This prestigious award is presented annually to an individual who is a strong advocate for NurseTRUST and who is known for leadership in their organization and community, for high standards, and for leading through challenging times.

Named in honor of Dr. Shirley Chater, a renowned nurse, healthcare leader, and advocate for nursing leadership, the Shirley Chater Enduring Leadership Award recognizes individuals who embody Dr. Chater’s spirit of leadership, innovation, and dedication to developing nurse leaders to improve nursing, health, and healthcare.

Williams served as Deputy Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows program from 2009 until 2015 and was instrumental in helping lead alumni ENF members in the transition and creation of NurseTRUST. Williams continues to serve as a leader in their ongoing work.

This recognition is even more special for Williams, as it’s traditionally awarded to nurses.

“I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for this award and the opportunity to serve this community. Shirley’s legacy calls us all to be beacons of enduring leadership. I call on each of you to embrace the journey of leadership with courage, humility, and compassion,” Williams stated during her award acceptance speech.

“Andi not only embodies Dr. Chater’s spirit of leadership, innovation, and dedication to developing nurse leaders, she also epitomizes CCL’s mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. She served as an instrumental leader at CCL for the RWJF ENF program for nearly a decade, and her leadership was critical to the creation and success of what is now NurseTRUST.org,” said Lynn Fick-Cooper, Chief Equity and Societal Impact Officer.

“To be the first recipient of this prestigious award who is not a nurse herself is a testament to Andi’s unique brand of leadership and deep commitment to the nursing profession. She is the most compassionate, creative, resilient leader I have ever had the privilege to work with across my career.”

The post CCL Societal Impact Group Leader Honored by NurseTRUST appeared first on CCL.

What’s your current relationship status with burnout? Do you wish you could break up for good? You’re not alone.

Across the globe, individuals, organizations, and communities are experiencing increased stress and uncertainty — and as a result, employees are dealing with burnout at unprecedented levels.

The impact is staggering. A recent study from Mental Health America reports that 75% of workers are struggling with overcoming burnout, and about 40% say it was a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Burnout is pervasive across all industries right now, and the human services, public health, and nonprofit sectors are particularly hard-hit. Saving the world is exhausting, and many nonprofit workers and the communities they serve are feeling an even greater strain today, with resignations compounding the already high levels of stress and burnout.

During the post-pandemic period we find ourselves in, leaders at all types of organizations are being pulled in multiple directions in the face of physical, mental, social, and economic upheaval. With long hours and less funding, many nonprofit and health leaders, especially, are dealing with burnout themselves, and so may not feel equipped to offer their teams strategies to become more resilient and effective.

Leaders approaching or experiencing burnout may feel physical symptoms, cynicism about work, emotional exhaustion, and reduced performance.

Sound familiar? Remember, it’s not you. It’s burnout.

How Organizations Can Support Their People in Overcoming Burnout

What can organizational leaders do to support their workers in dealing with burnout, and in tandem, address turnover rates? Senior leaders can bring intention and attention to creating the conditions for everyone to bring their best selves to work and foster an environment that supports their people and the communities they serve.

For the nonprofit and public health sectors in particular, philanthropic organizations and foundations can play several essential roles. First, grantmakers, executive directors, and senior leaders can consider their own personal and professional practices and how those are contributing to how they show up for their constituents. Second, they can stop doing anything that doesn’t support creating and cultivating the conditions for nonprofit teams and organizations to flourish.

Whatever your industry, if you’re a leader, you can build your own resilience by stopping and starting these 6 things to help create the conditions for colleagues to overcome burnout and “burn bright” instead.

Advice for Dealing With Burnout

6 Tips for Leaders: What to Stop & Start Doing

1. Stop repeating the same things. Start trying something new.

Do the conditions of the pandemic have you feeling like you’re living the same day over and over, like your own personal Groundhog Day movie? In addition to fostering boredom, unexamined routines can also diminish energy and focus. Consider how much you might be mindlessly defaulting to behaviors reinforced by the pandemic conditions, and what you might do differently today to shake things up.

Our brains actually thrive, and we feel happier, when we have novel experiences. Brain research has found that a rush of dopamine comes with any new experience. And it doesn’t have to be big to be effective — even small changes can help to create an immediate shift in energy and focus.

