In this episode of Elevate Care, host Kerry Perez dives into the dynamic world of healthcare leadership with Cory Geffre, MSMSL BSN, RN, Executive Vice President of Hospital Operations and Chief Nursing Officer at Altru Health. Cory takes us on his inspiring journey from bedside nursing to the executive suite, sharing hard-earned lessons and actionable insights along the way. Discover the five essential pillars of leadership—developing people, managing performance, building teams, improving operations, and achieving results—and how they can transform not just your leadership style but your entire organization. Cory also opens up about the power of self-awareness, the importance of empathy, and why continuous learning is the secret sauce for staying ahead in the ever-evolving healthcare industry. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, this episode is packed with wisdom, real-world strategies, and a refreshing dose of honesty about the challenges and opportunities in healthcare leadership.
In this episode of Elevate Care, host Kerry Perez dives into the dynamic world of healthcare leadership with Cory Geffre, MSMSL BSN, RN, Executive Vice President of Hospital Operations and Chief Nursing Officer at Altru Health. Cory takes us on his inspiring journey from bedside nursing to the executive suite, sharing hard-earned lessons and actionable insights along the way.
Discover the five essential pillars of leadership—developing people, managing performance, building teams, improving operations, and achieving results—and how they can transform not just your leadership style but your entire organization. Cory also opens up about the power of self-awareness, the importance of empathy, and why continuous learning is the secret sauce for staying ahead in the ever-evolving healthcare industry.
Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, this episode is packed with wisdom, real-world strategies, and a refreshing dose of honesty about the challenges and opportunities in healthcare leadership.
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About Cory Geffre
Cory Geffre, MSMSL BSN, RN, is the executive vice president of hospital operations and chief nursing officer at Altru, providing executive leadership for the organization and oversight of nursing practices, clinical services, and evidence-based patient care services. Geffre’s passion is building dynamic, diverse and engaged teams that deliver consistent high-quality healthcare to patients. Geffre has over 22 years of experience in healthcare leadership, business development and operational efficiency.
Speaker 2 (00:00.14)
Welcome to Elevate Care. I'm your host, Kerry Perez, and this is going to be a great episode. If you are a healthcare leader, if you want to be a healthcare leader, if you're working with healthcare leaders, that is what we're talking about today. And I'm thrilled to have with us cory Geffrey, the Executive Vice President of Hospital Operations and Chief Nursing Officer at Altroup Health. cory, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Kerry. Super excited about our conversation today.
Me too. So I have your bio here, but I always think it's nice to kind of hear directly, you know, from you. Tell us a little bit about your journey, what you're doing and kind of how you ended up where you are today.
Yeah, I love that. Thanks for that opportunity. I got my start in healthcare where I hope that many people have the opportunity to, which was a bedside nurse's aide and a long-term care facility. It was the highest paying job you get as a college dropout, which is what I was at that time. And in just a couple of weeks, I just fell in love with being able to take care of people and realize that this was probably the career path for me.
And so I went to school to become a licensed practical nurse and LPN, worked as an LPN, why I became an RN, worked as an RN, then really took a 25 year break from school, why I did all sorts of things inside of healthcare, outside of healthcare, then got my bachelor's degree and my master's degree. And so I've just had this whole journey, which I really love. I kind of call it grassroots or the blue collar journey into nursing, stumbled into leadership.
Speaker 1 (01:28.224)
along the way where someone was like, we really think that you have an opportunity to turn this department around. That's just been a train wreck for years and years. I declined four or five times. Eventually they wore me down and I had an opportunity to really find what I feel I was kind of called to do in healthcare in its help lead people who are taking care of patients. And that's kind of the fast track version of my story in healthcare from bedside to now the C-suite.
And how important do you think it was to have gone through all of those different components to get to where you are today?
Yeah, personally, it was foundational. Like, even going back, I would want to do all those steps again. And then also just, you know, professionally, as an executive, it does add credibility that most of the roles that I'm responsible for leading, I've had. And I know what it's like. And yeah, in some cases, it's been a couple of decades since I was there. But in most cases, I understand the core functions of the work.
That is so important. mean, I feel a little bit parallel in that there's an opportunity when you sort of work in the business, in the belly of the beast, and then on the business, and it just does derive that much more credibility to kind of say, I know exactly what that feels like. So excited to have you here to talk about this important topic. So leadership, as you even just described, walking through everything that you went through in order to get to leadership, it's incredibly complex. So what do you think?
like what makes a leader truly effective in this space and what are some of those qualities that kind of rise to the top for you.
Speaker 1 (03:07.788)
Yeah, when we really think about leadership, think the reason that there's, you know, so many books and so many gurus and so many conversations around it is it really boils down to me like one kind of statement. It's imperfect people leading imperfect people trying to get a perfect result. So just looking at that equation, this is an impossible scenario. And so all we can do is have people who are trying their best, helping people who are trying their best.
to get the best result possible. And so in order to be able to do it as a leader, the most important thing is that at no point can it be about you. So I see like the core foundation element for leadership is self-awareness and not just normal self-awareness, like, hey, yeah, yeah, I know. No, I mean painful levels of self-awareness. understanding the dark side of the moon in your life, the things that...
you know, make you angry and you aren't quite sure why and things that make you emotional, you aren't quite sure why. As a leader, you have to unpack those and you have to know all of those details because when you're having conversations and leading people and tensions are tough, you have to be sure that your own emotions and, you know, issues don't become an obstacle to achieving the result that you want. So I would say that's the first thing, Carrie, is painful levels.
of self-awareness.
And you know, that can be a very personal journey. Do you have any sort of recommendations for how people go about doing that? Or it is truly, you know, a personal way in which you figure that out.
Speaker 1 (04:42.902)
I think that if you ever feel that you've got it, you probably don't have it. every time, it's just a constant self-exploration. I was at a point in my leadership career kind of right when COVID started that I was like, I got this, like the executive path, like this is cool, I was built for this. And then I realized that the stresses of COVID for the first time in my life really tried to derail me.
where I couldn't unwind at home and I was losing sleep and I was really getting all of the symptoms that they talk about for burnout and I had to check myself. I was like, wait a minute, I didn't completely know myself. I wasn't completely self-aware. And so I think it's a constant journey. I don't think that there's an ending point that this is a race that you're always running.
That resonates with me too, some of what you were saying. There's an element of humility, you being willing to say, at any point I could get knocked off, whether it is something I'm dealing with personally or something professionally, and kind of having that ego death to be able to say, hey, I'm not perfect, which is going back to what you said about imperfect people, leading other imperfect people, expecting a perfect result. It's a difficult equation.
So with that, you have identified five essential pillars of leadership. Can you give us a high-level overview what they are, sort of how they work together?
Yeah, I really spent a long time trying to help leaders with a roadmap. We just get handed this group of people and it's usually in disarray. And like, what do you do every day? Is staffing and scheduling and payroll? Yeah, those are some of the tasks, but globally, bigger, what does this look like? And so we try to put those down into more digestible pieces and a little bit bigger buckets. And so come up with really five key areas. And the first one being developing people.
Speaker 1 (06:35.254)
The second one being managing performance and number three being building teams and that clump is all about people, right? That's where you're just focusing on your people trying to help them become the best versions of themselves and really get a dynamic where you can be successful. And then the last two are probably where leaders spend most of their time, but you can't spend time there if you haven't also spent time in the first three areas and that's improving operations and achieving results.
And ultimately, when you reach certain levels of leadership, you're really held accountable for only the fifth component or the fifth element, achieving results. And if you only focus on that, the rest of this will eventually fall apart. This is one of those things where I almost tell people as a leader, you have to juggle five chainsaws at the same time. And if at any point you spend too much focus on one chainsaw, bad things are going to happen.
And so focusing on the people aspect and then focusing on kind of the results on the output aspect, that's a real quick version of those five elements I like to focus on.
You know, to be able to get to these five pillars and even as you were just talking about what could fall apart, a little bit of inside baseball, I'm sure there was some trial and error in summarizing into just these five pillars. Can you talk about that process and to how you kind of narrowed these down?
Yeah, it's really interesting. We're going to go back to COVID. It all comes back to COVID. I had made a commitment early in 2019 that I wanted to publish a book. And I set a goal to publish a book by the end of 2020. So I was really in the throes of brainstorming and putting things down. And then obviously my role as kind of the lead clinical leader of a hospitals going through COVID made me put this aside.
Speaker 1 (08:30.774)
And it was disappointing at that moment, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise because there are a couple of elements that I thought belonged in this framework that actually got removed when you had the pressure test of 12, 18, 24 months of really having an opportunity to look at this. And so it was fantastic for me when once again, I was able to say, all right, let's take this thing to the finish line. Let's complete this book. And I had a whole new perspective.
and had additional confidence that this wasn't something that could only be successful in a vacuum of where I was, that had been pressure tested against a global pandemic. And so, yes, I'm glad that things worked out the way that they did. And I'm one of these people who said like COVID was tragic and deeply affected some people's lives. As a leader, that was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
to really lead at that level. were getting 10 years of experience every week, much less every year. And so if you really embrace that, there was an opportunity. And for me, it really helped me dial into these little kind of touches or glimpses of what burnout looks like for me and how I need to be sure that I'm looking at that a little bit further ahead than I was before, as opposed to waiting till it happened, seeing it around the corner. So yes, COVID pressure tested these and just
made me feel really great about this framework.
Excellent. Well, let's kind of get into that first pillar you were talking about, developing people, managing performance. How can health care leaders actively develop their teams? It's a generic question that I'm sure can get answered a million ways, but I know that you've got some specific things from the framework perspective.
Speaker 1 (10:13.826)
Yeah, it's really important that leaders realize that they can't be better than their team members. know, leaders are the coach and you're on the sideline, you're trying to get everything going and if you don't have the talent that you need, then you can't be successful. And so that's why it's so important that you're focusing on developing those teammates, know, helping them become better. So again, taking yourself out of the equation, focusing on the talent deficits. Don't just think along the lines of somebody's...
Good or not good, think about what are their unique talents and skill sets. Everyone has them. I think even the people that we label the lowest performing employee have some level of talent or skill set that's unique to them. Can I use it? Can I maximize it? If not, then maybe we have to move on. Sometimes it's just moving people around in roles or giving them more of the thing that fills their bucket and really matches up with their unique skill set.
And so it's really doing an independent talent assessment. As a leader, there's a trap of listening to what other people have said about leaders. They used to do this and one time they did this and you need to not focus on that. You need to really look at it from your leadership lens. You can listen to those things, but don't allow them to become permanent placeholders of who somebody was or who somebody is. So be sure that you're doing your own talent assessment.
That would be kind of the first step that I would say when you're at developing people, really looking at that talent assessment and then realizing your results, element five, can't be better than your team, your developing people, which is really element one.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, you know, that assessment, do you have strategies, tools, you frameworks to help people think through that or things that you found as kind of your best practice?
Speaker 1 (12:07.406)
Yeah, there's just a couple of little steps along the way. It's really difficult to come up with an assessment that one size fits all. think I've probably like you in my role have taken every personality assessment that exists. And I have more information on myself, but I don't know that it really helps me with my day-to-day work. There's one exception, which we'll talk about a little bit later, of an assessment that I really like. But yes, I think walking through, and as a leader,
Everyone needs a little bit different assessment. think leadership isn't painting with a broad brush across a whole bunch of people. Some people have too much confidence that you got to tone down. Other people don't have enough confidence that you have to turn up. You can't address those the same way. So it's really this individual talent assessment that you need to do on your team. Now that's difficult if you have 80 team members. So you're going to have to break it down into smaller chunks and be sure that you're really evaluating your leaders.
your leader of leaders, but as many of your team members as possible, start with the high performers and then work your way through the rest of the team.
Well, really like the objective approach and what you said too about trying not to have your opinion be influenced by others or especially folks who have been maybe with the organization for a long time. It's hard to break out of, you know, maybe who you started as and as you continue to try and grow, have people look at you in that light as, you know, not the entry level person as you started as, but as that person who is poised and ready for leadership. So I really appreciate that.
Yeah, I that, Kerry. Thanks.
Speaker 2 (13:41.568)
Yeah, what I like about this topic too is that it really is helpful, you know, in any industry. But as we're kind of moving through this and maybe even starting with developing people or if you want to carry it through, anything healthcare specific that you think is a little bit more nuanced than, you know, some of general leadership principles. And if that's, and if not, that's okay too, because like I said, it's great that this can be used everywhere.
Yeah, I do think in healthcare, there are a of voices. So there are different specialties and certifications, the Emergency Nurses Association, the Intensive Care, and there all of these different voices who are all sharing their thoughts and opinions for best practice. And I don't believe that any of them are wrong, but when you overlay all of their recommendations across every position of the hospital, it just becomes logistically impossible and in many cases,
financially impossible. And so I think healthcare has some catches because every week I'm emailed three to five white papers that say that there's something that we should be doing differently. And I don't think that they're wrong. And the vacuum of that subject, the white paper, it's great evidence there. We should really evaluate it. But in the vortex of the entire work of leadership, it may not be able to be applied, even if it would be better or best practice. And that's a delicate dance.
as a leader that I find myself doing is probably the tap dance that I have to do the most. Evidence says X, we're doing Y, how do you sleep at night? And it's really understanding that all of these factors are at play in our jobs and navigate through them. So I think that's a little bit more unique to healthcare than some other industries.
I completely agree. That's super helpful. Okay, so the first one we talked about developing people and managing performance. And then your next pillar was around building teams and improving operations. So what role do healthcare leaders play in building resilient teams and improving those operations? Especially, know, this sub bullet point here, when faced with staffing or workflow challenges.
Speaker 1 (15:46.102)
Yeah, you know for me the acknowledgement has to be that healthcare is broken. If you think that the particularly US healthcare system is as good as it needs to be and people just need to try harder and work harder, I think this gets a little bit more difficult. And I might be disingenuous as well because the data shows that it costs a lot and our results are okay. So I think it's acknowledging that it's broken. And so here's why that's encouraging. If it's broken, it means...
Continuing to apply the same pathways, principles, techniques, policies, procedures, protocols, probably doesn't make sense. We need to be testing and piloting new ways. We need to be trying new things. And that doesn't really match up with healthcare professionals, most of which follow checklists and flow charts and really have these, these kind of algorithms that have been trained and sometimes 20, 30 years ago, it's really, really difficult. you know, to me, the challenge is
us being open to trying everything. Everything's on the table. And if it hasn't been done before, that doesn't automatically exclude it. It actually means we should give it priority for evaluation. And that's a unique mindset and it really is uncomfortable. I describe it as dropping a whole tube of Mentos into a two liter bottle of Coke. There's going to be a reaction, a very strong emotional reaction to people when you're trying to do something.
that there's no evidence in doing, but acknowledging that what we've done for the last 20, 50, 70, 100 years doesn't work, it really opens up the paradigm for us to continue to try new things.
And that must be meaningful for team members who are feeling like things are broken to be heard, that it is acknowledged that, you know, a leader recognizes that as well.
Speaker 1 (17:37.998)
Yes, and telling them every idea is open, right? If the success of this organization required the executive team to be the smartest people in the organization, we wouldn't get where we need to get. The smartest people are those closest to the work at the bedside. And although every idea doesn't work in application, we need to be trying to get every idea. And it is empowering when you do that. But sometimes it's frustrating because they think their idea is the best. And sometimes you can't do all of them. So you have to balance it.
to be sure that people continue to generate new ideas.
In sidebar, sometimes it's just the wrong time for the right idea. How do you think about when an idea might have been presented in the past and it didn't work, but it doesn't mean that it should be forever forgotten about in the future?
Yes, this is great. So I am kind of have this inventive personality, which is why I get so much energy out of solving problems in healthcare. And so I come up with a lot of ideas and arguably some of them are bad. Some of them are good and many of them fit into this maybe not yet category. And I've been fortunate enough to work for a CEO two different times now who really did a great job of managing this for me. It's language that I use with people now. I'm like, I think that's potentially a great idea.
Can we put it in the parking lot for now? And I promise that we'll bring it out of the parking lot and take another look at it later. And then establishing what that cadence is, if it's six months, nine months, maybe it's three months, but then keeping those commitments to pulling those ideas out of the parking lot. I think that that gives people the inspiration that they need to continue to generate ideas that not everything's vetoed and not everything's approved, but some things maybe just aren't quite ready for prime time and we should put them in the parking lot.
Speaker 1 (19:18.03)
and evaluate it when the environment changes. And for ideas put in the parking lot before 2020, some of those need to come out of the parking lot and be test driven again, because the whole world in healthcare changed for three plus years. And so those ideas that may seem silly, having as many people work from home as possible, that didn't seem like it would work in healthcare. And all of sudden after COVID, we discovered that there were a lot of roles that could be done effectively from home. That's an example of an idea that came out of the parking lot.
and was actually applied with great success across many organizations.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. So, you you said the first step was kind of admitting that things are broken, you know, being able to be open to ideas. Are there any other things within the building teams and improving operations that you want to speak to or any other strategies or tools in this pillar?
Yeah, really with building teams, I have found the best tool out there is called the working genius. It's actually Patrick Lincioni. He's one of my favorite gurus to look at. He has this, and it's a different than a personality profile. It actually talks about how people work, what kind of work brings them joy. That's a mandatory assessment for anybody who's on my team. I actually ask colleagues, peers who don't report to me.
If they'll take the assessment just so I can understand a little bit more with working with them, that to me has revolutionized some longstanding frustrations. I'm an inventor by the working genius and I've always been frustrated by having people on my teams who couldn't come up with new ideas. Well, I realized for them that invention was actually something that frustrated them. And so rather than being disappointed, I'm like, hey, that's my role. I'm going to put that cap on.
Speaker 1 (21:08.204)
I'm going to come up with ideas and you all are going to do some of the other steps to make that happen. So would encourage people to look at that. There's a book associated with that. There's an assessment. I don't have any financial interest in that other than I'm just passionate about it it's a tool that I use with all of my teams.
Yeah, I'll definitely take a look at that too. you know, in the kind of business speak, I often think of frameworks of like, are you a builder or are you an optimizer? And sometimes you can be both, but it is interesting to sort of find out who gets energy from starting with a blank sheet of paper and coming up with net new, and who gets energy from refining a process. And both are important, but people might not be both. like, let people sort of self-identify so you can foster
What is making them tick?
Absolutely, I love that. When people connect to the work that brings them joy, they will work endlessly and tirelessly on that project. When it's something that frustrates people, they just are annoyed right away and disengaged and burnt out. And so I think a lot of the burnout that we're facing is people don't have enough time to do the things that really bring them joy at work. Not just talking about things at home, but what brings you joy at work? There's something for all of us.
It's just important that we find what that is.
Speaker 2 (22:26.094)
Excellent. Okay, and so all of this is great. We come to work because we like it, but we also need to achieve some results. So how do high-performing leaders drive real, measurable outcomes and keep their teams aligned and motivated through it all?
The other reality is if we don't achieve results, then we have to update our resumes. That's the way that this goes. And so we can't forget about this. can't dismiss it. And I think it's really important to have a pathway to do this. I'm a huge fan of daily huddles where you really declare what did you accomplish basically in the last day or week? What are you going to accomplish in the next day or week? That's not standard work. It's not scheduling meetings. It's not checking emails. It's not finishing payroll. It's something above and beyond.
that's gonna drive us towards a large organizational goal. And once you do that and people get used to it, it's really awkward at first. People say, I've had this on my to-do list for months and months and months, and it wasn't until I declared a commitment in front of my peers that I was able to move that forward. And it's weird me on this call suggesting that people have other resources, but the resource that I use for this is Four Disciplines of Execution. It's the best book that I've seen for getting stuff done.
It's really successful. There's a roadmap in there of how to have these huddles and exactly what they look like. I use that with my team and we've been able to really get some good results with that, Kerry.
Mm-hmm. That's great, cory, and not to put you on the spot, but do you have a kind of in-the-can, maybe example of how you've kind of applied some of these principles and achieved some results that would bring it to life even more?
Speaker 1 (24:02.188)
Yeah, there's so many examples that I'm proud of. I think the one that I'm most proud of is that my current organization, we reduced serious safety events by 80 % over the last five years. Went from an organization that had way too many to an organization where people are like, wait a minute, how are you guys doing that? And it was through these daily huddles and making commitments and moving from quality and safety events
being things that we just have to live with, to actually saying zero is possible because we make it a minute without an issue, an hour, a day, a week, a month. And therefore it's not about that it's impossible. It's about can we put together, you know, 365 days? Can we put together, you know, 10 or 12,000 hours? We can do this. We can be successful in entering into the equation that zero is the goal, not
not just a little bit better than last year, but zero is the goal and we already have evidence that we can do this. And I put up the Ted Lasso believe sign in my office and I told everybody the difference between who we are and who we want to be is that word. And as soon as we believe that we can improve this situation in our organization, we had a crystal clear pathway to do it. We started to see results and they were shocking when they first came. People were like, wait a minute.
You must have missed something. The data's wrong. We couldn't have improved that fast, but we did. And it's probably one of my favorite stories because that's what this is about. If you can't be high quality in healthcare, then what are you doing? That really has to be your true north.
That's huge. mean, an 80 % improvement, that's amazing. So I guess from a soft skill standpoint, there's a lot of things that could be kind of not imperceptible, but sort of hard to teach. What are some of those sort of like special sauce things that a leader should have to get people motivated to want to even embark on the journey of change?
Speaker 1 (26:11.01)
Yeah, there's this skill and I think that you probably get it as you age. You know, maybe have it as a parent, you maybe have it as a spouse, but you know, really understanding what people are saying when they're not saying it, right? Like people talk around a subject. like, I can't understand what you're saying you're upset about and the level that you're upset or a mismatch for me. Like I'm missing something as opposed to
Just being at, they didn't bring it to me, so it can't be an issue. No, no, no. There's something there. So I think learning how to ask great questions, that's probably the thing that the people reported to me have said, probably the best compliment is you always ask great questions. And so I'm trying to get to the heart of it. And I think as a leader, you have to continuously dig.
So I use it as difference between push notifications and pull notifications. So you think about on your phone, the pull notification, do you go out and say, hey, are there any email for me? And then your phone will load. Push notifications, they're coming in a real time. And so I tell everybody, don't wait just for your team to push you stuff. You should go out and pull. You should have a process in which they push, but you should go out and pull. Is there anything? How is this working? I haven't heard anybody talk about staffing concerns in a little bit. I know that there are some.
What am I not hearing? What am I missing? And being willing to take your public opinion bath, that's probably the second thing is, you know, as an executive, have to go, I make decisions that people don't like. I can hide in my office, I can hide from them. Or when I make a tough decision, if I go and stand in front of the team and say, hey, I'll take your feedback, maybe got it wrong, here's the why, and you continue to show up day after day, after a little bit, they stop being mad about it. And they actually appreciate that.
you were kind of faced the music and took the feedback. And I think a lot of times leaders are scared of that. But once you can push through that, all of sudden I hear about things from frontline staff, sometimes before my leaders have a chance to get it to me. It's because I stay connected to the work and I'm willing to take that public opinion bath frequently. That's Abraham Lincoln leadership lesson. Take your public opinion bath daily.
Speaker 1 (28:28.862)
And I think it's important that you do that. think those are a couple of things that I put in that soft skills category that you mentioned.
Yeah, no, that's super important. Just maybe pulling on that a little bit more. How do you kind of balance empathy with achieving results? In healthcare, empathy is important. It's important everywhere, but it sometimes can be a little bit of a hard balance.
Yeah, you know, being a clinician, and particularly I got my start in the emergency room, I remember the day that things changed for me and meeting people where they are is had a patient in one room was a three-year-old girl with a facial laceration. And the next room was an 85-year-old gentleman who was going to die in the emergency room. And if you were to look at the reactions,
of the families associated with that, the new parents, you would have not been able to tell who had a loved one that was gonna die today. And I realized that I could just stand back and judge and say, get over it, it's a little scar. Or I can meet them where they were and say, this is their worst day ever. And so how can I meet them where they are? And so I think that not only in healthcare or leadership, just in life, the gap that exists between you and other people is where
miscommunication and judgment and bias and all those things that we want to get rid of live. If you just step in and meet them where they are and leave yourself behind, I think that's how you get there. You get there as a leader, you get there as a clinician, you get there as an executive, is just meet people where they are and stop asking them to come to where you are. And I think if you can somehow manage to do that, you will have all the information, you will have great success.
Speaker 1 (30:19.198)
and people will be comfortable talking to you and working for you.
that was such a great example. That actually gave me chills just even thinking about that, walking into that room and you you as a clinician understanding what the score is, but you know, hey, that is somebody's first time at the ER with their precious cargo they've just been carrying for nine months. yes. So you started speaking about it a little bit with maybe some of your, you know, soft traits, but if there's healthcare leaders who want to level up,
Maybe they're stepping into a new role or leading through change. You what's one piece of advice that you'd give them?
Yeah, always be learning. You know, there's so much information at our fingertips, whether it's a great podcast like this for a commute, whether it's a three or five minute YouTube video, like just invest in yourself. You know, you can mindlessly scroll on the social media apps that give us information that's not value, or you can invest in yourself and don't even think about it for yourself. Become a better version of yourself for your team. So just consistently commit to micro learning a little bit each day.
None of us are as good as we can be, so every day we should try to become a little bit better version of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (31:30.67)
I like that. And then you'll get to that 0 % infraction rate if you're just 1 % better each day and you kind of bridge that gap with believing that you can to your point. Absolutely. did we not talk about that we should have?
Geez, I don't know, we had a nice little journey here. mean, I could talk for days on this stuff because I'm so passionate about sharing with people. But I think we covered a lot for people to chew on and digest and think about and maybe challenge some of their existing paradigms. So really happy with our conversation. I hope you are as well.
I am too. Maybe just to summarize it up as a nice little sound bite again, do you want to list out those five pillars for being an effective healthcare leader?
Yeah, absolutely. So develop your people. You're going to have them. So spend a little bit of time and investigate in them. And then manage the performance. Be sure that you don't let low performers continue to bring the bar down. And then build a team and build a team that understands and is working towards a goal and is aligned toward the organizational goal. And then help make the work better. That's what improving operations is about. It's not as good as it could be. Policies, procedures, practices are outdated.
Challenge them make them better and then if you do those four things well the fifth one will happen But you still have to focus on it. You have to have a crystal clear Objective and you need to be sure that people have daily accountability towards achieving those results put that together Rinse wash repeat every day keep juggling those chainsaws You'll be successful as a leader. There's a lot other pieces in there, but those are the big buckets buckets Just keep focusing on those and you'll have success
Speaker 2 (33:11.232)
I love that. That's an excellent framework that I think we can take everywhere that we go. And just personally, you come across so authentic, so genuine. I can understand why you would earn trust very easily. just caring about your people being vulnerable and realizing that you yourself are never perfect and this is the human nature. Where else can we learn a little bit more about you or follow more about what you're working on?
Yeah, usually share my thoughts and opinions on LinkedIn. That's where I like just the short little snippets. I'm working on making some videos here in my studio, just my thoughts of the day and my leadership lessons of the day. So those will be available. And then I have a website where people can just connect with me directly. So those are really probably the easiest ways that connect with me, but I would say LinkedIn would be the best.
Okay, awesome. So we'll put that in the notes, but maybe just a quick website plug if you want to say it out loud.
Yeah, so it's my first name, last name, dot com. So it's coryGefrey.com and you'll find that there. You'll be able to find the spelling of my name, relatively unique name. It's not highly utilized. So you'll be able to find that there and would love to see you there or on my LinkedIn page.
cory, thank you so much for joining us today. I had a really great time. Really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1 (34:33.836)
Thank you, Kerry.
Thank you. time. Awesome. And join us next time on Elevate Care. Thank you for joining us today on Elevate Care. If you found this episode valuable, please consider sharing it with a colleague and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. You can learn more about this episode and our show on our website at amnhalphcare.com and follow us on social media to stay updated on new episodes and the ever-changing world of healthcare.