Robert Gardner
Robert Gardner was named CEO of Banner Ironwood Medical Center and Banner Goldfield Medical Center in 2019.
Prior to being named leader of these two hospitals, Gardner served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Banner Baywood Medical Center and Banner Heart Hospital and, before that, he was COO of Banner Gateway Medical Center and Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Gardner has a decade of progressive leadership and executive experience in health care operations with multi-site and multi-state health care organizations. Gardner is a mission-driven executive and he brings strong leadership from his experience successfully navigating organizational culture and creating sustainable positive results across all key success metrics.
Gardner’s undergraduate degree is in communication from Arizona State University and his graduate degree is in healthcare administration from Grand Canyon University. He is board-certified in healthcare management as a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives. Gardner is a proud native of Arizona and lives with his wife, Lindsey, and their five young children in Gilbert.
Episode Transcription
Guiding Growth Conversations with Community Leaders in this podcast will explore the human journey of leaders, their stories of humility, triumph roadblocks and lessons learned. Come join us as we journey together and uncover the questions you've always wanted to know. Yeah, yeah. This podcast is brought to you by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce providing resources, connections and belonging for business professionals and rocket space, an event and meeting venue in the heart of the East Valley with a full service for person podcast studio. All right. Another episode of guiding girl Sarah, Here we go.
Hey, I'm excited about today's show. We've got a great guest with us. I really don't know a lot about him other than I read. So I can't wait to learn and understand and meet the real guy himself. I can't wait to see the bromance that comes from this. You keep saying that it's happening like I feel like myself it's true. What's happening. All right, so today we have with us robert Gardner um ironically robert, I grew up in Gardner Kansas when I saw her, she was like you like the mayor of my town.
There we go happening. Even our our priest at our hometown church was father gardener. It was just, you can call me Father Gardner for the rest of the series, robert is the father of five husband, one ceo of two hospitals and calls himself a barbecue extraordinaire. We're going to dig into that today because I've got some thoughts but before we do rapid fire rounds, rapid fire, okay, rapid fire time. Here we go, You ready? I'm ready. Okay. First question. Morning beverage of choice. It is going to be whole milk red top for me.
Only cold of course. Ice cold with ice cubes. No, no, no, no. Deluded, disgusting. How long does it take for you to get ready in the morning? Well, my hair takes quite some time since we're going there jelly. Yes, very jelly. Probably all of 30 seconds. Star Wars or star trek Man. Star wars don't even name one thing. You can't live with that sentimental. My wife and my bow favorite color. It's going to be for screen. What did your mom call you as a kid Bugs. That's absorbs.
I bugged a lot of people so I'll take it that way. But I'm pretty sure it came because I was annoying. Favorite superhero. Oh, that's going to be hulk look a lot like him. It's fine. Uh, no, just actually handsome and smart. What song do you sing on karaoke night? Probably ticks by brad paisley. What about in the shower? In the shower? Oh, that's going to be like when he's washing his hair. Yeah. When I'm washing my hair is gonna be john Denver gonna be a short song.
No, no, no, I will, I will lather rinse repeat multiple times just to finish the song. All right. Um, one of the most productive morning noon or night morning favorite sports team. Probably Arizona state. They don't say the Chiefs. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, That's Kansas over there. Here we go. Town of Gilbert or city of Gilbert. It's town guys come on spender or saver. Um Both. Both. You can't really? Okay. Yes you can. Well go their favorite holiday christmas all the way christmas. Do you prefer to work remotely or in person?
In person? Jump into the end here glass half full or half empty? Always full, not even half, not even half overflowing. Okay, thank you to phoenix mesa Gateway airport for their support with nonstop service to 60 plus cities. Gateway Airport makes traveling just plain easy visit. Gateway airport dot com for more information. So dental school. Yes. Dental school dropout, beauty school dropout. Talk to me about that. How did you get into that? And then of course the rest is history here now because you're making history with it.
But talk to me about that. How do you get into that dental school for me was always one of those things where I'm like, hey look, it's a professional career. They get money. Good work life balance there. Thought of highly in the community. I thought that yeah, let's go ahead and do this. The challenge of getting into dental school was also pretty exciting for me. The classes are hard. The test is hard. The interviewing skills are, you know, difficult and Eventually getting in was a little bit of a check box to say, look what I accomplished.
But I quickly realized after that first year that, oh great, now I'm going to have to actually do this for the next 40 years of my life. And so a lot of people would ask me was it the teeth, was that the grossness of it was the clinical aspect? Nothing to do with that. It was more the fulfillment for me. Um My brother in law is a dentist. My wife is a hygienist. My sisters are hygienist. I was around dentistry, ironically, lawyers and dentists are kind of what I grew up with.
And so I just assumed that it's either one of those two and figure we were tapped out on the lawyer side. So let's go do the dentist route. You actually like teeth. I'd like brushing them. Yeah. My own though. Like when kids lose teeth are you the tooth fairy? Um No, my wife is, yeah, but the real tooth fairy is the tooth fairy. Of course, yeah, she's the liaison at home for that. Yeah. So dental school for me was more about the challenge of getting in than really any excitement about being a dentist, being a business owner was kind of exciting for me I guess you could say.
And I was doing a joint program, it was the doctor and dental surgery degree and then it was also masters in health care administration. And in that first year, I quickly realized, yeah, it wasn't like in the clinical stuff, but I was loving healthcare. I think it's a meaningful industry and I was like in the business side of it. And so naturally gravitated towards enjoying the mh a masters in health care administration again. And we made the difficult decision to drop out of dental school and we were going to the University of colorado native of Arizona, my wife from Arizona.
So that was a big move for us in and of itself. And uh, you know, I remember telling folks we wanted to drop out and the two that are memorable for three that are memorable for me. We're number one, the dean of the dental school looked at me like I was a crazy man. Like what, what's your deal? Are you not doing well in class? Are your grades? Um not where they need to be. Even went so far to ask was I getting bullied or harassed like something's got to be driving you out because no one of their own free mind would ever make this decision.
And I think that really took him for a loop. And then um, my dad, he said, you know, is Lindsay on board my wife and I said, yeah, he said cool, proud of you do what you gotta do. And then this one is kind of stuck with me. His twin brother loved the man, he sent me an email basically saying, think about your wife and Children and the mistake that you're potentially going to be making here. You know, there's really only two ways to make a career in life and it's being an attorney, your dentist, I guess you throw a doctor to there so you can have three and it, I'll be honest, it rubbed me the wrong way.
But it also a massive fire under me to say bring it on, I will prove you wrong. And I know he meant zero ill will towards it. I think he was just, here's some advice from your uncle who loves you and cares about you. You know, little fire unquenchable fire kind of thing. So yeah, we made the decision to come back home and yeah, very hard. And you say we, because you buried your high school sweet. I did, I did, yeah Lindsay is my high school sweetheart.
We met in Mesa went to Mountain View high school, met her junior year, dated our senior year. I I left for two years to serve a mission for the church and was in Poland during that time. And you know we did the right letters back and forth kind of gig and got home in less than six weeks later we were married and yeah, we were in that decision together. That was definitely not one where I just woke up one day and said I'm done. We had a lot of conversations about it and she was incredibly supportive and obviously has been ever since.
So without that there's I probably would have stayed in dental school and been miserable and not loving life. I wonder how many people actually do because they're afraid to take the risk change course. You know, it's funny you bring that up. I have since obviously connected with a couple of my classmates from dental school and one of my good, good friends who I did a lot of my classes with moved in just down the street from us and I was asking him, you know, just the superficial questions about, okay, how much debt are you in?
And I'm not going to stuff and he's just, you can tell he's not a happy camper. And then when I asked him, okay, well now that you're done and you're officially a dentist, like at least you can have that element of this is exciting and I don't want to turn this on to like a bashing dentist podcast. I love him. But yeah, you could definitely tell he was he was not happy. And and there was even an element of jealousy like man, I wish you didn't say it, but you could, you could sense that there was a I wish that I had made a similar decision.
You know, his dad's a pilot, I really want to be a pilot. Don't know why I didn't. And so whether it's health care administration or a pilot or you know, who knows what I think if you're not passionate about what you want to do and you just stick with it because you feel like you have invested a decent amount to get there there there is no amount of investment that can make me say if I'm miserable, I might as well keep doing it. I'm keeping a scorecard up here by the way of like similarities that we robert and I have.
So my wife's name is Lindsay check check. Okay, I don't know how to score the gardener thing. There's got to be similar to their checks were on two so far. Okay. I married my high school sweetheart a lot of checks. That's okay. One for you. We'll give you that. I think you're a really good example of someone who has chased happiness and converted that into your professional life and your personal life and just it's such a great example and in your success I think is attributed in many ways to the fact that you just taste what you knew would bring you joy regardless of outside influences.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that was not an easy decision, but when you strip it away and kind of look at it from that framework, It actually, ironically now Hindsight's 2020 was a very easy decision and it was what's going to make me fulfill, it's gonna make me happy. What's going to bring joy to me therefore to my relationship with my spouse, my kids my community and yeah, if cool, I was making some good money or felt like I was an entrepreneur had a couple of different business practices or whatnot that would all be superficial compared to the feelings of joy and passion and excitement, no doubt almost an old soul, which I can say because you're actually really young.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny you bring that up to because I sometimes feel like I was, I was born in a different generation because I relate very much to, you know, my dad and mom in the fifties and kind of just their values and morals and work ethic and just simplicity and outlook on life and kind of an ever optimist kind of a mindset. And, and it's funny you bring it up because I, one of my biggest pet pieces getting lumped in with the stereotypical millennial generation, you know that we love to bash on so frequently and especially at work, you know, I'll be sitting around a group of my peers and uh, and obviously I'm quite younger and they're inevitably will be a comment about this new workforce and generation and oh my gosh, hello, thank you very much.
And there's, there's one calling in particular that no matter how many of those subtle hints or even just overtly saying, um, yeah, I'm right here she's still and again, love the lady, but she's still very much a millennial basher. And so it's, it's funny, I used to uh, get quite offended and now it's just rolls off right off that slick head office. Look there you go. Hey, so I'm glad you brought family because um, one of the questions we asked you in our survey was, when did you know, you were destined to do great things and you brought up a little bit about your father, you're just talking about how much of influences.
Tell me talk a little bit about how he influenced you in this journey and now even, Yeah, and, and I'm gonna try not to get emotional on this one. I love, love my dad, absolute hero. I don't know, that's a bit of a stereotype for, for most of us. Um, the unique factor of my dad is, um, I'll just kind of just jump right into it. He's blind and he has been since he was eight years old and he's got two brothers who are also blind. He comes from a family of nine kids.
He and his twin are seven and eight and then, and those are all eight boys. And then one little sister grew up in rural Arizona Southeast, Arizona pretty poor and father didn't have really any sort of education. Hardworking man owns some local businesses in the community, but for all intensive purposes or not well off. And by the time that my dad kind of came around and realized that okay, we have another blind boy in the family, a lot of the early resources that were dedicated to figure out what happened.
We're already spent on the first two and so it was pretty much chalked up as, yeah you got another one basically locked him up. He's not really going to be able to contribute to society so the best we can offer you is just love him but just basically hope he doesn't procreate. And I didn't realize a lot of this until I was in my early kind of profession And so I just grew up with a dad who was normal I played ball with my dad. I did frisbee with my dad.
You know I remember getting my driver's license and my dad jokingly saying something to the effect of congratulations you've done the one thing that I haven't been able to do and only legally but I guarantee you he could drive better than me. Um He's got a sense of direction like nobody. And so give some history of my dad though and what he's done and the reason why it's been so impactful for me is yeah. He grew up in an era where there was no a d a there was no protections.
There was a lot of blatant discrimination and struggled with self esteem and self worth as you can imagine as a poor blind kid who thought he was going to be this fumbling bumbling mr Magoo who kind of sold pencils on the corner and begged or something that that's kind of what he thought he was going to be destined for. And it wasn't until his mother kind of came in and said, you know, that's, that's not what we're gonna do. We're going to disregard all that advice. And his dad obviously was right on board with it all, but really his mother was the driving influence for him to say, you can be great and you are great.
And he had this picture hanging up in our house that I always thought was funny and, and I thought it was actually strange, A little weird and it was an art project that he had submitted to the Greeley County Fair. My dad's from Duncan Arizona. So Greeley County Fair when he was, I believe in sixth grade and it's a canvas piece of cloth and just regular Kranz and he had drawn freehand at a horse and kind of a bust of a horse and it's actually pretty impressive.
And in the frames the blue ribbon of winning first prize at the Greeley County Fair, it didn't dawn on me until much later my life and like he did that blind. Um, and I couldn't do that, even tracing it that could, and I don't know if the judges got together and said, hey, there's this blind kid, let's give him a boost of confidence, let's give him the blue ribbon or if he legitimately won, I mean it's greedy county and the population of five. So maybe he really did, I don't know, but regardless what it did for him was was give him a little bit of that motivation for I can be something in life and I can win and this is evidence that I can win.
And it was always just in our basement at home in Mesa. I remember when I first got in with banner health realizing that you know what that picture is pretty meaningful and so since fast forward today, it's in my office and it's right there as soon as people walk in and I get more comments about what is that than anything else. And I tell the story that you know that was the subconscious reminder to my dad that he can be great and it is now serving that same reminder for me.
That's cool. So anyway, he, he struggled in high school did well though and went to college, graduated from college, graduated from law school and became a successful attorney for Arizona public service, A PS and was their in house counsel where 33 35 years retired early got acreage and Mesa and you know, raises animals and did that all throughout and just again, you never get that sense. And so the reason I bring this up is I never once grew up with a dad who had a chip on his shoulder that said and looked me in the eyes like the world is going to push you down son but you're going to prove him wrong.
Just like I did. He just live life incredibly humbly and grateful for all of the blessings that obviously he had been given. But you could tell that it wasn't just handed to him. The guy worked hard and overcame a lot. And um, and so that from a very early age was kind of just received me through osmosis if you will, that um, I'm cut from the same cloth and while I may not have those blatant discrimination is that he had to overcome. Yeah. There's going to be an element of in anything people looking to say, I don't want you to be successful and whether it's an email from my uncle or whatever it is, it's, I'm going to prove you wrong because I know that my DNA, my blood overcomes and that's been the journey of life for me.
And so yeah, from a very early age, even if I didn't really realize until much earlier on, I, I knew that this is uh, that there's good things that I can do in life. I love that you have that painting in your office. That's so cool. So two more checkboxes already. Dad lost his right eye. Oh my gosh when he was 14 from a gun accident, He's one of 10 Children. So this my dad is legally wind. I'm not sure. Oh my gosh, okay. This competition. I like these.
Yes, sorry. You're, that's fine. That's really cool though. So I love the motivation in that in the story you had there for, for how your father's influenced you in that regard and that you're drawing it in today even to yeah, I'm curious how you translate that then into the workplace because you are a humble leader. It's evident in everything you do. And also, even with your own kids, how do you make sure that your teens and your home team as well feel that level of, you know, you said that your, your dad sort of gave it to you through osmosis.
How do you do that? How do you translate to them? I'm probably a little more overt about it then my dad was um, and I'm not sure if that's just because I really want to make sure I'm not messing up for my kids, but I'm also very careful to draw that balance on line between not being that dad who's going to step in and say like, yeah, here's the silver spoon. You've got everything going for you in life. I've got connections here here and here. We're gonna make sure you get into these schools and you're gonna have these jobs lined up.
But, but I do talk a lot about potential and realizing potential and I usually frame it in my own kind of first person sense that it's not like I've reached my max potential. I don't even know if, you know, as an individual, there is a max potential. Um, the sky's the limit if you will, it's the cliche of, I'd rather have you as kids aim high and miss then you know, um loan hit right on and that's kind of the mentality that I try to father with.
And ironically it's the same thing that I try to lead with at work that as an organization, as a team, we are destined for greatness and there are a lot of metaphorical obstacles and discriminations. If you will that are going to get in our way, there are going to try to keep us in the status quo. But as long as we focus on that North star, you know that that mission critical initiative, the rest of the stuff is going to come together. And so I really like to focus on, you know, to use that Simon Sinek language, the why and, and as a dad, I try to focus on why and work as a leader.