Make a commitment to trying new things as a way of helping you and your colleagues with overcoming burnout. It could be as simple as trying a new route on a morning walk. How might you encourage others to try something novel? Perhaps add “sharing new things tried” to your one-on-one check-ins or an upcoming team meeting and start creating space for colleagues dealing with burnout to share ideas with one another.

2. Stop holding your breath. Start an intentional breathing practice.

You might not even notice that you hold your breath or take very shallow breaths during the day, especially when you feel pressure. The moment we get anxious or stressed, we can assume some control and agency by breathing properly. Even less than a minute of intentional breathing can make a big difference. The research is clear: if we breathe shallow and fast, it causes our nervous system to up-regulate, and we feel even more tense and anxious. But if we breathe slowly, taking a deep breath with a focus on our exhale, it turns on our body’s anti-stress response. Breathing is convenient, free, and a fast way to ground into a state of calm.

One simple practice for dealing with burnout is to anchor intentional deep breathing to something you do every day — maybe just before joining another online meeting, or as you transition from work to home tasks. You might experiment with expanding this practice to include everyone participating in a meeting you’re leading. Simply invite team members to breathe fully for one minute at the start, or take a pause for a “breathing break” in the middle.

3. Stop sending generic messages of thanks. Start personalizing gratitude.

Have you ever received a generic, “reply-all” thank you message that fell a little flat? You’re not alone. While the intent is positive and it’s better than no gratitude, it can lack sincerity and reduce the overall impact. Giving thanks will actually make you a better leader and personal notes that include specific details about the value of an individual’s contribution are far more effective than mass communications, research finds. Just 5-12 formal, individualized, sincere gestures of thanks per year can significantly cut an employee’s propensity to leave and help with overcoming burnout.

Take a couple of minutes and write a brief note (even just 2-3 sentences) to a person that you’ve been meaning to thank at work. By doing so, you’ll not only share gratitude with the individual you’re sending the note to, but you’ll also be modeling this behavior for other leaders in your organization. Make it your practice to send your team members a brief but personalized thank-you note on a consistent basis.

4. Stop holding meetings by default. Start building an intentional meeting culture.

Meetings are a constant presence in our lives, and with the rise of the remote and hybrid workforce, they’re more prevalent than ever. Yet, meetings can be draining, feel like a waste of time, and force after-hours work. They can even feel isolating when there’s not an opportunity to connect. Meetings are critical to getting our work done, however, so take some time to really examine and update your organization’s meeting culture.

The next time you’re about to schedule a meeting, ask yourself the question, Is this meeting really necessary, or are we simply defaulting to a meeting because that’s how we’ve always done it? Consider whether you can handle the agenda via email or in a real-time messaging app, or explore shortening the allotted time. This allows people to avoid attending back-to-back meetings all day.

Lighten “Zoom fatigue” by making some virtual meetings audio-only when being on camera isn’t really necessary. Or, if it’s an option, suggest team members take the call while walking outdoors to incorporate some movement and fresh air. Bonus points if a walk-and-talk meeting can be done together in person. Meetings are a prime opportunity for connection, so make them count and use them to improve your organization’s virtual collaboration and communication practices.

5. Stop perpetuating a 24/7 work week. Start encouraging boundaries.

How have your boundaries around work and home shifted over the course of the pandemic? For many of us operating in a hybrid workplace context, we no longer “work from home” as much as we “live at work.” A boundaryless experience like this can take a serious toll on our health and contribute to burnout. Because of this shift, you may want to consider how you might be unintentionally creating expectations of working longer hours, including evenings and late nights, when your employees typically have been untethered from work.

If you or your colleagues are dealing with burnout, notice the communication patterns that have emerged for yourself and your team recently. If you find yourself often catching up on emails after hours or on weekends, reflect on this habit. How might you create or influence new expectations that support recharging and disconnecting from work? How can you actively support both a work ethic and a “rest ethic”? And what rituals can you start that signal to yourself that you’re “clocking out”?

Consider closing the laptop and leaving it in a designated workspace, collecting virtual or physical files and putting them away, or sending your team a friendly “I’m out and you should be, too” email at the end of the day or week, or when leaving on vacation. This will help your employees manage their work-life conflicts and increase their ability to unplug from work when the day is over or when they’re taking some much-needed time to rest and recharge.

