Values-Driven Leadership: A Conversation with Dr. David Schreiner

Dr. David Schreiner is the President and CEO of Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital and the author of a new book, Be the Best Part of Their Day: Supercharging Communication with Values-Driven Leadership.

David draws from his recent book to offer thoughtful leadership advice, but doesn't stop there. He couples the advice with poignant examples helping to really illustrate what a values-driven approach to leading can look like, and more importantly, feel like for your employees.

Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose.

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Transcript

Dr. Leah OH: 0:00

Dr. David Shreiner is the president and CEO of KSB. Hospital and author of be the best part of their day supercharging communication with values driven leadership. After meeting and chatting with Dr. Schreiner it is of no surprise he was the 2007. Dixon, Illinois Citizen of the Year or that he was recognized with the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of St. Francis College of Business. David chats with us about values driven leadership, the importance of asking thoughtful questions, but perhaps more importantly, listening deeply to your team's responses. Hello, and welcome to the communicative leader hosted by me Dr. Leah Omilion-Hodges. My friends call me Dr. OH. I'm a professor of communication and leadership communication expert, and the communicative leader. We're working to make your work life what you want it to be. David, welcome to the communicative leader, you've done so much great work and leadership and communication. And I can't wait to chat with you today. But before we dive in, can you give us a little bit of background on yourself?

Dr. David Schreiner: 1:15

Well, Doctor, oh, I'd share your excitement when I went to your website and I saw your language around intentional communication. You had me at that line, I just love your focus on that. Thank you so much for having me. On the program today. I started my healthcare career as a radiologic technologist. And I fell into that it's if I can tell a really quick story. I finished undergrad and had no idea what I wanted to do. And I was playing pickup basketball at a community college in Kansas. And I met a person that was the director of the X ray program. And he had had a student drop out that prior Friday. And I talked to him and I started the program on Monday, and just fell in love with it from the very beginning. I loved the patients, I loved the environment in the hospital. And then I had the opportunity to work at the University of Kansas Medical Center for a couple of years, a short time in Missouri. And then in 1989, I came to a wedding of my college roommate. And I met a person that was recruiting for the X ray director. I promised my wife we'd be here for two years from the Kansas City area. And now 35 years later, we're still here and I became a CEO in 2011. So I'm working on about 13 years as our president CEO at a small rural hospital in Northwest Illinois called Catherine Chava, Thea or KSB hospital.

Dr. Leah OH: 2:38

And I love I love the the beginning and recognizing I've done this undergrad, I'm not too sure what's next. And it highlights the power of connection of relationships and communication.

Dr. David Schreiner: 2:53

I wouldn't advise that anyone followed my academic approach, I pretty much graduated with an undergraduate degree in track and field and maybe a minor in fraternity and I didn't pay a lot of attention, Dr. O to the academics part. So there weren't a lot of options. How's that sound? Excellent.

Dr. Leah OH: 3:14

Well, I think you have adapted exceedingly, exceedingly well. And now,

Dr. David Schreiner: 3:21

I'm not early mistakes. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 3:23

Right. And that's, that's how we get better. At one thing, I'm so excited about this book that you've written. So it's just about to come out, it's entitled be the best part of their day supercharging communication with values driven leadership. Can you give us a little introduction to the book and maybe some inspiration behind the values driven leadership?

Dr. David Schreiner: 3:47

I would love to, and this started for me. In 2019, I was having lunch with a friend of mine here in Dixon, Illinois. And I was expressing to him that I didn't feel as if I was engaging in a meaningful way with the people that mattered to them, to me the most, whether that was my wife, my kids, our board of directors, our staff, our medical, our medical staff are hourly people here at KSB hospital. And he told me about a doctoral program that he had finished. And within a few days, he shared the curriculum with me, and it was very, very appealing. And what I learned through that program, Dr. O are some things around the idea of appreciative inquiry. And this led to me doing my doctoral research with five rural hospitals around the United States. And what I did is I spoke with five people at each of those five health systems. So I ended up with 26 interviews. We had one CEO that couldn't decide between two people. So I interviewed them both. Both. Just hit them both. You can't say no to that. So I interviewed the Chief Executive Officer of this of these hospitals, the chairman of their board of directors was the president of their medical staff, a vice president, so someone that reported directly to them, and then an hourly employee. And what I did is I took the information that the CEO gave me, and then I validated it with those other five people. And I came up with some common themes that all of these people did to engage more meaningfully with those people. And that resulted in three major three themes, each with five sub headings that are described in the book be the best part of their day.

