Why Great Leaders Are Built, Not Just Hired with Paul Kempinski

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Leadership isn’t just about filling roles, it’s about developing people. In this episode of Heliona Insight, I sit down with Paul Kempinski, former President & CEO of Children’s Mercy and now Founder and President of Kempinski Consulting, LLC.

Paul shares the lessons he learned about building executive teams, why developing both current and emerging leaders is essential, and how investing in people creates lasting organizational resilience.

Through Kempinski Consulting, Paul is paying forward his 42 years of leadership experience by providing personalized executive coaching, governance and advisory services, and public speaking engagements for meetings and conferences. Learn more about Paul and Kempinski Consulting.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
When I came to Children's Mercy and I began to put together my
leadership team, I invested a lot of political capital by
hiring a lot of leaders from theoutside.
Even though we had great leadership talent from within
the organization, I had concluded that those folks had
not yet been developed at a point where they could assume

(00:20):
these executive roles. But as I hired a lot of people
from the outside, I also made the commitment to myself and the
organization that we were going to invest in developing people
from within, not just existing leaders, but people who didn't
even realize that they had leadership potential.
And that was the catalyst for the creation of the Berry

(00:41):
Institute. So we created that as a an
entity and a pathway for existing leaders and potential
leaders to come in, to go through an assessment process so
that we understood what their goals and aspirations were and
to help them in a very personalized way at times and in
a broader sort of macro way at times to get plugged into

(01:05):
programs and modules and pathways that can help develop
them in accordance with what their goals were.
Hi, Abraham here. Well, sort of.
I lost my voice due to a very bad cold and I'm still

(01:26):
recovering, so I'm using AI to fill in for this segment.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's get back to the
intro. Today's guest is someone who has
spent more than 4 decades leading, shaping, and mentoring
leaders across healthcare and beyond.
Paul Kempinski is the founder and President of Kempinski
Consulting, where he pays forward his 42 years of

(01:46):
leadership experience through executive coaching, governance
advisory, and speaking engagements.
Before founding his firm, Paul served as the President and CEO
of Children's Mercy, where he led significant investments in
people, recognizing that great leaders aren't just hired,
they're developed. In this conversation, Paul and I

(02:06):
dive into what it means to prepare leaders for today and
tomorrow, the lessons he's carried through his career, and
how organizations can unlock thepotential of both current and
emerging leaders. So let's get into it.
Hello, hello. I apologize for interrupting

(02:27):
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(02:48):
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(03:11):
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(03:35):
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Hi Paul, thank you so much for being on the Heliona Inside
podcast today and I appreciate you so much for just just making

(03:57):
time and being available to be on the podcast.
And for those listening, I want to say that Paul will be
available October 15th for the live podcast.
Yes, this is an ad for myself, but again, make sure you
register a link will be in the comment.
But Paul, I want to start the conversation here.
You know, I read this block thatyou did, you know, title

(04:20):
leadership evolution and the value of the executive coaching.
I want to get into that because one of the things that we talk
about here on this podcast is, you know, focus around like
retention and, and then also just the cost of not being able
to retain your people. And I've talked to a lot of
people in this podcast that I'veshared, like coaching is, is,
is, is a good factor to helping,especially your leadership team

(04:44):
deal with things that are happening within the workplace
to, to be able to have access tocoach.
So I want to talk about this blog.
If you can give us a synopsis oflike, what is it about and why
did you write in? Yeah, that's great.
Well, first, Abraham, thank you for the opportunity to be on the
podcast. It's great to be with you and I
appreciate the invitation. I appreciate you asking about
the article that I wrote too, because I think, you know, I

(05:07):
recently retired after a 42 yearcareer in healthcare leadership.
And of course, when you're goingthrough that transition into the
next chapter of your life and you're looking back on a career,
you know, you're kind of exploring what were the
milestones of that career? What were the learnings of the
career? What, what are you most proud
of? What would you have done
differently as you have gone through the journey?

(05:30):
And I think one of the great learnings after 42 years in
healthcare leadership is the power of feedback,
introspection, and really understanding how you present
yourself to your constituents. And in my case, it was the
patients that we cared for, the families that we supported, and
of course, the team members thatwe supported so they could

(05:51):
activate the best potential of themselves.
So when I think about what I'm passionate about and what the
lessons I've learned in that career, it really was based upon
the power of feedback and the ability for others to have the
opportunity to reflect on how I'm presenting myself to them

(06:12):
and to others that I'm responsible to care for and
support. So that ultimately led to a
realization that my coaching experiences, my experiences with
executive coaches that were helping me, were some of the
most powerful moments in my career.
So that has really spawned this next chapter in my life, to

(06:34):
really do executive coaching as part of the next chapter and to
help activate the full potentialof other leaders.
Right, yeah. And and I, you know, I thanks
for sharing that you actually had executive coaching while you
were running such a big operation at Children's Mercy.
I do want to know, like, how exactly do you see executive

(06:54):
coaching playing out in the leadership team?
Because, you know, I've worked with a lot of companies and
normally when companies are selling solutions, they're
selling it to the employees. Even I fall into this.
I've, I've sell solutions to employees and now I'm, I'm, I'm
like pivoting a little bit and then going into the management
role like, OK, the, these managers, these, these, you

(07:17):
know, like leaders are also dealing with so much coming at
them that we don't see on a daily basis.
How can we create solutions to make sure that it can assist
them, be there for them, you know, counsel them as they
navigate, you know, just the murky waters of being being a
CEOA C-Suite, you know, like a board member, etcetera.

(07:38):
So I want to know how do you seethat play out in a leadership
team in your own experience, if you want to get into that?
And also, how do you see play out just in general?
Yeah. Well, it's a great question.
And, and first of all, I think we have to acknowledge that
leadership is very, very tough. Being a leader is a tough job.

(07:58):
You know, I had the privilege and the honor of leading a great
Children's Health system at Children's Mercy, you know, for
almost seven years. And while that was a blessing
and an honor to be doing that, it's a tough job.
You are always on. It's a 24/7 responsibility.
You are always being watched. And yet your ability to activate

(08:19):
the full mission of the organization is based upon the
ability to recruit, retain, develop and empower incredible
team members, right? Including leaders that may work
for you or may work for others in the organization.
And ultimately as leaders, we dowhat I have described and others

(08:40):
that we have worked with and culture journeys have described.
We cast a shadow. We cast a shadow to those that
we support, and in turn, that shadow gets cast throughout the
organization, and the organization will emulate our
behaviors individually and our behaviors as teams.
So it is critically important that we focus on developing

(09:01):
ourselves individually and developing ourselves as teams so
that the equation is 1 and 1 equaling 3 instead of 2.
When collectively we are acting in alignment, we are
collaborative, we care about oneanother, and we are singing off
the same sheet of music. With clarity and transparency.

(09:22):
We can do amazing things to helpour team members activate our
mission. Every single day.
So it is critical, you know, it is critical.
It begins at the top at the CEO level.
Perhaps you can even say it begins at the board level, at
the governance level. But if leaders are not nurturing
and fostering positive cultures that will demonstrate purpose,

(09:45):
demonstrate a vision, and demonstrate accountability to
that mission and those strategies that are going to
carry it out, we will not be successful as organizations.
And it does begin with leadership.
So our ability to introspect, toreflect upon ourselves as
individuals, to reflect upon ourperformance as a team, to give

(10:06):
and receive feedback with one another, to have healthy debate.
We don't always. I always said to our team
members that I don't want you all to be bobbleheads and say
that, well, if Paul said it, it must be because I always had an
opinion. I always had in a perspective,
but I was not always right. And collectively, when we

(10:27):
embrace the input and the perspective of others, we can
get to an even better conclusionthan perhaps we thought of
ourselves. So that's the importance of it.
Yeah, I love that. That's very beautiful, by the
way, the way you broke everything down.
And now I want to know as someone who who made a lot of
mistakes around feedback. I I was not prone to feedback,
but back when I was managing A-Team, that's also because I

(10:49):
was very young. And this may be an excuse, but,
but I, I was leading a very big team at a very young age and I
did horrible because, you know, I didn't allow feedback.
I didn't appreciate it because Ifelt like I know what I was
doing. I used to, I used to wear a
fedora. OK, I know what I'm doing here.
I mean, I still wear the fedora,but now I, I went to therapy, so
I'm doing much better. But I want to know, like you

(11:11):
being at at such a high level, like what does the cost of not
getting feedback or or not accepting feedback looks like
for a leader that's managing other leaders?
Well, the cost can be heavy. And by the way, Abraham, don't
beat yourself up because we all as leaders, any leader who does
not acknowledge that their journey has been imperfect,

(11:33):
they've made mistakes and they've had to learn along the
way is not being honest to be very.
I look at my early days as a leader.
I had no idea what I was doing. Because you know, there's only
so much that a textbook and a classroom can teach you about
leadership. Leadership ultimate effective
leadership is formed through experiences, through making

(11:54):
mistakes, taking risks, experimenting, learning from
others, mentorship, and of course coaching.
So you know it. It's not it, it is the journey.
I refer to it, and I think I saythis in the article, leadership
is like a bad EKG sometimes it has its ups and downs.
You're taking 2 steps forward and one step back.

(12:15):
So the importance of of having feedback from others and
embracing the perspective of others and also using coaching
to help evoke awareness on your part of what is helping to
advance your leadership and be successful and what is hindering
your leadership and perhaps creating those blind spots is

(12:37):
just critically important. So it begins with an
acknowledgement that we are not perfect.
We don't know everything. We make mistakes and we're going
to continue to learn. And to that vulnerability, I
would sort of encapsulate that as you know, vulnerability.
Vulnerability is an incredibly effective tool as a leader,

(12:58):
especially when it's authentic, because when others see that you
know that you are imperfect and you make mistakes, they are
going to they're going to evaluate you as being real,
honest, authentic and transparent.
And I think that's those are very, very important attributes
and it is critical. I've been part of many teams in

(13:18):
my 42 year career. I've been part of some
incredibly high performing teamswhere every day we came in and
we had the patient at the epicenter of every decision that
we would make and we knew that it was a team sport.
You know, leaders are generally type A people.
They want to be successful, theywant to continue to grow and

(13:40):
evolve and be promoted and evolve maybe to ACEO level.
But fundamentally the most effective leaders are those that
care 1st about the constituents they're serving, in our case the
patients and care about each other, care about each other and
have the willingness to be able to make difficult decisions even
when they're not the most popular decisions as well.

(14:03):
But that only comes by experience, making mistakes,
learning from those, getting feedback from others, and
realizing that the journey is foundationally imperfect.
You know, it's, it's constant learning.
No, yeah, I, you know, about twoyears ago, I had a coach for the
first time because I was making so many mistakes.

(14:23):
I was like, this is not, I know my intentions appeal what's
happening here. And then while talking to him
and and, you know, he was like, he's like, I'm overwhelmed
listening to you. You've lived 7 lives and I was
that way. What do you mean?
And, and he, and he was like, the amount of things that you
went through, the amount of failures that you've had and you

(14:43):
wake up every day and keep going.
And he's like, I can't even, I can't even imagine the, the, the
cost that's, that's within you right now.
And, and the fact that you keep going and, and, and back then he
didn't know my story, but he waslike, why do you keep going?
And, and then I was like, you know what?
I wake up every day just thinking like what I'm doing.

(15:03):
I just want to make sure it benefits that one child.
This is me as a kid, the things that I went through.
So to me that, that, that's whatkeeps me going.
Yeah. But then I made a lot of
mistakes because I, I was also bringing a lot of baggage into
all of the all the experiences that I was having in the early
ages. I didn't know how to
differentiate my own story and, and, and then me as a leader.