6. Stop the early morning phone scroll and caffeine hit. Start your morning with intentional, mindful movement.

Do you check your phone before your feet hit the floor in the morning? Is making coffee or tea your next step after that? These behaviors, while very common, may be eroding your energy before your day even begins. Checking your email, social media, and texts as soon as your eyelids open quickly hijacks your attention and emotions, often triggering anxiety before you’ve even gotten out of bed. You’ve probably already heard the advice not to keep your smartphone in your bedroom — but turning off notifications, curbing social media use, and removing as many apps off your phone as possible are all helpful, too.

As for your unexamined caffeine routine, simply delay it a bit. When you wake up, the energizing hormone cortisol is at its peak — adding caffeine on top of that is like throwing a match on a fire that’s already crackling. You’ll experience a greater caffeine boost by waiting an hour or 2 if you can.

Replace that immediate screen time and caffeine jolt with a little movement — a quick walk, some yoga, or even just stretching — and then something mindful like journaling, reading, or listening to music for a few minutes. Then, hydrate with water before you caffeinate. Give it a try for a few days and see if your energy improves and if these practices help with overcoming burnout.

When you assess personal habits and default organizational practices that may be aggravating stress and burnout, you can start building a culture that values resilience and gives employees permission to take care of themselves. Be mindful about recharging and modeling those behaviors for your team, and say goodbye to dealing with burnout for good.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

As a nonprofit ourselves, we’re guided by purpose and fueled by passion, and we understand the need for strong, resilient leaders who are able to support themselves and their teams in dealing with burnout. Create the conditions for employees to bring their best selves to work with our resilience-building solutions, or partner with our nonprofit leadership experts to help build a more resilient organization for your people, your mission, and the communities you serve.

The post It’s Time to Break Up With Burnout. Here’s How. appeared first on CCL.

The Global Fund was created 20 years ago to fight the world’s 3 deadliest epidemics: HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. Global Fund–supported programs have saved 44 million lives since 2002, proof that global commitment and community leadership can force the world’s deadliest infectious diseases into retreat.

The Global Fund also plays a major role in supporting low-and middle-income countries fighting COVID-19, which threatens to undermine progress and overwhelm the fragile health systems.

Since 2002, the Global Fund has  disbursed more than US$50 billion to respond to HIV, TB, and malaria and for programs to strengthen systems for health across more than 155 countries, including regional grants, as of June 2021, which makes it one of the world’s largest funders of global health.

The Global Fund contends with rapid change and uncertain operating environments every day. To achieve its strategic objectives for 2017–2022 and beyond, the Global Fund needed to master more adaptive ways of leading. Indeed, learning and leadership development was identified as one of the 7 pillars of the organization’s People Strategy.

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Their intention was to create a flagship leadership program — called “Elevate” — that would trigger a step change in their ability to adapt as a collective. Adaptive leadership was judged to be essential for the Global Fund in its fight to end the epidemics. To take the organization to the next level in enabling the organization’s mission, they sought high impact learning interventions for their leaders.

Solution

The Global Fund engaged CCL and its partner the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) to design and deliver the Elevate program. The partnership’s discovery work with the Global Fund determined that, individually, many Global Fund professionals were highly adaptive leaders. It was the organization’s collective capacity to adapt that needed unlocking. Together CCL, GCSP, and the Global Fund designed a multi-module and multi-modal program that would focus on developing collective practices to support a more positive and adaptive culture. Participants included the Management Executive Committee as well as their direct reports, and midlevel managers. In total, the Global Fund’s 180 most senior people managers embarked on Elevate.

With a learning journey spanning 4 modules across 2 ½ years, Elevate engages participants through multiple modalities:

• 1-day workshops
• Assessments
• Individual coaching
• Experiential simulations
• Momentum boosting clinics
• Short agility bursts

The Global Fund is nearing deployment of Elevate’s fourth module. Module 1 focused on Mental Agility and introduced the Theory of Change. This set the scene for Module 2, where the focus was on People Agility and challenged participants to build, nurture, and role-model a climate of psychological safety, trust, collaboration, and personal growth. Module 3, fully virtual, was titled Change Agility and focused managers on the adaptive requirement to navigate paradoxes that are not problems to solve, but tensions to lead.

