Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And speaking of leadership, this exciting month of April, we have a special leadership series where every single guest will be a leadership coach, a leader in their own organization, and they will be helping us become better leaders ourselves.

And to top it off, we have three episodes per week instead of the usual two.

We will be publishing three episodes per week, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, instead of the usual two episodes a week in this special leadership series in April.

So stay tuned, become a better leader, and log on to Apple and Spotify to give us a rating and a review, and let's get communicating.

Now my guest today is the CEO of a hospital.

He's just been awarded his PhD.

He is an author and he is a leadership expert.

David L.

Schreiner, PhD, is the author of Be the Best Part of Their Day, where he did not only research but actually lives the principles that he has talked about in his book, which we will discuss during this show.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hi, David.

Hi, Roberta.

Thank you so much for having me.

And I love your topic.

The way that you describe your podcast is a passion of mine.

And thank you for the work that you're doing.

I'm so excited to get the chance to meet you and talk to you.

I'm very humbled by your kindness.

Thank you, David.

And thank you for being here.

First of all, as I said, thank you for your book.

It amazes me how, because we've interacted before today, that you live the principles that you teach in the book and how you actually interact with your team at the hospital, which you'll delve into deeper.

So please give us a little bit of your background.

Well, thank you.

I started in the healthcare field as an x-ray tech, so a radiologic technologist.

My first job was at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

And then I had a brief stay at a hospital in Missouri.

And in 1989, Roberta, so I'm really aging myself here, I moved to Dixon, Illinois.

I interviewed here and our family moved here.

It'll be 35 years.

And I came as the director of our x-ray program.

And over that period of time, I was given the opportunity to do progressively bigger roles.

And in 2011, I was named our president and CEO.

So, I owe everything I have to Catherine Chavathaya Hospital in Dixon, Illinois.

And I'm very proud of the organization that we have and the work that we do for our patients and their families.

Absolutely.

And speaking of how you accelerated until you became CEO, looking back, do you think was it just you being good at your job that made this career progression possible?

Well, I think a person certainly has to have competence at the job, but I think a lot of people have competence.

And I hope that the people that are moved through organizations are moved through because of the way that they interact with other people and the respect that they have for people and their coworkers and the passion that they have for the work that they do.

I think a lot of people can be technically good.

And that's why I love your podcast so much, Roberta, because we're talking about the other side, the communication skills and the way that we shall love and respect for other human beings.

So I think that that's part of it, at least aspirationally, that's what I try to be every day.

Absolutely.

And that's what the podcast is about.

Just a bit of background about me as well.

So I'm a South African, Zulu South African.

And I don't know if you've heard this word before, because I believe Coach Rivers, Doc Rivers from Boston Celtics, he taught this to his team and that's when they won the championship.

The principle of Ubuntu, that's from my language.

You never heard of it.

That's fine.

No, but I want to.

It's Ubuntu.

It's a Zulu word meaning humanity.

I am because you are.

If I hurt you, I'm hurting myself.

If I do something kind to you, I'm doing it to myself.

There's this 100% connection, so to speak.

And so whenever we talk about the soft skills, I think one of the reasons I wanted to base the podcast on it, not only because it's from my culture, but also I also observed how it's not the smartest people technically only that get promoted, but the ones who are actually able to relate with other people.

I love that, Roberta, and I love the way that you phrase that.

Could you say that one more time?

Ubuntu.

So it's U-B-U-N-T-U, Ubuntu, humanity.

I am because you are.

So I have some great news for you.

I saw this within the last month.

There was a research article that was published in Becker's Healthcare Review, and it said that board of directors are increasing the amount of importance they put on quote soft skills or communication skills and the ability to interact with others more so than they ever have in the past.

So for all of your listeners, I know that you preach the positivity of interaction and communication, and that's being noticed in a very significant way in hiring practices.

Yes, which we're going to talk about today.

So the first thing I noticed in your book, I will first go to the end, which is where you said you had to learn that you don't know everything, because I think a lot of leaders are under the impression that they must put on this mask and think they have all the answers.

How did you come to that realization?

Well, I've been through making a lot of mistakes, and my wife is very good at reminding me of that as well, that I don't know everything.

She tells me that quite often.

But what I found, Roberta, that was really instrumental for me is I was rewarded throughout my career for solving problems.

And I think many of us have been in that situation before.

And I noticed as we have positions of greater responsibility, and I don't really like the word authority, but we have just greater responsibilities, I noticed that by being more than doing, I could be of more value to the people that I work with.

Before if someone came to see me, I would try to solve their problem.

And more than once, I had someone tell me that's not what I was asking for.

I wanted you to listen.

I wanted you to ask great questions.

I wanted you to help me figure it out.

And so for me, that's being.

The doing was trying to fix your problem.

The being is being respectful of you as a person and trying to understand at a deep level how I can serve you best.

You are absolutely right.

But also the other side of it, if we look at a leader's point of view is, especially if you're running a busy hospital like yours, sometimes the propensity to fix everything is because you have so much on your plate and you want the problems to be fixed, go away so that we tackle the job.

Yes, not no, yes, and I would add something to that.

What I have found is the fixes that I put in place were often not sustainable.

And when I was able to reach out to the people that were closest to the work, that in my situation in a hospital, we're serving the patients, we're working with the family members, we're working with our medical staff, much for you, for your customers, the people that are closest to the work had the best answers.

And when they came up with the solutions, those solutions lasted longer.

So I could fix it quickly, and I could continue fixing it time after time after time, or I could listen to the people that are experts in that topic and fix it once and have it last.

Which is a much better, much better option for sure.

I'm going to go, I'm going to page 70 speaking about fixing problems.

So you had a complaint from a patient because of how they received their itemized billing and I love what you said.

You said, I'm glad you brought this to my attention.

I'm grateful to know this because I was unaware the bill didn't have the information you requested on it.

I would hate for you to leave a hospital's family over something fixable like this.

I'm grateful you're giving us a chance.

How did you have that wisdom to have that response?

Because usually when we come with our complaints as customers, that's usually not what we receive in return.

Well, and that wasn't my response when I started as well.

I usually began with an apology and I would apologize again and I'd apologize a third time and I'd be upset because it wasn't delivering what we wanted to deliver and then I'd take the bill and I wouldn't be able to do anything with it or I would struggle to do something with it.

That's the deficit approach.

What I learned was the abundance approach is asking that question of if this bill had everything on it that you wanted, that would satisfy your needs, that would allow you to be educated about what you're paying, what would it look like?

And what I have found is by taking that second approach, I learned so much more from those individuals and it's often actionable.

We often think that people are going to ask for something that we're incapable of delivering and I found that not to be the case.

It's usually a really good idea that we can put into place that serves many people and exactly as you described it in the book Roberta, it's thanking them because so many people just don't say anything and then they leave our organizations and we lose them as customers.

It happens to all of us and that's a worst case scenario.

So thank you for coming over and in that part of the book, thank you for coming over and interrupting our meal because we live in a small town.

You are with your wife having dinner.

I like to go out and eat just for that reason, but you know, I understand that's part of the job description in a small community.

But having those interactions and asking good questions and listening to the answers and having that genuine desire to help, I think goes a long ways in getting those solved.

And you can't always fix the problem.

And then of course, it's important to say so.

It's important to close that loop and say what you can do and maybe just as importantly what you cannot do.

Right.

Back to you don't have all the answers, but at least acknowledging and being transparent about that, there's a way you're going to make them feel if you do that versus saying, oh, no, this is fine.

This is fine when it's not.

And speaking of making your patients feel that way, you talk about the 10 to 5 rule that you have at the hospital with the way that the team interacts.

It then translates to whenever somebody walks in, they say, you know, can I help you?

Can I show you where you need to go?

But it starts with that, that 10 to 5 rule.

Can you explain that to us?

I'd love to.

Have you heard of that before?

No, it was the first time I heard of it.

One of the things that I love about my job, Roberta, is I get to meet with new employees in the first hour of their first day at KSB Hospital.

So new employer orientation.

They're brand new to the organization.

And one of the things that I talk to them about is the 10 and 5 rule.

And what that means is when someone is walking towards you in the hallway and they get about 10 feet away, we make eye contact.

So what can you learn by making eye contact?

One, usually the person might make eye contact back, they might smile.

And there's an energy you read about them.

Perfect.

There's an energy.

And sometimes in a health care setting, that can be a scary place, right?

Whether you're a patient, whether you're a family member.

Sometimes you can see fear.

Sometimes you can see a little bit of what I call a deer in the headlights look of I'm lost.

Maybe I'm not sure where I'm going.

But we can see that in people's eyes, right?

So that's 10 feet.

Just make eye contact.

And then at 5 feet, say something.

What could you say?

Good morning.

May I help you?

Can I help you find anything?

Is there anything I can do?

Welcome to KSP Hospital.