(15:26):
So again, a lot of insecurities were coming into the workplace
and I wanted to know you as a leader, have you ever
experienced anything like that where you were like leading, but
then there's something that's also, and, you know, poking into
that before you talk to your coach to realize, oh, maybe I
should not hold on to this for so long.
Absolutely. First of all, everyone, we are

(15:46):
all human beings 1st and leaderssecond.
You know, we all have baggage. We all have life experiences as
well as work experiences, and the best example that I can
think of is I had, you know, theopportunity to lead Children's
Mercy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

(16:07):
Bless your. Heart and and I'll never forget
that because it was first of all, an experience that none of
us ever want to go through againwithout question.
And yet out of tragedy and challenge comes opportunity and
growth. And one of the things that we
learned as an organization is that we had the ability to make

(16:27):
decisions that may have taken months or years and make them
within hours, days, worst case weeks, because we had to.
But we also realized that while we were trying to ensure that we
were taking care of each other and taking care of the
organization where there was no playbook to do that, that we can
pull off the shelf. We were also moms, dads,

(16:50):
grandparents, friends, communitystakeholders, children of
parents. And we had to ensure that we
were well at home with all of the challenges of children being
pulled out of schools, of perhaps loved ones, elderly
loved ones, maybe not surviving the pandemic, the exacerbation

(17:11):
of the mental health crisis thatwas occurring at the time.
We were all experiencing those dynamic as human beings and at
the same time we had to lead an organization through an
unprecedented experience. You can't separate the 2.
Now I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing and that is a
survival technique for me. But no one is ever perfect at

(17:34):
separating the lived experience and the work experience.
Ultimately they do come together.
I always laugh when I hear aboutwork life balance because
there's no distinction between work and life, especially when
you are a leader and in particular when you're ACEO.
So you can't just simply separate the two.
You can use tools and techniquesto allow you to focus on the you

(17:56):
know the issue at hand, but you're never going to be able to
fully separate your personal life from your work life.
Right. Wow, yeah, no, like thank you
for that because I I, I as a newparent and leading teams, I've
I've kind of been struggling with that because I work every
day. I am always with my computer,
you know, even when I'm watchingsometimes films with my kids,

(18:17):
I'll have my computer and then I'm, I'm working.
But but then it got to a point that, you know, my kids, you
know, they, they're so adorable.They, you know, especially my 7
year old. One time we, we were watching a
movie and mercy went and grabbedmy computer and gave it to me.
I don't know whether it's a goodthing or a bad thing, but he
like accepted it and they all just hang out with me.

(18:38):
So, so it's like I, I hear the work line balance all the time
and I never relate to it. And people like you just unplug.
I was like, I don't know how to do that as a leader.
Yeah, and I don't think you can completely as a leader.
And you know, it's, it's such a great important topic, I think.
And you're much younger than I am.
And the journey that you're going through, I went through.

(19:01):
I have always, when I dive into something, a job or a task or
something, I, I dive into it with the idea of ensuring that
it is achieved and there is excellence and it's a positive
outcome, right? Doesn't always happen that way.
So when you're working in these positions, it's hard work.
And it, they are, these are not nine to five jobs, correct.

(19:22):
But I think one of the things that I did, and I did it back in
2003, I went through a program that was called at the time, the
Corporate athlete. It was a program that was
started by two former professional tennis players who
began to work with elite professional athletes with the
goal of taking them from high performing to championship

(19:46):
level. And through science and evidence
and research, they realized thatcertain physiological and, you
know, biological and, you know, a body chemistry issues
contributed to performance. But ultimately there was a
realization that exertion without recovery.

(20:08):
Leads to failure, right? If you're a professional athlete
and all you do is exert 100% of the time and you never take the
time to recover, ultimately you're going to fail.
Your muscles are going to fail. You're going to fatigue.
So the same principles they learned apply to leadership.
If you are constantly going and exerting and not taking time to

(20:28):
recover, ultimately you will fail.
So as part of that experience that I went through with the
corporate athlete, we had to write a personal mission
statement. I still carry that personal
mission statement with me. It's right in this little
portfolio right here. And what I realized when I went
through the thought process of writing that is when I die, when

(20:49):
I'm 6 feet under, what do I wantmy gravestone to say?
Do I want it to say he was an incredible healthcare executive?
No, I want my gravestone to say that he was a great husband, a
great father, a great friend, a faithful servant, you know, to
the one above, a community servant, all of those things.

(21:13):
And oh, by the way, he was pretty good at what he did for
his job. That's at the bottom.
Because when you look back on what legacy you want to leave,
the legacies and the jobs that we are working with are
fleeting. Very few people leave a legacy
that in 100 years people will remember.
At Children's Mercy, we have examples of that with Catherine

(21:34):
and Alice Berry, the founding sisters of Children's Mercy.
But in the grand scheme of things, what do you want to be
known for? And that should be your guiding
light. That should be your North Star.
And for me, that's always been. It's not perfect and sometimes I
work too hard and maybe at timesI should have been working and
I'm. But I always prided myself on

(21:55):
always being there for the kids baseball games, the girls
softball games, the basketball games, the events and
everything. It was rare that I missed those
and I and it was difficult at times, but I always thought it
was important given how I wantedmy legacy to be listed and
prioritized on that gravestone. Yeah, wow, that's beautiful.

(22:16):
I feel like I'm getting all the cheat code of like, you know,
what to do the next 10-15 years.But thank you for that.
I do want to, you know, like now, like dive into the employee
experience as a leader. Like how do you see that play
out, especially when it comes topsychological safety?
And, and, and I know you know, you've like lead teams, like
massive teams during Covic and during COVID, a lot of

(22:39):
discussion around psychological safety was everywhere.
But usually you hear it from theemployee experience.
So from a leadership perspective, especially you, I
remember you, you guys were investing around 275,000,000
into the pediatric mental health, but COVID was happening,
all these things were happening.So I wanted to know how do you

(23:00):
see or how did you saw psychological safety play out as
a leader within the workplace? Yeah, I think there were a few
what I would describe as cataclysmic moments in our
journey of children's mercy that, you know, gave me what I
described as a kick in the gut. So we're referring to the mental
health crisis, which had existedand was growing rapidly before

(23:25):
COVID ever hit. And then when COVID hit, we
start pulling kids out of schooland doing all those things.
The mental health crisis began to be supersonic in its speed
and just to continue to exacerbate.
And we began to see an increase in something that for any CEO of
an organization just keeps you up at night.

(23:46):
And that is a dramatically increasing number of physical
assaults to our workforce, to our team members, and an
incredibly high level of what I would describe as verbal and
emotional assault to our workforce.
And in some cases, not physically necessarily, but
emotionally with one another through bullying.

(24:09):
We had surveys that indicated that we had a problem even
within the workforce, not just between patients, families and
and our team members. So that was the wake up call
that we had to ensure that we were doing everything we can to
ensure that our team members were physically and emotionally

(24:29):
safe. Some of those interventions were
physical in nature. It was the way we we designed
our physical units, the way we provided security support and
response and different things like that.
But it was also ensuring that we, the employees, the team
members knew that we cared aboutthem.

