Partnership equips employees for navigating industry changes

Advertiser content: UD Center for Leadership

As industries and technology evolve, leaders are faced with guiding their organizations and employees through situations that often have never been encountered before. Peggy Mark, chief learning officer at Premier Health, is familiar with the challenge of adapting to an industry in flux.

“If you look at the healthcare industry, we are in a state of change that we have never experienced,” says Mark. “The role of the leader always has been critical, but because of these unprecedented changes, it is crucial that all of Premier is leading and collaborating on the same level so we can guide this organization into the future.”

Mark is responsible for the training and professional development of Premier Health’s approximately 14,000 employees.

With the support of the University of Dayton Center for Leadership (UDCL), Mark has been able to provide leaders at Premier Health with resources and tools to foster a strong environment for all employees to excel within.

The University of Dayton Center for Leadership is a unique and powerful resource that partners with innovative thinkers to create dynamic, engaging, and transformative programs for senior executives, emerging leaders, and front-line supervisors and professionals.

“When we work with an organization, we strive to have a solid understanding of what their needs are,” says Brent Kondritz, associate director of leadership programs at UDCL. “Once we identify potential solutions for their needs, we collaborate very closely with the organization to determine a curriculum recommendation in which content, goals, and objectives are all customized.”

This personalized approach is one of the reasons Premier Health partners with the UDCL.

“Working with the UDCL is very different from sending employees to an existing development program,” says Mark. “The customized curriculum we create with the UDCL has the Premier Health thread of values and culture woven through all of the coursework, regardless of who is presenting.”

In order to pinpoint what Premier wishes to accomplish when training and preparing their leaders, Mark spent time with Premier employees prior to designing the program with the UDCL. “We want strong leaders in our clinical areas, non-clinical areas, as well as physician leadership,” says Mark. “So we identified a core group of competencies that every leader needs, no matter their title, and we decided to train our leaders inter-professionally.”

Premier Health and the UDCL created a 14-session, one-year, certificate program that 23 Premier Health leaders from different fields and locations participated in. Topics included managing change, crucial conversations, and creating a great workplace culture.

The UDCL works with all types of organizations. Non-profit, government, education, and for-profit businesses have all partnered with the UDCL to provide their employees with world-class education.

“The community asset that we have in the UDCL is really special,” says Mark. “Often times organizations create their own development programs internally, but they are not able to bring in the quality of speakers and educators that the UDCL can.”

Some of the custom programs the UDCL has created for other Dayton businesses have focused on assertiveness skills, navigating difficult conversations, coaching, transitioning from a peer to a supervisor, mentoring, and accountability.

Varying lengths of programs are offered. Depending on what the organization is looking to achieve, half-day programs, full-day programs, and multiple-session programs are available.

“The big thing in designing a program is assessing and helping an organization determine the right fit with the challenge or opportunity they are experiencing,” says Kondritz.

“The programs we have are interactive, engaging, and experiential in nature. We want participants to be able to apply what they learn in real-world situations,” says Kondritz. “We want them to make a difference and impact the team and organization they are working with.”

One way UDCL ensures the success of their programs is through a responsive evaluation process.

“We focus and work with organizations on continuous feedback,” says Kondritz.

Prior to the Premier program, each participant underwent an extensive 360 assessment in which their direct reports, peers, and supervisors evaluated them. After the 360 assessment, each leader met one-on-one with a UDCL executive coach to review their results and identify areas of strength and development.

“After each session, we had Premier participants do an evaluation, so we had real-time feedback on content,” says Kondritz. “We also did a midpoint review to help guide our curriculum. Getting feedback from organizations is very important so we can continue to meet and exceed the needs of the partners we are working with.”

After the program, another 360 assessment was completed to measure growth of the participants. Mark feels like Premier’s partnership with the UDCL is surpassing expectations.

“We just graduated our first class of 23 leaders, and the experience was overwhelmingly positive,” says Mark. “We have already selected participants for our next cohort, which will begin the program in January 2017.

“They bring in world-renowned speakers, and their standards are so high in terms of curriculum development. From the minute Premier decided we wanted to develop an inter-professional program, there was no question that the UDCL was where we would go. We can really be creative to build a standard that specifically meets Premier Health’s needs and takes advantage of the quality of the UDCL programming.”