Dr. Leah OH: 5:32

Yeah, excellent. And I love my organizational heart is just warmed when you're talking about not just at the C suite level, but getting points of view from all these different levels. And recognizing that's how we understand the story of the culture at a at an organization.

Dr. David Schreiner: 5:54

I'm a big believer in the idea of talking to the people that are closest to the work. And that's very important to me to learn about how we can better serve our patients and their families, and each other how we serve the members of our own organization. And so getting that wide spectrum is something that's really important to me. And I think there's some ideas in the book about various mediums to do that. Excellent.

Dr. Leah OH: 6:15

And so Dave, we know you're in the healthcare sector, that you lead a hospital. So considering this, and with your research, what are essential qualities or characteristics of values driven leader needs to be successful in this challenging environment. With

Dr. David Schreiner: 6:32

Dr. O, what it means to me is caring about people, it means about being intentional and listening, and asking great questions, and making sure that they know that I love them for the work that they do. And when we when we work in health care, especially in a small community, we're dealing with people often as patients that they're they can be our friends, they can be people that go to our church, our kids are in the same schools together, we employ about 950 people in a community of 16,000. So it's not uncommon that someone in the community has a tie to the hospital. And so the way that we treat people and the kindness that we offer, has been one of the greatest learnings. And I know the question is, well, didn't you know that before, but to be able to go through the research and to show that certain practices work, and when they're genuine, and when they're authentic? And they're part of who we are? And that's what values driven means to me, Doctorow is that who we are, and what's important to us? And how we then show up that way, to the people that matter the most?

Dr. Leah OH: 7:38

Yeah, and I love that point, when you talk about love, didn't you know this to be nice before, but I think especially in your role at your level, mice is often checked at the door, because that's not necessarily what you're being asked to respond to, or to answer to, or drive toward. And when we forget that, we lose the values along the way. So I really applaud you for the work that you're doing and the way that you're embodying it every day.

Dr. David Schreiner: 8:08

Well, you've you've touched on a couple of things there that I think we unpacked a little bit. Some good news is, is in a recent article, it was in Becker's hospital review, it talked about board of directors that are looking for the softer side with CEO candidates, and understanding that we can't deliver on our key performance indicators if we don't have meaningful connections with the people that are closest to the work. And so I think that's really encouraging to me, to see that kindness and love. And results are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would argue that you can't have patient engagement without having employee engagement. And whether it's patients for me or customers for you and your business. I just can't believe that you're going to deliver the type of customer care that you optimize or that you want to do, if you can't have that type of engagement with your employees. And hearkening back to the mission, whatever that is for your business, keeping that mission in the forefront of your work and of the team members work so that they know why we're here that, that why we're to such an important factor in what we do and how we're motivated and how we show up every day. Yeah,

Dr. Leah OH: 9:16

exactly. And so this leads us and you've kind of touched on this next question, but I'm wondering if you have some examples of how you've personally applied or maybe how you've seen others apply this values driven leadership.

Dr. David Schreiner: 9:31

The greatest thing about interviewing these five places is I could look for examples, and I could hear stories about what has happened. And if you'll remember the timing, I started my doctrine in 2019. So I was doing my research right in the middle of a pandemic. Yeah. Oh, and so I was not able to care. A word of advice don't start in the middle of a pandemic, or if you think one's coming, I had no idea when I signed up that halfway through that was going to be part of the equation. But I had a chance to listen to these stories. And I heard about these leaders and one that comes to mind is there was a leader in the state of Washington. And she worked at a hospital that was community owned, and the board members were elected. So her board of directors were elected in the community. And they were trying to build a replacement hospital. And of the people that were on the hospital board, some of those people had ran on a platform of no new taxes. And so this hospital CEO is saying, How can we build a new hospital if we don't have the ability to have some taxes that support the capital required to do so. And so what she did is she began a listening tour with the people in their community, she would go to rotary clubs and Kiwanis Clubs, and McDonald's for coffee. And she would do all of her presentation through questions. She would ask questions about what's important to people in having a hospital in their community? And why does technology matter in the delivery of services and the people's, that they expect and that they deserve? And so it was really meaningful for me to see that she didn't go out on a campaign to say, here's what we want to do. And here's why you should say, yes, she began by saying what's important to you? And how can we meet that need. And if that ends up, resulting in a new physical plant for our hospital, that's great. But if that's not the right thing to do, then let's look in another direction. And here we are, now they have a new hospital in that community, and the people that were elected by the people that are in their electorate in their community, they voted yes, on the tax increase. So I'm not an advocate of increasing taxes. But the way it was done, I think, is a compelling story.

