Great Manager Profile: Doug Eckman

this profile is reposted from:http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/08/12602/great-manager-profile-doug-eckman

Doug Eckman, MBA, works at the intersection of dual bureaucracies. As director of operations for UCSF School of Medicine, Dean’s Office at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH), Eckman must navigate both the university and the city’s Department of Public Health, which oversees patient care and operations at the public hospital.

Despite the complexity and perhaps because of it, Eckman loves his work. He excels at helping people find common ground and at bringing out the best in his team. “I think it is important that people enjoy what they do,” he says. “Also, I think it should be challenging, as people do better when they are challenged.”


Eckman has been honored for his strong commitment to encouraging his staff to reach their fullest potential, receiving the 2005 Chancellor’s Award for Exceptional University Management.

Born and raised in Grand Forks, ND, Eckman is the son of a locomotive engineer and a non-practicing nurse. When he was 17, Eckman, the oldest of seven kids, won a full scholarship to Columbia College and moved to New York to study philosophy. Following a series of “adventures” that included stays in Hawaii, Colorado and Minnesota, his migrations ended in 1976, when he came to San Francisco and got a job at the former Children’s Hospital (now part of California Pacific Medical Center).

From there, Eckman moved to SFGH, where he worked as a respiratory therapist on the night shift and eventually became the manager of the department – a place where he says he made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot. He worked in the emergency department and in intensive care units, which served as an excellent training ground for Eckman’s operational and people management skills. He also earned an MBA in Management from San Francisco State University.

On-the-Job Development Encourages Creative Solutions

During the recent Employee Engagement Survey, Eckman’s team scored highest in the area of learning and growing on the job. Notes Eckman: “I’m a big fan of education. If there are courses or classes or professional meetings they want to go to, I don’t say no. I will even suggest, and sometimes insist, they attend these activities in their performance appraisal for professional development.”

Guide for Great Managers

A Great Manager Resource Guide outlining some strategies for setting expectations and providing feedback and recognition is available here [PDF].

But true learning takes more than courses or conferences; it requires on-the-job development. And it is this aspect of Eckman’s management that’s most often cited by his team members as the source of their growth. Eckman says “people should be allowed to make mistakes because that is how we learn.”

Mark Addis, director of biomedical engineering who came to SFGH over three years ago and was new to both UCSF and his role as a manager, has benefited from Eckman’s management style. “He takes a mistake I’ve made and offers suggestions about how to do better in the future,” Addis says. “He doesn’t tell me what to do, but offers some examples of how people have done it effectively.”

As a result of this approach, Addis has grown a great deal. He’s gone from heading a department regularly threatened with outsourcing to running a successful and cost-effective unit with highly trained employees.
And the benefits continue on to the hospital and its patients. Back when the anesthesia machine servicing was outsourced, the contractor wouldn’t report the machines during a procedure. Now that the work is being done in-house, the team can work with the anesthesiologist during an operation and “technicians are getting feedback about what a great job they are doing,” Addis says.

Eckman describes it this way: “If people can figure out how to get their needs met and serve the goals of others, it is amazing the creativity they can tap into. As a manager, it is my job is to be sure that creative solutions on one side do not have negative effects on others down the road.”

To further challenge his team and support its growth, Eckman engages them in group problem-solving activities. “If people are complaining about something, I say OK, let’s get a small group together to examine the problem.” After allowing them time to truly analyze the problem and develop recommendations, Eckman observes that “they come back with ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of and because they came up with them they supported the [resulting] change.”

Eckman is deeply committed to the learning and professional growth of his team. “To the extent possible, let them [your staff] pursue their interests. Don’t put constraints on that. [There] should be a really good operational reason to say no. To the extent possible, let people create their job, by building on the foundation of the original job description. If you restrict them to the minimum, the job description, then you are only going to be getting the minimum from them,” he said.