Results

Across the first 3 modules, the Global Fund is witnessing positive behavioral shifts among participants:

• Leaders trying new things and feeling accountable
• Indicators of speaking up are emerging
• Instances of cross-unit collaboration initiated
• Role modeling by senior executives generating greater impact, and
• Adoption of practices recommended by the Elevate cohort by the senior team to help lead the most critical tensions.

Participants report a positive impact of Elevate across 10 out of 11 key indicators relating to individual and collective learning agility. Module 4, Results Agility, is focused on helping participants consolidate their myriad individual acts of leadership into focused collective practices that generate a cultural step change.

No one could have predicted that COVID-19 would present Elevate participants and organizers with the ultimate adaptive challenge at the mid-point of the program. Fortunately, Elevate was always conceived as an adaptive program for targeting adaptive outcomes. The flexible approach to design has allowed CCL and GCSP to walk in step with the Global Fund’s shifting internal and external realities and tune its solutions to leadership that matters for today.

Participants Say

The post Accelerating Collective, Adaptive Leadership at the Global Fund appeared first on CCL.

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)® has partnered with Johnson & Johnson to launch the Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellowship. This unique 2-year leadership training program for nurses aims to strengthen their leadership and entrepreneurial skills to amplify and integrate nurse-led innovation in health and healthcare.

CCL is one of 2 partners chosen by Johnson & Johnson to develop and evolve the Fellowship, which targets nurses who are committed to transforming health and healthcare. Chosen for its broad experience delivering executive education, including through the national Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows program, CCL has developed the curricula for the Johnson & Johnson Fellowship. Nurse Approved, a Boston-based organization that educates and provides opportunities for nurses to launch innovative ideas, has partnered in selecting the cohort for the program and in contributing to the curricula.

“CCL has a special focus on developing leaders in the health and healthcare field, so it is a tremendous privilege to partner with Johnson & Johnson on this groundbreaking initiative,” says CCL President and CEO John R. Ryan. “We look forward to this journey and its great potential for driving innovation in the field of nursing.”

The first cohort of Fellows consisted of 12 nurse leaders from across the country, who began the program in October 2019. The program included a combination of in-person and virtual learning, along with mentorship and coaching, with each Fellow concurrently working on individual innovation action learning projects.

“It’s been amazing and inspiring to witness the personal and professional growth of our Fellows over the last 1.5 years. Despite unprecedented challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, each one found ways to push themselves into sometimes uncomfortable and unfamiliar territory to lead and persevere in continuing to drive their innovation projects forward,” said Lynda Benton, Senior Director of Global Corporate Equity at Johnson & Johnson.

The fellows have used the opportunity to improve the patient experience, break down barriers in care, and transform mental health care access, among other innovations.

Explore a news highlight from Johnson & Johnson for an update on the first cohort of the Nurse Innovation Fellowship and the progress of their individual innovation projects.

The post Partnering With Johnson & Johnson to Offer Innovation Fellowship & Leadership Training for Nurses appeared first on CCL.

At its core, social sector leadership is about bringing out the full potential of people and starting to address systemic, complex societal issues — so called “wicked problems” — by uncovering the roots of the issues. At CCL, we’ve had the privilege to work alongside many social sector leaders and partners as they invest in improving the health of entire populations, transforming education to serve all, and alleviating persistent, intergenerational poverty. These experiences have led us to an increased understanding of the aspects of social sector leadership that propel these efforts to greater success.

We believe that transformational change and networked, collaborative approaches to confronting wicked problems require reframing and expanding upon the traditional leadership competencies. Interpersonal communication skills, a tolerance for ambiguity, and strategic thinking are critical, as are embracing broader capabilities and frameworks.

This paper explores our recommended leadership strategies for societal impact and a collaborative approach to reimagining what leadership looks like and how it works in the social sector. For example, who leaders are, the kinds of problems they take on, how they connect, and how they sustain themselves can be foundational and powerful in terms of leadership effectiveness and societal impact.

Challenges That Social Sector Leaders Face

Given their size and complexity, systemic societal problems cannot be solved by individuals alone, however heroic. Collective, interdependent approaches are required for lasting success.

