Naji Gehchan: Hello, leaders of the world. Welcome to “Spread Love in Organizations”, a podcast for purpose-driven healthcare leaders, striving to make life better around the world by leading their teams with genuine care, servant leadership, and love.
I am Naji, your host, honored to be joined today by Richard Dale a seasoned, values-driven executive known for his strategic acumen and operational excellence. He has consistently delivered proven results by translating vision into market realities in startup, large company, and non-profit contexts. Richard currently specializes in Executive and Leadership Coaching, Health Sector Advisory, Impact Consulting, and Team/Culture Facilitation. Until recently, Richard held executive roles within Optum (part of UnitedHealth Group) for over ten years, where he played a pivotal leadership role in founding and operating OptumLabs, and subsequently as a Senior Vice President for Health System Alliances in Optum, leading efforts for multi-billion-dollar cross-enterprise partnerships and innovation collaborations. Beyond his professional work, Richard serves as on different non-profit boards touching healthcare, environment, and global peace initiatives.
Richard, It is so great to see you again and have you with me today!
Richard Dale: Thank you very much, Naji. It’s great to be here.
Naji Gehchan: I remember our first chat where we were passionately debating AI in healthcare and what this next decade will bring us when we combine computational science to lifescience! Let’s take though some steps back, how did you get into healthcare and leading teams transforming its ecosystem?
Richard Dale: Well, I realized recently that I am on career number five. So, uh, I’m originally from the UK, but my wife and I moved to the States many years ago. Now, um, my first career, I was, uh, a techie. I was a software engineer and a database engineer.
Uh, and number two, I was an entrepreneur. Um, number three, I worked in venture capital for over a dozen years. And then I joined optimum United Health Group, and I was a health care executive there for over 10 years. And now I’m an executive coach and strategic advisor. So
I think looking back, you can always draw a line. Maybe it wasn’t so clear looking forward. But, um, a good friend, Paul Bleicher, um, invited me to co found PhaseForward, um, back in the mid nineties, and that was the, um, the startup that he and I co founded, and that was, um, that developed internet based, uh, electronic data capture for clinical trials.
Uh, and we sold mostly to the pharmaceutical industry and the CROs. Um, and really, that was the first time I was involved in something related to healthcare. Uh, and I was working with Paul, who’s an MD PhD, um, who taught me a lot about healthcare broadly and the pharmaceutical industry and clinical trials in particular.
And from that, when I moved into venture capital, um, I was, you know, seen as the healthcare expert, even though I had a pretty narrow view of what that was back then. But because of that, I got to see more healthcare tech, um, as that came through our pipeline. And the firm I was at invested horizontally across all industries in, in, um, technology, but we had a few.
Health tech investments. And I was involved in many of those in certain ways. Um, and we were very involved back in those venture capital days looking at big data. And so I was interested in the intersection of big data and health care. Um, and my good friend, Paul, who I had co founded face forward with, um, and I was very interested in the intersection of big data and health care.
Um, he had gone on to, uh, to Humedica as Chief Medical Officer and that company was acquired by Optum and then he was tapped to lead Optum Labs and he brought me in, um, to be Chief Operating Officer at Optum Labs. And I did that for a few years. And after Paul retired, I then took over running Optum Labs.
And Optum Labs was an innovation collaboration. Research and innovation collaboration with 30 or more leading healthcare institutions around the country, starting with Mayo Clinic. Interestingly, AARP was one of our core partners, and then academic medical centers, disease foundations, government agencies, uh, and other players in the health ecosystem working together to generate new insights from healthcare data to improve the system.
And so that’s kind of the path that I took over the years.
Naji Gehchan: Well, thanks for sharing this. And it’s, it’s fascinating. You’ve built team, uh, in a startup. You obviously led in a big corporate groups. You partnered with external groups and now you’re coaching execs on how to lead better and build team. And I know it’s one of your passions, building high performing teams to deliver for patients.
Can you share with us? How you personally did that and what are the key advices or key learnings that you take with you from
Richard Dale: a leadership standpoint? I think, um, you know, I describe myself as, uh, coming to really understand leadership, um, late in my career, really only 10 years. Before that, I would say I was an unconscious leader.
I think I was, I was an okay leader. Some people would say good things about my leadership, um, stretching back over the years, but I really got to grips with it, um, actually during my time at United, um, and through the opportunities they provided me, um, to really see leadership from multiple perspectives.
Um, and I’m going to tell a very short story, and this is, um, many of your, uh, subscribers and listeners may, uh, be familiar with this. David Foster Wallace told a story at the beginning of a commencement speech back in 2005, and it’s called the This is Water story. And the story goes that there are two young fish swimming along one morning, and they pass an older fish swimming in the other direction.
And the older fish says to the younger fish. Hey kids, how’s the water? And they pass each other and they each keep on swimming. And then one of the younger fish says to the other one after a few minutes, What’s water? And, you know, the story illustrates very beautifully how, um, there are, there’s an environment we’re all swimming in, which we don’t really notice, or even know what it is.
Um, because it, it’s all around us and it’s always there. And, In leadership or in an organizational environment, you know, one could say that the water we’re all swimming in is culture, but organizational culture is not so invisible anymore. Maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago it was, but nowadays most people are aware.
As they join an organization or they’re part of an organization, they will talk about culture. So culture is visible. My philosophy is that leadership is what shapes culture and leadership is that invisible, um, medium, which generates the currents, which often, very often, nobody really sees. And as you become a more conscious leader, as you know, if I can use that phrase, you begin to understand that, uh, as a leader, you’re responsible for shaping that environment.
And so you have to see what is invisible, um, so that you can shape it. And so, um, that now, you know, underlies my approach to leadership. I think, you know, with that goes, um, understanding your own values and being true to those. Um, and, uh, understanding some of the levers of leadership, which, you know, become a little bit more mechanical.
Um, but once you start to see leadership, then you understand how those leaders work. Does that answer the question?
Naji Gehchan: Yes. Yes. And I want to double click on, uh, on this and really on the culture piece. I, I certainly relate to what you said and I love how you framed that leadership is the invisible medium creates culture.
Uh, so you’ve, you’ve done and you created culture throughout different organizations. Um, and really organizations that were driving. innovation in healthcare, which is sometimes some people would say it’s easy to innovate and some others say it’s so regulated, it’s so hard. And I think it’s both right.
Both are right. I’m interested on how you have done this and what type of leadership or what was the most important ingredient that you had in the culture to be able to have high performing teams that are innovating
Richard Dale: in healthcare space?
I think that, um, and that’s a great question. I think there’s a mixture of two or three things and, and, uh, nothing I’ll offer here is, you know, brand new to anybody. I don’t think it’s, um. You know, it starts off, you know, it’s great to have a high performing team and great people who are committed to the mission.
Um, and so there’s an element of hiring, um, which goes into that, um, alongside that goes psychological safety on a team and an example I give that people talk about psychological safety, um, and we kind of know what it is, but it’s not necessarily clear how we create that. What does it mean to you. allow for failure to celebrate failure, um, to allow people to have opinions and express opinions, which might be different from what the leaders or what people think the leaders might might believe.
Um, so one example. Which I put in place at OptumLabs and I had used previously, um, is a root cause analysis, discipline and process. So, um, if something went wrong, which it did, you know, all the time, um, we would do a root cause analysis. Now, if something went right, we would also do what we called an after action review, um, which whether or not things went well, we would, you know, inspect what we did to learn how to do it better the next time.
And if it was a great success, then let’s, um, distill out what did we do well so that we can repeat it. But in particular, if something went wrong, um, we did a root cause analysis, and we were very clear that, um, we were not looking to blame an individual. That if something goes wrong in any organization, it’s a system failure.
And if we’re relying on an individual to be at the top of their game and remember everything in their head, Um, that’s a system failure, you know, everybody’s favorite, um, analogy is with the airline industry, which is everything has a checklist. So, at its simplest, you know, why are we asking somebody to remember what three things to do when they could have a checklist?
Um, why are we asking people to remember who to tell what when we could have a checklist? A racy chart, you know, who are we supposed to consult with? Who are we supposed to inform? Um, why are we making decisions, you know, based on opinion and anecdote when we could be looking at data, or we could be all looking at the same strategic criteria and scoring rubrics.
And so these root cause analyses would look at what went well and what went wrong and what was lacking in the system. And we would say over and over again, we’re not looking to blame anybody. And even if it looks like when we do this analysis that one person happened to be. You know, standing there when something bad happened or their action or inaction was a key part of the chain of events.
We can’t expect to rely to have a system succeed by relying on an individual to remember or be on the top of their game. What are we doing to support those people? And then we would separately say that doesn’t take away the responsibility and accountability for managers. To have expectations for their team and to do performance evaluations, um, at least on an annual basis, and to share feedback and to help to grow their people.
