is that we had structured learning opportunities prior to the trip. I think we had at least four or five sessions where we just kind of prepared ourselves so we could experience the trip in a way that it didn’t feel like we were just, boom, learning everything for the first time.

Kecia Kelly:
And it could be overwhelming, like, why are we here and what are we doing? So we went, so I can tell you personally, you know, I went into that engagement kind of having a foundational knowledge about what we were going to learn, and so it made things that much more exciting for us. I would, I want to revert back with what Amy said earlier. Kathryn Correa, who is our, she’s our retired CEO now, but our CEO at a time, at the time, what we learned in Japan is what she had been preaching for her entire time she’d been here. And I think that hindsight’s always 2020. This experience may have been good for the senior executive leadership team. Maybe shortly after she joined, it was almost conflicting mindsets around that, but the experience. So she was all in for making this investment because it was a significant investment for legacy to make it nest. But she truly fundamentally believed that the return on the investment for legacy health was going to be infinite.

Kecia Kelly:
So I think that was the power of it. And even coming back from Japan, you know, Brad and John, our coaches have really kept this upfront for us. And I’m going to just manage up Amy, Doctor Shamaton as well, too, because in one of our largest bodies of work, she has kept this forefront in every pieces of our work. I mean, the thousand percent, what she’s talking about. So we have continued to find ways to infuse our learning experience in our current work. And I’ll just say one last thing, is that we have 1000% alignment around some work we’re doing around financial health of the organization. And we’ve seen the beauty of when you have 1000% conviction and alignment, because the likelihood of it being, we know it’s going to be less. But what we need to do and what we’re going to do is apply that to all the work that we’re doing.

Kecia Kelly:
We’ve seen what we can actually visually see when you’re 1000% convicted, what happens. But we know that we have other priorities in the organization where we don’t have a thousand percent conviction as a senior leadership team. And we need to get there, because if we’re not there, it won’t happen and it won’t infuse throughout the organization. So Amy’s laughing at me. Did I say something, Amy?

Amy Chaumeton:
No. I mean, it’s so true. And I think we’ve also talked about the dilution. If the senior team is 1000% convicted, then the next level of leadership may be at 500% conviction and half each way on the way down. And that by the time you get to the frontline workers, it’s not feeling as tangible or as real. And so how important it is that you start with that absolute 1000% conviction with the senior team supporting those initiatives that you’re working on. Powerful.

Katie Anderson:
How did that time together, away from your day to day work and be having this shared learning experience actually help accelerate you towards that alignment and 1000% conviction, not just with the three of you who are on the trip, but influencing the rest of the leadership team?

Amy Chaumeton:
It comes back in almost every piece of our work. I think Keisha and I see it in so many places. I mean, as I watch Kecia in her interactions and her work that she’s doing, I see it everywhere now, and it’s really, it’s incredibly powerful to watch. We’re working on that thousand percent conviction and alignment and clarity and focus for our leadership team on one of our most important initiatives and on the cost containment. You see it in the respect for our employees and our, and our want to bring along our people in a different way. And I, as I say, I mean, if anybody came back and has embodied what we learned, Keisha’s like the, a gold star student.

Katie Anderson:
Keshia, what are some of those, you know, if you think back to maybe six months ago to today, what are some examples, and Amy, too, what are some examples of those behavior shifts that you have made? Knowing this is an ongoing learning journey over many years that you’ve had, but really, like, you know, at the beginning of the year to now, what are some shifts that you’ve made in how you show up with your teams or at work to demonstrate that you are this serious convicted leader?

Kecia Kelly:
You know, it’s, I’ve gone through some, another kind of development program around being a leader, and it’s all about being and not necessarily doing. I feel more courageous and convicted in the work that we’re engaged in. And I say that because my lens through which, how we’re focusing on work, first of all, it’s not even about me, right? I mean, I get a benefit from it, but it’s not about, like, how can I make myself better and how I cannot be a great person person. It’s this magnitude of servitude or servant leadership towards the people that you’re serving. And I never claim to be a servant leader, but I do claim to be on the journey to be a servant leader. I see my role as one that is in service of others. So when I approach the work, you know, I carry that lens of being a serious leader in that I’m trying to serve, serve my teams. I may feel like a failure if I’m doing something that’s not in service to them.

Kecia Kelly:
So it’s really been an incredible shift in, I’ve never really been centered around myself, but really in my service to my teams, it’s just taken on a whole different form. And what’s interesting is that you won’t see me touting around, oh, this is where I learned in Japan. You know, it’s not, you know, it’s just because really, honestly, everybody doesn’t want to hear about what you learned in Japan. But it’s, but it’s a reflection of the things that you learned in Japan. So it’s really just how I’m showing up and bringing the entire senior vice president team together along that work. I think having Jonathan and myself there, we are both clearly very strong and accomplished leaders, but we have different styles of leadership. And Melinda as well, too. I know she didn’t attend, but it’s a way of the re showing up on the team, and people can feel it, they can see it, they acknowledge it.

Kecia Kelly:
It’s just kind of fun to see because you can’t really put your finger on it. It’s just that there’s something really serious about moving this work forward, and it’s made me much more courageous in taking on things that actually probably would have scared me in the past.

Katie Anderson:
What’s an example of that? Like, how you’re either being more courageous or something you’re doing a little bit different than you would have done before.

Kecia Kelly:
You know, I can tell you that one of the things that Katherine entrusted me with, and this was prior to the Japan trip, but, you know, I’m a nurse. I’m the nurse. I represent all things nursing, but I also have an accountability for all things pharmacy, and I have an accountability for all things lab. I am not a pharmacist and I’m not a lab person. And those are two perfect examples of. It doesn’t require you to be a pharmacist or a laboratorian to lead. Right. But it’s about, you know, it’s that continuous developing myself to understand that, so I can talk about lab in depth, because that’s one that’s really just so far out of my comfort zone.

Kecia Kelly:
It’s just completely out there. But I have continued just to find ways to learn all things lab. It is. It is. It is a state of continuous learning, but there’s also a state of humility. I mean, I can tell you there are some times that I don’t even understand. It’s like you’re speaking an entirely different. I don’t get it.

Kecia Kelly:
But I have the courage to say, you know what? I really don’t understand that. And I need a little bit more time for you to help me to understand that so that, because if I don’t understand it, I can’t support the work. I can’t lead the work if I don’t understand it. So there’s this vacillation between being humble and just continuously learning. And that’s one where I’ve said, and I mean, I think it was, I was with our Labcorp executives. I think a week before last. And I was so lost that, like, I had a headache and I went home and I went to bed. I just did.

Kecia Kelly:
But I talked to the senior vice president the next day, and I said, listen, I said, there’s some things that we discussed yesterday that I absolutely have no clue what you said. And so he took some time with me and helped me to understand what he was trying to explain. And then I got it. And so now I feel that much more empowered and knowledgeable that I can support that work moving forward. And so that’s a change for me. And it is that thing around that self development that created the capacity for me to do that.

Katie Anderson:
Katie, powerful. Amy, how about one example for you on that?

Amy Chaumeton:
I gave you an example in a microcosm of like, a three s, right? So prior to the trip, you might be working on an a three with somebody you’re leading and just take it off and do it. And after talking to Mister Yoshino about developing your people and taking the time to let them learn, instead of using that reflex from the experience you had and the knowledge that you have, but letting them do the self discovery. So that, again, it’s that sustainable change that Kecia referred to earlier is taking the time to do that, which is really hard in healthcare, because, like, it’s a fast and furious industry that is changing all the time. And we’re trying to keep up, and there’s issues to solve, and you want to keep moving. But that investment in your people to develop them and create the skills there, it will be longer lasting and sustainable.

