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Jennifer Webster on Why the Best Leaders Never Lose Sight of the Basics · Step Wise

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'll call it a life lesson, but what's one big breakthrough lesson you've ever gotten from a coach or from your coach?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's going to sound very simple, but I can I can tell you a little story behind it is never lose sight of the basics.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_04: What that means is you've got to constantly make sure that you've got a pulse on the foundation of the organization that that you're that you're leading.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: She's a very experienced CEO, having honed her leadership approach through extensive experience in healthcare services, including notable tenures at Fortune 10 corporations and dynamic private equity-backed firms.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: I talked to Jennifer about what it's like to lead in today's tumultuous time with healthcare, given the fact that she's a proven change leader.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: Please welcome Jennifer Webster to Stepwise.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Foster.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love to talk a little bit about your journey.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: You are CEO of Dispatch Health, an important job in the world of healthcare.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, let's start there.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: What is Dispatch Health and what is it that you do in the healthcare ecosystem?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_04: So we enable complex care in the home.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_04: And we do that primarily on behalf of health systems, so hospital systems.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: And we do it across the continuum of care.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: So we do it from the point of view of a visit-based service where someone can avoid going to the hospital or being admitted to the hospital.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: We can also provide care for them in a virtual hospital setting.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_04: So it outside of the traditional brick and mortar.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_04: And we do that through technology, logistics, and other care delivery assets.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know a single human being who has not or would not have been benefited by having dispatch health services in their lives.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, for those of us who have had elderly parents or siblings, um, the idea of providing complex care in a home environment is so appealing.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's fabulous.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I applaud you and the work your team does.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_04: It is such a value to patients to be able to stay where they're comfortable, be with family, be with friends, be with pets, be with their plants, be with all the things that they like to have around them.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: And it really shifts the sort of the power dynamics into the into the home in terms of a patient really being able to take control of their care as well, too.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_04: So they're still 100% under the supervision of all of their care providers from that hospital or health system, but they're able to do it in a place that they feel more comfortable, that they can ask questions, take their time, not be hooked up, you know, not be surrounded by loud machines and equipment and all of that.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_04: They can do it where they're comfortable.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: That is so huge.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, hospitals back in the day were set up with a very imbalanced power dynamic.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: Physicians were beneficial, but they were also gods and goddesses.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: What they mostly gods at that point, all of the care staff would just salute smartly and follow their orders.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: And the patient would take whatever care they could get.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: And now you're shifting this locus of control, the power dynamic, back to a partnership because so much we now know, so much of care and healing has to do with a lot of things that are personal to each person.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's fabulous.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it's important, Foster, to remember that we are not taking the place we are of that health system and of their physicians, doctors, nurses.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: We are providing them with the ability, those health systems, to do this care, you know, at home and really be as efficient and as you know, productive and profitable as those beds are inside the four walls of the hospital.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_04: Whether they're in the hospital because they need to be there and those beds are available for those patients that really need to be inside the four walls, or whether they're, you know, can be safely treated at home, they can they can do that in either setting.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_04: And then the hospital benefits from freeing up that capacity, having the availability to be able to treat those patients who truly do need to be 24-7 inside the hospital.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: Not everybody watching this or listening to this will know what MPS means.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's a net promoter score.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: It goes from plus 100, means somebody is an active promoter of you and your services, to a minus 100, which means they are an active detractor.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: And the fact is, Jennifer, that you and your team get these patients sometimes having the worst episode or worst day of their lives, and you can still boast a very high NPS score.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: How does that work?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and we are consistently in the high 90s, by the way.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: So we really do it through the clinicians and through the care that is being delivered by the primary uh clinicians that are going into the home and the care providers that are going into the home.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_04: And whether that's the hospital's team, whether that's our team, or whether it's a service provider network that we work with, it really all starts with the care that they are receiving in the home.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_04: We spend um you know a tremendous amount of time on training and on you know making sure that the experience that the patient has in the home is the same or even higher quality than they would receive in a physical brick and mortar environment.