With staffing shortages increasing, this SVP provides characteristics on how executives can improve their leadership for a better working environment.
Kerry Shannon serves as the senior vice president and chief integration officer for Seattle-based Virginia Mason Franciscan Health.
Ms. Shannon will serve on the panel "What Service Lines to Add, What to Drop Next Year" at Becker's 10th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference on Nov. 7-10 in Chicago.
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Becker's Healthcare aims to foster peer-to-peer conversation between healthcare's brightest leaders and thinkers. In that vein, responses to our Speaker Series are published straight from interviewees. Here is what our speakers had to say.
Question: What is the smartest thing you've done in the last year to set your system up for success?
KS: The smartest thing I've done is continued to help people connect to what brought them to the care environment and emphasize the team's strength. The vast majority of our patients have their lives changed for the better every day and we try not to lose sight of what our amazing clinicians and support staff contribute.
Q: What are you most excited about right now and what makes you nervous?
KS: Staffing continues to make me nervous, which is no surprise. I remain excited by my colleagues, who are as committed as they are creative. This industry continues to reveal the caliber of people drawn to the provider environment and challenges are always met, especially when we work together.
Q: How are you thinking about growth and investments for the next year or two?
KS: We have to be both targeted and realistic regarding growth — looking unemotionally at our strengths and the characteristics of our markets. The winners will fully appreciate the workforce as well as the disrupters and invest accordingly. Wishful thinking is not a helpful companion right now.
Q: What will healthcare executives need to be effective leaders for the next five years?
KS: Healthcare executives need high emotional intelligence, a sense of urgency, agility and a sense of humor to be effective leaders.
Q: How are you building resilient and diverse teams?
KS: Our organization is eighteen months into a transaction. Great timing, right? Our CEO has focused on ensuring we have true teams rather than collections of individuals by fostering a sense of purpose with patients and our colleagues at the center every day. We embrace and seek all kinds of diversity in very tangible ways. Diversity of thought is considered important and fostered, not assumed because we have other types of diversity.