But managing an individual and their performance is separate from root cause analysis and, um, uh, at United Health Group has at many large organizations. We had a big matrixed organization, so we were working with, um, partners from other parts of the organization, and in particular we worked with, um, people in IT and data management, um, but also in compliance and in finance, and in those kind of organizations, people can be very quick to blame somebody from the other organization.
Oh, it’s their fault. Um, and so when we started doing root cause analyses, not only did I have to reassure people within OptumLabs that I was not looking to blame any one of them, I had to reassure our partners from other parts of the organization that we were not looking to shift the blame to them. Um, and over time, you know, I just made everybody do these root cause analyses over and over again, even on very small issues, as much to get into the habit of doing it and to Demonstrate that nobody was getting blamed and nobody was getting negative consequences for analyzing correctly what we could do better next time.
So that’s a long answer about psychological safety. Um, and then I’ll pick on one other facet. There are probably many more. Um, you know, how do we stay open and curious to innovative ideas?
And that’s learned as well. Um, so the little parable version of this is, you know, somebody comes into the office and comes into my office and says, Richard, we should paint the walls lime green. That’s an innovative idea. Right? We’re going to paint the walls lime green. And I, the first thing in my head is, why do we need to paint the walls at all?
And why lime green? And it’s the wrong color. And we don’t want the paint smell. And why is this innovative at all? Um, and when people come to us with innovative ideas. It’s very easy to fall into that kind of critical, judgmental expert, you’re using your expertise to immediately see that, um, the things which could be wrong with an idea.
So one trick I offer people is before you give voice to that, ask the person with the idea, what did you observe that led you to that idea? Did you see a problem or an opportunity? Really, what did you observe? And in this example, the person says, well, the walls are all crumbling, so we need to fix them and paint them.
And it’s like, okay, I may or may not like the idea of painting the walls, and I may or may not like the idea of painting them lime green, but I understand there’s a problem if the walls are crumbling, and that is something that we can work on together. And so trying to get under the thinking and honor the fact that a person is trying to come up with a solution and not just point out a problem, right?
Everybody’s told, don’t show up in my office with just a problem, bring me ideas. So ask, what’s the opportunity? What’s the challenge? What’s the problem? Now you have a conversation where innovative ideas, um, can be discussed. And even if you have to give a little bit of coaching to somebody, which is, well, you know, the corporate color is Blue, you know, well done for noticing that the walls are crumbling.
Let’s think about how we can fix that. One last thing I will say about health care, innovation in health care. There are many very large opportunities to innovate in health care. And the reality in health care is very often the best we can hope for is incremental innovation. And I think that we need to honor that and be realistic about that.
And we need to have a big vision and we need to keep our eyes on the prize. And we need to be okay with incremental improvement and incremental innovation, because changing healthcare involves. You know, organizational change. It potentially and very often involves changes in delivery of clinical care.
And so clinicians, physicians, nurses, other providers, um, who are under all sorts of pressure and now being asked to rethink how they’re delivering care. Rethink workflows. Um, and there are being asked to do that from all different angles. The financial flows in health care are very complicated, and there’s a lot of resistance to those changing outcomes.
And so we have to keep our eyes on the big vision and go one step at a time and celebrate those steps as moving in the right direction and creating a culture where it’s all about the big vision where we can never expect to get there in, in the small amounts of time and within any given planning cycle sets you up for disillusionment, but recognizing that this is a stepwise process for the most part.
Um, you know, hopefully creates the space for people to feel good about the steps they’re taking and the trajectory that they’re on.
I love the framing about,
Naji Gehchan: you talked about people, psychological safety, being open and curious. And as you shared at the end, it’s incremental, uh, innovation. And as you were talking about, um, you know, how to, uh, build a psychological study gave this great example. Um, and, and, you know, it made me think because you use the words discipline and kind of like the underlying culture of caring for one another, like being disciplined on doing them.
consistently when things go wrong and when things go well, and then ensuring that there’s a culture where people are trusting and not finger pointing. This, this is, this is exactly the philosophy we built. I thought a lot about this, um,
Richard Dale: even in, in
Naji Gehchan: businesses where, or in situations where you’re dealing with life and death, usually the more you’re disciplined on making sure that you’re learning.
For to improve and giving feedback that is more a constructive feedback for the team to learn rather than, as you said, finding who’s guilty. Like, it’s not about this, but consistently in the organization, we, we fall several times into. this other part of finger pointing. So, and I’m sure it relates to the culture you built in the beginning for you to have been able to deliver on what you’ve done at the end.
