This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

Keynote: Mastering Conflict and the Importance of Building Culture in Teams

Introduction and Episode Overview

Bill Russell: Today on Keynote

Meghan Trevorrow: When there is more clarity around this is who we are and what we're about, there's actually more freedom for every individual coming on because they know how to join the mission.

Bill Russell: My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Our keynote show is designed to share conference level value with you every week.

Now, let's jump right into the episode.

Meet Megan Trevorrow: Leadership and Culture Insights

Bill Russell: All right, it is Keynote, and today we're going to do a special episode. We're going to talk about leadership, culture, and a couple of other things. I have. Megan Trevorrow, the Chief Operating Officer for This Week Health on the line. This is going to be a different episode. Welcome to the show. This is your first time on the show, isn't it?

Meghan Trevorrow: Very first time.

Bill Russell: Very first time. And it's your birthday too. So happy birthday. So you've we've been working a lot together over the last, Gosh, three years. We've learned so much about culture. You brought a ton of knowledge into the organization around it as well.

This is going to be interesting because it's going to be it's a conversation. It's not like I'm going to interview you and you're going to interview me. It's just, we're just going to have a conversation about it. I'm going back in preparation for this. I started going back through your posts.

If people aren't following you on LinkedIn, there's a lot of really good stuff here, even, and you don't post like little posts either. These are pretty extensive on culture. Give us, for those people who don't know, give us a little background on your. Your journey through learning and understanding culture.

Meghan Trevorrow: So it I can write about leadership, each day with a pretty lengthy post because it's just decades of journal entries that I picked up a few months ago and thought that it'd be great to start sharing.

Leadership Challenges in Sports and Healthcare

Meghan Trevorrow: So right out of college, about 10 years ago, thrown into leadership and started working with an organization that was.

Working with athletes, mainly in college and the professional realm here in Orange County. And it was athletes and coaches really saying, we've got these platforms. We want to actually use our influence for good, and you can have influence without being a leader. If that makes sense. And so it was athletes and coaches that recognize I have a huge following.

Social media was picking up at that point in time. And it was very, self aware conversations that these coaches and athletes had that. We're honest and vulnerable saying we, we want to take our platform seriously and we, want to use our voice and our leadership, for good.

So how do we do that? I was tasked to develop, how do you actually equip coaches and athletes to be leaders? And I think a story that kind of sums up. What the problem that we were trying to solve was let's say you've got your top athlete on the men's national team. That's who we were working with.

And top athlete, and he's chosen to be the captain on the team, but he has no interest in being the captain. But he was chosen because his skillset was the highest technical. So I think this can relate within the healthcare industry and other industries when it's leadership, that someone's competency places them in a role of leadership when one, maybe they didn't ask for it and two, they may not want it, but for the ones that do I've, I'm a captain of a team.

I'm a great volleyball player, but I don't know how to lead people. And so that's where leadership and culture and team started for me.

Bill Russell: So do coaches. Think about, okay this is the best volleyball player on the team. He was just selected coach. Do they actually think about, how do I help this person to be a leader?

Or do they look for the other person who's actually the unappointed leader, who's the leader?

Meghan Trevorrow: It, oh man. The best coaches actually find the influencer on the team and name them captain. And they may be a bench player. And I've seen this another time in a more corporate setting. And there was a moment where every, everyone who'd been within the, or with the organization for more than 10 years was automatically placed as a director role and they hired me to be the talent advancement team.

And I just realized that there was no formal training on leadership. And people were really struggling placed at that title, but with no formal. Yeah, just training or equipping of how do you actually manage people? How do you lead a team?

Bill Russell: What's interesting to me about the college athletics is all these coaches are struggling now, especially at the D1 level with the portal.

Meghan Trevorrow: Yes.

Bill Russell: They're really struggling and you just read the story after story, but part of it is they used to be able to build a program and the really successful coaches, Build a program, which means that every four years you're, it's think about this in healthcare. So we have a, an IT team, but every four years.

There's going to be a grad, every year there's a graduating class. So all of a sudden, every four years you're replacing the entire team. Yes. That's a crazy challenge. But the really good coaches were able to build programs. And so year after year, however they did it, they were able to say, okay, we're going to have we're going to have team leadership.

We're going to be effective. We're going to they had all these I don't know, maybe it was, I think the word I'm looking for is culture, but what are the elements of culture that enable one coach to have a program that succeeds year after year and another one where it's like they had a good class, which made them a good team for four years, but then they have to go into complete rebuild mode.

Meghan Trevorrow: The, coach that I'm following right now is Dawn Staley at University of South Carolina. She's a women's coach. They're the top team in the nation. They've been the top team for the last, I think, three years, maybe more. And from my research, because I've wanted to talk to her, but I haven't been able to get in touch with her.

But just from learning, she starts with the, she starts over every single season. So it doesn't matter if you're a senior that won a national championship last year. Everyone goes through the basics and you start over every single year with the basics. And that's not just on technique and game plan and strategy.

It's on the culture, who we are, what we're about, how we operate. And it's redundant. I think if I could put words into her mouth, she's, she knows that she's doing her job well when when people feel like this, they don't need to hear it because they've heard it so many times.

Bill Russell: There's this emphasis on talent.

This happens in healthcare. as well as coaches for teams. There's this emphasis on getting the best talent, and for good reason. John Wooden, a famous coach from UCLA back in the day, had, I think, 10 national championships, which is unheard of in basketball, unheard of at UCLA. And he has this quote that said the team with the best players usually wins.

I love the fact that he said, usually. wins because we've seen it over the years, especially in men's basketball. Patrick Ewing losing to the Villanova team, or we see you come down to that last game and, and they don't win. But there seems to be you need good players.

You need talented players. But there seems to be an overemphasis on talent.

Meghan Trevorrow: Yes, and another coach that I've spent a lot of time with is a local coach here in Orange County. Runs one of the best men's volleyball programs here and his approach to recruitment is so different than most other D1 programs where it's the other programs I'm not They're, they might, they actually might get the better talent because they put what's really shiny.

What does 18 and 19 year old kids want? They want swag and a really great locker room. And a really cool

Bill Russell: workout facility.

Meghan Trevorrow: They really do. And that's what some recruitment programs actually show. And and he actually recruits them based off character. So who's going to be a learner. Who's interested in being a leader who wants to grow as a person, not just as an athlete.

And he's the top performing program in the country. And he, actually has a program flow where if you're an incoming freshman, you're a learner. So you take on that identity as a learner. When you hit sophomore, I might have to retrack this, but if you're a sophomore, now you're a leader, so your job is to now take one of the learner, freshmen, under your wing.

If you're a junior, you're a champion, and if you're a senior, you're a sage. There's a growth pattern that, identifies your identity and your role on the team, and everyone has a role to play, including starting with being a learner for an entire year. And and his, yeah, there's so much to say about his program.

Bill Russell: It's interesting. I've, I don't know who I picked this up from, but I used to say this quite often that really great leaders are good followers, like they, they know how to follow, they know how to, take and, to be honest with you, even as a CIO for a health system, people are like, Oh, you were in charge in some meetings, I was in charge in other meetings.

I was, not in charge. I was there to. To listen, to understand, to have empathy, to communicate empathy, to there's just a whole bunch of things that I, took because I was new to healthcare, I had to take a, Anytime I was with a physician, I had to take a very humble position of teach me.

I don't, really know healthcare. Explain to me your job. How do you do your job? How do you function? How do and it just asking a lot of questions. And yeah, great leaders are good followers as well.

Meghan Trevorrow: Yep, they submit to the vision and yeah, and they're learning from somebody and I think the best hires that I've experienced actually come in with that mindset of I'm going to learn as much as I can and they choose to follow for a little while and trust just happens at laser speed when there's that posture taken or if someone comes in and wants to prove themselves or hit the ground running and just get a lot of wins.

There's a very slow learning process and then a very slow trust process.

Addressing Conflict and Building Trust

Bill Russell: So invariably in a team and culture, and this is one of the things I find that you you run circles around me on, and it's just when there is a challenge, when there is a problem and there will be you have that new recruiting class and you get these, These eight new freshmen in on the volleyball team, and one of them ends up struggling or having a challenge.

How do you, first of all, what happens if you don't address that? And then, if you decide to address it, how do you address it?

Meghan Trevorrow: I like to say is team values are great until someone gets offended. And this is the entire, hopefully the world will start hearing the culture of honor message.

But I've been a part of some of the best. Most high functioning, very impactful teams that crumbled within days because they didn't know how to, they hadn't proactively addressed, this is how we handle conflict. When that doesn't happen, when there's not a proactive, if someone has an issue and it's not addressed one on one, face to face with the person worst case scenario, the conversation happens with someone else and Now we have gossip, which gossip sounds like it's this siloed thing, but it is a it's a disease, I would say, within a team, because what happens if I go to someone else to talk about you, I have created a filter that they have now of you that might not be true.

And, so trust and this like slow, quiet, weird drift starts happening. And three months later you're not collaborating. You're not talking, you're not solving problems. You're starting to function more as silos and you can't actually remember why. And that's the worst the worst thing ever that I, I think it's okay.

If a health system or company. Stalls on their mission with an external issue, like a cyber attack or a hurricane or the political landscape changing, like external things are out of our control. When it comes to internal issues like lack of healthy conflict, that's not okay, because that's absolutely within our control to address and handle conflicts and arise.

And the gap that I see is the inability to step into what's uncomfortable. And conflict is extremely uncomfortable. And everybody, including myself, really loves comfort.

Bill Russell: Yeah, and it's, I've seen you do it now several times. I've I don't enjoy or like conflict. I just want to be real clear.

However I've over the years, I, tend to address it quicker than I used to, because I see what can happen if, problems do not get better with age you think, Oh, maybe this will go away. It rarely goes away on its own. You have to address it. And so I've, I just force myself to address these things as quickly as possible.

But, you have a better way of approaching it than I do. The people feel valued in the process, where I'll say, we've got a problem.

And I'd love for you to talk through how you approach it so that the person feels respected and honored. This is one of the things I've really learned from you.

Meghan Trevorrow: Yeah, the, first step that most people miss, including myself, when I wasn't doing conflict well, was approaching it with a Let me find the black swan mindset.

And so black swan and negotiating is whenever someone's trying to negotiate, they're looking for the black swan, meaning there's something that I may not know to even ask for. So I'm going to keep my questions so open ended and get them talking because there might be something that I don't even know that I don't know.

And so the approach within the first statement that opens up a clear the is, Hey, help me understand. And, if it can also, it can feel manipulating because people like, I know you have an issue with me. Why don't you just come out with it? So there's a way to go about it when that's authentic and not manipulating.

But if the conversation can open up with a question where I might, I really might be missing something, but you showed up late to this meeting for the third time, we've talked about this and help me understand. And what's crazy is if the person who has done the Or cause the issue is able to talk first and have a voice first.

The, wall stay down. There's not a defense that comes up and the minute that a defense comes up in a conversation, there's lack of connection and the entire goal with clearing the air is to reconnect. And whenever conversations start with getting them talking first, the person that I have issue with, the human factor comes into play.

One, this should never be done via text or email. There's something about face to face. And,

Bill Russell: Can it be done this way? Yes.

Meghan Trevorrow: Yeah. If you're not, you can't do a face to face, Zoom is best. FaceTime next, phone call is the last resort. And you did this, Bill. I think it was three months into working with you, and you called me on a Saturday, meaning you didn't wait until Monday, and you opened up the phone call, Just with kind of banter about the weekend, we just connected as people.

And then you're, I think you opened up the question Hey, I saw you message this on the entire staff Slack channel. Help me understand why you did it. And I knew it was like, Oh, okay. I think that he had a problem with that. But I, spoke. And and you still corrected me of, hey, moving forward, I would prefer if you actually reached out, I was teaching you what I'm teaching everybody right now.

And after that phone call, I, I think I told my now husband, I was like, I can work with him. Because you didn't wait until Monday. And this is what happens when there's a culture that normalizes feedback in conflict is I never have to wonder where I'm at with you. If you have an issue, I know you're going to come to me and you're not going to talk to anyone else on the team about me.

And that actually feels really safe. So conflict is uncomfortable in the moment. But if I know like I, if Bill ever has a problem, he's going to call me up and we're going to clear the air and we're going to move on. And that's It feels weird, but it's actually a really, big feeling of safety and respect when a conflict is engaged more.

Bill Russell: It's interesting. We're having this conversation and somebody might go, Why are we talking about sports and this?

The Importance of Clarity in Leadership

Bill Russell: In my experience, a lot of here's what I do know. Most people leave their job because of their direct supervisor, because of their direct manager. And the stats, just bear it out.

You just look up that stat. It's there and it's, overwhelming. It's not oh, 10% versus 8%. It's 50% versus 10%, for the rest of 'em. So it's, it is a, your direct supervisor. And a lot of it is this, we never I, don't wanna say categorically, but it feels we hire somebody and assume they can manage.

We assume they have the skills. We assume they can do things. It's, almost going back to that first story where you said, Hey the, most talented player got promoted to the promoted get, selected as the captain and away they go. It's, it we tend to not do this.

And if I could go on with one more story, when I came into St. Joe's. The first project we did was we redid our career pathing, and one of the reasons we did that is we did a immediate survey of the staff, and they had no idea. They just had no idea what's next for me, where am I going, that kind of stuff.

So we redid the career path, and we found a couple of problems, and the biggest problem that we had to solve was a lot of people became managers because that's where the money was

Meghan Trevorrow: So

Bill Russell: They were on this path of hey, I'm a really good analyst. I like being a good Analyst they would self tell you i'm not a good manager of people.

I don't want to manage people But my kids are getting ready to go to college. I've got to make more money. And so they say you're really good at this. Why don't you manage the other people who do this? Not as good as you. And they go yeah that naturally that makes sense. But as we looked at it, we had a bunch of departments where people were really not happy.

Like one bad manager makes 10 unhappy people. It's just, it just so one of the things we did is we said, all right, we've got to get the compensation on these paths. To be, they can make more money doing what they're doing because there's great value in what they were doing for the health system.

That we didn't want to put them into a role just for money. And so on the technical track and on the analyst track, we created higher pay scales, which was no small deal with hr because this concept didn't really resonate with hr. They were just Hey, you're gonna pay outside the scale.

I'm like the scale's wrong. Like we, we have to create the, we have to create the structure that makes the team work. The other way around of you've got to fit the team into the structure. And it just broke so many things. I'm sorry. I just threw a whole bunch of stuff. No.

Meghan Trevorrow: How how was it received?

How'd it go?

Bill Russell: Oh the the role clarity was really well received. First of all, clarity in general is real. Anytime you can clarify, especially a team of about 800 people, when, you bring clarity, so as the CIO coming in. The first thing you want to know is who are you? Who are you? What are you about?

How are you going to make decisions? How are you going to interact with me? How is this going to impact my life? The minute the previous CIO leaves and you come in, they have a whole series of questions and you have to set those things. But the next thing you have to do is bring clarity to the organization in so many different areas.

What do we value? Who are we going to be? How are we going to measure our performance as a group? How are they going to be measured individually? What is expected of us from the organization? Part of what I had to do as a leader is go out into the organization. So we did a survey of the entire organization and said, how's IT doing?

And we asked it a lot of open ended questions and we got a lot of open ended answers, which were really good. At the time, I was like, Oh my gosh this is, really brutal, but you have to know where you're starting from. And then you, set it up with the team and say, look, this is how the organization views how we're doing.

It's okay. Like we have to start somewhere. It's okay. And I know this reflect that you might feel this reflects on you. Cause you've been here for 10 years and whatever, but in a 30, 000 person organization, in an 800 person team, no one person created this problem. And so this is where you have to create so much clarity around so many different things so quickly.

And and by the way, you'd never stop creating clarity. You're creating clarity from the day you get there until the day you leave. I found one of the most challenging areas to create clarity is when the merger was announced. Mergers announced, Providence is coming in. We're actually coming together as two organizations.

And now you have to create clarity in an area where, man, there's very little clarity. Where you don't

Meghan Trevorrow: have clarity.