(24:51):
So we had a Center for professional well-being that
existed when I arrived at Children's Mercy, but we decided
to expand that not only to include well-being of our
clinicians and especially our physicians, but the well-being
of every team member. So we had a program that was
expanded and LED and supported all of our team members through

(25:12):
things like little pulse surveys.
We would go out on patient care units or in departments to do
Wellness check insurance to see how people were feeling.
We would bring things to the departments ranging from candy
to stress balls and everything in between to show that we
supported them. And we also ensured that they
knew that it was unacceptable when a team member was

(25:34):
physically or verbally assaulted.
And that, you know, I think was evidenced by the fact that we
made all these interventions. And then of course, that led to
a the program that we call that Children's Mercy still calls
Illuminate, which was a $275 million investment in addressing
the mental health crisis. But it's not only about the

(25:55):
kids. It's not only about the kids and
the families. It's also critically important
that we take care of one anotherin our organizations because
when somebody is not physically or emotionally well when they
come to work every day and they are not going to be able to give
their best to the child that's in that bed or the child that's
on the exam table or the Co worker that they are working and

(26:17):
collaborating with. So that's why it's so critically
important. Yeah, I mean, that's even
heavier because I, you know, I actually forgot that that was
happening during COVID. And, and, and as a leader and,
and just the entire team, I knowthat's not part of their job
description going into work and realizing that now we have to
actually deal, not even deal. But you, you, you have to be

(26:41):
responsible of other people's emotions.
Yeah, when you have to be responsible of their, of their
health and well-being. And then as a CEO, like you have
to take all that on not not onlythe mental, the physical, but
the financial as well aspect of that.
It's so true. And as ACEO you, you have the
responsibility, the burden, and you know the honor of making

(27:01):
sure that you are strong and setat steadfast and you know that
people can look to you with confidence knowing that while
we're going through these challenging times, things are
going to be OK. So I always work, did my very
best to be a transparent but optimistic leader.
Leaders have to be optimistic, but then sometimes it takes a

(27:23):
toll on you personally, and the best example I can give is when
the shooting occurred at the parade after the Chiefs won the
Super Bowl. That took an enormous toll on
our organization and our people because some of the victims of
that event were treated and cared for at Children's Mercy.
And, and I had lunch the day before with the brother of the

(27:46):
woman who was killed in the parade shooting.
And I, and I did not realize it hit me.
And I began to actually take advantage of, you know, the
support of our team members and our Center for well-being.
When I realized that this was hard for me.
And there were times when I was presenting to large groups of
team members that I, I started getting very emotional.

(28:07):
I was breaking down myself. And that's when the leader of
the center came to me and asked me if I was OK and, you know,
could she help? So yeah, it's.
And by the way, while there are always, we're experiencing
events, as you know, right now over the last few days.
So they're unfortunately, we arein a societal pattern where
these events that ultimately take a toll on us physically and

(28:30):
emotionally are becoming more frequent and more profound and
of course, more public through social media and television and
so forth. So it's ever more important that
we look inward to understand howwe are responding, but as
leaders, how our organization isresponding.
And again, why is that important?
Number one, we need to care for each other as people #2 we need

(28:53):
to care for the people under ourcare.
And in our case of Children's Mercy, it was children and
families that we are supporting.Wow.
No, Yeah, Thank you for that. You know, because I like to
remember the very vividly because I used to have a condo
at the Pollen Light Apartments and I remember, you know,
thinking about going to the parade with my kids.
But but I'm like, you know what?I'm not feeling too good.

(29:14):
I'm just going to stay. And then I stayed in and all
that happened. I'm just like, whoa.
And then the, you know, the sametime, you know, I was working
with Judith Mercy at that time with I can't, I can't remember
his name, but but he, he always has really good hairstyle and,
and, and really good. Jackets.
It must be Rob Steele. Yeah.
Robert Steele. Yeah, Yeah, I was working with

(29:35):
him and the chief, you know, like I can't remember her name
as as well. I'm really bad with names.
The chief marketing officer. Teresa Olson.
Yeah, yeah, I was working with them as well.
Just spoke with Teresa last night.
Really awesome. Yeah, group of people and, and
then also I was connected to them by Vince of I believe he's
a treasurer on the board, Vince.Yeah, that's right.

(29:56):
Vince Clark. He's a Vince.
Like untitled, like mentor of mine.
Yes, he's someone who I check injust everything.
Hey, I'm building this, what do you think?
And then he would give me feedback.
Great guy. Yeah, Vince is one of the
smartest people I know, and it'sbeen a long time.
Children's Mercy board member chairs the Finance Committee.
A really, really smart guy. Yeah, great guy.

(30:17):
Yeah. So I lean on to him a lot,
whether he likes it or not. I don't know whether he he's
like, I met this kid and he hasn't stopped emailing me, but
like, you know, like good guy. I remember back then I was
working with them and then I wasremembering, I was like, man, I
wonder how they're doing down there because that's a lot.
You're seeing kids that are dealing with, you know, the
aftermath of COVID and all, all the things that are happening

(30:38):
and now this happened. But like what?
I'm happy that you have support available for you within the
workplace. Which was your Wellness leader
coming up and talking to you? Yes, I know a lot of companies,
even the Wellness leaders don't have the luxury to do that.
They probably would not go and talk to the leader even if they

(31:01):
notice something because they don't want to offend them.
What did you do personally to tomake it safe for that individual
to come and talk? To you, you know, that's a great
question, Abraham and I, I thinkit goes back to really my
upbringing. You know, I, I grew up in a, you
know, very a middle class home. We never wanted for anything,
but we didn't live a life of luxury.

(31:23):
I grew up in a small home. My dad was a pharmacist and you
know, he, he served in the Navy and became a pharmacist and
pharmacy director, has worked inthe VA system his entire career.
But my parents taught me a lot. You know, we, we were not, it
was an old school family. We didn't tell each other.