Yet many social sector leaders try to go it alone. Burnout among nonprofit workers is all too common, and maintaining resilience is a challenge. Interestingly, through one of our grant-funded partnerships to develop nonprofit leaders, we found that “work-life balance” was rated as the least important leadership competency among participants and their bosses. In another one of our partnerships, 61% of nurses reported they would like more company support for wellness, and in a third, just 40% of nonprofit executives told us they felt they could accomplish their work without sacrificing their lives outside of work. The resource-scarce context challenges social sector leaders’ sense of balance.

It’s clear that though social sector workers understand the connection between self-care and performance, there’s a gap between what individual leaders know is important to sustain the work and the support provided by their organizations. To tackle complex, systemic societal issues sustainably, institutions must provide tangible support to their workers and intentionally build a culture of resilience. They must also help to foster larger, more diverse networks of individuals and organizations committed to working together collectively and collaboratively.

An additional challenge facing social sector leaders and one of the reasons they consider leaving the field is that many nonprofit organizations face a lack of resources and few opportunities for career growth and development. For those working to foster systemic change in public and population health, or addressing poverty, educational disparities, and other enduring problems, reimagining what leadership looks like and how it works is foundational.

5 Crucial Leadership Strategies for the Social Sector

In this paper, we suggest 5 reimagined leadership strategies for societal impact for nonprofits and the social sector, specifically:

• Moving beyond the traditional individualistic model of leadership, and embracing the idea that leadership is a collective process;
• Cultivating and leveraging diverse, intentional, inclusive networks that draw from communities and groups that have historically been excluded from systems of power and influence;
• Equipping nonprofit leaders to maintain perspective and stay focused in fast-moving, constantly-changing, dynamic environments and contexts;
• Encouraging social sector leaders to learn while they also do — marrying leadership development and learning together with leadership actions; and
• Making initiatives sustainable by providing institutional support and fostering a culture of resiliency for individual social sector leaders.

Each of these strategies has power on its own, but together, they have the potential to power a quantum leap in leadership effectiveness for nonprofit organizations. These reimagined leadership strategies for societal impact are what we need to address society’s most vexing, complex, and persistent problems.

Interested in learning more about how reimagining social sector leadership can help to achieve greater societal impact? Download the full white paper for an in-depth analysis of our 5 reimagined leadership strategies, and gain insights from our groundbreaking research and partnership case studies.

Download White Paper

The post Confronting “Wicked Problems:” Reimagined Leadership Strategies for Societal Impact appeared first on CCL.

Our partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the Executive Nurse Fellows program began in 2008. From 1998–2008 the program was led by the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley. This program focused on strengthening the leadership capacity of nurses who aspire to transform health and health care at the local, state, and national level. The 3-year cohort-based experience is designed to enhance nurse leaders’ effectiveness and build the capacity of senior nurses in health services, scientific and academic organizations, public health and community-based organizations or systems, and national governmental and policy organizations.

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To date, we have collaborated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to provide this program to hundreds of senior nurse leaders. This document serves as a summary of our survey findings from 10 years of Executive Nurse Fellows participants.

Program Impact Extends Across Context

We saw consistent reports of outcomes across three separate evaluation efforts. An external evaluation report in 2007 concluded that the Executive Nurse Fellows program occupies a unique niche in a field facing enormous leadership challenges and inadequate leadership development offerings. Effective executive nurse leadership has a positive impact at both organization and broader health systems levels. What results do we see from our own Executive Nurse Fellows?

The ENF impact extends outside of the individual and immediate organization in the following ways:

• Increased presence as leaders of professional associations and as presenters at meetings and conferences;
• Heightened involvement in testifying before local, state, and national legislative committees and health care commissions;
• Greater involvement in internal and external governance, regulatory, and other oversight bodies; and
• Increased involvement in media activities, including press conferences, and TV and radio interviews.

By the Numbers

Post-Program Outcomes: Self and Rater Reported

We collected data from participants in addition to those who worked with them to understand what behavior changes they could see. The following improvements were reported:

• 92% of participants and 79% of raters feel the Fellow had increased ability to use feedback to make changes;
• 90% of participants and 71% of raters feel the Fellow had increased awareness of the impact of their behaviors on others;
• 88% of participants and 82% of raters feel the Fellow had increased ability to deal with complex challenges; and
• 63% of participants and 69% of raters feel the Fellow had increased employee engagement.

Participants Say

The post Leadership Development for Executive Nurses: 10 Years of Impact appeared first on CCL.