Bill Russell: You don't have clarity. And people are giving you a message to give, and you're going, I don't think that's true. Okay, what do you do as a leader? You want to create clarity for your team.

And so in a lot of discussions, especially, I didn't do this in broadly, but a lot of one on one discussions, I would say to them, I'm like, look, there's a lot of opportunity for you in a organization that went from 30, 000 people to a hundred thousand. There's going to be a lot of new opportunity. But likely that opportunity back then, likely that opportunity is going to be in Seattle.

It's not going to be in Southern California. So you have to ask yourself what do you want? Where do you want to go? And how do you position yourself? In here, I can make the introductions and help you to, move forward, but just understand that. You know this, our IT organization was headquartered here.

It's no longer going to be here. It's going to be headquartered up there. That creates a different dynamic. And what does that do to culture? When you do a merger, that's just a new culture, isn't it?

Meghan Trevorrow: Yeah, and I think it was a master class that you actually showed me, and it was talking about when Disney bought Pixar.

Bill Russell: Yeah, it

Meghan Trevorrow: was Disney and

Bill Russell: Pixar, yeah.

Meghan Trevorrow: I've never been a part of Merger, so I'm just pulling what I've heard that has stuck with me. They talked about, like part of the contract conversations was Pixar needed to keep their culture to stay Pixar. To stay the value that Disney wanted. And there was a proactive ongoing conversation of how to protect Pixar's culture, even underneath the Disney umbrella.

And long story short, I don't have an answer for you, but there was to how, it was great to hear inside of a massive merger that I actually know about, people prioritize the culture conversation. Basically, who are we? What are we about? What are we trying to do?

Bill Russell: Yes.

Meghan Trevorrow: How do we operate?

Bill Russell: Yeah, I the, history of that one is really interesting because you had a, Highly underperforming culture.

And then you had Pixar. And the reason they were hiring Pixar was they had a phenomenal culture. And so that, oh gosh, who gave that to see Bob Iger is giving the master class and he said, we knew like the value was in who they were. And we were hoping who they were would rub off on our Disney animators because our Disney animation had just not done well for many years.

And they were hopeful that it would, pull it out. And, and it did. And actually that's not entirely true because Disney animation had already started its comeback, but they decided to keep those things separate. That was, really fascinating. Two health systems coming together.

Man, that, that's a class in and of itself. Like, how do you navigate that and how are you a part of that? You, say another thing which I think is really interesting. It's, culture changes. Whenever you hire a new person, culture changes. Talk a little bit about that because I think people think culture is something you set and then it's static.

It's that's our culture.

Meghan Trevorrow: Yeah, I, this is a new kind of revelation where, okay, if we actually don't correct this expectation of I've built my culture and now I just need to You know, maintain or even protect it. It's going to be a, you're pushing a boulder up a hill and to no point. Where in reality, if culture is, I'm defining it as anytime two or more people are together.

So your character plus my character what it feels like to be on the Zoom call with the two of us. There's a feeling or a vibe or an atmosphere. How you and I work together is a culture just with two of our characters together. We bring in, let's say, Drex. And his character now informs the environment and the atmosphere.

You take if you leave, and now it's just Drex and I, the culture just shifted again. And I'm thinking that if we actually started owning that, that's reality when it comes to culture. We would be way more intuitive within our recruiting process of what, do we want the team to feel like with this new hire.

Rather than what core competencies and skill sets or projects need to be owned by somebody else. And not that it's replacing those things, but that's part of the recruitment process of what, do we want the team to feel like when we show up on Monday morning and we start working together.

And whenever someone either leaves or joins the team, there should, the culture should shift and adjust. And I, think it's the leader's job. to keep clarifying like the big rocks about our culture of who we are and how we operate and then allow the freedom for each individual to bring their own unique personality and sometimes cultures can feel really robotic if we don't clarify like the bigger picture of the culture who we are how we operate what we're trying to do with like how does each character uniquely bring something to the table so we just hired Kate Gamble and it feels so great to be able to say even before she's here, we're bringing someone else on.

This is what she's gonna, the value that she's gonna bring. This is why we really, want to bring her on. This is who she is. And even when she's starting the onboarding process, she meets with everybody one on one. We start getting to know her and we more embrace this change with her coming on and we talk about it rather than try and make her fit.

The culture fit is, I think, the language that's setting her Improper expectations that could lead up, leave us feeling really frustrated. And whenever you have to protect a culture now you're protecting the entire time.

Bill Russell: It's, interesting because, in that you, you touched on this, but I want people to hear it.

So we have core values. We have a way of operating. We have a flow of communications. We have a whole bunch of things. And that's why we have the first two weeks and we religiously set aside that first two weeks and say to people, we don't expect you to produce a thing. Like you are going to go through this process and we do a bunch of things in that process that has been really impactful.

And I thank you for, holding the line on that, because there's so many times where we're like, we're hiring Drex, we're going to get them going immediately. And

Meghan Trevorrow: it's wait a minute,

Bill Russell: slow down. And so it's important to, for them to understand, okay this is how we function. This is how we operate.

But what you're talking about is them being in the room changes the dynamic, changes the discussion. And that's good. If you hire the right people that's, a good thing. And if you give them that freedom, they will, create with that. Kate's doing all sorts of things that we didn't imagine.

Like people are, Oh, you hired Kate to do what she did at our last company. I'm like, No, we heard Kate because we love Kate and we know she has this skill and she's now going, Hey, you know what else I could do this and have you thought about this? And, it's it, but it is interesting.

With that, there's a freedom, but there have been times, and we've done this over the last year, where you bring in people with very strong ideas and they say, let's do this. And we say, yeah that's, not our mission. That's not our culture. Yeah. It's just not who we are. It's not that it's a bad idea.

It's, a good idea for somebody. It's just not a good idea for us. So we do hold the line on some things. I don't want people to get the picture of, our culture is, not defined and there is a definition to our culture, but there's a freedom within our culture to, to expand it and change it.

Meghan Trevorrow: And what I've found is if. When there is more clarity around this is who we are and what we're about, there's actually more freedom for every individual coming on because they know how to join the mission. Example, my nephew went to a military college and it was The biggest surprise because never played sports, never was part of a a team or training and he chose to go to this university that was so rigid and structured and I just, I asked him one night at dinner, why the heck are you going to the Citadel?

And his answer was, it's because I know exactly what's expected of me. Clarity. Structure. He knew exactly how to join and be a part of this military college because what was expected of him and how they operated was so clear for him that he actually came into his own because it started with clarity of how to join.

I don't know if that makes sense, but That's what I'm finding out is there actually, there's more freedom for the individual when they know how to join something. And when leaders, don't provide that clarity of this is who we are, this is how we operate, this is what doesn't work for us, this isn't, this is who we are not.

When there's not that clarity, people are waiting to like slowly, reactively find out if I'm, if I fit here. And it's an on edge feeling of do I belong because I haven't been told how to belong,

Bill Russell: right?

Final Thoughts and Reflections

Bill Russell: It's been great to have these conversations with you. By the way, there aren't a lot of people that you can have this conversation with.

I, we, I'm hopefully going to be interviewing Deborah Proctor, who I think is the queen of culture. I just the work that she did at St. Joe's. I hope to capture. for everyone so that they understand that. But this we continue to fine tune how we are approaching culture, what we're learning.

I love the fact that you're posting out on LinkedIn and, actually in a bunch of your posts, you're asking people for feedback. It's Hey, I have this new concept or someone introduced this to me. What do you think? I'm like, I don't know what I think yet. What do you think?

Meghan Trevorrow: I'm processing in real time.

Bill Russell: Yeah, and it's fun to process this stuff, and I've had a bunch of people in the industry who have said to me, man, Megan's posts are like like a master class on culture. And I'm like, yeah I, and I really appreciate it and appreciate these conversations. Thanks for coming on the the show, your first show, hopefully not your last.

My

Meghan Trevorrow: first show, hopefully it was okay.

Bill Russell: Happy birthday.

Meghan Trevorrow: Thank you so much.

Bill Russell: Thanks for listening to this week's keynote. If you found value, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating. it if you could do that. Thanks for listening. That's all for now..