Category: Innovation in Deployment of Leadership
  LEAD AWARD RANK: 16
 
  Organization: Jefferson Health New Jersey (formerly Kennedy Health)
  Program: Jefferson Health New Jersey Servant Leadership Program
  Program Director: Debbie Deissroth, Corporate Director, Learning & Development
  Visit: KennedyisJefferson.org
 
 
Our editorial team interviewed Debbie Deissroth from Jefferson Health at the LEAD2018 Awards this past February. Here are some excerpts from the exclusive interview.
 
What is the overall objective of your program?
The program was designed in partnership with Saint Joseph’s University to develop each Jefferson leader’s intrapersonal, interpersonal, and team leadership skills, following a Servant Leadership model. The four-day in-house program is delivered by Jefferson operational leaders who have previously participated in the program and completed facilitation skills and content training through a “train-the-trainer” approach. Program components include fundamental leadership principles, ethics,  values and authenticity, risk and perspective taking, effective communication and conflict resolution skills, team leadership, and change and culture change leadership.
 

Who do you impact with your program?
The in-house program is focused on newly hired or promoted leaders within the Jefferson New Jersey organization. Along with senior leaders, we have also been able to reach down further into the organization to include supervisor level associates, as well as department managers and professionals who influence leaders but have no direct reports themselves. In addition to developing leadership skills, one of the great interdisciplinary outcomes achieved through cohorts is to encourage interdepartmental communication and collaboration. To date, we have had more than 150 leaders participate in the in-house program, which began in January 2017. Some 400 additional leaders participated in the program since its 2014 inception.
 
What are the lessons you’ve learned this year from facilitating your program?
In order to develop the skills of Jefferson NJ faculty members, we provided content and facilitation skills in a train-the-trainer model. We have also used co-facilitation to balance learning styles and provide flexibility, when needed, to cover for each other when one faculty member has a scheduling conflict. Using teaching teams of four leaders per session day, there are two assigned to the morning session, and two assigned to the afternoon. We have various executive ambassadors kick off each session before the day starts, sharing their personal journey and some thoughts on the importance of this program to the organization’s success.
 
How do you measure the return on investment and success of the program?
We are fortunate to have fairly sophisticated annual employee engagement data, which has shown incremental improvement in all leadership indicators every year since the program launch in 2014. Organizational health scores have risen 50% in the past five years; average manager scores have increased by 20% in that same time period, and training scores have risen by 31%. Statements include: how associates feel about ideas being encouraged, whether managers are making associate jobs easier, the quality of communication and interdepartmental collaboration, and managers showing concern for associate well-being. We were thrilled to see incremental improvements in all measures continuing through all the merger activity in 2017.
 
What lies ahead for the program and how will it continue to succeed?
We’ve just completed a merger with Jefferson Health, which is the 16^th ranked top hospital in the country. There is strong interest in the New Jersey culture by the larger Jefferson organization. We believe that our culture is rooted in the Servant Leadership model, and we hope to expand the program to the larger enterprise as we work further into our integration. There are multiple strategies being considered; however, ideally we would follow the same delivery model used in New Jersey. This would mean cascading through the leadership levels - starting at the top with our partners from Saint Joseph’s University as faculty for the director levels and above – then, working our way deeper into the organization until we can deliver an in-house program, such as we have now in New Jersey.
 

 

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