I try to focus on the why knowing that the how and the what it's going to come together. But ironically I think it worked too many individuals. Too many leaders spend 95% of the time telling people what to do and maybe how to do it and no one is connected to anything more meaningful and we lose focus on the wine. It's just not something you hear in a highly regulated field like health care and I think to that point that's why health care so broken if I'm being frank and honest, I think it's because we scientists and Taipei, you know, kind of personalities, evidence based practices all believe that the way to keep people safe and have a good experiences stand here, do it here cut here.
So here, this long, this long, everything is incredibly scripted and you see the evidence, the proof is in the pudding. It's not, it's, it's one of the most unsafe environments. We have constant issues and challenges in health care. And again, I don't, I don't want to be specific to any one particular location, but it's well known as an industry. You know, there's all sorts of statistics that kind of correlate and compare that if the safety ratings in healthcare were applied to the airline industry for example, we have like five crashes at Sky harbor a day.
You know, like it's just, it's crazy. And so I, I do think it is a little stranger ironic that it is so scripted, it is so regulated and there is a very difficult time to break that cycle and mold, but yet it's the very definition of insanity that we all quote all the time and I just kind of pause and laugh and I think a lot of my success is because I'm actually not just falling victim to the same kind of rat race over and over and over again and you know, so people will look and say, wow wow like what are you doing differently, I'm just doing differently.
It's not that the one thing I'm doing differently is the thing, it's just I'm asking those questions. I am challenging the status quo. I am focusing on the why and I'm trying to inspire and cast a vision as opposed to again, try to tell people that the turnaround time in this particular room needs to be under 30 minutes because studies have proven that patients have a better experience at the turnaround times under 27 minutes well. And it's also money driven to write big time. Absolutely not just experience. That's the cost.
So you don't fit the mold, but clearly somebody before you didn't fit the mold because they brought you into the picture. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up because from a gratitude and humility perspective, speaking about banner health in particular, this is an organization that absolutely took a chance on me, you know, so I talked about dropping out of dental school and you know, where did I go from there. All I knew about health care was teeth. So I went to work for a big corporate dentist pun intended.
I cut my teeth in basic business, you know, learning how to do profit loss learning expense management, understanding insurances and regulations and how doctors work and all the challenges of a front office and back office and it was great experience. The real great experience though for me was it was backed by a big equity firm and um, if you're unfamiliar with those firms, it's, it's sink or swim. It's a, but does the Holy Grail, it's putting dots on a map, we're going to grow as quickly as possible and there's not a lot of time for the, I don't know, the bureaucracy of decision making.
And so ironically I was given a lot of really cool experiences that I wouldn't have had if I went directly to a very large integrated delivery system, like abandoned health, like a dignity like any of the others around the area. And so I was, I was given a lot of opportunities to work, some pretty cool hats and I did that for a number of years and Private equity is pretty, pretty standard. And the fact that they sell you pretty quick. So they sold, I went to work for another company that was in health care that was also backed by private equity firm, did that for a little bit and did it one more time.
And banner health in 2017 was going through a bit of a reinvention. They thought, you know what we, we are very hospital centric and we need to be more consumer focused. So they came up with some new values, a new mission statement, new purpose statement and they realized that we can't just put words on a piece of paper, We need to go leaders who can actually help us live this mission and they went and looked for individuals like me who knew health care could speak the language maybe weren't fluent in hospitals, but um knew enough to kind of be dangerous, but more importantly, had a different skill set that didn't fit that mold to your point, Sarah and they brought me in as the chief operating officer for banner Gateway here in Gilbert and then on that campus is also the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, which is one of the largest cancer centers in the southwest.
And they absolutely took a chance. I had zero experience and I know this sounds so conceded and I'm probably gonna regret saying it so edited out. Here we go. Here we go. But um, I I kind of bring it up to the point of Michael Jordan was a rookie once upon a time, once upon a time, he had zero NBA experience. And um, and somebody took a chance and said, I recognized the potential and you see that obviously well past Michael Jordan and the sports analogy is just an easy and clean one for me because any time there's an NFL NBA MLB, whatever and number one draft pick, potential people spend big money and a lot of behind the scenes brokering deals to get that draft pick, Even though technically speaking they've got zero experience in the professional industry and and I wish that more organizations would do that.