The thing that I love is that I don't believe in scripting.

I don't believe that I should tell Roberta, this is what you should say, because I hired you because of the intrinsic values that you have and the person that you are.

So I don't want to tell you use these words.

But I want to give you these ideas like the 10 and 5, so that you can then incorporate your own personality and what feels natural and authentic to you.

But what I have found is when other executives come into our organization to meet with me, it's not uncommon for them to say something about, everybody said hello to me, they were smiling, they looked at me.

It's not, you know, the head down walking through the hallway.

And I think it's a part of our culture and I'm very proud of that.

Yeah, the blank stare, because we're always afraid, you know, we're going to be weird to say hello to a stranger.

Let me just have the blank stare or in the elevator look away.

That's the very thing we're always trying to avoid that I couldn't do.

So let me ask you, do you think that's a rural versus urban thing?

So you're in Dixon, how far is it from Samoanock or Sandwich, Illinois?

We're about 45 minutes west of Sandwich.

We're about an hour and 45 minutes from downtown Chicago.

So I was in Chicago for the first two years since 2020.

And then I was in Sandwich, Samoanock, for about a year.

Very different human interaction.

When I'm on the train, nobody's even looking at, nobody looks at anybody.

It's not even about me.

In Sandwich, not only do people say hello, but even at the shop, they just start chatting while they're waiting at the cashiers.

It's the craziest thing.

At the restaurant, they know this person across the table.

It's so community based.

It was such a different environment from the city.

My son lives in River North, which is a suburb of Chicago.

When I'm in there, he tells me all the time, what is wrong with you?

Stop talking to people.

Like I said, it's weird.

I remind him, he spent the first 18 years of his life in a rural community.

It's weird.

Everybody just keeps quiet and they give to themselves.

But then, as you said, we need to cultivate that rural-human connection because we translate that to the workplace.

I think that life is difficult for a lot of people.

We have no idea what's going on in people's lives.

If we can do something to make that day just a little bit better, if that's a kind smile, if it's an appropriate pat on the shoulder, a little friendly wave, I don't think it matters where you are.

I think those things matter to a lot of us.

Be the best part of their day.

Right, and then speaking of when you met in Yuhai within the first hour of them being at KSB Hospital, you spoke of someone who was applying for a director position.

Even though at the interview they aced it, they told you everything you needed to know and they were the perfect candidate.

But when you spoke to your team about that person's interaction with them on their way to the office to be interviewed, it was a very different story.

Please can you explain that to us?

Sure, I'd love to.

Thank you for that opportunity.

So you explained it very well.

We had an interview with the gentleman that did a really nice job.

His credentials were impeccable.

He interviewed well.

After he left, so the interview was over, I was walking through the facility and I went down to our front desk and there's a lovely little lady that sits there.

She's a volunteer.

And I said, you see the guy that just walked out?

Yes.

What was he like when he came in to see you?

He was complaining about the parking, the weather was horrible and she went on and on.

She even used the words, he was just very rude.

And we didn't make an offer to this gentleman, because our belief is, is that if that's the way you're going to treat anyone in the organization, beginning with a volunteer, it's probably under times of duress, the personality is going to reveal itself with your colleagues, with your coworkers and with our customers slash patients.

And so sometimes doing just a little bit of extra homework can help in a decision that is important to the organization.

Especially at director level, he would have quite a number of people reporting to him, right?

Yes, correct.

I recently had a guest who is a co-owner of a tech company.

Before we started the podcast interview with us, I said, how are you?

I said, I just had a nephew yesterday.

And we talked about his family the entire time before we recorded, because usually that's the time like I did with you when we just get to know each other.

But we never said anything about what we're going to talk about at the recording.

And then he said to me, when I hire someone, if they don't know how to make that small talk with me, no matter how well their tech skills are, just like you and I made small talk, I told you about my nephew, we started talking about names and everything.

He said, if you cannot make small talk, because some people just sit there for the interview, be quiet and don't start talking the tech stuff and the resume.

He said, I need to see the human side.

When you go out for dinner with a friend or with even new acquaintances and you notice the way that they treat the staff.

And I think that says a lot about a person if they honor everyone.

And the kindness is there and I understand what you're saying with the interview.

I have introverts that are wonderful at what they do and they are more quiet.

And that's fine, but they're still kind.

We can see that.

It may be more difficult for them to chat or to talk about personal things.

But when we gauge them and we ask them great questions, when we listen to them, we see that humanity and the kindness that we're looking for in leaders.