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: I was going to ask you about training because this a 90-something NPS score does not happen by itself.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't happen because you just have trained clinicians.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's something else.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: So what Dispatch Health is doing is monumental for the improvement of or the perception of incredible quality care and quality caring by the patients.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's major.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_04: And it has to be.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, if you think about a physician or a nurse in a in a health system or um in a physical brick and mortar, for them to feel comfortable sending that patient home where they don't necessarily have the physical access at a moment's notice, it's really critical.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_04: The the bar is incredibly high for us to be able to do that.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_04: And our our our teams uh rise to that occasion every day.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: That you know, the technology has to work impeccably, the logistics has to be work impeccably.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_04: The uptime of all the tools and systems that they're using in the home have to work when you know uh when they're when they're expected to.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_04: So all of that, all of those things have to go right.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_04: And when you get into a home, you know, every home is unique, every home is set up separately.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_04: You also get the opportunity to see how the patient is living, which is, I think, also really valuable both to the patient themselves, but also to the to the providers.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_04: We see things in the home that you'd never see inside the four walls of a hospital.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: So maybe there's things that could be helpful to that patient in terms of keeping them safe, keeping them from going back to the emergency room, going back to the hospital.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_04: And we can see and address those things when we're in the home, as well as take the time.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: Think about, you know, on a given day, how many patients inside a hospital get seen?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's um, you know, it's a very busy place.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_04: And so to feel as though these patients always have the access to someone that's only seeing and hearing them inside their inside their home is really valuable to them.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: As the CEO of a really relevant and important service in our healthcare ecosystem, what are the some of the challenges that you and your team face in scaling this?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because this is an important service, and yet not everybody has access to it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_04: There's a couple things.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_04: And one, it it comes down to uh change management.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_04: I think that there is certainly a trend of moving care to the home today.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it continues to build momentum.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_04: And certainly COVID contributed to that, and I think you've seen that momentum.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_04: But there are, you know, regulatory and reimbursement and other things that have to keep up with this concept of being able to deliver care at home.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_04: Bringing care to the home, you think about the cost to build a hospital bed today, two to five million dollars, we have to be able to build that same infrastructure in the home and bring it to the home at a fraction of that cost.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_04: We need the health systems to understand that in order to prevent an emergency room visit, to prevent a hospitalization, to prevent a readmission on the backside, there has to be the reimbursement structures.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_04: And frankly, there has to be the ability for insurers to pay for that care outside of the physical brick and mortar, because as you know, our healthcare system sometimes moves very slowly in terms of adapting things like the treatment codes and such that are needed to be able to actually bill for and provide for and create sustainability for these types of capabilities in the home.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: You make a really good point.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's sometimes not the ability to care, it's not the ability to diagnose, it's not the location.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it is something as simple as a billing code that prevents a lot of change from occurring.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and in our case, um you know, a big enabler of uh this care delivery, especially for those health systems who you know have a lot of Medicare or Medicaid patients, is the acute hospital care at home waiver program that was put in place during COVID, during the net the health emergency.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_04: And that was initially for uh until the emergency expired, and then it got extended by Congress, and then it got extended again.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: It finally did get extended for five years at the beginning of January of this year, 2026, which then gave health systems more confidence in the durability of the program and the ability for them to be reimbursed for doing this.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_04: What we'd like to see is that made permanent and that the government would make that permanent because we believe that you know, not only will that benefit all of those patients, it'll also benefit commercial patients because those who have commercial insurance are will will also get access to this similar benefit today.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: We could go down this rabbit hole, but I'd say in order for that to occur, for providers to have any sort of stability, somebody's got to be looking at the whole system.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: And unfortunately, uh, and I don't know if everybody realizes this, but half of all healthcare dollars come through the government for a variety of reasons Medicare, Medicaid.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: So they have an outsized impact on what actually gets provided, how it gets provided, how it gets compensated, all of that stuff.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: Very important.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: Given that you are in the throes constantly of having to adapt to lots of different input.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'll call them changes.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: What's your cheat code as CEO for leading your team through such tumultuous change?