Katie Anderson:
It’s not just in healthcare that I see this. It’s across all industries, this pressure to get results. And so a three is a problem solving format that was introduced in Toyota. And I talk about it in my book, but I see this not just in healthcare, but other organizations, too, where it feels easier for leaders just to give the answer or take over the problem solving process, because you know, you know how, you already know how to get there, and you can get there faster. So it’s this trade off between time and speed and getting to the answer that you think might be the right answer versus developing the capability. And as leaders, you really have to make that, make that trade off. But again, you’re going to, you’re then burdening yourself with all that problem solving that Keisha was talking about and not able to do all the other things. So that I see, as such, the tension of leadership, of, like, how do you set the direction and then not take over all the problem solving, even in this sense of, you know, all the stress and chaos and the need to get results.

Katie Anderson:
The results get there because of the process and the people. I have one final question for you both about if you were talking to other senior leaders, regardless if they’re in healthcare or other industries, what is one piece of advice that you have for how to take a step forward in being a more serious leader about creating this sort of high performing, people centered learning organization that gets results?

Amy Chaumeton:
I mean, for me, it would be around that 1000% conviction and taking the time to explore that you’re all on the same page as to what that really means and asking the curious questions to take a deeper dive and not take wherever you’re going with your thousand percent conviction as sort of that surface level piece, but really understanding the depths of it, because you could see that. And it really struck me that not only is it about respect for people and developing people, it’s about how those people can then take care of their families and subsequently how that then rolls up to taking care of a community that’s not just respecting people, it’s much more.

Kecia Kelly:
I love that. Amy, you said a couple of things I was going to say. Yeah, but I would say, Katie, is that, you know what I would tell leaders? It’s not about you. It is not about you. These roles are, as Amy said, which I wanted to add, is that when you’re serving a team and leading a team of people, you are leading them and their families and remembering that. So I think that’s one thing that I think is important. But I would just go back to just this commitment to finding ways to build capability, make sure you’re not the one being the problem solver. There’s nothing more exhausting than people just opening up trash on your desk and asking you to sift through it and solve it.

Kecia Kelly:
And so it’s exhausting as a leader. And so I would say that your success is defined in your ability to develop your teams and your leaders and to be able to develop the next leader below that level and to develop that. That is how your success is defined, and that’s how you will have the most gratitude and satisfaction as a leader. And I really do think that it is a perfect recipe to prevent burnout at this level as a senior executive by building that capability within your teams. And honestly, Katie, I’m going to tell you that I have really enjoyed that freedom since coming back from Japan. It is an incredible freedom that I have, and it brings me joy to just see that how the leaders on my team have evolved and are becoming more of some of that capability. I’m starting to see that, and that brings me gratitude. So that’s what I would share with other leaders.

Katie Anderson:
That’s fantastic. And I guess I have one more bonus question for you. We talked earlier about how you can learn in many ways, and that development is, of course, first and foremost about how are you applying and practicing in the work you’re doing. But also having experiences can help you accelerate on that learning journey. And one of which was a big investment that you and your leadership team made to come to Japan as a group, as a leadership cohort. What would you say to any other leader who’s on this journey and sort of on the fence about whether or not they can or should make the investment in going on a Japan study trip with me? What would you say to them?

Kecia Kelly:
I think that a lot of times, in the world of lean, I think people think they’re like experts in that space of leading and leading in a lean environment. Having a point of self reflection, and I can just tell you that I actually did the audible, the book of your learning to lead, leading to learning, and I actually had the. And it was really good for me because it was just playing in my ear, and I could hear your voice and Mr. Yoshino’s voice. But I can tell you that that allowed me to do a personal reflection and assessment of where I was. And it really opened up for me that I have a lot to learn. And I think that sometimes people may think that a trip to Japan is like, “Oh, I don’t need to go there. I already know what I need to do. That’s just a trip to Japan.”

Kecia Kelly:
I think that. And I’m not saying that maybe it’s other books that are like yours or other readings or moments, but I think there needs to be a point of really kind of self reflection. And I felt like the book really forced me to really reflect. And what it did is it created the capacity for me to want to learn. I probably would have wanted to try and find my own money to go had legacy not made that investment in me, because I really felt that much value in it. And the sushi that I didn’t eat was good.

