Episode 5 The Grit to Lead: How Perserverance & Tenacity Paved The Way to Leadership Excellence

Matt Frye, president and CEO of HSHS St. John's Hospital, discusses leadership and the evolving healthcare industry. He defines leadership as making tough decisions and persevering through challenges. He emphasizes the importance of serving the community and patients with integrity. He also highlights the advancements in technology and the changing workforce in healthcare. Frye shares that mentorship and hard work have played a significant role in his career path. He advises aspiring leaders to set goals, believe in themselves, and be willing to take risks. Despite facing skepticism, Frye encourages young professionals to pursue their aspirations and not let others define their worth. I'm your host, Laura Perez Ehrhardt. Welcome to CoachNomics Presents Podcast, a part of the ECS Network. I'm a certified executive coach, and I've been coaching executives and senior leaders for a couple of decades. This is the art of leadership. My guest today is Matthew Frye. He's the president and CEO of HSHS St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Illinois. Matt, it's so good for you to join me today as my guest to talk about your exciting career path and journey to becoming a successful leader. I have to say, we're in very different and interesting times now, and I know my listeners are going to be curious about your evolution and perspective around what's going on in the healthcare arena, but even more so, what it takes to become a successful leader, especially one that others follow. So let's start with how you define leadership and what that looks like to you. First of all, thank you for having me, Laura. It's an honor to be here with you, and I truly do feel privileged to have the opportunity to sit here and speak with you today. Leadership to me is the willingness and the courage to be able to make tough decisions and to be able to persevere through challenging times. I think you can be a leader as a frontline employee. You can be a leader as the head of an organization. Really, leadership is how we show up each day. It's how we make intentional actions and how we carry those forward for the betterment for the larger good. Everybody defines leadership in a different way, and post-pandemic, there's just been so much that has changed, and there's just so much more pressure, and especially for you being in healthcare, I mean, the expectations are even higher, right? So not only serving and being a servant leader, looking to be a situational leader, looking to lead, you know, staff members, but also leading a healthcare system must be just overwhelming, and I know that there's just so much throughout the day that happens, and you have to pivot so much, and then serving the patients, right? Making sure that the patients are getting that exceptional care. That's why I started off with asking you to define leadership. I think that this is just really a very sensitive and very crucial time in healthcare alone. Talking about healthcare and leadership and servant leadership, how do you define your true north? What is that for you? You know, I think my true north comes back to the patient and comes back to the community. I think, you know, at the end of the day, everything I do as a leader, I'm a firm believer in servant leadership, and essentially what that means is everything that I do is a service for colleagues on my team and the patients in the community that we serve. You know, at the end of the day, my true north is doing things with integrity, doing things with honesty, doing things in a way that will provide the maximum value for our patients. And sometimes that requires us to make difficult decisions in order to get there. Unfortunately, sometimes that requires us to make decisions about the services we provide. Sometimes that requires us to make decisions about the hours in which we provide services. Really what it comes down to is being able to provide the services that are needed for the community at a particular time. And, you know, I take great pride and honor in the work that the team does. You know, truly, we wouldn't be able to be successful if we didn't have our patients and our community as our true north. Well, like I said, healthcare is, we're in the middle of, you know, just so many great opportunities going forward. I mean, the pandemic really did throw a huge wrench in how we do work, how we connect, how we relate to each other. I said this before in another podcast, if people are really paying attention and willing to look through this through a different lens, it's really giving us so many more new opportunities to get things right. And I know that healthcare, there's just so much changing, there's so much great things happening. I know that, Dion, you know, within the news we hear so much that's doom and gloom, but in reality, I hear and see a lot of wonderful things that are progressing in healthcare. What would you say as a leader that is at the forefront right now that's progressing? It's interesting. So I think there's quite a few things. So one, probably the most obvious, is technology itself. Technology, pharmaceuticals, I mean, they're advancing at a rate that is really unprecedented. I guess to provide state-of-the-art care for our patients, providing some relief from a mortality and morbidity standpoint that just couldn't be realized 10 years ago or even 15 years ago. You know, that advancement is moving at neck-break speed. I mean, I'll give a good example of something that I actually experienced about two years ago when I was with Sutter Health. We were getting a new CT, which is computerized topography in imaging modality. We were getting a scanner in the emergency department of our hospital. And so that project had gone on for about 18 months, and there were a lot of other renovations going on in the emergency department or ED. Finally, the vendor gets on the phone with me and says, hey, Matt, we're now at a point where we're about to send out the CT unit. I just want to tell you that the unit that you bought, although it was state-of-the-art 18 months ago, is now obsolete in some areas. Wow. So would you like to, you know, you were smart enough to buy an obsolescence clause on the CT unit. Would you like to invoke that obsolescence clause and get the newer unit? Now, it might come with some additional construction costs because it might be a little bit heavier, the heat output might be a little bit more. You know, it is – there has been evolution over the last 18 months. That to me was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. I'm seeing those types of things occur throughout the industry as – even over just the last couple of years. You know, that's one poignant example, but I could probably name another 15 examples. You know, some other things that I think are really important is, you know, one, around workforce. The workforce in the hospitals and in the ambulatory settings have changed quite a bit. I think the stress of the pandemic has forced some of that change. For example, moving towards virtual care whenever possible. We now see a lot of drive-thru labs where you can actually stay in your car and get your blood drawn and processed, et cetera. I've been one of those folks. Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people have. And you know, we're starting to see patients say, you know what, I've now experienced this more convenient way to have care delivery. I don't want to go back to the other way. As health system leaders, you know, we really need to figure out how do we change the workforce? How do we change our delivery model to meet the needs of the consumer, which ultimately are our patients? But, you know, we've also seen extreme shortages in nursing and physicians, and so we've had to pivot our models, get a little bit creative there. While delivering exceptional care to our patients, how do we do that in a way that looks a little bit different from a structural standpoint? One way that we are exploring that at the hospital I'm currently at, which is a large, you know, 442-bed, level one trauma center out in the Midwest, in Springfield, Illinois, is we've started to bring licensed practice nurses, or LPNs, back into the hospitals. Now, this is something that other areas have started to do, but frankly, our CNO here at this hospital, she's been the CNO here for eight years, she's worked in nursing for 25 years, she's never worked alongside an LPN in acute settings. So this is somewhat new in a lot of areas. In California, they go under a different license moniker, LVN, licensed vocational nurse, but it's the same level of nursing. You know, we don't really have LVNs in any of the hospitals out in California, or at least we didn't a couple years ago, and so, but this, and it's referred to as team nursing. This team nursing model is now becoming more and more ubiquitous because RNs are becoming harder and harder to find, and RNs are commanding higher and higher salaries, and frankly, it's just, it's very costly to staff our units, you know, solely with RNs. So we're needing to get creative, but, you know, those are other evolutions that we've seen in the industry occur, and I think largely as a direct result of the pressures applied through the pandemic. Those are just a few examples, but, you know, I could probably talk for two hours about that. You know, the impetus for change in healthcare is, it is fast evolving, and something that, frankly, we are going to have to get used to. We will need to get more and more comfortable with change in this industry because this is not going to abate any time soon. I think all industries, whether it's tech, biotech, healthcare, you know, the service industry, everybody's having to adapt to the change, depending on, you know, where you're at in one industry, it just depends on the kind of change that they're needing to adapt to. Now that we're talking about adapting and evolution, let's talk about the evolution of your career path because back in, what, 2013, you started out in healthcare as an administrative fellow. So how does an administrative fellow in 2013 end up as president and CEO at St. John's? So let's talk about what that career path, what you have had to follow to reach and attain your current role, which is really impressive, Matt, but also the kind of support that you've needed, such as coaching or mentorship, how has that played a pivotal role in your evolution of career path being? Okay. Great question. I really love how you tied in that last piece there. You know, I have been the fortunate benefactor of incredible mentors over my career. And frankly, I place a lot of the success I've had, the credit for that really goes to many of those mentors. I would also say, and this probably isn't a popular thing to say, but a lot of it has to do with timing and luck, you know? I mean, sometimes it's being in the right position at the right time to get tapped on the shoulder. And, you know, sometimes it is a little scary, but being able to stand up and say, yeah, I'll do that, I'll step into that, and I'll take on the risk of possibly failing, and that could have some disastrous effects on your career. And being willing to accept the call, so to speak, when it comes. A lot of those calls, so to speak, and I've had quite a few over the 10-year career that you mentioned, a lot of those happened out of sheer circumstance. It was me being in the right place at the right time, showing a certain grit and determination, and folks really trusting that I could do something differently and provide value. All of that being said, and I would be remiss if I didn't also say, you know, a lot of really hard work went into it as well. There was very long days in there, and, you know, I would never say that everyone has to work the same amount of hours or, you know, sacrifice the same amount. You know, some people are able to achieve the same things and do it maybe a lot less painfully, if you will. I've worked 60 to 70 hours a week for pretty much that entire 10-year career, if not more. And I think, you know, there is a certain amount of failure that I've had. In fact, I would say probably I have failed more times than I've succeeded. Luckily, I'm going to take it all the way back, full circle back to the beginning. Luckily, I've had mentors that have been able to help me understand those failures, learn from those failures, incorporate those learnings into my activity and my growth, and ultimately allow for me to accept accountability for certain things and really take the opportunities as well as some of the successes and hopefully help to build on that. You know, I am a servant leader through and through, and my goal, my mission is to serve my colleagues and to be someone that can be reliable in all of these things. But that stuff comes over time, and I've just been very, very fortunate to have so many impactful leaders in my life that have been willing to deliver tough messages and hold me accountable, even when I didn't want to hear the news or I had blind spots, didn't necessarily believe it at first. That can be really challenging to do, but frankly, I just wish everybody had one or more solid mentor in their career to help them achieve what they want to achieve in life. Beautifully said. What I heard you say earlier about being at the right place at the right time, I truly do believe that we do make our own luck. What I mean by that is how we lean into the changes we need to make in our personal and professional career path, the choices that we make to work, who we're going to connect with, building our networks, the type of work and roles we take on. That's all, I think that's what I call making our own luck, because, you know, as we meet people, as we engage and we're in our current roles or whatever that role is at the time, we're meeting folks in meaningful ways that really does help us to connect when we do land in a role and people are noticing us. That's the luck that we've created. That's the due diligence that we've been doing. That's the grit, I think, part of what you're talking about, but what I realize. But I've also heard you say, and I'm glad you brought this up, you realize that you're not perfect and you have made these mistakes. And I love the fact that you bring that up because making those errors, and I always tell people, especially when I'm coaching or mentoring management and senior managers, is make your mistakes, make them fast, but learn from them. Then decide how you're going to apply them. My next question, and we walked right into that, ask you about a leadership blunder. What's one that comes to mind that you can share with us along your path and what did you learn from it? Oh, gosh, there's been a lot of them. Before I touch on that, I'd like to just go back because I think you made some really salient points, and I'll just share because mentorship is something I'm very passionate about, and Laura, I know you're very passionate about it as well. I'll share two pieces of information that two separate mentors have shared with me. One mentor told me, and this goes back to kind of us manifesting our own destiny and creating our own luck. He said, Matt, you are never going to be the smartest guy in the room. You are never going to be the best looking person in the room. But one thing that's under your control is you can be the hardest worker in the room. That is under your direct control, and that is something that you can take full ownership of and help to guide. So I think that really kind of speaks, Laura, to what you were talking about, about creating our own luck because I completely agree with you. I do think some of it is just timing, but some of it is timing and you are someone that people think of for things because you've created relationships. Because you've demonstrated that grit that you mentioned. Because you've demonstrated an ability to follow through and work well with others and hold people accountable. I completely agree with that point you made. I think the other piece, and this also kind of falls in line with that, a different mentor shared this with me. Luckily, I received this feedback just a couple months into my fellowship. It's something that really stuck with me immediately, and I've tried to incorporate throughout my career, and I think it's served me well thus far. He said, Matt, there are three things that you need to truly incorporate if you're going to be a solid leader. One is you need to always do what you say you're going to do. He