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_04: It starts with transparency and communication, helping the organization understand the why behind the decisions that are being made.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_04: The more that the organization understands, they may not agree, but as the more that they understand and the ability to link that back to the strategy and the things that we have been communicating over time.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_04: And that's why the consistency of that message matters a lot.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_04: The clarity and the consistency of the message matter a lot because folks need to understand why are these decisions being made?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_04: And then, of course, how is it going to affect me?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: The more that you're able to communicate and tell people what's going on, or even when you can't you don't have all the answers, if you can at least share with them some, you know, some of the details along the way, and then tell them that you'll follow up when you have more information and then do what you say you're going to do and actually follow through.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_04: I think that helps to build trust in the organization and it helps to build an understanding of those tough, you know, those tough choices that are that are being made.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: And then at least the organization can have the context for what for what's happening versus, you know, I don't know where this came from.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_04: Why you know why is this happening now?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Jennifer, you're making this notion of alignment between purpose and mission and strategy to your workforce vital, which it is.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: You're making it seem very much easier than I know it is for you and leaders in in um in the organization.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: You're leading a distributed workforce.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: You're not everybody can you know huddle around the conference table every time.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um is that correct?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_04: That's correct.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_04: I was gonna say we like to think about ourselves being present in the markets with the customers that we serve and the patients that we serve.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: That's really where our headquarters are.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: So, from a practical point of view, what are the modalities you use to communicate with people?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because any good leadership theorist will tell you that people have to hear the message over and over again before it really kind of sinks in and gains traction.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_04: I think we do it across a number of levels.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I'll start with sort of the highest touch, which is every chance we get, we go out as an executive team with as a leadership team to those operations in the field.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_04: For example, just a couple of weeks ago, we were in our northern uh Virginia market and had the opportunity, uh, a couple of us on the team to go out on ride-alongs with our uh clinicians, with our teams into patient homes.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_04: So meeting our teams where they are in the field and getting opportunities to spend face-to-face time with them is absolutely critical.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_04: Stepping back from that, we get together once a month as an executive team.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_04: So, in order to build cohesion amongst us so that when we show up, whether it be to our operating teams or our our support teams, that we are consistent in the messaging that we are delivering.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_04: We utilize uh town halls, we utilize leadership meetings.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, I have a town hall uh leadership meeting tomorrow.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, and we utilize a similar structure and a similar format, similar messaging.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: We there there are certain sets of materials that we always come back to.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: We always lead with a patient story, we always lead with our mission, vision, and values and connect that to our strategy.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_04: So creating that consistency, creating that clarity every single time.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_04: The other thing that I love to do uh myself is skip level meetings.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: I I find those so valuable just to stay connected to folks across the organization and I you know seek to do those periodically.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: And sometimes if I just hear something great about someone, I'll reach out to them, uh just hey, I'd love to get to know you better and just reach out and and say, look, let's put 30 minutes on the calendar and just tell me about yourself, tell me about what you like, what you don't like, tell me about you know your job, tell me about your family, tell me about just let's spend some time.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_04: And I think especially in this distributed workforce that we have today, you know, making those personal connections is incredibly valuable.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's impressive.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: I I love hearing it all.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a this is a fosterism.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: You're not letting systems replace the humanity of connection.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: You've got your town halls and you've got the leadership meetings and you've got ride-alongs.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: Those are all great systems, and doing those consistently uh is trust building.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: That said, you have kind of heart-to-heart connection when you're reaching out to people directly and having conversations with them, and also the honor that riding along with somebody while they provide care is massively huge.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm not a clinician by background, uh, I'm a business person by background, and so it's humbling, frankly, to see.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, if you think if that was your family member and the kind of care that they are getting, it's it's incredible.
• 16:37
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• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: Consulting was built for a different era.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: What we have chosen to become is an integrated performance acceleration firm designed to deploy against very specific problems in the investor-backed healthcare ecosystem.