The kindness comes out.

That's right.

Yes.

It's not about being introverted as much as it's, I acknowledge the human in front of me.

Perfectly said.

Right.

And then now let's talk about this part of your book.

You have three supercharged communication principles.

How did you come up with those?

I did.

The research that I did is I promise I won't bore you with methods, but I had the opportunity to reach out to five of the best performing rural hospitals in the United States.

And virtually, because this was during the pandemic, I wasn't able to travel.

But I met with it and I interviewed their CEO, the president of the board of directors, the president of the medical staff, so a physician, a vice president that worked for them and an hourly employee.

What organically emerged from these 25 interviews, Roberta, were these three concepts that I said all of them did?

And doing these three concepts was confirmed by the people that worked with them.

So it wasn't just that I said I do this.

I also asked questions to try to discover if the people that I interviewed outside of the CEO noticed these types of practices and all five did all three of these practices.

So I felt that that was important to share.

And then underneath each of those three categories, there are five subcategories.

So I found 15 practices that I believe people can put into use immediately to improve the way they engage.

And the thing is with that, because we focused on communication on this show, as you have mentioned earlier, okay, there's one first of all, this quote that says, the illusion we have is that the communication has taken place.

I don't know if you heard it before David.

As soon as I hit send, I communicated.

And yes, we're going to talk about AI because the church GPT story I found intriguing in your book.

But yes, first, please explain to us what you mean by appreciative inquiry.

Is that the similar story to when someone came with a bill complaint, and you say thank you for bringing this to our attention?

So the story exemplifies the use of appreciative inquiry.

So appreciative inquiry was developed by David Cooper Reiter, Dr.

Cooper Reiter at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

And what it means, Roberta, is an individual or an organization describes and feels what was happening when they were performing at their absolute best.

When they were knocking out of the park, when they were overachieving, they were meeting all of their either personal or organizational goals.

That's the idea around appreciative inquiry.

And so, the inquiry part is taking that feeling and asking the person to describe what was the composition of the environment when that happened?

What was going on around you?

Who were you working with?

What was your own mindset?

What were your goals and ideas that you wanted to win, so to speak, you wanted to achieve?

So it's really the concept of coming from a place of abundance as opposed to coming to a place of deficit.

We always talk about engagement in this podcast, and there are so many different perspectives when it comes to engagement.

How would you describe engagement, especially as it applies to the KSP hospital environment?

I believe engagement is how we both feel during and after the conversation.

If you and I are able to connect with each other and you leave that conversation believing that you had the opportunity to express your opinion, you were heard, you were asked questions and by asking those questions, I was able to clarify perhaps what you were sharing with me.

And really, if it came down to two words, I'd be back to respect and kindness.

And the title of the book comes back to my goal is that you go home that evening and you say, I had this great conversation today.

I had this interaction with whatever the person's position might be and that was the best part of my day.

If we could do that one to one or two people every day, how would that change our workplaces, our communities?

I think it would change it in a very positive way.

Yes, both of us were engaged in the conversation and it made us feel a certain way when we left.

It's a very beautiful way to describe it.

Let's talk about which I think a lot of organizations are maybe not aware that they're guilty of, which is this CEO red carpet treatment of the CEO is coming.

Everybody look perfect.

Perfect.

Let's be honest, we're all trying to keep our jobs, David, so we don't want to look bad in front of the head of the company.

How did you get over that and make your team not feel that pressure to act perfect in front of you?

Right.

Well, it's such a good question and you're right, it exists and we're naive if we don't appreciate that that's part of the workplace.

There's a portion of the book and recommendation called Rounding and what rounding is, is basically going into the work.

So one of the things that I do is I visit every department of our hospital.

There are about 45, 50 departments in our hospital and I visit each of those every quarter.

So today I did two visits, they're 15 minutes each and I gather with the people, whoever's available at the time, and we talk.

And so when you talk about that red carpet treatment, the first few times I tried that, people would scatter when I came into the department.

They did not want to be one of the people that...

Reminds me of the movie The Devil Wears Prada, when she was...

What I found is that the second time there were a few more and the third time there were a few more.

And as I did it and they saw that this was not a one and out that I was doing, when they saw me for the repetitively, now I've got a situation where in some departments, if they do their break, so to speak, in the morning, they'll all come in and we'll sit down and we'll talk about things.

And what I ask very simply are, tell me about what you're really proud of, some projects that you're working on that are really successful.

Tell me about anything that I can do for you.