said, you know, people have short memories, and frankly, some people are somewhat vindictive. You can be completely on your game 99 times, and if just one time out of 100, you do something unethical or you say you're going to do something and you don't do it, unfortunately, 50 or 60% of people, they're going to remember that forever. You know, he said it's just fundamentally critical that as a leader, you are 100% on. You are always ethical. You always do what you say you're going to do, and people can rely on you. He said the second thing is you need to always be as responsive as possible, and he challenged me with something that I've done for the last 10 years since I had this conversation with him, and I encourage everybody to do this because I think it's just critically important. But, you know, he said, you know, as a reminder, you work for your team. Your team does not work for you, and what that – one way that you demonstrate that is you respond to them. And so, Matt, I challenge you to respond to every email in your inbox every single day before you leave the office. Sometimes that will make for some really long days, but it's really important. I would actually say it's critical. It's something that I have done – I wouldn't say that I'm 100% perfect at it, but I would say 99.99% of the time I execute on this task, and it's served me well. And I think the third thing that he shared is you just need to be someone that people want to work with. You can't be a jerk, okay? Someone that people want to follow, right? Yeah, totally. I mean, you got to be someone that people, you know, can get along with. They respect you. They feel like you respect them. There is mutual respect and camaraderie that is able to be garnered between you and your peers and your subordinates and those that you report to. All of those things, I think, fall back into the advice you had given, Laura, that we kind of create some of this luck through our actions and being intentional about the way we present and we carry ourselves and the way we show up is going to really increase the odds that, you know, the luck will be manifested, not just sit back and idly wait for things to happen. Yeah, wow. That's a mouthful, but so true. I love it. The listeners, Matt, that are out there right now who are new to leadership or really looking at their future and stepping into future leadership roles, what piece of advice can you share with those young professionals that are aspiring to become a leader or who have stepped into a leadership role today? The first thing I would say is set your goals and aspirations and never think you're unworthy. A little secret that people don't know about me is I was a stonemason for five and a half years before I got into healthcare. I worked at McDonald's as a cook throughout undergrad. Also, I sorted metal at a scrapyard, working under the table and getting my undergraduate degree. In graduate school, I was a shift manager at a sandwich shop through graduate school. So I would just say that people might tell you that you're not worthy. People might tell you that you can't achieve certain things. You might tell someone that you want to be the CEO of a hospital and give you a very real experience. When I realized I wanted to be the CEO of a hospital, I spent three years, every single month, I reached out, made contact, and went and met with a new hospital CEO. To expand my network, to learn from them, to ask them what their advice, guidance, and counsel would be on me attaining a CEO role of a hospital. The surprising thing is 95% of them, virtually all of them, there were just a few of them, virtually all of them said it would be impossible. You can't do it. Give up. Start putting your focus elsewhere. You're aiming too high. People are going to continually say these things, and that's their opinion, and it's not like they're bad people. Those opinions are formed through their personal experiences, their lived experiences. So it's not like you should hold it against them or take it offensively or think, oh, this is because of X, Y, and Z. My personal advice is you take the nuggets of value that you get, because there will be nuggets of value in there. You try and work on those. You incorporate those, and you just continue. Continue the fight. Never give up, and you will be able to achieve whatever you set out to achieve. Because it's somebody else's truth doesn't make it yours. Totally agree. Don't let other people's narrow scope of the world or their world influence your decisions. There might be some small nuggets and some things that they need to think about, right? These early leaders need to consider, take into consideration, but not ruminate over it and let it distract them from their path. Absolutely. And you know what? They will, because they truly believe, I think most people are good people, and most people want the best for the people they're trying to help. Mentorship, at its core, is a service, right? So when someone's taking the time to provide mentorship to you, and they're telling you, give up. You're wasting your time. There are many other things you can be doing that are going to be much more valuable to you. They're not doing that. They're typically, I would say, not saying that because they want to hurt you or because they're being petty. Again, I think it's their shared, it's what they have experienced through their lives, and probably what they've been taught or what they've been told. But I completely agree with you. We need to, as protégés, we need