• 16:52
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• 17:03
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• 17:11
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• 18:01
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• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love to spend some time talking about Jennifer the leader and how you got to where you are.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: Can you share a story or two about kind of key moments in your development as a leader that really stick out for you?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: And and and I think, you know, starting with those those big those big names uh early in my career.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_04: So GE, you know, I will date myself here, but I joined GE under the Welch era.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_04: Oh wow.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_04: Jack Welch era.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the things, the really two things, two themes, and both at GE as well as McKesson is that these types of organizations focus on leadership from day one.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_04: I stepped into GE from undergraduate, right?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_04: No, that had no job experience.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_04: And immediately in my first year, two years, was going through a leadership development program alongside the financial development program that I was doing.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: Every step of the way, they were providing not only the technical training that was needed to do the job, but the but the leadership training as well.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: What that instills is just a tremendous amount of that as operational discipline, financial discipline, as well as leadership discipline.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_04: So all of those things are being developed right alongside each other.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_04: And frankly, you know, as a 20-something, you don't know any better necessarily.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: After about eight years, I left GE and I went to a small startup.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: It was for less than a year, so it doesn't, it doesn't take up a lot of space in my resume.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_04: But I got to that organization, and what I realized was like, hey, I know a heck of a lot more about not only the function that I was there to serve, you know, to serve, but also about leadership and how to lead organizations and how to create performance inside of organizations, how to demonstrate business results, all of those things that I thought were just how every company did it.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_04: Starting at a company like GE and then going to a company like McKesson shortly thereafter, in between that small stint that I had in between, it really instilled upon me the leadership lessons that I was able to learn and the development that I was able to build really early in my career that I think helped differentiate uh me as I as I moved through my career and moved up in inside um the various organizations that I've been a part of.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: Can you think about another time where it just shifted you into a whole different level of capability or something that leads you to be CEO today?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: Certainly when I was at McKesson, I think one of the things that they would do for emerging executive leadership was to identify some of the folks who were had had had high potential and then would actually uh enable them to receive sort of one-on-one executive coaching and advisory.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_04: Doing it as a positive thing, not as a result of, hey, you know, this person maybe has a gap or this person has something that they need to come at it from a more, I don't want to say negative, but from a more you know developmental perspective to say, hey, look, we're gonna proactively take these leaders and give them the tools one-on-one that are gonna help them just continue to build upon those capabilities.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_04: I would say that was the starting point for me, really recognizing that you know, executive coaching, executive leadership has been a valuable part of developing me as a leader.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_04: It led me to FMG leading, uh, frankly, and and and not just around executive coaching, but that's been a big part of the last couple of roles that I've that I've had with with CARD and with.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: With dispatch health.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to FMG Leading.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: They'll be a co-sponsor of this episode.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: I will say I'm not unbiased in that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: I happen to think that leaders, when they get access to a really good coach who has only one agenda, which is to help that leader be wildly successful and not pulling their own agendas, can be such an accelerator of talent and performance.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that it's important for folks to understand.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_04: I've had different advisors over the years.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_04: And sometimes, you know, you need different things.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_04: And so at different points along the way, those advisors can, you know, and you've got to find one that sort of matches to your personality and your and your style and the way in the way that you work too.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'll call it a life lesson, but what's one big breakthrough lesson you've ever gotten from a coach or from your coach?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's going to sound very simple, but I can I can tell you a little story behind it is never lose sight of the basics.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_04: What that means is you've got to constantly make sure that you've got a pulse on the foundation of the organization that that you're that you're leading.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_04: I was uh a relatively new CFO at the time, and we had made a major acquisition.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_04: And so we were spending a lot of time integrating and focusing on the new business that was coming in.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_04: And we had a very large customer.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_04: Long story short, they ended up filing for bankruptcy, literally our largest uh uh physician practice that we had.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: And it was a major setback at that time.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_04: The business that I was part of was relatively small, and it wiped out all of the EBITDA for that business for that particular year that we had to build back from.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_04: And that earned me a date with the company's CEO every every month for the next six months.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_04: And I can tell you what, I built the most strong revenue cycle RCM function inside that particular business following that event because I never wanted to find myself in that situation again.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_04: You have to make sure that you have the right, the right leadership in place too, because this was also an area where we had inherited a leader and I had heard that she was good.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_04: Unfortunately, you know, uh she wasn't ready for the size of the organization, the complexity of the organization that we were now uh a part of.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_04: And so therefore, I needed to invest more time leading and mentoring and leaning in to that person and that function than I did.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great story, really great story.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: So, what are your kind of three or four or five kind of core principles of leading?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_04: I think you have to be humble and I think you have to be, you know, low ego and have to be open to perspectives of others.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: I once had someone, uh, a colleague say to me as they were stepping into a new role, and it stuck with me for a long time.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: The individual says, Well, my team's just gonna have to figure out how to work with me.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, I think it's exactly the opposite.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_04: Every person on your team is different.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_04: They all have different strengths, they all have different capabilities.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_04: I want all eight players on my team, don't get me wrong.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: I used to be known inside of McKesson as a poacher.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_04: I would get out there and I would find the best people and I convince them to come work for whatever part of the business I was a part of.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_04: I was going after talent as as hard as anyone else, but I had to create a value proposition for them.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that one of the things that I've constantly gone back to is that I think as a leader, there's really three or four areas that you really want to focus on.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_04: Building something, you want to focus on fixing something, you want to focus on taking the job that nobody wants.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_04: And you want to bring people along on the journey and develop people along the way.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_04: Because some of the opportunities, the greatest opportunities I've had are stepping into roles that were really challenging and really difficult.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_04: And perhaps we're not the sexiest or not the most, you know, exciting in terms of something that people traditionally might like lean into in terms of their, you know, what they want to go do.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_04: And and at the same time, I think the lessons that you learn and and the resilience that you build in in doing those kinds of things, I think lasts lasts with you and the flexibility that it brings to your ability to go into any situation and just figure it out.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, fabulous.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Build something, fix something, take on something hard, and bring people along with you.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: What's one thing about Jennifer as a leader that might surprise people to know, really, or hear?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_04: I would say one thing that probably would surprise folks is that I am an off-the-charts introvert.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: No kidding.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_04: And yes, so it takes a lot of energy for me to have to, you know, show up and act as a leader and act natural in a leadership role.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_04: I think the thing that's perhaps not well understood about introverts is is that you know, they draw their energy from themselves.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_04: So I need to prepare a lot for times when I'm going to have to be present.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_04: And then I need to take time on the other side of it to recover from that.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_04: But I think folks think that leaders, a lot of needers, leaders are just naturally extroverted because they they somewhat have to be at least big presence, big personality, you know, show up, be, you know, and and set the set the tone for an organization.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_04: And you can't do that if you're, you know, if you're if you're retreating and and you're and you're not showing up with the confidence and credibility that's needed.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: The book I'm working on right now is called, rough titles called Honoring.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's an approach to leading in today's tumultuous world.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it starts with honoring self because you can't honor others or honor the organization unless you have that knowledge.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm an introvert, I need to prepare, I need to kind of steal up, I need to get my energy up because it's going to come energy out.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm an introvert as well.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: And being that out front with people really causes me to um need to recharge, let's just say.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: Love people, yeah.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: But it's a question of energy stores and where it comes from and how it gets replenished.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: So before I can honor the other person and really truly care for them and listen to them with compassion and stuff, I've got to do that stuff for myself, so I really appreciate you bringing that out.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: Given that, what advice would you give the younger Jennifer if you could tap her on the shoulder to do that?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: I would tell young Jennifer to expand her risk zones and put herself more out there.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: My career started in finance, which is tends to be a very precise function to begin with.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so whenever I would be at a group setting, especially in some of those earlier days at some of those larger organizations, not only are you perhaps one of the only women in the room, you might be one of, you know, one of the youngest folks in the room.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: And so using my voice more so that people understood that I had a perspective on something, as opposed to forming opinions about who I was or what I might be thinking or or what I knew or what I didn't know.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_04: A good friend of mine and and former colleague of mine actually told me, she said, you know, don't be beige.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_04: And it really stuck with me.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_04: Find your voice, be confident in yourself.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I've sat in plenty of meetings over my career where I was thinking the exact thing that someone else said, but they said it before I did because I was too afraid to speak up, especially early in my career.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_04: Similarly, I heard people say things that were totally off base, but they said it with such confidence and conviction the room just moved the room just moved on.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_04: And so you can't, you know, constantly not be right.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_04: But the point is, is you don't always have to be perfect.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a young leader in an organization.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's a complex, fast-moving organization.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: I really believe that my career would be benefited by having a mentor.