Is there something that I can do to remove barriers to allow you to operate at the top of your license?

And those two questions usually can lead to 10 or 15 minutes of discussion.

I think it takes away that idea of perfection and grading and judging.

But it's how we show up, right?

It's how we have those conversations.

And if I go in and I'm judgmental about something, they're not going to bring anything to me the next time.

But if I go in and I listen and I ask great questions, and I try to understand and discover what's important to them, then we can extrapolate some of those learnings throughout the organization to make it a better place to work.

It sounds like the principle you mentioned earlier, which is, I'm not here to fix whatever is wrong in your job, but you ask the right question so that they come up with it for themselves.

Yes, exactly.

Right.

And let's talk about crisis management.

And you mentioned a very powerful story of Johnson & Johnson, the Tylenol case.

Yes, and our Tylenol case in healthcare was during the pandemic.

And if I could briefly, very quickly share a story, if that's okay.

I was interviewing a CEO at a hospital in Missouri, and they were the first hospital in the state to have a COVID patient.

And what happened, remember, this is a small rural hospital.

And in a very short amount of time, people in the community were saying, don't go to the hospital, COVID's there, and it's a dangerous place.

And so because of that, and that happened at hospitals around the country, because of that, they very quickly had a significant drop in volume, which caused financial difficulties, which resulted in layoffs.

And you can imagine the snowball that was created.

And what this executive did, and he's a tremendous leader, is he said, I'm going to communicate with our team a minimum of every day.

And sometimes he would communicate something at 9 o'clock in the morning, and they would receive new information from the Missouri Department of Public Health or the Center for Disease Control.

They would change that practice at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

And the thing that his employees loved about him is he was very transparent.

He was very honest.

And he was willing to say, I told you to do something at 9, and at 2 o'clock, I told you to do something differently, and that's going to happen.

We just have to roll with that kind of thing.

And I think we tried to do that in many hospitals and many businesses around the country.

The pandemic is not just a health care issue, but I think that transparency and authenticity in a crisis, it goes so far towards building that trust of the community that you're working with.

This reminds me of, I don't know if you've heard recently of this principle of VUCA, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and with all the changes happening, some crises are obviously bigger than others.

But if you can adapt to that at 9 a.m.

we're doing something else and at 2 p.m.

we're doing something different, I think you're going to be able to adapt in this new world because a lot is changing, not just pandemic-wise in any organization.

Change is so fast and that term Buka is in the title of my dissertation, but no one reads a dissertation.

I think my dissertation chair and my mom read my dissertation, so I tried to come up with a little with something a little zippier for the book.

Yes, if that's the mentality we adopt, if that's the mindset, I think we're all going to be okay.

Any last words of wisdom, David?

Well, again, just a gratitude for you for giving me the opportunity to share with your audience some of the principles, and I'm just proud of what you're getting out there and the information that you're giving to your listeners, Roberta.

I hope that you take time to pause once in a while and soak that in.

Thank you so much.

That means a lot to me.

Thank you for your kind words.

I do appreciate you for being here today and for sharing your stories, for being transparent.

As I said, all the principles you talk about in your book, you literally live by them because I've interacted with you quite a bit before this interview.

So I thank you so much for your ubuntu, your humanity.

Thank you.

My pleasure.

And before we go, can you please tell us where to find you on the web?

Yes, the easiest place is my website is drdavidschreiner.com.

So I would invite you to visit that.

The book is coming out.

I would love to have an opportunity to work with you and your teams.

If you're looking for a keynote speaker or someone to visit your team for leadership training or even one-to-one work, I would love to do that.

One thing that I'm really proud of, Roberta, is you gave me the opportunity early in the interview to talk about the work that I've done here at our organization and a portion of the proceed as well as any speaking or coaching fees are going to our KSP Hospital Foundation.

So I'm very proud to be able to give back in some small way to the organization that's helped me and my family so much.

Thank you so much for the work that you do for that and the hospital in general.

And in the book, Be the Best Part of Their Day by David L.

Schreiner, PhD, is that the hospital has such an influence on the community and because of how the team and everyone who works there is treated, it trickles down.

You call it the cardiovascular system, leadership is like a cardiovascular system.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

drdavidschreiner.com.

drdavidschreiner.com, yes.

All right.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking on Communicating Podcast once again.

Please log on to Apple and Spotify, leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on the show that will be of benefit to you.

We encourage you to continue to get communicating and let us know how communication skills continue to improve your life professionally and personally, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.