And as a leader, I have absolutely tried to pay it forward. And when you look at the direct reports that I have on my team or that I've worked with over the time, that banner in particular, I have been very intentional about finding those individuals who can help us meet the mission knowing that they may not have the experience we're looking for, but they will absolutely fit the mold of leadership that we're looking for. You gotta do this favor. Now when you get back to your office, next time you're signing something, just kind of like the cameras to you, Michael Jordan, you know, when you're doing a signing, I don't think it's conceded.
I think it's a difference in self belief and I think sometimes that's what holds people back. They have the ability. They just don't have the belief in themselves. It's a great way of putting it. So five kids, five kids, what's the ages? 97531 and done. Oh, and that's what they all say. No, it's, this is official. Justice Official. Yeah. All right. Good. Good. Did you guys always want to have a family? We did. Okay. So this was a planned. Yeah, absolutely. And um, I mean, I came from a family of six kids.
I'm number five. My wife Lindsay came from five kids. She's number four. So we, we always knew that we wanted to have a bigger family, but certainly knew that there was going to be a cap on that. And so as you can tell all two years apart, very planned, very intentional, like my life, it wasn't like, let's just see what happens. You know, it's, yeah, I know we want to have kids, we want to have them relatively close together so that they can have those close relationships and be friends, give it a little bit of space so we can have some, some sanity and then be done and go raise the kids and kind of instill in that next generation the things that we're still in us and then get on with your life and say, hey, get out of the house, let us go now, enjoy, you know, time where it's just us.
So yeah, it was kind of one of those, you know, get in, get out and get on with life. How do your kids see you? Um, you don't really know, but if you were to guess their lens, what do you think they see? You know, quite quite literally, especially with Covid, they don't see me nearly enough. And, and that's, that's unfortunate. Um, it is getting better when they are with me and I want to be clear and frank and, and even clarify the intentionality of being present when I'm home is very important to me and going back to my dad, One of the big lessons that I learned very quickly from him was when my dad was home as a very busy attorney for a large organization in Arizona never once did I ever feel like my dad wasn't home.
He, he worked and he worked hard, but he would go to the office early, he would come home at the regular time, but when he was home it was disconnected and when he was on vacation with us and he went on vacation with us, it was dad is with us, he's not off on the bench on the phone on the computer. And so I again received that message and that's exactly how I try to be. So the skinny version of that answer is I think they see me as a dad who's involved in their life, who loves them, who was present for him, you know, a little bit of guilt as these dinks, smartphones and everything else makes it a lot harder than I think my dad and growing up who didn't have all that in his pocket all the time.
So that takes some conscious effort to do. Um, but nonetheless it is absolutely a strategy of mind that when I'm home is home. And so they see me as the guy that's going to be on the ground rolling around with them who's taking them out camping, getting dirty and who's gonna show up to, you know, their performances and and be cheering for him and let them express themselves how they want to express themselves and if that's different than the way that I grew up or different than my interest then so be it like game on k let's go have fun, let's do it.
Let's have fun. I'm assuming that um lindsey is going to have a similar kind of placing your spot here as far as where you spend your time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, ironically though she's out of town in Hawaii without me, so a little rough at the garden house right now being mr mom and yet you're with us. That's amazing. Thanks for giving a Hawaiian vacation. Yeah. No, no, I wasn't invited, lively clear to that one. I was invited. I was talking about his five kids at home and he's not.
Yes, yeah, I did, I did coordinate the baby sitting for that. Um Absolutely yeah, Lindsay it's, it's cliche to say, but you know, best friend, you know better half all the above lover to death and the time that we spend together, there's a lot of fun whether it's just chilling at home doing projects, you know, netflix and Orioles for me and probably sipping on water for her, you know, and she's making fun of me or it's going on big grand adventures. She's a big hiker grew up in that environment.
Her mom's, you know 60 times like the Grand Canyon and Kilimanjaro. So that's kind of in her blood. So she's definitely let me go grab, you know, a backpack and hike. It's pretty funny actually, I, I like the outdoors, I like hunting and just got back from a trip and I, I have now a camper trailer, you know, fifth wheel trailer in and uh, Lindsay makes fun of me all the time. She is a purist, you know, um, she prefers a tent on some hard rock somewhere. Making fun of me for sleeping in a trailer.
