Welcome to week three of The Healthcare Leader — one thought on leadership, operations, and career.
There’s no single background that produces great healthcare operators.
But there are patterns in how strong leaders learn — especially when their path isn’t linear and curated.
I recently connected with a dozen healthcare operations leaders with varying career backgrounds on LinkedIn — asking how their experience shapes the way they show up and lead today.
You can read their key insights in the article here: 12 Healthcare Leaders, 12 Different Paths to Operations (and I’ll reference these leaders in more detail in future newsletters).
In this week’s newsletter, we’ll look at a few of the insights shared by four of these leaders across our domains of Leadership. Operations, and Career.
Let’s dive in.
Inside
🧠 Leadership: Learning From the Wrong Examples
One of the most formative leadership lessons often comes from watching what not to do.
Jarrod McNaughton, a Health Plan CEO and former Hospital CEO, put it plainly:
“I think the biggest learnings have actually come from the bosses that weren’t that great. I would watch how they treat people and see how demoralizing their comments and actions would be on their teams. I quickly found myself almost taking an inventory of how I would NOT treat people based on watching them.”
That idea resonates deeply with me — and it’s a pattern I see frequently among leaders whose careers didn’t follow a straight, protected path from residency or fellowship into operations leadership.
When you work for a variety of bosses — with different skill levels, incentives, blind spots, and priorities — you accumulate something more valuable than polished mentorship.
You gain contrast.
You see how small behaviors erode trust.
You notice how decisions affect team morale.
You learn which leadership habits create fear — and which create stability.
These “battle scars” provide clarity. Not just on what good leadership looks like — but on what you refuse to repeat.
Your manager has the same impact on your mental health as your spouse or partner.
Empathetic leaders who experience unnecessarily difficult superiors recognize this — and commit to being better for their teams.
Discussion & Reflection
What leadership behaviors have you committed not to repeat?
Which difficult leader taught you something you still use today?
⚙️ Operations: Turn Vision Into Action
Strong operations begin with a clear future state — and succeeds or fails based on how well that vision is translated into action.
Scott Reiner, who lead a 27 hospital health system, tied a large portion of his success to one skill developed early on:
“What I was able to do early on was envision a future state and reverse engineer a plan to get there.”
That principle applies at every level of the organization.
As a frontline leader, your job is to understand the strategy of your superiors — not just what they want to achieve, but why. Then you translate that intent into daily work your team can actually execute.
As you move higher in leadership, the role changes, but the work remains the same. You’re no longer translating strategy — you’re crafting it. And the real test becomes whether others can understand it well enough to act on it without constant clarification.
Great operators connect vision with execution. Providing a roadmap others can successfully follow.
They understand that clarity creates momentum — and ambiguity slows progress.
Operations isn’t about having the most innovative or exciting plan in the room.
It’s about building a plan others can carry forward.
Discussion & Reflection
Where might your strategy be clear to you — but unclear to your team?
What would change if your goals were translated into simpler next steps?
🚀 Career: Treating Today as Practice for Tomorrow
Early in his career, Terry Newmyer, a consultant and former CEO, reframed how he approached work under pressure:
“I came to realize that every day in my vocation was simply another day of ‘practicing’ for the future. Instead of performing at work, I was practicing my marketing and business skills in preparation for assignments not yet given to me.”
That mindset changes everything.
Practice invites learning.
Performance invites fear.
Anthony Stahl, Hospital CEO, shared a complementary insight:
“Failure is often just feedback wearing a bad label. Some of my most important growth came from setbacks.”
When leaders view their work as rehearsal rather than audition, failure loses its power. Mistakes become insights. Feedback becomes fuel.
Careers rarely unfold as planned. But leaders who treat each role as an opportunity to learn and practice tend to grow faster and lead with more confidence than those who only prioritize advancement.
Your current role may not be your dream role. But if you treat it as practice, you’ll be better prepared to succeed when you reach that perfect role.
Practice well today. Future roles have a way of finding people who do.
Discussion & Reflection
Where are you performing instead of practicing?
What setback might actually be preparing you for a larger role?
I hope you’re finding value in this newsletter. If there’s anything you would like to see more or less of, feel free to hit reply and let me know. I read every email.
Until next time, stay inspired!
Rob Erich, MBA, FACHE
LinkedIn: @RobErich