Dr. Leah OH: 11:44

Yeah. And it really highlights that a values driven approach can be the shared values, not just a leader pushing his or her their values, but recognizing that this is community based.

Dr. David Schreiner: 11:59

Exactly. That's right. And, and we're here in our organization to serve our community. And we have to continue to look for ways to give the community what they want and what they need.

Dr. Leah OH: 12:10

Exactly. So this next question is a follow up to the previous and I'm not sure if you have other stories that you want to share. But I think maybe there are times when they're really challenging situations that you might encounter as a values driven leader. And how do we navigate that as a values driven leader while preserving our organization's values,

Dr. David Schreiner: 12:37

I can share one other story with you Dr. O. And this came from a hospital in Missouri. And they were the first hospital in the state to have a positive COVID patients. So if we think back to that time, no one knew what this disease process was, they didn't know how it spread, there was an aura in this town in this community, after that news got out that you do not want to go to the hospital, it's not a safe place to be. And so this hospital leader was looking at a situation where people were avoiding his organization, the staff were afraid to come to work because they didn't know what they might take home to their family members. And this resulted in a financial catastrophe for the organization, because as you can imagine, there was no volume. So there wasn't a need for all the people. So one of the things I admire so much about the CEO, is he said, the decision that I made in the first hour of this situation is I was going to communicate on a regular basis with full transparency with, uh, people in our organization, and with our community. And so he made a pledge that he was going to do a video that would go out every single day. And he said, There were times where I would put some communication out at nine o'clock in the morning. And then we would receive information from the Missouri Department of Public Health or the Center for Disease Control that reversed what we were told earlier. And so at one o'clock, I put out a second video changing it. And there were times over this period where I put a video out on that day, and I said, I don't have any new information for you. There's nothing new from yesterday, but I wanted you to know that I care about you. And then I'm going to share everything that I know, as soon as I know it, so that you can help us as an organization and community get through this crisis. And it's been such a meaningful story for me as I go through different challenges like all of us do in our businesses, to understand that we want to include the people that are doing the work and bring them underneath the tent, as opposed to doing something to them and taking consequences that come from it. Yeah,

Dr. Leah OH: 14:41

what a powerful story to show what a commitment to communication can result in and people are okay hearing I don't know or I'm not sure but I'm going to connect back at this time. That really Trent we have trust, right? We have connection it's a converse ation rather than this one way, communication at someone.

Dr. David Schreiner: 15:05

Oh, you're exactly right. And you asked about difficult conversations, because their number of the patient activity have gone down so much, they did have to do layoffs. And instead of the executive team arbitrarily deciding it's going to be this group of people, they went out to their organization. And they asked for people that want that volunteered, so to speak, perhaps they had their own health issues or family health issues that they were more concerned about. Or perhaps they were simply in a financial situation where they could weather that storm where others might not be able to. And he was able, in that very difficult situation, again, to work with his team. And they got through that, and the majority of the people that stepped up and said, Hey, I'm okay to take a little bit of time off. Over time, they were able to bring those people back to the organization, which is really a feel good story. I just, I have a tremendous amount of respect for this person. This

Dr. Leah OH: 15:54

week. Yeah, me too. I don't even know that. Wow. Because in my role, I usually hear the opposite. You would not believe what this leader is doing? Or can you? Like people just kind of short circuiting because of the ways they're being treated or the ways that information is being handled. So it's incredible to hear such an exemplar. And

Dr. David Schreiner: 16:17

you know, when we all hear then we cringe a little bit, right? Dr. Owen, it just almost, I physically react when I hear about that type of leadership. And the things that I talk about are aspirational. And I'm not able to succeed, and all of these every day, and there are decisions that people just aren't going to like. But I also think there are things that we can do to try to soften that. And just that listening and understanding. And, you know, I use that word love, and it's uncomfortable for me, sometimes it can be really uncomfortable for others. But I think it's important that if they know you're leading with that, then you're going to do everything you can to make the best decision you can and difficult situations.

Dr. Leah OH: 16:53

Exactly. So one thing I found myself thinking of when we are preparing for our conversation, are there are times I imagine, especially in the role that you're in, where it might feel like a values driven approach is in competition with maybe organizational priorities, or financial constraints or efficiencies. So how do you navigate those situations when you feel maybe that competition or the challenge of here are values, but then we have these financials? Or whatever it is, what does that look like? That's

Dr. David Schreiner: 17:31

such a great question. And we have a tagline here at KSB hospital called it's the P. And this originate is originated in the mid 90s. And I've tried to kill this thing like 15 times, and the employees of our organization will let me kill the love. So if you came into Dixon, Illinois today, and you saw any of our advertising, you would see it's the people at the very top of it. It's the people and we have, we have a situation where we are having financial difficulties, and over 50% of rural hospitals in America had a negative bottom line over the last two years. And we've experienced that as well. How do you correlate that idea of having a family with telling people that they may not be a part of it anymore. And we had one situation in my career in my 35 years in healthcare, it's the hardest thing I've ever dealt with, where we had to lay off 20 people. And we had to have more than that off for a shorter period of time. And thankfully, we were able to bring back the large majority to our organization, but it's hurtful to be able to tell those 20 people you can't work here. And there's not a good way to do that other than provide them the things you should be providing like a fair severance and some help and moving them on to their next opportunity. You know, those type of things that we try to do, but I think the way you handle that definitely impacts your culture moving forward.

Dr. Leah OH: 18:53

Exactly. I always say distressing news can be palatable if it's delivered in a audience centered, timely manner. Right? When we're not pulling the wool over people's faces, we're being as transparent as we can with information and communicating with them with respect, doesn't mean they have to love it. But it's a lot easier to swallow that pill when we do it in that audience centered way.

Dr. David Schreiner: 19:22

It sure is. That reminds me of a statement that a surgeon told me a long time ago when I was a baby X ray tech. And he said minor surgery is to find a surgery on someone else. And it's the same kind of thing when we think about how decisions we make as executives impact people in our company. And it's a it's a really big deal if you're changing their workplace in any way. And so it's all of the things you said Doctor or just exactly pertinent for those situations.

Dr. Leah OH: 19:50

Yeah. And so we've kind of already started leaning more into the communication side and a lot of your book is also about connection and importance of relationships. And so when we talk about engaging and connecting at the personal level, can you tell us kind of what you're thinking about what goes into this? And what does that look like?

Dr. David Schreiner: 20:12

Yes, I have five components that are there. And I'll share a couple of them with you all, of course, are in the book. But the best one, or the first one that is rarely the best. The first one is something that you're outstanding at. And that's asking great questions. One of the things that I found in my research is that we can bring people into our universe in a more meaningful way by asking them important things. And it seems like a hard thing to do. But as I've practiced that, in the last few years, I've had tremendous success by just saying more about what I'm thinking in a way that allows them to talk about the things that are going well. And there's a important distinction between tell me what's going well in your job, and how can I support you? That's on the left hand side, the right hand side of the ledger is, what problems are you having? And how can I fix it? It took me a really long time to understand that people were not looking for me to fix everything. They just wanted to share what their experience was. And by asking great questions, I could move closer to that. Another part that I thought was really important is finding ways to express gratitude, if I could share a really quick story about that. One of the organizations that I interviewed for my research was in Vermont, and this gentleman, the CEO of the hospital was from a large Catholic family. And he said, In our family, we celebrate with food. So in our hospital, every quarter, so every three months, our administrative team and our board of directors has a meal for the employees first shift, second shift, third shift weekends, we want to make sure that everybody is included, and we serve them, we tell them that we appreciate them. And we love them for the work that they're doing. And if we go three months, and we don't have some kind of an event, to celebrate, then we just make one up, we just go ahead and celebrate for some reason. And there's always something out there that we can do. And he rolls that through year after year after year. And he's standing there at three o'clock in the morning in the morning serving a meal to an RN and a housekeeper to tell them thank you. And that way to find gratitude is so important.

Dr. Leah OH: 22:18

Yeah, and you're right, it doesn't necessarily take a lot, I imagine that is a very long, long day for the individual. And those are really difficult hours, but the amount that it gives to employees, and what they give to patients, we recognize how much that transforms a culture.

Dr. David Schreiner: 22:38

It does. And the other thing I found is, it also transformed me when I do it, it fills my cup to be able to do that, because you get some of that gratitude back. And that's okay. You know, they recognize that the leader is there at three o'clock in the morning. And all of a sudden, you know, you go to the evening meal that night, and it doesn't feel like it's that many hours. And it's not like you're doing it on time. And you know, we're all blessed from a little bit of flexibility around our schedule. So you're probably going to find a little bit of time, some other place to make up for it, so to speak. But again, just that ability to connect is really important. And it's not an easy thing for me, doctor, oh, you know, it's, it's hard for me to go into a situation and be the focus of attention. That's, that's not my personality. And I think in some ways by asking those questions and talking about gratitude, depending on how you lie on that introvert versus extrovert scale, we can all get there in our own ways. And that's, that's why I try not to be super prescriptive in my book, but to give ideas that I think are actionable, but actionable in the way that feels best to you, in your business in your personal life. Yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 23:46

Because when we feel like our authentic selves, everyone else can pick up on that. And it's a lot easier to forge that connection.

Dr. David Schreiner: 23:56

Yeah, I'm not sure how to do it if we're not authentic, right, because who shows up every day? And we've all seen examples of that. And I think it's incredibly confusing for the people that are yes, it is. Yeah,

Dr. Leah OH: 24:08

yeah, exactly. And another notion from your book that I'm really intrigued by is this idea of engaging with intent through different mediums. So can you walk us through that idea and how we do that?

Dr. David Schreiner: 24:23

I'd love to is it okay, if I start with a story, please? My favorite interview that I had is remember, I did these on zoom so we can all picture how the camera comes on. You're talking person, right? So I'm interviewing a nurse in Michigan that's works in the intensive care unit. And so I'm sitting there waiting, the camera comes on and I hear this noise and I can't quite figure out what it is. And when the camera comes on. She's vacuuming and she's holding a baby. I'm thinking what in the hell is this? Starting with you And as we go through that conversation, I found that she works in the intensive care unit, she has a second job in a long term care facility in a nursing home, she has five children, and one of them has special needs. And we ended up talking for almost an hour when I asked for 30 minutes. And what this person told me was that I don't have time to watch an eight minute video from our CEO. But you know what, if that video is transcribed, if it has the words, as we go the trailer along the bottom of the screen, then I might go to a section that I'm interested in, and I might go to, you know, three minutes and 15 seconds and watch the next minute. And so that afternoon, we started doing that with the videos here in our hospital. And even though I'm sure everybody loved my eight minute videos I'm hitting. Next week, those were three minute videos. And so you know, that's one medium, there's, that is an example. Another thing that we talked about is that we all learn differently. As a professor in a university, I'm sure you see this, but some of us like that one to one interaction, it can be formal or informal, it can be a time that you have a chance to come in and meet with me. Or we can be passing each other in the hallway and take, you know, an extra two or three or five minutes just to talk about what's going on. Some people like the opportunity to be in a department setting where you might have 45 or 50 people that are in the room, while others like to have that you know, a larger group, and they're all okay. And so I think we have to find ways to use the mediums, whether it's live meetings, group meetings, video, email, social media, we I used to think that we could have that as an OR, and I'm leaning towards it being an and, yeah, and the time commitment that we put into those different mediums, I think has a return on investment that is really significant. Because we have the ability to interact and engage with more people. I mean, we're not a large company, many of your listeners are probably much larger than us. But when I came to our organization, we would have 350 people today we have 950. And so I have to change my behavior to interact with the people that matter so much in our company, it's not them conforming, to me, it's the other way around.