(31:44):
We loved each other all the time, but I knew I was loved.
And, but my dad especially, and my mom taught me that the
importance of working hard and never taking yourself too
seriously and realizing that you're just one of, you know, 3
or 400 billion people in the world.
And you know, you're, you're nothing, you're special, but

(32:06):
you're nothing special at the same time, right.
So as I worked my way into, I went through undergraduate
school and Graduate School and so forth.
I, I had the blessing of workingin jobs in the early part of my
healthcare career where I was side by side with what I call
the people doing the real work. My first job was administering

(32:30):
the emergency department of, in,at a hospital, an academic
institution in Chicago, Rush University Medical Center.
And, you know, it was an inner City Hospital and I, I saw these
patients that were coming in every day.
And, and I, I remember, you know, you remember these
milestone events. And I used to oversee the unit

(32:53):
clerks, as we call them, that worked in the Ed.
And my first year in the job, right around Christmas time, I
was having a meeting with the unit clerks and they asked me if
on New Year's Eve, they could gohome 1/2 hour earlier than their
shift ended. And they said, you know, how
come? How come?
And they said, well, at midnight, that's when the

(33:14):
shooting begins. And this will allow us to get to
our homes before the shots ring out.
And I thought, Oh my God, Oh my God, you know, And as my first
and best mentor in healthcare told me and taught me, first you
have to think about who these unit clerks are as people and

(33:35):
their lived experiences before you think about what they're
doing in terms of their tasks onthe job.
So I learned, I think a big doseof humility and vulnerability
very early on in my career. And I always took pride and to
and to this day, I take pride inthe fact that I walked the
hallways of Children's Mercy being my last job.

(33:56):
And my best days were when I waswalking those hallways, not in a
meeting room, but in the hallways saying hi to, you know,
the housekeepers and telling them that thank you for doing a
great job. This place not only looks great,
but you're preventing infectionsfrom occurring by cleaning the
operating room impeccably well. You're creating a first

(34:17):
impression for everybody that walks in this door.
It sometimes it may have been just a greeting, a good morning
in the hallway. Sometimes it may have been a
hallway conversation. But for me, that was the joy
that I took in my position. So I think what I did was, you
know, created the reality and the perception of

(34:38):
approachability. I would have people come to my
office every day and people who wanted to meet with me.
And sometimes they were the housekeepers and the people, you
know, working, doing the real work as I described.
And I valued the opportunity to meet with them because I learned
a lot about what was really going on in the organization.
And it always gave me that little injection of humility

(35:00):
that we all need as we evolved into these higher level
leadership roles. So, you know, the frustration
that I would have at times was when people wouldn't tell me
what was really going on. They might tell me the great
things that were happening, but I would always say, tell me what
I need to know, not what I want to know.

(35:20):
And I think that helped to create a safe, you know, space
in general, but that that that was the joy when I could meet
with the people who really were doing that work, that important
work every single day. And I think that created, you
know, the feeling that he is an approachable leader.
We can talk to him in the hallways.
He knows names. Even though I wasn't always
great with names, I knew faces. But I I took pride in that and

(35:43):
candidly, it gave me great joy in my membership career.
No, Yeah, I, you know, I, I, youknow, like work, you know, not
to even like say that as they fall.
But I've worked with a lot of leaders where they don't have
that experience. They don't want the employees to
give them feedback, but the employees are afraid to give
them feedback. So it's like they're always just
like putting out all these surveys with this struggle to,

(36:06):
to like get feedback. I actually work with a bunch of
hospitals because I do all thesemental health events and a few
of them hired me and, and then they'll send the employees to
those, to those events so they can get feedback.
Because through my events, I'll have an entire, you know, like,
you know, like a survey for whenthey come in and when they
leave, because I do like a, a, apulse check.

(36:27):
That's like, how's, how's everyone doing?
And, and then as they leave, like how, how do you feel now
after this entire experience? And then I will share that with,
with those companies because they struggle to get, you know,
feedback from, from their people.
And my only rule is that I'll give you the, the feedback.
I will not tell you who wrote it.
This is for you to get better, to make sure that you can create

(36:49):
the psychological safety so thatyour employees can approach you.
So thank you for like explainingjust in your own realm how you
go about. That, well, if I could comment
on that too. And I, and I mentioned this in
the article that I shared with you.
But unfortunately the, the investment and the
prioritization of giving and receiving feedback is not where

(37:12):
it needs to be. I would suggest not just in
healthcare leadership, but in leadership in general.
And it's so critically important.
And at times when, in my case, when the healthcare system in
general was going through challenges, sometimes when you
had to begin to prioritize resources or your focus had to
focus on cost reduction, things like coaching and mentorship and

(37:36):
leadership development often would be the things that would
suffer and be deprioritized. That's a mistake.
That's a mistake because that ability for us as leaders to
give and receive feedback, to beopen, to be a evoke awareness on
our own parts about how we're leading effectively and what
blind spots we have, it's so critical.

(37:56):
It's not critical just in the current state as you're managing
the issues of the day, but it's critical in terms of the future
state, implementing the vision of the organization and even
most importantly, developing thenext generation of leaders doing
the succession planning that unfortunately, some
organizations don't do well. And in fact, we didn't do well

(38:17):
at Children's Mercy until we began to make that investment.
And one of the things I'm most proud of at Children's Mercy is
implementing what we call the Berry Institute, which was our
investment in developing leadership from within, but in a
in a specific way, developing leaders who understood the
importance of positive cultures and had the ability to nurture

(38:39):
that culture. Because when you have a strong
culture, those team members thatare caring for kids and
supporting that that care are going to be given the best
chance to activate the full potential of themselves every
single day. As you talked about just like
developing, you know, today, I think that is almost about four
different generations in the workplace.
And another feedback that I get on this podcast and as a

(39:01):
company, it's, you know, a lot of people leave jobs because
they don't feel like, you know, they have a future in there or
there is no path for them for growth.
There's no, you know, just any access to just personal
development or like professionaldevelopment for them.
They just, they have to work andgo home.

