In healthcare, interprofessional teams comprised of members from different disciplines working together toward a common goal produce better outcomes. An effective and high-performing team is often the key differentiator between organizations that successfully accomplish their vision and those that do not. This chapter discusses the rationale for building and leading a high-performing team, describes two models that portray a team’s life cycle, and identifies key strategies for building and sustaining high-performing diverse and inclusive teams. Ultimately, interviewing should identify applicants with the position IQ and experience needed to function in the role. There are various approaches to interviewing applicants for positions in your organization, including open-ended unstructured interviews, more structured behavioral interviewing approaches, and motivationally based interviewing. Determining whether the applicant has the energy to persevere through adversity to find answers and reach solutions is key to a successful hire.

This chapter helps the reader to gain an understanding of of him- or herself, as a leader and describes key strategies for becoming an effective leader. It highlights several evidence-based and vital strategies to help the reader gain better self-understanding. It provides strategies and techniques to help the reader develop as a leader. The chapter lists the emotional quotient inventory people skills (competencies) that one needs to be successful at work and in life. It also provides a list of interpersonal and intrapersonal (people) competencies that research shows are vital for success. This chapter serves as a starting point on the journey of leadership self-discovery, covering ESI, five practices of exemplary leadership, strengths-based engagement, coaching, change, and communications.

Although nurses, other clinicians, and healthcare leaders take great care of others, they often do not prioritize their own self-care. This chapter describes the nine dimensions of wellness and highlights strategies to enhance self-care for optimal health and well-being. The nine dimensions of wellness include: physical wellness, emotional wellness, financial wellness, intellectual wellness, career wellness, social wellness, creative wellness, environmental wellness, and spiritual wellness. Taking time each day to monitor and attend to our own well-being can have multiple rewards for us, from physical to emotional and financial health and well-being. Steps taken today to safeguard and improve one’s own well-being can lead one on a journey to optimal health, well-being, self-discovery, connectedness, and satisfaction. Great leaders engage in good self-care and model wellness behaviors for others. They also see to it that their workplaces encourage and provide resources for their employees’ well-being.

A critical part of the leader’s role is to effectively communicate to her or his organization, community, competitors, clients, and supporters. Our online communication options can help us succeed in messaging. Social media can help us to rapidly respond, communicate, and push out messages to a variety of audiences. This chapter helps the reader to identify the advantages and disadvantages of social media use as a leader, describe the elements that comprise a personal brand, define the basic steps to create a digital presence, determine ways to use social media and other digital platforms for the benefit of our organization, and identify strategies to partner with organizational teams to support goals. Leveraging a personal brand for business influence requires coordination and communication to align with organization-wide efforts. Successful use of a digital personal brand requires engagement, nurturing, and the time, effort, and energy to do it right.

Healthcare organizations today need change to improve healthcare quality and safety and reduce costs. In creating and promoting a change vision that is exciting and organizing a strong leadership team, leaders must contend with a number of work settings and workforce factors that make change challenging. This chapter discusses the importance of an exciting team vision for successful organizational change, describes three organizational change conceptual models, and identifies key steps in leading and sustaining organizational change initiatives. It describes barriers and facilitators of systemwide change in an organization and discusses strategies in building a wellness culture, including return on investment and value of investment. Many self-care and self-healing tools are low cost and can significantly and positively affect the work environment.

Based on thousands of cases studies, focus groups, interviews, and observations over three decades, the authors identy five practices of exemplary leaders, including: modeling the way; inspiring a shared vision; challenging the process; enabling others to act; and encouraging the heart. This chapter describes the strengths of leaders in terms of their greatest exemplary leadership practice, help the reader identify which leadership practices one will work toward achieving, and discusses how one will encourage others. The chapter examines each of the 10 identified leaders through the lens of one or more of these five exemplary evidence-based practices. For each historical leader, a notable quote is shared and a brief overview of who they are and the key leadership lessons they embody is described along with some of their words of leadership wisdom.

This chapter describes the three “Ds” (dream, discover, and deliver) and how they lead to success. The text discusses key characteristics that result in great leadership, reflects upon the strengths and limitations of leaders, and identifies leadership characteristics the reader might need to develop. It helps the reader to recognize important lessons they may learned in theri own lives and how these lessons will influence their future behaviors. The chapter includes examples from the author’s personal and career story. It is the author’s hope that the lessons learned in looking back at his journey and the calls to action throughout the chapter will help one to avoid common pitfalls and propel one forward to flourish in their own leadership, innovation, and/or entrepreneurial journey.

Often, positive deviance (PD) is viewed as negative and counterproductive. However, a closer look at PD reveals strong links to innovation. This chapter presents the origins of PD, the principles underpinning PD, the discipline of PD, the relationship of PD to innovation, and scenarios in which PD occurs. The work of innovation stems from many sources and is an important knowledge base for all healthcare workers. This chapter presents the nature of PD as an important behavior that can lead to multiple innovations when evaluated and framed as positive. As with any innovation, a disciplined approach is necessary for success and recognition by the larger community. The chapter presents examples of PD to illustrate the activities of PD and the thinking of positive deviants. Behaviors based on a PD approach to change guide the work of positive deviants rather than the traditional approach to change.

This chapter identifies the legal matters that should be considered when starting a healthcare business. While certainly not the most important consideration in starting a business, certain legal issues might help one decide whether or not it is even to proceed beyond the idea phase. The chapter begins with a section explaining how the laws work in the United States and a short summary of regulatory schemes that apply to healthcare businesses, helping the reader determine the extent to which a healthcare business will be regulated and the implications of those regulations on a business plan.

Design thinking is a process that cannot function under the same constraints that have been built around more linear and quantitative approaches in healthcare. It requires a different ecosystem, one that allows for and embeds empathetic engagement, radical collaboration, and rapid prototyping. Design thinking is an action-oriented problem-solving framework. This chapter helps the reader to: define design thinking and describe its role in healthcare leadership, innovation, and practice; develop an understanding of how design thinking relates to, and complements, other effective management and practice approaches; develop comfort in, and a way to navigate, ambiguity and unknowns; and describe strategies for successful implementation of design principles and practices within their own practice/organization. Design thinking yields increased systematic understanding of a problem and its possible solutions because it starts, and is driven by, key stakeholder’s lived experience(s), which cut across sectoral, social, geographical, and political boundaries.