by Amy Hou | Mar 14, 2016 | Leadership, Leading Teams, Skills
I recently received the same question at two different post-speech Q&A sessions and during an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer:
What about your experience as a nurse prepared you to be CEO?
Well, firstly, that question kind of makes it seem like I was a staff nurse one day and the next day I was appointed CEO. In fact, my career journey took several turns from my start as a pediatric nurse in an infant and toddler unit to my current position. Still, I appreciate this question because it gives me an opportunity to talk about empathy.
As a nurse, I learned the importance of having empathy to do one’s job well. When you’re trying to teach a family how to care for a child with a new diagnosis, you want the best possible outcome for everyone involved. You try to understand how the family is coping emotionally as they recover from a health crisis in their child and are beginning to accept a potentially life-changing diagnosis. You need to try to understand their family dynamic, their knowledge and systems of childcare, their culture surrounding children. Challenges to good health are often multi-faceted, and no two families are exactly alike. Nurses regularly use empathy skills to know how an individual patient and his or her family will hear and respond to the healthcare provider’s message and use that to determine what the patient needs going forward.
Empathy and effective performance as a leader go hand in hand. As a leader in my organization, I try to put myself in the shoes of not only CHOP’s patients and families but its staff as well. I ask, how can I better enable them and support them to do their best work? Part of my mission is to get out of my office and hear from CHOP’s front line employees so that I can better understand the challenges they face and work to improve how we function.
I can also use that opportunity to tell them about important issues I see and bring the big picture of the organization to them. Together in these conversations, we figure out how they fit into that big picture and what we both need to do to get better. In order to make these effective discussions and not just opportunities for glad-handing, you have to start with empathy — an ability to listen and learn how people hear your message.
So many executive leaders don’t think about how their message will be received. They perfect their stump speeches and leave it at that. But understanding what your employees are going through is essential. When I give a talk, I do my best to find out who the audience will be, why they are coming, and what issues are important to them so I can bring nuance to my message. If I’m to give a talk on quality and value in healthcare, I’m not going to give the same talk to medical students as I do to senior medical staff. I will try to think about what the students know and what their world is about.
Put simply, I try to connect with them. And I learned how to do that as a nurse.
by Amy Hou | Mar 5, 2016 | Mentoring, Networking, Professional Growth, Starting Out, Women in the Workplace
I belong to a group of women leaders who meet once a year with the goal of providing mutual personal and professional support and advice. In this post, I want to talk about how this group functions and how important and meaningful it has been for me.
There are two rules to this club: 1) What gets said in the group stays within the group, and 2) If a member gets in touch with you during the year, you must respond within 24 hours, even if just to say, “I’m away but will get back to you on this date.”
The group was established around thirty years ago by women leaders in the pharma industry. They saw their male counterparts going on golf outings and fly fishing trips with each other and decided to start a personal/professional support tradition of their own.
At the annual meeting, usually held at a resort, each person gets time in front of the rest of the group to make a presentation about what is happening in her life professionally and personally (because these are so often interconnected). After the presentation, discussion is opened up to the group, who may provide insight and advice on either topic. There are also some impromptu regional meetings, in addition to the regular annual one.
What has struck me every year with these remarkable women is that everyone has a personal journey, and it can be incredibly powerful for us as professionals to support that journey. This is the true purpose of affinity and networking groups — they’re not just forums for shrewdly angling for a better position or a higher salary. They’re for generating understanding, for thinking of new ways to approach challenges, and for listening to advice from like minded people.
If you don’t have an affinity or networking group within your organization, see if you can develop one. It’s not hard! Focus on activities that engender professional and personal support and mentoring. Address the idea of confidentiality. Put a little bit of structure around it. In my group, nominations for new members must come from three existing members. This means that anyone entering the group most likely relates well to its goals and culture; they’re well-accomplished and have reached a certain level in order to be there. Be aware of and seek out diverse backgrounds in your members. Elect leadership to the group; consider collecting dues and hiring an event organizer for big meetings.
Lisa Suennen over at Venture Valkyrie has written an excellent article about this group and some of the quotable quotes that came out of our meeting.
by Amy Hou | Feb 26, 2016 | Press
I was interviewed for Jane Von Bergen’s “Executive Q & A” column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She asked me about my training as a nurse (not a physician), how I got the CEO job, exciting medical developments at CHOP, and more.
Look for a longer version in print in the Sunday Inquirer’s Business section!
by Amy Hou | Feb 24, 2016 | Boardroom, Press
I’m honored to officially join the Comcast Corporate board of directors. I’ll be the 2nd woman after Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and former president of the University of Pennsylvania, to join this board.
It’s an exciting new challenge for me and I hope you’ll stay tuned for more about my experiences on a corporate board of directors.
by Amy Hou | Feb 24, 2016 | Boardroom, Challenges, Women in the Workplace
From Bloomberg.com:
“Women, who make up half the American workforce, may be 40 years or more from parity with men on U.S. corporate boards, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a new report.”
Read the rest of the article here.