Theme of Respect, Trust and Support

The same philosophy is held by Eckman’s manager, Cathryn Thurow, MHA, the School of Medicine’s Assistant Dean of Administration and Finance for SFGH. She sees her role as supporting Eckman in his professional interests and growing his responsibilities. Since they have been working together, Eckman has become a mediator and a hearing officer and more recently was asked to provide administrative oversight for the clinical labs.

Equally important to Thurow is supporting Eckman as a person. She ensures the Dean’s Office is a supportive work environment and provides flexibility, when possible, to accommodate personal needs. “Doug really appreciates that,” says Thurow, who adds with a smile, “I let him do his job. I am not a micromanager.”

This theme of respect, trust and support is repeated over and over in the Dean’s Office. The key ingredients being: managers who respect one another’s skills, trust one another to do their jobs effectively, and support and encourage their teams to apply their interests and talents in new ways.

Sue Carlisle, MD, PhD, the School of Medicine’s vice dean for SFGH, sees the benefits that trust and respect have on the overall operations at the public hospital. “We are an interesting intermesh of city and university. Because he [Eckman] is trusted, the people who report to him see him as a role model of how to do their work. The trickle-down effect both from trust and modeling in the staff makes us a much more cohesive team with the city staff and much more effective in achieving our goals.”

Mary Clancy, clinical laboratory manager at SFGH, outlines the successful elements of Eckman’s management style. “Doug is very fair and thoughtful. He gives guidance and lets you follow up. I trust him very much. If I need help, he’ll be right there.”

When asked how Eckman’s management style affects the results of his direct reports, Andy Brunner, UCSF Risk Manager at SFGH, says “he has enough confidence in my abilities to let me work independently, but he is always available for advice and ensures that I have the resources I need to do my job.  He recognizes me as a professional and is more result- than process-oriented, which I appreciate.”

As Curt Denham, director of finance and a member of the dean’s office management team, describes it: “Everyone is treated well. Everyone is considerate and appreciative.”

Perhaps the key to Eckman’s effectiveness as a manager is that he measures his own success by the level of enjoyment his team members have in the work they do. He believes that his role is to cultivate the sense of enthusiasm and enjoyment that comes from being engaged. He says his years of experience have taught him that “good problem-solving doesn’t come from unhappy people.”  

Photo by Susan Merrell 

Great Mananger Profile: Deborah Yano-Fong

this profile is reposted from: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/05/12037/great-manager-profile-deborah-yano-fong

By Aja Couchois Duncan on May 17, 2012

Understanding her staff’s needs and helping them achieve their goals is one of Deborah Yano-Fong’s greatest strengths as a manager.

Deborah Yano-Fong

Coming from a Japanese-American family, Yano-Fong says her parents put a lot of emphasis on education. They tried to steer her toward medicine, but Yano-Fong had wanted to be a nurse since elementary school. “Nursing is about the patient,” Yano-Fong says, and that compassionate focus on the wellbeing of another is the basis of Yano-Fong’s  management style.

The connection between her training as a nurse and her expertise as a manager does not end there. “Nurses help educate patients, and teach and mentor new nurses. These are all key skills for new managers, for supervising people.” In addition to these skills, Yano-Fong has added serving as a role model and a coach.

The daughter of Mary Yano and Yukio Yano — a research chemist at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab whose work led to the development of the isotopes that are still used in PET scans today — Yano-Fong went to school in El Cerrito and from there to UC Berkley, her father and mother’s professional home. After beginning coursework in premed, Yano-Fong transferred to UCSF to complete a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Eventually, she completed her graduate degree in nursing at UCSF as well.

“Nursing has been wonderful for me,” says Yano-Fong. “It has provided me with the opportunity to do clinical nursing, to be a nurse manager, to go to graduate  school, to have a child, and, while parenting, creating a job share with another nurse, Susan Alves-Rankin, to serve as the first ever co-directors of Patient Relations.”

According to Yano-Fong, the concept of job sharing was new to UCSF. But as a result of its success, Yano-Fong and Alves-Rankin served as examples of how two nurses could balance their professional lives and family responsibilities. Yano-Fong served in this role, and several others at 50 percent time, until the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed and then Chancellor J. Michael Bishop and Mark Laret, chief executive officer of UCSF Medical Center, appointed her to the position of Chief Privacy Officer for UCSF. Since then, the Fishbon Medical Library and the Patient Health Library have come under her auspices as well.

Applying Lessons Learned in Nursing

Over the years, Yano-Fong has become a nationally recognized leader in the emerging field of patient privacy, one that involves a great deal of legal and policy analysis and high stakes decision-making. She has become a key advisor to other UC privacy officers and has been involved with the state of California’s privacy steering committee and CalOHII (California Office of Health Information Integrity) the oversight body for enforcement of state privacy laws.

A Great Manager Resource Guide outlining some strategies for setting expectations and providing feedback and recognition is available here [PDF].

In addition to becoming an expert in her field, Yano-Fong has continued to focus on management skills that she honed as a nurse: clear communication, high standards and strong organizational skills. These are the hallmarks of Yano-Fong’s ongoing success. She explains that she learned over the years the key to managing people is to do it on a person-by-person basis. “Know their strengths and weaknesses,” she says, “and also what their goals are for their professional career growth.”

Yano-Fong’s first experience managing people was as an assistant nurse manager role on 8 North South at UCSF Medical Center on the Parnassus campus.  Soon after, she became the nurse manager for the neurosurgery/neurology unit on 8 Long Hospital. “It was a lot,” she says, but she felt prepared. “Nursing requires a cohesive team. From shift to shift, hour to hour the priorities change based on the needs of the patients. The worst night is bearable with a strong team; collaboration and teamwork is how people survive getting through rough spots.”

Using key concepts from the health care and nursing profession, Yano-Fong has flourished as a manager. “My role,” she says, “is in helping an individual know where they want to go and helping them build the skills to get there.” But her value as a manager is not only in supporting the development of her staff, Yano-Fong also ensures that the key values and goals of the organization are incorporated into everyone’s job description. “Our organization has been very clear about mission and values,” says Yano-Fong. “It is very important that my managers know the goals for the year, where we are going, and what we are marching to.”

Providing Feedback and Recognition

How she does this is by setting clear, inspirational standards and providing regular feedback and recognition. When a team member handles a difficult situation well, Yano-Fong sends a note to the individual acknowledging their success. Also, if her team has gone through a difficult time or experience, Yano-Fong will take the group out to lunch — to celebrate together and to acknowledge their hard work. “Real time recognition is really important to me,” Yano-Fong says, “also recognition beyond the group.” To that end, she has started a monthly academy award for staff recognition.

During the last Employee Engagement Survey, Yano-Fong’s team scored highest in the area of feedback and recognition. Notes Yano-Fong, “you hear all the time that the people in an organization are the critical element. I really do believe that. I transmit this to everyone I work with. Being valued ensures teamwork and that we can be successful.” Providing feedback and recognition ensures her group is motivated, guided, and acknowledged for their accomplishments. 

Vicky Kirby Martin, PhD, associate privacy officer for UCSF, notes the impact of Yano-Fong’s management practices. “Deborah supports us in a way that ensures we can express opinions and think ahead. She allows the team to evolve: we participate, contribute and innovate.” This is critical. “Everyone wants innovation, but often we reward the one and ignore the rest,” Kirby Martin says. “Deborah creates trust so the whole group feels safe to contribute.”

Yano-Fong cites Leader as Coach, as a useful resource for managers interested in building their feedback and recognition skills and learning to coach their employees. For Yano-Fong, the key to being a successful manager coach is to “pick coachable moments.” It is not, she says, simply “telling someone what to do but helping them define their pathway.”

Yano-Fong acknowledges, it isn’t always easy. “Sometimes there are challenges, but I find the greatest benefit comes from focusing on my team’s success.”

 

To maintain this positive focus, Yano-Fong puts a high value on ensuring her team takes the time to break bread together and to gather around cultural events. Notes Yano-Fong, “diversity is a key value at UCSF and a key value for being a leader.”

Yano-Fong is a long standing member of UCSF’s Council of Minority Organizations (COMO) and served for many years as the co-chair of UCSF’s Asian Pacific American Systemwide Alliance (APASA). She has also participated in the MLK Commemoration Planning Committee, which plans UCSF’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration Celebration.

Building Relationships with People

“A key component of being a leader and manager is building and maintaining one-on-one relationships,” she says. “Having the background and expertise of working with different people — understanding there are cultural and personal differences — enables me to better support and work with others. Through this, I understand how to recognize individual preferences and support people to ensure they can do their best.”

For Victoria Kleemann, longtime director of Volunteer Services for UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, Yano-Fong’s strength is in her ability to establish and communicate an underlying sense of respect. It is also Yano-Fong’s commitment to giving time and attention to each member of her team that makes everyone understand their importance to the mission. “It is a simple form of acknowledgement,” says Kleemann, “but it is the basic foundation for creating collaboration and a strong team.”

Susan Alves-Rankin, RN, MS, assistant director of Patient Services and Service Excellence, sums up Yano-Fong’s abilities like this: “Deborah has a high level of personal and professional integrity which is visible in everything she does. She has very high standards, serves as an excellent role model, and expects of others only what she herself would do. She is also infamous for always supplying grazing snacks and comfort foods to nourish her team’s spirit. What else could you ask for in a manager?”

David Odato, associate vice chancellor of Human Resources and chief administrative officer of the UCSF Medical Center and Yano-Fong’s manager, notes that cites Yano-Fong’s practice of recognizing staff as central to her success as a manager. “Just this week she told me about someone who had done something well.” As a result, Odato explains, he wrote a thank you note and the individual was so pleased, “she was grinning from ear to ear.”

Odato has seen the impact of Yano-Fong’s attention to her staff. “Her strengths are developing people, being an excellent listener, engaging her staff and helping them come up with their own solutions.” As a result, many of her staff members have been promoted through the ranks at the medical center.

Yano-Fong echoes this as a core value for her. When asked how her staff would describe her as a manager, Yano-Fong responds, “I think staff would say I am supportive both professionally and personally. I would hope that they say that I help to provide opportunities for them as well.”

Her hopes have come to fruition. Through her practice of setting inspirational expectations, providing feedback and recognition and coaching her team for development, Yano-Fong serves as an exceptional role model for other managers. She lays the foundation for those who work with her to be effective in their current roles and helps them hone their skills for professional growth and enduring success. 

Photo by Susan Merrell

Great Manager Profile: Kevin Souza

reposted from http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/02/11482/great-manager-profile-kevin-souza

by Aja Couchois Duncan

Kevin Souza is not new to managing people. His first experience was 25 years ago as a manager of a basic science research lab in endocrinology.

Kevin Souza

Now, in his current role as the assistant dean of Medical Education in the UCSF School of Medicine, he is responsible for unifying the geographically dispersed medical education administration, with approximately 60 staff members making up the team.

But it is not Souza’s years of experience or the breadth of his role that makes him such a great manager, it is his commitment to inclusivity, fairness and innovation. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Exceptional University Performance. It is not a honor that Souza takes lightly. “It was the greatest moment of my professional career,” he says.
Born in Clarksville, a small town on Tennessee’s northern border, Souza grew up on a 400-acre family farm. “We grew cash crops like corn and much of our own food,” he says. “We slaughtered our own pigs and chickens.”

From these rural beginnings he embarked on a career in science, earning his B.S. degree in Biology at Austin Peay State University and an M.S. degree in Biology from Vanderbilt University. After earning his graduate degree, he taught biology at Vanderbilt and at Chancellor College in Malawi, Africa, as a US Peace Corps volunteer. Souza then returned to Vanderbilt before coming to UCSF in 1993.
While at UCSF, he has served as a lab manager in the Department of Psychiatry and an information officer in medical education. In 2000, Souza became director of Educational Technologies and then in 2008, the first assistant dean for Medical Education.

 

Responding to Employee Survey

“The position [of Assistant Dean] was created as a result of a 2007 employee satisfaction survey,” Souza says. The survey results indicated that medical education scored below the rest of the campus in several areas. Staff identified inequitable pay and poor communication throughout medical education as areas that needed to be addressed. As a result, equity reviews were held for all medical education; these reviews have become standard practice occurring every two years.

Also, a communications committee was formed which resulted in the creation of the medical education blog, website, and other communication vehicles. In addition, to those changes, the position of assistant dean position was created, a role that would serve to unite medical education across the University. Souza notes with both modesty and a sense of satisfaction, “the most recent employee engagement survey results showed us that we have been successful in improving in these areas.”

The results of the recent employee engagement survey brought some other things to light as well.
“Our lowest score was in `having a best friend at work’,” Souza says. While many in the group were critical of the question and wondered about the value of the results, Souza saw it as an opportunity. Taking up the Chancellor’s mandate to review the results and develop a plan, Souza notes in his quietly passionate way that Medical Education launched a wiki site with team survey results and resources, unit managers facilitated discussions of the results within their teams, and all staff came together for a workshop to develop engagement strategies.

At the beginning of February, the entire staff came together again to create a plan using Gallup’s engagement pyramid of four key areas: basic needs, individual contribution, teamwork and growth. The strategies that emerged from this process were:

• Develop skills in all staff to cope with an ever-changing environment (basic needs)
• Develop robust staff profiles to educate other about what each of us contributes (individual contribution)
• Develop personal mission statements aligned to medical education at UCSF (teamwork)
• Develop a buddy system for new and continuing staff (growth)

Bonnie Hellevig, assistant director of Educational Data, notes that the group really embraced the opportunity to look at teamwork and engagement. She attributes much of this to Souza’s leadership.
“He has a great way of envisioning what could be,” she says. “Something good always comes out of it.”

Hellevig sees the highly focused and inclusive process as one that ensured both positive outcomes and the empowerment of the entire medical education group. “Everyone is included and hopefully will be more engaged with each other as a result.”

Chandler Mayfield, director of Tech Enabled Learning, notes that the campus set forth very basic expectations for the engagement survey results. Instead, Souza took the opportunity to address something that was important. “He embarked on a very ambitious plan and process, focusing resources — in a time of compressed resources – to create the best possible outcome, one that staff really owned.”

Creating an Environment Where People Succeed

For Christina Cicoletti, director of the Clinical Learning Unit, the process reflected the culture of medical education under Souza’s leadership. “Medical education is amazing and such an inspiring place to be,” she says. “Having an assistant dean that isn’t a PhD or an MD is inspirational because it makes us feel that with hard work and dedication any of the staff could achieve a leadership position of that level someday."

But the most important element to Cicoletti is the mentorship and authenticity that Souza brings to the group. “He is one of the best teachers I ever met in my life. He can explain what is going on at a very high level in a way that enables all to understand. Transparency is really important to him; it is one of his guiding principles. This helps us know what is going on and we feel connected.”
When asked what he learned as a result of the engagement survey, Souza says, “What was reinforced is that I don’t know everything; I really rely on the talent of my team. And too, I learned that we are doing a lot of things right.”

What drives Souza’s commitment to his staff is the same thing that drives his commitment to UCSF. “When I think of UCSF, I think of the most innovative health care institution in the world,” Souza says. “In medical education, I try to support this innovation by honoring what motivates my staff and giving them the room to take their careers in new directions. To me this is directly connected to creating and sustaining an innovative healthcare environment.”

For Cynthia Ashe, manager of the Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators, the source of Souza’s success and that of his team is quite simple. “Kevin leads by example,” she says. “He maintains an open mind and a goal-oriented forward focus. He hires good people and mentors them. He is creating an environment in which people succeed.”
No matter what the goals are for the organization, Souza says, the greatest impact comes from honoring people and their skills. “It goes a long way to creating a happy, healthy, productive, innovative environment.”

Photo by Susan Merrell

Great Manager Profile: Giselle Martin

reposted from http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/12/11107/great-manager-profile-giselle-martin

by Aja C. Duncan

Editor's Note: This is the first in an occasional series to highlight UCSF's great managers as determined by the scores in a recent employee engagement survey.

Great managers come in all shapes and sizes. “Everyone has a different style,” says UCSF’s Giselle Martin, “the key is to embrace your style and build on your strengths.”

Giselle Martin

In a recent UCSF employee engagement survey, Martin, management services officer and chief administrator of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in the UCSF School of Dentistry, received one of the highest overall engagement scores by her staff.  

It is not hard to imagine why Martin’s team members posted high engagements scores in the employee survey. An enthusiastic manager, Martin talks about her staff as if they were family. “I truly care about the people I work with,” she says. “I care about their feelings; I care that they do a good job.”

Her recipe for success comes from her own experience. “Since I started my career in entry level positions and, at times, performing similar roles, I know what it takes for them to get something accomplished. I’m a bit more sensitive to their needs. My staff knows that I recognize how hard they work. They know I appreciate all that they do. This is key.”

Martin spent the first five years of her life living in a small town in Mexico called Juchitlan in the State of Jalisco. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she watched her parents work two, sometimes three, jobs. As the oldest daughter of five children, Martin was managing her siblings at an early age. “I made sure that when my mother came home from work, the house was in order.”

When she began her career at UCSF in July 1995, Martin worked as temporary employee in the Buchanan Dental Center. Eventually she worked her way into a position as an administrative assistant II. She decided she needed a greater professional challenge, but felt she didn’t have the education to back it up. So she went back to school. She worked full-time, took evening and weekend classes, all the while parenting her two young children, ages six and two. It took many years, but by the time she graduated with her bachelors degree from the University of San Francisco, she was class representative, on the Dean’s honor roll, and asked to give the graduation commencement address for which she spoke in front of approximately 2,000 people.

“People ask me how I did it,” she says, “I simply made it work. There were times I had to take my kids to class. Sometimes the teacher would kick us out, but I always went back. Plus,” she laughs, “my family had evening homework hours for years.”

Through it all, Martin maintained a goal sheet, outlining key steps and celebrating the small successes. “I still have those,” she says. “I use them to remind me of where I was, where I am and where I am going.”

Creating a Roadmap for Success

Knowing where to go and creating a plan to get there is a fundamental practice for every successful manager. For her final graduate research project — Martin just completed her Master of Public Administration in Health Services Administration for which she was a merits scholarship award recipient — she wrote a paper on “UCSF Successful Managers Career Track, Effective Management Styles and Leadership Dynamics.” [PDF]

In the course of conducting that research, Martin read widely in the fields of management and leadership and interviewed 15 effective managers at UCSF. What she found was this: successful individuals defined their goals and created a roadmap for getting there.

Setting goals is an area where Martin excels. This skill is also important to the success of her team. The area where her staff scored Martin the highest was regarding setting expectations, specifically in ensuring her staff knows what is expected of them at work.

“I have really great staff,” Martin says. “They know their work and are passionate about their jobs. I don’t need to micromanage them.”

To put together such an excellent team, Martin makes sure she hires the best staff and puts them in positions in which they can be successful. To lay this foundation, she sets high performance expectations at the time people are hired. She uses regular staff meetings as an opportunity to check in with her team regarding expectations and to ensure everyone has what they need to succeed. A resource guide for managers on setting expectations is available here. [PDF]

Martin also has an open door policy. She is flexible with her staff, enabling them to deal with life’s emergencies so they can return to work able to give 110 percent. She uses available campus resources to bring in experts whenever possible to ensure her team is knowledgeable, skilled, engaged and successful.

“My staff knows that I recognize how hard they work. They know I appreciate all that they do. This is key.”

Martin’s strengths is her ability to get the group working together, says Lee Rogers, an academic personnel analyst in the department. “There are lots of things beyond our specific jobs that need to get done,” Lee says. “She [Martin] creates an informal atmosphere where people come together as a team to help each other out.” 