Richard Dale: So
Naji Gehchan: if we go to AI, which is one of your other
Richard Dale: passions,
Naji Gehchan: uh, what are the things you are most excited about for AI
Richard Dale: in healthcare?
It’s interesting because, you know, things are moving so fast that Um, as we know in the general conversation about a I, the opportunities seem endless and the risks seem, you know, in your face. Um, things that could go wrong or or might go wrong or do go wrong. And so, um, I’m excited about the long term opportunity for all of the information that we theoretically have.
About an individual person and their health and wellness or disease or health trajectory and all of the information we have about health care pathways and medications and other interventions and devices, um, and all of the literature which is published, um, about how to engage people in their own health and wellness.
There is so much of that information out there that without help at the point of care, it becomes very difficult to bring the very best for that patient in that moment. And I don’t think Any clinician, however, expert in that very particular thing at that very particular moment would say, Oh, I always remember everything which might be relevant.
I can always see everything about this person in front of me. So the ability to provide for the people at the point of care, the right information, the right Um, almost hints, you know, have you thought about, you know, maybe it’s differential diagnosis, but all of these different elements, um, and by the way, which, which are not only oriented around the specifics of the person we’re caring for, but also about the care team and what their strengths are and what their blind spots might be, um, to me, I think the end goal of all of this, it’s.
is coming back to what we’ve talked about for several years, if not many years now, you know, the right care for the right person in the right dose at the right time. Um, now, before we get there, and I do believe that that is not immediate in any sense, um, not least because the data is not really available properly yet.
Um, although, you know, the CMS final rule, which came out yesterday, continues to move that ball forward very slowly and incrementally. Um, before we get there, there are many other places that, um, AI can be helpful. So one example is, um,
you know, when you leave a healthcare encounter as a patient, do you really know what you have been asked to do, uh, as a patient? You know, if you’ve left the emergency room or an inpatient admission, you have pages and pages of discharge notes. Um, even if you’ve just left a primary care annual physical, you know, the doctor has said to you or the nurse practitioner, um, you know, please make sure you do X, Y, Z.
In follow up. Um, you know, it’s very possible that artificial intelligence knowing you as a person can make sure you understand, you know what you have been asked to do this. And this one is the really urgent one. And this is the one you should focus on after that. Um, and unfortunately, I have heard of stories of people who checked out of a primary care setting or an urgent care setting and did not understand that they had been advised to go to the emergency room.
They
did not understand they had been advised to go to the emergency room and they did not go to the emergency room. And later on, they ended up in an ambulance going to the emergency room, um, with potentially worse outcomes because of that gap. So that’s an extreme example, but helping in the communication.
Of what’s going on for an individual, potentially for a care team. I think that potentially comes sooner because it’s a more compact example. And then there are all of these diagnostic opportunities to just get better at diagnostics. And there are all of these, I mean, in, you know, in drug development, there are all of these programs now looking at drug development and it helps.
We’ve got, um, protein folding seemingly, you know, finally we’ve cracked that nut. And so, um, looking at all the different ways that we can look for candidates for a drug pipeline, um, look at potential toxicity profiles, look for efficacy profiles, um, look for new targets, look for new candidates to address those targets, um, you know, those are exciting opportunities as well.
So, it’s everywhere. And it’s nowhere yet. That’s,
Naji Gehchan: that’s a great summary. And as you said, so as you said, it touches drug from discovery to development. It touches care. It
Richard Dale: touches prevention,
Naji Gehchan: treatment. So eager as you are to see how this will impact us as a humanity. Anything that keeps you up though at night when
Richard Dale: you think about AI and its impact on humanity?
Yeah, it’s the same thing which keeps other people up at night. I think that, um, even before AI, um, you know, the first layer is to say the spread of. Disinformation and misinformation that can be accelerated and magnified by A. I. Um, and for people who have malicious intent to just create content at a much higher volume than before, and they might not believe they have malicious intent, but this goes to the next level.
If you peel back the onion one layer, why is there more distrust off the health care system, the medical system, caregivers? Science, why are there, um, you know, arguments about the, um, you know, the meaning of, um, results which come from well run, well orchestrated, randomized, controlled clinical trials from other scientific work, which is.