(39:21):
So they feel like they're stuck at the same position over and
over again. On the other hand, a, a lot of
younger generation, especially Gen.
Z and like the, the, the late, like millennials that are going
into the workplace, they're justbeing told do this and then and
it's like, OK, well, I haven't, I'm, I'm expecting training, but
there's no training available. You just figure around.
I, I literally had a meeting with someone who wanted to grab

(39:44):
coffee with me. You know, she goes to UMKC.
She's just been like messaging me earlier.
I kind of ignored it because I'mlike, I got so much to do, but
then I actually like took it up,you know, and then grabbed
coffee with her. And then she was like, you know,
I just wanted to know if you know, with your solution
because, you know, apparently she's been listening to what,
what, what we're building and she's like, do you guys have an

(40:06):
opportunity for people to learn continually on your platform?
I was like, oh, I should, I knowI really don't, but I'm going to
build that. So I wanted to get your take on
that as a leader. Why is it important to make sure
that you know your employees, your leaders are always learning
continually so that they can grow and then also create them
path for them to maybe apply fordifferent roles within the

(40:29):
company? Yeah, it's, it's, it's a great
question. It's an incredibly huge
challenge in leadership in general and all organizations.
And I'll, I'll go back to some of the work that we did at the
Berry Institute. But, you know, when I came to
Children's Mercy and I began to put together my leadership team,
I invested a lot of political capital by hiring a lot of

(40:50):
leaders from the outside. Even though we had great
leadership talent from within the organization, I had
concluded that those folks had not yet been developed at a
point where they could assume these executive roles.
But as I hired a lot of people from the outside, I also made
the commitment to myself and theorganization that we were going

(41:11):
to invest in developing people from within, not just existing
leaders, but people who didn't even realize that they had
leadership potential. And that was the catalyst for
the creation of the Berry Institute.
So we created that as a an entity and a pathway for
existing leaders and potential leaders to come in to go through

(41:34):
an assessment process so that weunderstood what their goals and
aspirations were and to help them in a very personalized way
at times and in a broader sort of macro way at times, to get
plugged into programs and modules and pathways that can
help develop them in accordance with what their goals were.

(41:58):
Now, this is not a perfect science or a perfect art because
we we said right up front, we'renot going to be able everybody
who wants to be a leader of Children's Mercy or be promoted
at Children's Mercy. Not everyone's going to have
that opportunity. And in fact, there may be
situations where the next step up or the next step over for an
individual might be in a different organization.

(42:20):
That's just the reality. That's just supply and demand at
work. But the first step was sort of
understanding the goals and the aspirations or maybe pointing
out an opportunity or a talent that somebody didn't even
realize they had. So what we would do is begin to
populate committees and task forces with people who didn't
even have a leadership title, but they knew they were thought.

(42:41):
We knew they were thought leaders in the organization and
they could make contributions to, you know, the work at hand.
So we tried to do that. And then we developed programs
internally. We took advantage of programs
externally like the block Schoolof Management as an example of
that and began to develop this curriculum that was

(43:02):
individualized when it was appropriate and developed for,
you know, larger populations andmembers of of leadership.
You're right. We are now basically, you know,
we have 4, maybe even 5 generations of workers in our
organizations, all of whom have different needs, different
priorities. And for me as an old baby

(43:23):
boomer, understanding how the unique perspectives, differences
and priorities everybody brings to the, to the table, it's
challenging and we can't always meet them, but we have to
understand them and do our best to tailor our organization's
resources around those. But first and foremost, there's
some building blocks. And the building blocks are to

(43:44):
ensure that every, every team member has the opportunity to
understand the purpose and the reason for the existence of the
organization. What we do, why we do it, it's
our mission, what their role is in the organization and to
engage them as what I refer to as an improvement specialist.

(44:05):
I I was never successful in getting this on their ID badges,
but I worked hard to refer to every team member in the
organization, not just as a registered nurse or financial
counselor or social worker, but as an improvement specialist
because they always knew what was broken and what needed
improvement in our systems and processes more than I would ever

(44:27):
know. And that was sort of the
evolution that's been the evolution of the lean leadership
and in healthcare and in other organizations.
So when you do that, when you engage people, first of all, you
give them a sense of purpose. They know that they're valued in
the organization. And then second of all, their
talents and their capabilities begin to emerge and they rise

(44:48):
above the waterline. I'll tell you a little story if
we have time here. But when COVID hit, there was a
physician, her name is Doctor Jennifer Watts.
She's an emergency medicine physician by background and a
sense the children's mercy evolved into a variety of
leadership roles. I didn't even know Doctor Watts
before COVID hit. And then in a few short weeks,

(45:11):
Doctor Watts was in my office several times a week.
And we were on the calls with governor, the governor's office,
and constituents and colleagues from around the healthcare
community working our way through the COVID pandemic.
That's an example of a leader who threw experiences and
circumstances. Some plan, some unplanned rose

(45:33):
above the water line and we realize, wow, that's an
incredibly talented individual that has the opportunity to
evolve. So sometimes it's planned and
systematic, and sometimes it happens via circumstances.
Wow, no. And, and, you know, like even
with truthers mercy, you know, I, I for some reason, I have my
favorite employees there or favorite leaders due to their

(45:56):
activities online. And that's this individual, I
think her name is Christina Meyer.
Steph. Stephanie Meyer.
Stephanie Meyer. Yeah.
Why? I said Christina, That's right.
But Stephanie Meyer, you know, Isee her post online and she's,
she's always talking about, you know, not only our experience,
but the employees experience, the patient's experience.
And the way she write is very like poetic.

(46:19):
As a writer myself, I, I enjoy reading her post and I do now.
I just said that I'm thinking ofall the pushback that I get when
it comes to the four or five different generations in the
workplace. Usually the pushback that I get
is like, how do you make sure that you are not letting go of
your own mission and vision as acompany just to meet those

(46:42):
people where they're at? Cuz a lot of companies struggle
with that. They're like, well, we don't
wanna just have a bunch of Genji's in our company dancing
around. They usually they're like, we
wanna make sure we maintain our company vision and mission and
culture and we don't wanna change our culture.
It's working. This new generation is coming in
how they don't know how to adaptto that generation, but they see

(47:04):
it as like, we don't want to change our company culture.
So there's always that friction,generational friction.
You, you, you know, one might call it.
And I want to know, like in yourcase, how did you see that play
out? Internet Mercy or any other you
know, like organization that youhad the pleasure of working
with. Yeah, it's it's a tough
challenge and it is a two way street.
So on one hand, we definitely invested a lot in understanding

(47:28):
the goals, the aspirations, the concerns, the dreams, the fears
of our team members in the organization.
We did that through surveys and an investment in culture, which
we can, you know, get into causeall these dots connect.
Ultimately, it's a phrase I use a lot.
So we definitely had to make that investment in understanding
and doing our best to support their needs, with physical and

(47:51):
emotional safety being at the forefront, right?
But then you also have to meet in the middle because
fundamentally we also developed a set of core values and guiding
behaviors that we expected everyteam member to conform with,
beginning with leadership. So those are sort of the
foundational building blocks that are almost the non