When asked what is the most important thing for supervisors and managers to do, Martin has a fairly simple prescription, ““Listen, listen, listen. Listen to their concerns, their ideas.” Beyond listening, she lets her staff know that their jobs are important. “We expect a lot of them,” Martin says. “I really feel that everyone wants to do a good job. All we need to do is let them and acknowledge them when they do. A thank you goes a long way.”

Tony Pogrel, DDS, MD, William Ware Endowed Chair in Orthognathic and Reconstructive Surgery in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the UCSF School of Dentistryepartment of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, has witnessed Martin’s growth as a manager. When she came into the position more than three years ago, she had some areas that needed development. He notes that her persistence and commitment have made a big difference. One area where her effort has really paid off, Pogrel says, is in the monthly staff meetings, which Martin leads. The meetings provide a great opportunity to communicate with clinical and non-clinical staff.

Susan Schultz, associate dean of Administration and Finance for the School of Dentistry, recognizes Martin’s excellent people skills. “She genuinely cares about her staff,” Schultz says, “and supports their development. She wants them to move forward.”

Understanding the Big Picture

Schultz says that it can be difficult to balance driving for results while genuinely valuing the needs of people who are being directed. For Schultz, the solution lies in understanding the big picture. “It is important,” she says, “to not get mired in the details. We need to be able to step back and see what is important, where we should be investing our time.” It is from this place that expectations, in alignment with the broader organizational needs, can best be set.

It is essential that managers connect individual staff members’ roles with the needs of the department and the overarching goals of the organization.  Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, in her State of the University Address this October, indicated that the University’s three-year plan provides a guide to UCSF employees, outlining a clear set of things they can act on every day. And this, according to the chancellor, is where great managers come in. “We have to have great management. It’s not just nice to have; it’s essential to have because great-minded people with passion and talent who want to be committed to the institution need to know what exactly the institution needs from them.”

Across the University managers are rising to the challenge.  In the words of Martin, “even though I am not a researcher, educator or clinician, I have always felt my role supports the mission of UCSF. I love UCSF and am a strong believer in what it stands for.” 

The Single Most Important Practice of Leaders

After spending the last few weeks coaching a number of leaders in various roles and industries, I was struck by the commonality of each of their needs. “I just need time to step back and think more strategically,” was the refrain I heard over and over again.

It seems simple enough, give yourself some quiet, focused time to think and strategize. Certainly the research and leadership scholarship identifies reflection as a critical practice for successful leaders. Schon defines “reflection-in-action” as a process that consists of developing strategies of action, understanding phenomena, framing and reframing situations encountered in day-to-day experience. Sounds like something every leader should engage in.

At its root, reflection requires time. And here is the rub. Who has the time? The answer is of course that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. It is how we use it, what we attend to, that makes or breaks us. If sleep was optional, there are some who would skip it. They would of course get seriously injured or ill, but they would have a few extra hours over the rest of us. Reflection is like sleep in its criticality. But unlike sleep, it is optional. But without it, we often find ourselves on the reactive rather than proactive side of the equation. We can certainly survive. The question is, can we thrive?

To be an effective leader, to be a strategic leader, we need to carve out some time each day, or, at a minimum, each week to take stock of things, to look out toward the horizon, to anticipate what’s coming and make preparations, to define where we are going and forge the path ahead. 

This reflection can take many forms. It can be narrative, bulleted, illustrative. The form itself does not matter – use whatever works best for you. But be sure to take the time to think through your past, present and future circumstances so that you learn from past mistakes, gather the necessary information to make good decisions now, and chart a course for the future.  

Being strategic is not so much a skill as a practice. Give yourself the time to practice yours.

Authentic Leadership

Joseph Castro is a tall, robust man with dark hair smoothed back off his forehead. Young for his position as Vice Chancellor for Student Academic Affairs, he carries an old world elegance, simultaneously appearing both charming and wise. This is what one sees on first meeting Joe. But what is so compelling about him, what inspired me to write this profile about him, is something else entirely. It is his heart, the giant muscle which guides Joe in everything he says and does.

