1. Start Each Day on a Positive Note.

A few minutes of mindfulness sets the tone for your day. Kickstart your morning with a happy thought and a glass of water. After a glass of water, eat a meal that will give you energy for the upcoming day.

2. Set goals.

Set personal or professional goals each week or month, or even for the year, so you have something to work towards. How will you contribute?

3. Have Fun!

Find things to look forward to such as a hike with friends or a safe day out. As we come out of the pandemic fog, let the travel and adventures begin!

4. Be Flexible.

Perhaps one of the good aspects of 2020 was our ability to learn to become more flexible. Learn to live a more agile and flexible life. Build in the ability to change plans. Flexibility also builds resilience.

5. Celebrate Every Win, Both Big and Small.

2020 has taught us how precious life is and why we should celebrate more big and small “moments” of our lives.

6. Be Grateful.

The importance of being grateful cannot be overstated. Whether for our health, our family & friends, our jobs, or our ability to serve.  Think about developing a simple “trigger” each time you wash your hands to think about what you are grateful for. Here are easy ways to practice gratitude at work.

Written by Dr. Bonnie Clipper, DNP, MA, MBA, RN, CENP, FACHE and Chief Clinical Officer at Wambi

For this episode in our healthcare subseries, we’re revisiting our conversation with Dennis Murphy (@dennismurphy340), President and CEO of IU Health. Being smart and healthy is essential to running a successful organization.

IU Health is a healthcare mecca with 35,000 employees, 17 hospitals, and 400 locations statewide. Their culture is driven by one uniting mission: to make Indiana the healthiest state in the country.

Over the last 30 years, Dennis has amassed a wide range of leadership experience in organizations of all sizes. Along the way, he’s learned the building blocks for a healthy culture remain the same, whether you have 40 employees or 40,000.

How do you diagnose and improve your organizational health? Listen in as Dennis and Nikki break it down.

1. Feel your culture. Clarity and consistency in messaging, a clear construct for leaders of all levels to make good decisions, and storytelling. Tell stories that reinforce the culture you’re trying to build.
2. Build a healthy workplace. No matter the size of the organization, the steps are the same: Identify your goals, clearly communicate those goals, and empower and assist teams to work together to achieve them.
3. Shift your values. Move from constitutional values to values that embody who you are. Be able to share your values in 20 seconds or less (the human attention span is shorter than ever). Seek employee feedback on crafting your values. For larger organizations, consider having a sample size gives feedback versus the entire workforce. Lastly, make the change of values a movement and not a mandate.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi  – Buy Here.

In collaboration with Wambi, the Gut + Science Podcast Healthcare Series hosted by Nikki Lewellen, Director of Partnerships at Wambi, highlights accomplished, people-first healthcare CEOs (and executives) that share their powerful mindsets, experiences and tools that have helped them succeed. The show encompasses all areas of human capital at work and the successful best practices that breed healthy, engaged organizations.

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The Gut+Science Healthcare Series, sponsored by Wambi, brings the best influencers and leaders in healthcare to share best practices, stories, and lessons to build stronger people-first healthcare institutions.

Vicki Hess is an engagement expert, author, thought-leader, and speaker, and she is passionate about inspiring healthcare leaders to take action and transform engagement.

Listen in as she and Nikki reveal the tools you need to create the environment you want to work in:

1. Employee Engagement has to be part of the organization’s strategy. It’s not a tactical thing. Stop the flavor-of-the-month surveys and choose a survey that equips you with data and insights.
   1. [00:04:53] Vicki: What I see that doesn’t work is when the survey becomes a big push, it becomes like the flavor of the month. And all of the sudden now we’re focusing on the survey and we want everyone to do the survey. And if you turn in your ticket, you’re gonna get a prize. And the managers like, please, please, please take this survey. And Edwards like, oh, whatever, you know, and they take this survey. And the reason they say, oh, whatever is because last year when this happened, the survey results came back. They had the requisite action planning meeting. They all got in a room. They looked at the results. They said what they wanted to have to get better. And then they never heard anything again. [00:05:26]
2. Take Action. Weave engagement into every single thing you do as an organization. 
   1. [00:06:08] Vicki: When somebody says to me, we have a people pillar and it’s an agenda item on every single meeting we have and all of our performance reviews are related to that and et cetera. Then I’m like, they’ve got a strategic connection. So the organizations that do well with sustaining engagement over time, they go from what I call engagement dread where the managers like, oh, I got to talk about the survey and, you know, do an action plan to the engagement thread where you weave engagement into everything that you’re doing. [00:06:40]
3. Manager engagement skills are huge. Communication and employee-engagement training is a must for managers of all levels.
   1. [00:19:59] Vicki: if it’s truly important, it’s got to be part of the strategy. It doesn’t have to be compensation related for leaders, but it definitely has to be some measure of their success has to be related to the engagement levels of their team. The other thing is there’s got to be the tools for training and teaching managers how to be effective, engaging leaders. And it can’t be a flavor of the month.  [00:20:22]
4. You must have the right mindset and belief for the strategy to work. Be intentional with how you equip your leaders to understand the engagement initiatives.
   1. [00:19:10] Vicki: These unproductive beliefs and mindsets that organizations let thrive, that they let go on are often the cause of disengagement. At an organizational level, then leaders feel helpless. Their mindset might be, but what can I do about this? And then individuals there, their negative mindset as well. It’s somebody else’s job to make me happy at work. And so unless those things are addressed and talked about. Now, the cool thing is we know what the unproductive beliefs are. We just have to be willing to talk about this elephant in the room or the sacred cow. [00:19:41]

In collaboration with Wambi, the Gut + Science Podcast Healthcare Series hosted by Nikki Lewellen, Director of Partnerships at Wambi, highlights accomplished, people-first healthcare CEOs (and executives) that share their powerful mindsets, experiences and tools that have helped them succeed. The show encompasses all areas of human capital at work and the successful best practices that breed healthy, engaged organizations.

Subscribe to Gut + Science

• Stitcher
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts