Enable people to achieve
Walsh says employees need to know that management has
placed them in the best position to succeed within the company.
Everyone in the organization — from senior management
down — has to have his or her talent leveraged for maximum
effect.
She says the challenge begins at the job interview — and
never really stops. As a leader, you have to remain constantly
on alert for ways that you can enable your employees to
achieve more success.
“That’s a challenge for anyone,” Walsh says. “You can only get
so much information out of an interview. If you have folks who
know the individual you’re interviewing, that’s what I find very
helpful. I find just using references, talking to individuals who
have worked with the person, is helpful. You might think
you’re only going to get a one-sided opinion, but oftentimes,
when you’ve talked with people who have worked with an individual, they’ll give you honest feedback about what kind of
person they are to work with.”
Once a candidate has been hired at HCA Gulf Coast, Walsh
and her leadership team take proactive steps to keep their best
and brightest performers, and that includes a chief operating
officer development program designed to help the company fill
management positions from within.
Familiarity is another key ingredient in building unity within
an organization. With that in mind, Walsh attempts to fill management positions with in-house candidates before looking
outside the organization.
It isn’t the ideal course of action in every situation, but internal promotion is preferable to Walsh for several reasons: It
saves management the task of having to train a new employee
from the start, it helps bridge the gap between management
and employees when the manager is already familiar with a
company’s people and practices, and it gives high performers
long-term goals.
“Any organization that does long-term planning should
always want to look at individuals within the company, individuals within each division and what their work patterns are
going to be moving forward,” Walsh says. “If I feel I’m going to
have opportunities for people three to five years down the
road, I want to be sure I have the right caliber of individuals to
put in those positions. You always want a talent pool your
organization can draw from.”
Walsh says she looks for several key traits in people who aspire
to management-level positions at HCA Gulf Coast, traits that
identify an individual as a unifier and consensus-builder.
Management-level candidates at HCA Gulf Coast, perhaps
most importantly, must be willing to look in the mirror and
self-assess their own areas of weakness, something with which
Walsh has had firsthand experience during her administrative
career.
“I was, as many people are, not comfortable with speaking in
public,” she says. “It’s something that does not come easily to
a lot of individuals, yet in a leadership role, that’s an important
skill.”
Walsh overcame her public-speaking obstacle by continually
placing herself in situations where she was forced to address
an audience. She wants to see the same willingness to tackle
personal challenges out of her managers at HCA Gulf Coast.
“Communication skills are part of your makeup,” she says.
“Some of us are naturally effective communicators, others are
not. But even though we all have our strengths and weaknesses, the more we work in our profession, the more opportunities we have to fine-tune our skills and perfect them.”