You know, at the gold standard, um, and underneath that erosion of trust is, um, both an explosion off knowledge and a more and more specialized. A generation of knowledge and a whole gap. Um, you know, I have a friend who works in the space between civics and science and helping think about how does society understand and absorb, um, scientific progress in a way that, um, is appropriately skeptical and knows how to ask the right questions.
And yet, is able to listen to reasoned thinking and, um, and understand why a sci scientific consensus emerges. And then recognizing that the science will continue to change and, uh, we will have a, uh, an initial set of knowledge, which we generate from, from the data and from experiments. Uh, and we can all agree that’s good science and it’s a good conclusion.
And five years later, we might find we’re wrong and we, we missed the boat. And I believe that there’s continues to be an open question about the, the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease. Are these proteins in the brain cause or effect? Um, and that’s a great example of good science. And even though many people, um, who are, you know, great thinkers can disagree on that, I can hold open the possibility that further work will, um, uncover hopefully a better and more compelling story behind it.
So all of that underlies the fact that to somebody who’s not educated scientifically, it’s difficult to know what to trust in the scientific and the medical field. And so we have this growing distrust, the inability to really manage that. And it doesn’t help that there are newspaper stories or internet stories published every day, which do not tell the difference between correlation and causation.
So that adds to the mistrust. And so now we’re back at the top layer, which is it’s so easy for misinformation to spread. For people, even a goodwill to be misinformed and spread information, which is harmful. And AI can support that or even accelerate that.
Naji Gehchan: I want us to pivot now and I’ll ask you a word and I want your reaction to it. The first one is
Richard Dale: leadership.
Uh, so the word which came to mind was authentic. And I think it goes with integrity. Um,
And I, some people confuse authentic leadership with transparency, and I think there are times you cannot be transparent as a leader. As a leader, you might be party to confidential information about your organization, which you cannot share, but you can still be an authentic leader, and you can still have integrity in every organization.
Conversation you have with somebody on your team or, or anybody. So authentic integrity, those are the three action. What about health equity?
Health equity,
you know, Sachin Jain posted on what was then Twitter and now X. And I think maybe he wrote a blog post about this a year or two ago. He said, why do we keep on talking about social determinants of health when really we’re talking about structural poverty and racism and inequality? And these are societal problems.
And so health equity, I think, um, is one facet of, um, the need for more equity in our society as a whole. And it’s driven by all of these things and that, um, I agree with his. All to not be blind to the human underlying causes and impacts of what drives inequity or equity by slicing and dicing it so small that now we’re talking about access to transport or pharmacy deserts, and it becomes very technical when what’s going on underneath it is the responsibility of society as a whole to fix and society Through its choice of leaders and policies needs to address this very broadly, and the health care system can only go so far in doing that.
Third one is Bill Gates.
Um,
I don’t know, maybe it’s become clear that I’m not somebody who likes to personalize things. Um, I will say that, um, I will answer your question in a minute. I will say that many years ago, I had the privilege of having lunch with Bill Gates. I was at a startup based here in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Vermeer technologies, which made front page, which was the world’s first WYSIWYG webpage editor.
And that company was acquired by Microsoft. When Bill Gates was still CEO and the entire company, all 30 of us flew up to Seattle, um, and we had a, you know, a round table lunch with Bill when he spoke about, um, why they were acquiring us and his vision for the, uh, for the acquisition. Um, and interestingly enough, you know, what you see is what you get with Bill Gates as well.
You know, in person, he seems to be the same person as, as, uh, we see on television and in documentaries. I think Bill Gates commitment to philanthropy and commitment to science driven philanthropy is laudable. I think he’s a very complicated human being, and I do not want to judge him. Um, we’re all complicated people with strengths and flaws.
Um, and if we all could try as hard as he has to make the most of the privileges that we might have, um, the world would be a better place.
Naji Gehchan: The final word is spread love and
Richard Dale: organizations.
You know, we don’t often talk about love in organizational settings, in most organizational settings. Um, but a few people and I congratulate you on being one of them talk about love in organizational settings. Um, and as we know, you know, love can mean many things. And, um, and it can be easy to kind of go off track with that.
But insofar as love means.
Going and showing care for the people that you work with and who work for you and who therefore you are serving kind of servant leadership model there. Um, and acting in a way that you would hope, for example, you know, the colleagues or the boss. Of your spouse or your child would be, um, behaving towards your spouse or your child.