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if one doesn't select me, how can I go about and what advice would you have for me as a young leader to attract and find and work with a mentor?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_04: Be very clear about what it is that you want, you know, want to have a mentor for.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_04: Someone might tell you, hey, you should get a mentor, right?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: And you should and a mentor isn't just somebody that's going to show up and do everything on your behalf, right?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_04: You have to come prepared to say, like, here's what I'm looking for.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: I'm looking for advocacy, or I'm looking for advice, or I'm really I'm just looking for, you know, someone to talk with about something that I don't know very much about.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_04: I'm seeking to learn more.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_04: And then look for people that you know are demonstrating the types of of skill, you know, leadership skills that you know you you'd you'd want to emulate in your uh or have the skill sets um in the area that you're seeking to learn more about.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_04: Anyone who really is going to be a great mentor is going to be thrilled that you asked.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: I, as a mentor, can learn from you as well.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think that if you have someone that you ask to be a mentor and they say no, that tells you all you need to know.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: Jennifer, what's influencing you today in terms of what you're reading, what you're listening to?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: How do you stay sharp in learning?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a nonfiction reader.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_04: I love nonfiction.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: I my and my favorites are what I would call true tales of adventure or triumph over adversity.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: A book that I read recently was about um a captain, Thomas Musgrave, who uh was the captain of a schooner called the Grafton that got marooned off the um uh subarctic, sub subantarctic islands off the south of New Zealand.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_04: And the reason I bring this example up is the tie to, you know, from a business perspective to leadership.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_04: All five of the crew uh survived for almost two years on this desolate, remote island with, you know, barely anything and were able to come up with the ability to eventually sail to their to their safety and to their to their rescue.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_04: Similarly, um I've read a number of books on Ernest Shackleton and the endurance, folks that have done these incredible journeys and demonstrated incredible leadership along the way.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: But more importantly, the lesson that I take back from these books and the thing, the perspective that I gain from these types of books are like you can do hard things in business, and it's never going to be as hard as some of these types of experiences.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_04: Whenever you think you're having a hard day, think about being stuck thousands of miles away with no communications, no ability to know if anyone is ever going to come.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_04: I just find that fascinating, just the human ingenuity.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then, kind of last question for you, Jennifer: what can we do to engage with Dispatch Health or Jennifer Webster?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_04: So, one, uh yes, would love, love for you to for to to follow us.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_04: We just relaunched our website and our our rebranding and our brand messaging.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so amplifying those messages uh would be fantastic for us because if you know if you knew Dispatch Health four or five years ago or even a couple of years ago, you may not know Dispatch Health today in terms of of who we are and who we serve and really the capabilities that we provide on behalf of our you know on our customers.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: And then two of my colleagues, our president Aaron Bartley and our chief medical officer Pippa Shulman are launching their own podcast uh called At Home at Scale.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: And it's focused on how uh health systems and organizations can build their at-home um complex care at home strategies and how they can bring those to life.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_04: As the leading company that's been at uh delivering complex care at home for as long as Dispatch Health has, over a decade of experience doing so, we feel that there's there's a lot of information that we want to be in a position to share with with the industry about it.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so they're gonna be launching that in the next uh next couple of weeks.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: Jennifer, you're terrific.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um we value you as a friend of FMG, a client, uh, as a leader in healthcare uh improvement, so vital for our country and so vital for all of us today.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: Really appreciate your time.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you so much, Foster.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_04: Have a great day.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: If this conversation was worth your time, and I hope it was, do one thing for me before you close the app.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's how people like you help people like me find this show.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: And if what we talked about today sparks something in you, there's a book called Leadership Rethinking the True Path to Great Leading.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, that's the real title, that goes deeper into this territory.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's on my website, fostermobley.com.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then sign up for our email list to be notified when my next book, Honoring, goes into pre-sale in 2027.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: And if there's one person in your life who needed to hear this episode, send it to them.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: Not because we need the numbers, because they need the conversation.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: Set the table, invite cool people, magic happens.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Foster Mobley.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: As always, friends, step wise.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: Our music for season three is composed and performed by Montana musical legend Philip Auburg.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: Courtesy of Sweet Grass Music.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: Phil's recent passing was felt by many, including those of us associated with this podcast.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: We thank Patty Aubberg and Sweetgrass Music for access to this beautiful piece.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Stepwise.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Stepwise is produced, edited, and promoted by Zedist with support from Amber Gillard Consulting.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Find more episodes and resources at fostermobli.com and follow Foster on social media at Fostermobli.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.