Dr. Leah OH: 27:22

I really love this, David, you're demonstrating how it really is the leaders responsibility to meet the team the people where they are, and recognizing that it is a lot easier for you to shift your behavior to meet them, rather than to expect your 900 employees to bend to meet you where you are. So my next question, David, I'm really excited for this one. In preparing for our conversation, I learned that you introduce a technique called appreciative inquiry. I'd love to learn more about this and how leaning into this approach can make us more thoughtful peers and more thoughtful leaders. One

Dr. David Schreiner: 28:04

of the concepts that I learned in my doctoral studies as well as in my research is around the concept of appreciative inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry was first founded it Case Western University by David Cooper writer. And the idea is you look for people and organizations that are functioning at their highest point, if you're looking at an individual, when is the time when you were just knocking it out of the park, your cup was full, you were doing meaningful work in a productive way. And you felt wonderful about what you were doing. And we can translate that over to an organization where you're meeting your mission, you're profitable, your employee and customer satisfaction is high. So that's the idea of appreciative inquiry. One of the examples of that in a healthcare setting is I work in a small community. And when my wife and I go out for dinner, it's not uncommon for someone to stop by the table and talk about their experience at our hospital. One of the questions that sometimes comes up is around billing. And hospital billing is not anything that anyone loves. And in the past, I used to ask what was wrong with the bill, the appreciative inquiry approach is to suggest if everything that you wanted to see was on that bill, what would the bill look like? And what my experience has been, is by shifting that person's thought process from a deficit mentality to an appreciative mentality and a place of abundance. The information that we got was more robust. And the person leaves feeling better about the conversation because they were able to give me meaningful information.

Dr. Leah OH: 29:43

Yeah, that's really powerful. And another thing when you're talking about that example, I was thinking about the validation that you know, your friends and neighbors feel when you stop to engage with them and ask them in framing to like you said, Putting it in a more positive where we hear them and ask for their ideas, appreciate their ideas. It really goes a long way in changing how we feel about a certain topic or a certain situation or a certain hospital bill. Oh, Dave, I'm having so much fun. And I hate to that we're on our last, our last question here. But I'm the communicative leader, we like to leave our listeners with really pragmatic leadership or communication, tips, advice, challenges, just something that they can do right now, in order to make their work life what they want it to be to that and what advice do you have for us,

Dr. David Schreiner: 30:43

as we begin to wrap up the interview, and we talk about some leadership or communication tips. So if we put that in the category of advice or challenges, one of the things that I asked you to consider is how can you take some of those best practices or practices around the idea of asking great questions, or finding ways to express gratitude, or using multiple channels to communicate your message as well as 12 other concepts that are found in my book? How can you take those ideas and incorporate that into your own personality, so that you can engage in a more meaningful way, with the people that matter to you the most, that has a lot to do with where we are in that introvert versus extrovert scale, and how we can take some of these concepts and scale that down to what feels comfortable for us. Because when you lead with that authenticity, and you lead with that idea that you care about the person that you're engaging with, and you're present in the moment and listening deeply, to the answers to your questions. And then thinking deeply about the questions that they asked you. That's going to be the way we get to the person going home that night and saying, Wow, I had a chance to work with Dr. OH today. And that was the best part of my day. That's what we want.

Dr. Leah OH: 32:00

Dave, I have to tell you, you've also been a highlight of my day, and it is so fun to hear about the amazing work that you're doing. Because again, as a leadership communication scholar, far too often I have people telling me about what a terrible manager or leader they have. And it is is such a ray of sunshine to hear the incredible work that you're doing. And I want to point out how far we can get as leaders by asking thoughtful questions, as you said, and not just their we're not stuffing their butt by thinking and reflecting deeply. Because we have done such a good job listening. We're not just hearing what our people are saying, we're really listening. We're thinking about their nonverbals as well. Right? We're going back to that idea when someone says, Oh, I'm fine. But we tell they're not we're not just stopping at what they've said. So again, Dave, thank you for sharing so much with us. I am so excited to read your book. And I know that it is really going to help a lot of other folks who want to be better leaders. Alright, my friends, that wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, you indicate with intention and lead with purpose. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the communicative leader.