to make sure that we, this is another piece of really helpful advice I received from a mentor, you take the nuggets of value and truth and you incorporate those, but the rest of it you need to leave behind. And I just think that that's a really strong piece of information that people should just understand. But I think going back to your original question, it's just really important that if you have the determination to set out for a certain goal or aspiration, go for it. And it might take a tremendous amount of work. I mean, it took me 10 years working pretty crazy hours. During that time, I earned a couple graduate degrees and a doctorate and became a fellow of ACHE and had three kids and got married and moved a couple times and all of this. It wasn't easy, for sure. That is not easy, but it is totally doable. I like to joke with my wife a little bit about this, but I really do believe this. I think it drives her nuts. But that is, I truly believe you can do it all. You can have whatever you want if you're willing to work hard enough for it. So doing it all comes with sacrifices, right, Matt? Absolutely. And Laura, that's a really good point because there are certain sacrifices that I have made that other people wouldn't be willing to make and nor should they be forced to make. And sometimes you'll be able to find a pathway that doesn't require those same sacrifices. It might take you a little bit longer, or you might not be able to get exactly where you want to be, or maybe circumstances will just be different and you will be able to achieve all of what you're wanting to achieve without making the same sacrifices. You're absolutely right. There have been a lot of sacrifices along the way, a lot of dinners missed with my kids, a lot of dates missed with my wife, events that I haven't been able to attend that are family-oriented. So there have been a lot of those things along the way that I have had to make sacrifices on. And those have been sacrifices that, to me, are acceptable and that I've been willing to make. But you bring up a really good point, Laura. That is probably something that our listeners should keep in mind is that none of this is free. There is no free lunch. When considering what those sacrifices are, it's also understanding what you're giving up. If you're married, if you have a significant other, what they might be giving up. And being realistic with those expectations, having those communications before you step into and make these decisions alone, because it's never a one-way conversation. It's a two-way if we're in relationship, right? It's getting complete agreement and what that agreement will look like for you and your partner. So thanks for sharing that. That's something that I think that our listeners out there are really going to appreciate. One other question around the lessons that you've learned and how they've influenced you, the leader that you've become today. Maybe I'll start with going back to your question on one of my biggest leadership blunders, and then I'll talk about some of the lessons, because this directly feeds into it. I feel like I have learned 10 times more from my mishaps than I have from any success that I've achieved. So one – and I will emphasize by saying I have had hundreds of mistakes, so that is totally natural. And, you know, Laura, I think your advice that you give to folks that you mentor about embracing your failures, I just – I can't emphasize enough how much I think that is such a healthy approach and view of failure. One blunder that I had, I was working as an implementation manager. I was launching a new service line, and this was one of my first new service lines that I had launched, and there was a lot riding on this. It was essentially establishing a call center for our home health line of business for all of Sutter Health. This had previously never been done before. We had gone through all of the typical steps that you would go through for a new implementation. So as an implementation manager, it was my job to kind of take the concept, work that through all of the preliminaries, including, you know, workflow development, IT, infrastructure development, staffing, et cetera. Leading the team through GoLive, and then as an implementation manager, at least the way that this role worked, I actually served as the operations manager until stabilization was achieved, and then I would hand that off to the permanent operations manager. We had launched this new business line. We were about 12 hours into it, and things were going terribly. The abandonment rate was at 15 percent. Our target abandonment rate was less than 5 percent, and the abandonment rate was quickly climbing. These are for very ill patients on home health. Some of the patients that were served in this program were actually on palliative care, and so you can imagine the anxiety that families feel when they're calling in for some sort of clinical need, patients on palliative care. It was not going well. The workloads that we had in place were – we were identifying once they were actually put into place that, you know, they weren't functioning the way that we had designed. And so the chief of home health and hospice had reached out to me and said, Matt, what in the heck are you doing, and what's your plan? Because this is absolutely unacceptable. I made the mistake of, one, thinking I could fix it. That was a big problem. Thinking I could fix it, like, don't worry, just hang on, I'll fix it this shift, you know, type thing. So that was one huge