I first met Joe many years ago. He was new in his role at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and had discovered a scholarship fund for Native female medical and nursing students which was being underutilized. Calling a meeting with the Native American Health Alliance, of which I, as a Native staff member at UCSF, was a member.  We spent an hour together, Joe, a first year Native medical student and I talking about the ways in which UCSF could best utilize the scholarship funding and advance participation of more Native people in the health sciences. Later, Joe covered the expenses for my attendance at a meeting at UCLA, where Native staff across the UC system were working toward the creation of system-side Native American Staff Development Conference. The conference was recently held for the third year and UCSF, more accurately Joe, sponsored the event.

These are small examples of the kind of care Joe takes in his relationships with students and staff, with following through on his commitments and priorities. These are minor examples of the authenticity of Joe’s leadership. When I asked Joe what he considers his strengths as a leader, he indicated four things: good listener; open and accessible; creative; and focused on serving others (staff and students). But I would describe his strengths differently. I would say he listens with his heart and he problem-solves with his eyes on the best outcomes for everyone involved. His words are worth their weight in gold. As for weaknesses, Joe is comfortable naming these as well. He avoids conflict. He struggles with self promotion. He has a hard time turning down projects that align with his values and thus finds himself sometimes overcommitted.

Recently I heard Joe speak on the topic of leadership. He told the audience that much of what he learned about working with others came from the grandfather who raised him. He also indicated he had learned a great deal from childhood adversity. From his grandfather he learned how to get things done by building positive relationships with others and from adversity he learned resilience and the ability to focus on long-term outcomes rather than short-term concerns. But the most important leadership lesson that Joe ever learned was not to focus on himself. In his words, “It’s not about me.  It’s all about whom I am serving." That is something else Joe learned from his grandfather, the value of service. It isn’t always easy, he acknowledges, but he is committed to this principle.

Enlarge Your Sphere of Influence

“Leadership and learning,” according to John F. Kennedy, “are indispensible to one another.” And yet over and over again, we as leaders think that `what we know’ is our greatest asset. It is not. ‘What we know’ provides a robust frame through which to interpret new information; it provides the structural support on which new things can rest. But without learning, there is nothing new. There is no growth at all.

Leadership then is not a role or a  pre-existing skill set but a practice. It is the practice of asking good questions, of learning from our environment and the people around us. One way to deepen this practice is to train in the art of shifting frames. Frames are the way we see the world, the borders we put around life experiences so that we can focus on the content therein. But the process of framing is reductive and thus limits what we can see. As a leadership practice, take a moment to ask yourself “what is the meaning I am constructing about this situation, person, challenge? What solutions or actions am I leaning towards?” This will give you a sense of the frame you are in. But to shift the frame, you must actually see an alternate point of view. Stand up. Walk to the other side of the room. What do you notice here?

There are a multitude of frames, as many frames as there are people. Bolman and Deal, in their book Reframing Academic Leadership point to four core leadership and organizational frames: structural, human resources (people development focused), political and symbolic (cultural). Each of these frames is associated with a particular kind of situational analysis. In the structural frame, leaders often ask, “what are the critical rules, roles and policies? How can I establish effective procedures, lines of authority, and technologies to ensure the best possible outcome?” In the human resource frame, leaders attend to people’s needs, developing skills and growing capacity, enhancing relationships between individuals and teams, and ensuring the overall health of the system. In the political frame, leaders focus on power as displayed through conflict, resource constraints, constituency interests and agendas and group alliances. In the symbolic frame, leaders ask themselves, “what are the cultural beliefs being displayed by this person, team, department? What stories would be most compelling to them? How can I create practices, celebrations, rituals that would effectively bring them together around a shared vision? Which symbols best convey this vision?”

The next time you find yourself facing a situation that is all too familiar and yet the outcome you are seeking eludes you, shift your frame and see what new focal areas, new solutions become available to you. The more attention you pay to the diversity of frames, the more effective you will be as a leader. Learning is the key to enlarging your sphere of influence.