(48:13):
negotiables along the way. So, you know, the challenge is
to be able to articulate a vision under help people
understand their role in moving toward that vision and
understand and to hold people accountable for a set of values
and guiding behaviors that were sacrosanct, that represented the
soul of the organization. While at the same time

(48:36):
understanding those needs, goalsand aspirations that you have as
an individual and work hard to be able to create an environment
and an organization where they knew they had a place.
They had a place to continue to work, to grow, and to find
opportunities to help them activate their full potential.
It's never perfect. We succeeded in many ways and we

(48:58):
failed in other ways, but that was our ultimate goal, to find
that sweet spot. It's sort of the middle of the
the Venn diagram, if you will, right?
And we worked hard to do that, but it's never a perfect art or
a perfect science. Right, well, thank you for that
because that you know, I hope I hope my you know, past gets that

(49:20):
I've had the push back can hear that and and like learn from
that. I, you know, we are getting to
the end of this and I do have a question that I started asking
like too much every person that I talk to now, which I'm calling
it the three CS and I want to take your, I want to hear your
take about HC and just see what you think of them.

(49:44):
So the first one is clarity and the second one is communication
and the third one is capacity. And I want to hear how do you
see clarity play out in an organization and then we can go
to communication and capacity. Boy, I, I should have hired you
a long time ago because you're really touching on a lot of very

(50:05):
relevant points that as leaders,we all have to focus on.
Clarity is so critically important, and in an
organization like Children's Mercy, which when I left was
comprised of about 9000 team members.
Wow. I didn't know there was that
many. Yeah, 9000 team members

(50:25):
distributed over 2425 sites to hospitals.
So you had physical challenges of creating clarity in the
organization and just the challenge of articulating to
everyone why we exist, what we aspire to achieve and how we're
going to get there and what yourrole is in that journey.

(50:48):
So I always felt it was critically important that we
communicated frequently, effectively and clearly.
Now, I, I wasn't always successful in that.
I think sometimes as leaders we can drift into management speak,
right? And I was guilty of that at
times. And in healthcare in particular,

(51:11):
we're very well known for our acronyms.
Everything we do has a, you know, an, an ABC attached to it
in some way, shape or form. And we have to be mindful that
not everybody understands what those ABC's are, right?
So we have to be able to speak in a way that everyone can
fundamentally understand. And it's sometimes that may be
complex for certain audiences where the complexity is

(51:33):
required, but through town hall meetings, so that what what we
used to do, we, we started town hall meetings.
I started small group meetings with random employees, no more
than 15 who self invited themselves to these meetings.
And we had a way of prioritizingthe invitations where we would

(51:54):
just do a kind of a group rounding session so people could
hear what's going on in the organization, but ask any
question of me and we could talkabout things in a small group
intimate way to help create thatclarity.
And then if those team members understand what's happening, why
it's happening and where we're going, they're going to tell
their friends too, and their friends are going to take

(52:15):
advantage of these. So through large town hall
meetings that may have thousandsof people participating to small
meetings that may have 15 to one-on-one meetings, that's how
we attempted to both communicateand create clarity.
One of the things that I was very proud of that was a
learning during COVID. So when COVID hit, you know, it

(52:37):
hit children's hospitals very differently than adult
hospitals. Adult hospitals were bursting at
the seams with incredibly sick patients.
In our case, COVID was not a disease of children.
Therefore, we had to shut down essentially the hospital, shut
down our clinics and the hallways were times like ghost
towns and, and we were social distancing, trying to ensure the

(53:00):
safety of one another. So as a result, I wasn't able to
be physically in front of peoplenearly to the extent that I was
used to. So we started these virtual
meetings where I would literallygo in the auditorium and do a
virtual meeting that people could call into on their
computer and, you know, so that they would know from my

(53:20):
perspective how we're experiencing the pandemic, what
we're doing, why we're doing it and so forth.
That became so successful that we continued those those virtual
meetings. And so it's a variety of ways
that we tried. Many were successful, some we
had a tweak. We got feedback from a lot of
people on what we could do better.

(53:41):
But that helped us to create both the communication
methodology and also the clarityof the communication and also
how the organization is doing right.
How are we doing in terms of quality and safety and the
patient experience? How are we doing in, in terms of
advancing our research vision? How are we doing financially and
so forth? And we were struggling during

(54:01):
COVID big time. Yeah.
So that that clarity we is is critically important.
Right. And you've like touched on
communication, Yeah, because I know both kind of play very
closely together because in in order to be clear, you have to
communicate. Yeah.
So what's your take on capacity because I know that's one of the
biggest part when it comes to COVID and now?

(54:23):
Well, let me, let me give you, if I could one additional point
on communication, of course. Well, certainly the workforce
looks to the CEO to be a, you know, a very effective
communicator. I can't communicate on my own.
There has to be cascading of communication through our
leadership and management teams.At times we struggled with that

(54:44):
because we had to ensure that wewere all sort of marching to the
beat of the same drum. We were all on the same page in
terms of where we're heading, why we made a certain decision
and so forth. And that was a challenge at
times because when you grow intoa management role, a frontline
management role, a middle management role, you're not

(55:05):
always taught how to be an effective communicator.
So we had to work very hard to equip our management team with
speaking points that they could use in their own personal and
authentic way to communicate thedirection of the organization
and what's happening. Sometimes that was successful
and sometimes it wasn't successful.

(55:27):
That was a big challenge for us,but an area that we invested
heavily in. So communication is not just at
the individual level, but it hasto be systemic and it has to
include everyone that has a responsibility for communicating
and gauging their team members in the direction of the hospital
and the organization. And then you mentioned capacity,

(55:48):
so I, I'm going to ask you to define capacity more clearly for
me. But one of the things we learned
at Children's Mercy and, and oneof my learnings as a leader is
I, I felt we had an opportunity to accomplish a lot and I felt a
sense of urgency in moving the ball down the pathway.

(56:08):
Why did I feel that way? Part of it was my nature as a
leader, but part of it was knowing that we are caring for
children. And if there is one child that
is not getting the best possibleoutcome in the safest
environment with the best experience, then we have work to
do and we can't sit, sit around and just wait for those things.

(56:30):
We have to move. So one of the things I was
criticized for, and some of it was very legitimate, is we're
doing too many things, too many initiatives, right?
So one of the things you have tobe mindful of is an in an
organization is the capacity of the organization to do multiple
things at the same time and complete them successfully.

(56:51):
That may be projects, tasks, long term strategies, whatever
it is. So we began in the final couple
years of my tenure before I retired to really focus on
prioritization of initiatives, to ask ourselves how are they
aligned with the importance of our culture, our strategic plan,
research, patient care, whateverit might be.

(57:12):
And we tried to narrow down the the physical number of things
that we were working on to be mindful of the capacity of the
organization physically and emotionally to take on the
amount of work that we were doing.
Because it's easy for me to say we're going to do XYZ, but then
somebody has to actually carry out the work, right?
And that was one of the learnings for me as the CEO and

(57:34):
for us as a leadership team to better understand and focus on
how we prioritize our initiatives.
And that was really being mindful of the capacity of the
organization to not just do the work, but to do it successfully
and ensure that our patients andfamilies and our team members
were benefiting from it. Yeah, Thanks for thanks.

(57:56):
Thank you for being honest aboutthat.
Just stating that that was something that you were like
criticized for. And then, you know, the capacity
aspect, I just let the guests just take it as is and, and then
share from their own experience.But normally I think you were
the first person that shared that perspective.
Cuz I said I'm saying, wait, that's new to me.
Cuz usually when I access a lot of people share capacity from

(58:20):
the employee experience, It's usually the burnout.
I didn't know my team was burning out until I did this and
this and then and I realized, ohwow, I'm giving them way too
much to do. I think we're saying the same
thing because the consequences of not being mindful of the
capacity of the organization andits people is that you do have

(58:42):
burnout. And it's not just burnout at the
leadership and management level,that burnout takes place all
throughout the organization. And then, you know, there is
maybe not a define, maybe not a,you know, a, a tangible, but but
a very intangible level of chaosthat can occur in the
organization where people, they're not sure what they're
supposed to be doing, right. So that's when we really said,

(59:05):
look, first and foremost, provide great care.
That's what's most important. Everything else will take care
of itself, but the consequences of not being mindful of the
capacity of the organization is you do have burnout, you have
turnover, you lose good people, or at a basic level, you're
simply not getting the best out of the amazing people.

(59:27):
And we had 9000 amazing people at Children's Mercy.
The best out of people who everyday want to come to work
and just do the best job they can of caring for kids or
supporting that care. Yeah, yeah, my wife is going to
kill me for saying this, but a long, long time ago.
My ex used to work at Children'sMercy and, and she was the one

(59:48):
who actually connected me to Vince and she loved her job.
Like every morning she's just waking up and I'm just like, let
me sleep. She's excited to go to work.
And she used to work at Labor and Delivery.
No relations. Shana, if you're listening, just
a story. But yeah, I just wanted to share
that. And, and, and even me, the

(01:00:08):
reason why I wanted to have you in my podcast is because my son,
you know, I take him to Children's Mercy.
And his name is Mercy. He thinks the hospital is his.
He genuinely believe that's his hospital because his name is
Mercy Children's Mercy. Well, it is his hospital.
It is his hospital. I know it's it's.
That's why we exist. No, absolutely.
And and and I remember when we met you for the first time, I
didn't even know who you were. You were, I didn't even know you

(01:00:29):
were CEO, but he just asked you some question and you like got
to his level and you were talking to him.
I'm so, Oh yeah. This, this guy is really cool
because I work with a lot of therapists and I know that's the
method to to like, to like show that you are present with a
child. And I remember I was talking to
the nurse and she was like, Oh yeah, that's the CEO.
I was like, what that guy? I mean, I'm like, I could have

(01:00:49):
introduced myself, but yeah, I was running late.
So I was when I was like, alright buddy, let's go.
Just just just let the nice man go.
Well, thank you for that. Thank you for being present with
him at that. Well, I, I appreciate you
mentioning that, but as I said earlier in our discussion here,
those were my best days, you know, when I had the opportunity
to walk the hallways and, and meet folks like yourself and

(01:01:12):
your child and just engage with you.
I mean, you know that, that, that just, that was my purpose,
right? You know, that was constantly
being, that was my reminder. And, and I, you know, the other
lesson I learned and I tell people is that for me, when I
thought I was having a bad day, I would just go and walk the
hallway and then I would see thekids, the families and the

(01:01:34):
struggles. No one wanted to be in that
hospital, right? And immediately the bubble burst
pretty quickly and I realized mybad day was nowhere near the day
that those kids and families arehaving.
So yeah, that's a great perspective.
Like, wow. But yeah, I mean, I, I could
talk to you all day, but I'm going to have to bring you in
Season 2. And, you know, we have a closing

(01:01:55):
tradition here that I like to ask every guest.
So based on everything that we've talked about today, from
the woman you walk into the building to now, I, I, I want to
know genuinely, how is your spirit right now?
My spirit is really at a high level now.
We were talking before we sort of went on the air.
We're both. I know my allergies have kicked
in and you know, I didn't sleep well last night and all that.

(01:02:18):
So I may not, I may not be at myphysical best, but this
conversation has been energizingfor me because first of all,
anytime you have an opportunity to reflect upon, you know, 42
years in a field that is ultimately geared toward
improving the health and well-being of individuals and

(01:02:40):
communities, that's, that's a great opportunity to reflect.
And then at the same time, I, I,as I pay forward the lessons
I've learned over those 42 yearsin my new career, you know, with
Kempinski Consulting, that is anopportunity to just reinforce
and remind myself, myself of those lessons that I am paying

(01:03:03):
forward to others and hopefully impacting in a positive way the
next generation of leadership sothat they can in turn, care for
folks like me who are going to need that care and do it in the
best way they possibly can. So I, I feel great and I thank
you for facilitating a wonderful, wonderful
conversation. Well, I'm honored, you know,
I'm, I've, I've been looking forward to this for, for a very

(01:03:25):
long time. So I'm glad that it happened.
And again, thank you so much forcoming in and, and just being
honest with me and being vulnerable and transparent.
You know, it takes a lot for, for, for like leaders to, to get
to this position. So I know from the bottom of my
heart, a lot of the people that listen to this will find value
in that. Normally I'll, I'll, I'll get
someone text me after they listen and they have so much to

(01:03:47):
say. So that would be a lot of value
in just listening to this conversation.
But again, thank you so much forfor being here today.
It's been my pleasure, Abraham. Thank you for having me.