Um,
um, not being quick to harsh judgment. Um, looking for ways to lift people up. Um, having authenticity and integrity in your dealings with them. Uh, these are the hallmarks of, um, of love. Of caring for somebody. And the mission, um, in a way that it is analogous to other places that we talk about love and in some faith communities and certainly in our families or with close friends, we think about love and, um, I think it is appropriate, uh, to use that language, um, and to be aware of its pitfalls.
Because, you know, unlike in ancient Greek, there’s one word for many kinds of love in English. Um,
but I think that kind of, um, you know, perhaps that’s one of the things which is invisible in the water that we need to make a little bit more visible and be aware of in our leadership.
Naji Gehchan: Any final word of wisdom, Richard, for healthcare leaders around the
Richard Dale: world? Um,
I think that, um, as
you become more conscious of The water, the leadership, and as you become more conscious as a leader of your role in shaping those currents, Um, I think it’s okay to be, to share that with the people you’re working with. To say to them, you know, I’m thinking about my leadership in a new way. I’m thinking of trying something different.
Um, I’m seeking your feedback. Um, that requires some vulnerability, you know, you can say to yourself, you know what, I’m going to try and do this a little bit better. I’m going to try and do that a little bit better. And you keep it to yourself. And maybe you have a coach or you have a friend who you tell it to.
Um, but you’re not necessarily telling the people you’re working with. I think that Um, it might be a good idea to think about sharing that with people and helping them support you on your journey. Um, and inviting feedback from them. Um, and by the way, if they start to see changes, you know, people find change difficult.
They can freak out with change. And so even if you are changing in positive ways. You know, you might somebody might come into your office one day, but you’re being so nice to me. Are you going to fire me tomorrow? Um, and so you can lower the temperature around change by telling people the changes that you’re planning to make.
So, I do think that vulnerability and that authenticity and that being kind of explicit with yourself and with your team about what you’re doing can be very powerful. And, you know, can I finish with one last story? Sure. Um, somebody who worked for me, uh, at that stage for a few years. And I’m going to use his name, um, Scott Regenstein, great guy, still a good friend.
He was, uh, a direct report of mine, and he one day said to me, Richard, can I take you out for lunch? I’ve got some feedback for you. So here’s a direct report telling me that he’s got feedback for me and can he buy me lunch? Um, so I guess that already starts that I, I guess I did something right. And Scott is a special person, but that was the setup.
And, uh, we went out for lunch and he said, Richard, I want to give you some feedback about how you delegate. Um, and delegation had been on my list forever of areas where I just, you know, every year in my performance review, it’s like, you could do a better job of delegating, delegate better. And I was like, I delegate great.
I don’t know, what, what more do they want from me? Scott told me that day in four words. Delegate outcomes, not tasks. So many people who are good at delegating know that. Uh, for me, that was a mind blowing moment. It completely changed how I thought about delegation. And I thought about it for not very long, and I’m like, Okay, I see that.
And I would look at the emails that I had sent people delegating things, and I had delegated a 25 point List of tasks where really the outcome was make the customer happy. Maybe you’ve got a better idea than me about how to make this customer happy, but I’m delegating that to you. Anyway, changes like that are not easy.
I worked out what I needed and I worked out. I needed. Um, support. And so I sent to all of my direct reports a little thing, which said, Look, I’m trying to get better at delegating. I know that this is where I fall down. Please help me. Give me feedback. Um, this was before COVID. I even had a little piece of paper on my, taped to my desk, on the other side of my desk, facing where the person would be sitting with the same little thing.
Help Richard delegate. Give him feedback if he’s not being clear about outcomes. Tell him to stop giving you tasks. And so there’s two or three different leadership lessons there. One, what a gift it is to have somebody like Scott, um, be willing to give their boss feedback. Number two, what great feedback and what great advice, and I recommend it to anybody.
Delegate outcomes, not tasks. And thirdly, maybe you can find ways to think about how you ask people around you to help as you look to improve your leadership.
Naji Gehchan: Well, that’s a great story and really a great way, uh, to, um, unfortunately end our chat. Uh, we could talk for hours and, um, it was really great to have you Richard with me and, and discuss those important topics for us in healthcare for being with me. Thanks.
Richard Dale: Well, thank you very much. I loved the conversation and I’m glad to be part of the Spread Love mission here. I wish you continued success with it. Thank you.
Naji Gehchan: Thank you all for listening to SpreadLove in Organizations podcast. Drop us a review on your preferred podcast platform
Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on spreadloveio.com. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. Most importantly, spread love in your organizations and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement, our world so desperately needs