3 CEOs Evolve Their Leadership Practices For A New Paradigm of Leadership, Productivity, and Well-Being

Summary

Leaders are facing a level of complexity and uncertainty not seen before. The landscape of management, employee relations, and the structures of workplaces are evolving—and fast.

According to a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

So as organizations and businesses evolve—where do we go? How do we succeed amidst the complexity and ambiguity? What does it mean to lead from a different level of consciousness?

InSight’s co-branded Leading Through Epochal Change program addressed these changes and inspired CEOs to transform themselves towards a new way of leading. Epochal Change provided a uniquely facilitated, peer-based journey of learning and impactful growth for CEOs, leaders, and executives across a variety of industries.

Leading Through Epochal Change is a powerful example of one of the transformative journey’s offered by InSight and its partners.

“I am so grateful I had the opportunity to do the Epochal work with Renelle and the group I was with. It was definitely life-changing in a good way.”
~ Annette Kowal, CEO of Colorado Community Health Network

Overview

This Case Study shares the leadership journey of 3 CEOs who participated in the Leading Through Epochal Change Program:

• Ross Brooks, CEO of Mountain Family Health Center
• Annette Kowal, CEO and President of Colorado Community Health Network
• Helen Royal, CEO of Summit Community Care Clinic

Outside of their individual businesses and industries, the three CEOs understood that shifting the leadership and systems of their organizations leads to a larger shift in leadership and society as a whole.

Challenges

The CEOs in this study faced a variety of similar challenges across their different businesses, markets, and experiences. Each CEO joined the Leading Through Epochal Change program to address the growing leadership, hierarchical, and organizational challenges within their healthcare organizations.

Challenges for Annette:

• Fast growth of their employees — from 12 to 40 people over 6-years
• Expansion in leadership team — the challenges in how to manage properly
• Issues of self-doubt and negative talk — Annette not recognizing herself truly as a CEO and colleague to board members

Challenges for Ross:

• Internal Communication Issues and Divisions— realizing there was a severe brokenness within teams and peers across providers and business divisions
• Massive Growth — doubling of patients, staff, and locations over 7 years.
• Negative Mindset and Thoughts — leaders feeling a lack of connection to purpose, happiness, and joy

Challenges for Helen:

• Massive Growth — from 42 to 110 employees across 6 health centers
  Problems with Communication — communication and execution issues across the growing staff and leadership
• Problems with Community Perception — managing the organization’s systems while keeping focus on providers and supporting our patients (of which 45% are uninsured).
• Staff Burnout — difficulty keeping staff and reducing staff burnout (from both employee and leadership level). 

Process

This particular cohort that made up the Epochal Program took leaders through a series of practices over 6-months:

• one full-day, in-person session in Denver every six weeks with 2-hour interactive video meetings held every two weeks in between
• Case studies on international healthcare models who have successfully evolved their organizations using next-generation practices
• Powerful processes, such as The Leadership Circle Profile™ 360, that invited participants into a broader sense of themselves as leaders and gave them the new tools required for success
• “Hot seat” activities where one participant engages the full collective’s cognitive and intuitive power to address a set of challenges they were currently facing
• Meaningful relationship building across the system as a foundation for co-creating an aspirational future for community health in Colorado

Annette’s experience: The Leadership CircleTM provided a lot of value and resonated with Annette. It showed her where her gaps were as a leader and how other leaders and employees perceived her (which she stated was an unexpected perception in a very positive way!). Annette learned from the other executives that she needed to be more courageous as a CEO, which she previously thought was her strength.

Annette also felt more confident coming out to her team and organization with her spiritual empowerment and personal beliefs. This led to her being a stronger CEO in the work of running the business and reporting to a board of directors.

Ross’ experience: Ross learned about the conscious leadership shift towards the Teal Framework and how he and his team could manage away from “Reactive” or “Orange” management towards the Teal paradigm. Ross learned that balance is not weak and running the fastest is not the best path for the collective whole.

The Circle of Safety and Trust was immensely valuable to the Mountain Family Health Center executive team. Ross shared that at first, all the CEOs involved thought “this is never going to work” and then it turned out to be the most impactful process for all of them.

Helen’s experience:

Helen found the In-Person Circles to be a great opportunity with the diad/triad exercises that dug into the leaders own styles, challenges, and the value that they brought to the collective group. Helen found that as a CEO, you don’t often have a safe place to show your weaknesses and challenges. The Epochal process created a real space to support that and help leaders grow.

The Leadership Circle and Immunity to Change processes were extremely valuable to Helen. They showed the leaders elements of how they act when things are going well—and how they act when things are changing drastically or negatively. The process then shared how you can move through those scenarios in a positive way. Helen learned that she didn’t have to take the entire responsibility of leading on herself and can use others to support her.

Outcome

Annette, Ross, and Helen all reported positive and life-changing results as leaders along the Epochal process. From learning more about themselves as leaders, to creating better frameworks for internal communications, to integrating techniques on managing their teams across rapid growth, to—perhaps the most important—an overall increase in well-being and joy as a leader.

Quotes and Thoughts from the 3 CEOs:

Annette Kowal, CEO of Colorado Community Health:

“I do feel like I am a more well-honed and focused leader/CEO since going through Epochal.”

“Without having gone through Epochal, I would not have been able to understand – or even coach a staff or a colleague or a board member – around this notion of integral and creative VS and that 99% of people operate and lead from a reactionary place.”

“That alone was worth the time and the price of going through Epochal.”

“Also the #1 thing… the younger generation is demanding this [shift in consciousness]– so any organization that’s going to hire anybody is going to have to figure this stuff out in the next 10 years. Otherwise their business is not going to have an adequate workforce.”

Ross Brooks, CEO of Mountain Health Family Center:

“I am continually impressed by Renelle’s wisdom and ability to facilitate a complex group of people in and bring her own leadership perspective and experience to the table.”
“I think this work with the Leadership 360 and Peer Coaching is really important to start to break down those hierarchical structures and to basically flatten and share leadership across organizations across the Healthcare System.”
“Some of the benefits are increased consciousness in board of directors, and moving myself and others towards an increased “Joy Quotient.”
“We now collectively own the wellbeing of this company.”

Helen Royal, CEO of Summit Community Health Clinic:

“I find Renelle and her work to be courageous and inspirational. She inspires me to do things differently.”

“It’s great to have a process now – a framework to understand – when things aren’t going well you can see what’s happening on the Leadership Circle.”
“[Epochal] did a great job of mapping the process of where we were going. Certainly, my level of understanding of what we were doing and focus has gotten clearer.

“Three things that really stuck with and impacted me are 1) First Values, 2) Immunity-to-Change Map, and 3) The Leadership Circle.”

ADDITIONAL QUOTES FROM EPOCHAL LEADERS:

“The “Leading Through Epochal Change” program, was truly a transformative experience that allowed me to cultivate leadership skills that are absolutely essential in today’s rapidly changing healthcare environment.”

“Absolutely Extremely helpful experiment that helped me raise my personal awareness on how my style and presence sets the leadership tone for my organization”

“If you’re a leader yearning for connection to the heart of why you do what you do, and open to transformational personal change, this exploration and training is for you. Epochal Change is as named.”

“The Epochal leadership program, has been life changing for me as a CEO. I now have more concrete knowledge on what type of leader I am now, and where i want to be as a leader a year from now. I have tools and resources available to me to make changes at my company that will help staff and BOD members be more effective and engaged. Thank YOU!”

“The experience is life changing. Leading through Epochal Change resulted in multiple new insights about myself. It has given me new resources to improve as an individual and professional.”