Katie Anderson:
No.

Amy Chaumeton:
Any. It’s so hard to say what we learned and saw, but the ideal condition that I might have seen prior to our visit is very different than the ideal condition that I would see after the visit. And it’s so much better, and there’s so much more happiness and joy. It’s inexplicable in some ways. I mean, I really have struggled to explain to people sort of the. That joy and happiness that we saw in the workplace and how the people. I mean, you look at inafoods and how they come to work early, and they have created this beautiful park that hundreds of thousands of people come to each year, and they help manicure it and keep it clean and beautiful, and. And they just.

Amy Chaumeton:
They do that because it’s a gift to the community and how the kids in the school, they clean the school and the teachers didn’t intervene. You can tell the stories, but actually seeing it is so much more. And my ideal condition is so much more clear and happy and joyful than it would have been before the trip.

Katie Anderson:
That’s beautiful. And it all goes back to, how do we create, like, joy? And that’s the holding precious. What it means to be human enough foods that you mentioned is, like, happiness is their purpose. And of course, they need business results and all of that, too, but they lead with happiness. So what if we moved healthcare to leading with joy and health? And how would that shift everything? So thank you both for being such serious and joyful leaders. It was a pleasure to host you in Japan and to get to know you. And this is, is not the end of our learning journey and our relationship together. I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Lean Solutions Summit next month in September of 2024 in Michigan, and continuing to support each other as we continue to build this chain of learning together.

Amy Chaumeton:
Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Katie.

Katie Anderson:
Being serious as a leader is the key to getting the results that you need for your customers, be they patients at a hospital or consumers of your service or product. As Kecia and Amy highlighted, leadership is about solving problems, but it’s about first focusing on people, your people, and helping them take ownership of solving problems. It’s about creating the conditions for your people to be successful, first by setting a clear direction and then providing support and showing that you care. It’s about committing to your own personal development and being 1000% convicted of the real results your organization needs and how you will help your people. It’s about having clarity on that ideal condition for your organization that transcends a focus purely on getting business results, but instead on how to instill a culture of joy, happiness and humanity to the workplace, so that results and problem solving are the output of engagement and a sense of shared purpose and mission. Reflect on some of the ways that Kecia, Amy and I discussed about how you can demonstrate your seriousness as a leader, whether you’re an executive or a change leader, coaching senior leaders to create an organization that gets results through a focus on people and learning. Go to Gamba, the place that work happens, not just to check on processes, but to show that you care about people. Ask more questions and give space for learning.

Katie Anderson:
Unburden yourself from the responsibility of having to solve every problem. What I call break the telling habit, which you can learn more about in episode 13 and focus more on being and less on doing. How are you showing up as a leader rather than getting overwhelmed by the busyness and firefighting that can get in your way, which I explored in detail in episode four of this podcast. As you reflect, identify one way that you’re going to focus on developing yourself over the next month as a leader leading change whether you’re a senior leader, team leader, or continuous improvement practitioner, write down the action you want to demonstrate. Set your intention for practice for each day, and reflect at the end of how you showed up and what you’re learning. Remember, it’s the process of being committed, seriously committed, to developing yourself and to learning that is the foundation for organizational change. It’s about how you are growing your chain of learning with intention and conviction. If you’re ready to take your leadership to the next level, either as an individual change leader executive or a leadership cohort in the same organization, join me for one of my upcoming immersive Japan study trip leadership development programs.

Katie Anderson:
As Kecia and Amy highlighted the opportunity to step away from your day to day work, to invest in your leadership development individually and as a team, and to see how leaders are applying these leadership principles in action is an investment that will have an exponential impact on you, your teams, and your organization. To learn more and submit your application, go to kbjanderson.com japantrip. I’ll put the links to this and other resources mentioned in this episode in the show notes, as well as information of how to connect with my guests, Doctor Kecia Kelly and Doctor Amy Chomason. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow and subscribe now to chain of learning and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Thanks for being a link in my chain of learning today. I’ll see you next time. Have a great day.