mistake. Two is my response to this individual who I had a great working relationship with, and in fact, she tapped me to be a home health administrator about three months later to step into a turnaround situation. My response to her was, well, I don't know that, you know, we can make any changes at this point. And big problem, right? She's the customer. And I had somehow lost sight of that through all the stress and through all of the issues going on. I had lost sight of a couple core things. One, I had lost sight of the patient. Two, I had lost sight of who my customer was. Who my customer was. And yes, my customer is the patient, but my customer was also the center care at home, which was the home health agency. And three, I lost sight of my authority and my power as the implementation leader. Essentially, in all of the hubbub and all of the excitement and all of the failure, I had abdicated my authority. Through these three failures, I had, by the end of the day, we were at a 35% abandonment rate. I had almost entirely sullied my relationship with this important client. And I had lost all trust and stature with my team that I was leading. You know, luckily, I had been able to take these failures that were, you know, at the time, things just seemed like they're going to go on forever. Take these failures and put them into action. I immediately put a halt on any further operations. We reverted back to phone lines for the following day. We met for 12 to 14 hours a day over the following two weeks, worked out all the kinks, made sure that we had the appropriate staffing, that all of our workflows were working as intended, that we had the nursing support we needed, and ultimately, that our patients were going to get the service that they deserved. And then we relaunched two weeks later, and we had a much different experience. A lot of critical failure points there, but I think the key is we always need to be humble enough to, you know, understand that we've failed and that we've had opportunities for improvement and then incorporate the change there. So, you know, that kind of feeds into the lessons. You know, I think being humble is one of the biggest things that we can do as leaders. Now, that's not being someone who is so humble that, you know, we don't take, you know, a stand every once in a while, or, you know, we aren't able to take command and control of a situation if we need to. But we do need to be humble enough to say, hey, listen, I don't know it all, and I've surrounded myself with really smart people that probably know a lot more than I do. And together, as a team, we can figure this out. I think... Absolutely. Leadership is a we, right? It's never an I. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're talking about, you know, being humble, but it's also being humble and having a sense of humility, which I think you have a pretty good dose of. Yeah. And, you know, that doesn't... That's learned as well. You know, every once in a while, particularly early on, we think that, you know, if we're a bull in a china shop or if we act a certain way, you know, hubris and with confidence that it's going to produce better results. And you learn pretty quickly that that is the complete opposite of the result that ends up happening. You know, another lesson, though, that I learned is kind of back to that hard work mentality. Hard work does not necessarily mean working 14 hours a day. Hard work can mean working seven hours, but doing it in a very smart and efficient way. You know, I think we all need to define hard work. To me, I think hard work is doing what's required. Being willing to sacrifice and suffer and make changes in order to get the job done. But at the end of the day, doing what is required to get the job done. That might mean six hours worth of work. That might mean 18 hours. But having the mindset that we're not going to give up and we're going to persevere. To me, that's what hard work means. Matt, if you wrote a letter to your younger self today, what advice would you give to your younger self? Oh, I would say, you know, I thought about this a lot and I think the single biggest piece of advice I would give myself is be happy with the fact that it takes time to achieve certain things. You don't need to get to the finish line tomorrow, but the ride is important. And you can learn a lot if you open your eyes, you open your ears, you humble yourself, you learn from others. You know, you can develop yourself in so many other facets outside of your title, outside of your salary. You can effectively achieve a lot more by going slow to go fast. Well, Matt, we've reached the end of this podcast. This was an unbelievably wonderful conversation with you. Thank you for sharing your leadership journey with listeners today. And I know folks that are out there are going to get so much out of this podcast. So I truly appreciate this. Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Laura. That's it for this episode of Coachonomics Presents, The Art of Leadership. So if you're interested in being a guest or you're a subject matter expert, please go to my website, www.epiphanyconsultingsolutions.com and submit your request on the web chat link. You can also find me on my LinkedIn page under Laura Perez-Ehrhardt or my website, epiphanyconsultingsolutions.com. Much gratitude to my listeners. If you love the show and learn from it, pay it forward and share my podcast with your colleagues or friends. I'm Laura Perez-Ehrhardt. Until next time, stay safe and be well.