So we were going to ask you that question. Our rapid fire was camping or glamping. So yeah, so here's the deal. But I'm back to spending and, and uh, and buying, it's both. I love the conveniences of it, especially, it's gonna be a longer trip, but I'll rough it with anybody like game on. Yeah, I'll go out there. You want to have a challenge for sleeping in the woods and some wilderness survival kit. Yes. Let's go do it. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. I could see a fading out over there.
So you wrote in your information here. All humans long permission Yes. Talk to me about that. Yeah. I don't remember if I read that somewhere or it's just kind of innately stuck with me. But I am a firm believer that as individuals, human beings were all attracted to meaningful missions and I brought this up in a leadership conference the other day at work and maybe it's a couple weeks now at this point, but I said if that's inherently true and don't just agree with me, but do you agree with me and, and everybody's like, Yeah, absolutely.
Like think about the Pat Tillman Foundation or or any kind of cause that you have that you're like, I subscribe to that. I pay money to that I participate in. And it's all based off of the mission. Something behind that is meaningful. Were attracted to that. Yeah. The y again, and ironically, healthcare has that innately built into who they are. And the unfortunate thing is we've commoditized the business element of health care so much so that we forget that mission. And so I don't know if I brought up in the in the response, but I can bring it up now.
Newton's third law basically is, you know, for every action, there is an opposite equal reaction. So if as humans were naturally attracted to something meaningful, the opposite is we're un attracted to meaningless things and I fundamentally believe that as a leader, the number one thing that you can do to kind of get a performance from your team, whether that's financial, whether that's morale hR metrics, whether that's the customer satisfaction, whatever. Give them the meaning behind what they do, give them a meaningful mission, let them know what that is cast that vision, explain that why and then give them a very specific role to play and help them to connect that dot into why that's so important, ownership ownership. Yeah.
Let them know that you're actively contributing to that because when you don't, what ends up happening is they feel like I'm just a corporate P on I'm FTE number 10302. You know, I'm not Sarah Watts anymore. I'm not bad. I'm not Robert. And so they become disengaged. J. O. B. Absolutely, yep. And, and so that's the meaning behind it. It's when you have a mission and it's a meaningful one. Because don't get me wrong, there's a lot of missions out there that are not meaningful. Take a lot of financial driven, you know, chase the dollar in the moment kind of things and yeah, that could be what your mission is.
And we're gonna go do it and you can get some short term gains, but long term, like you're going to have some turnover. There's gonna be some people that say, yeah, it was fun. We did it. But where's the substance behind that? And so when I say a mission, make sure it's meaningful because if you don't and you're not describing that on a regular basis, you're inherently just feeding into Newton's third law and you're giving somebody a reason to be unattractive to the u to the company and eventually they're going to go bound.
So they're going to go find a place that can fulfill that mission for him. What's your serious and important mission, what's your in life, you have to help others reach their potential. I know it sounds kind of weird or simple, but it is absolutely realizing that there is so much potential and good that can happen from a collective body of individuals and unfortunately I think Sarah to your point were either scared to just unleash our true potential because we think someone's not going to like it or we may not realize that we have it ourselves and you need someone to kind of like that emotional energy in you.
And and as a leader one, you give their permission to be your authentic self and unleash the beast. Right? That's the whole analogy for me. That's why I love him so much. And then to to allow them to be in an environment that fosters that creativity that fosters the let's let's push off the norms. Let's challenge the status quo. And as a leader, if you can help to light that emotional energy and someone else to see in them something that they don't see in themselves. My gosh, the potential from that is unlimited.
And so by one, given the permission to, if you already know you have the potential, just let it go for it. Like take the handcuffs off, you will or then to help them to find it themselves. That that to me is the number one reason why every leader should come to work every single day or every parent should wake up and say, what am I going to do for my kids today? What do you think is your highest and best version of yourself. Oh man. Um I I think I'm living it again how much influence I can have over.
You know, whether it's in the work life with X amount of FTE s and this promotion or that promotion and a broader sphere of influence That that's actively happening. I'm currently doing that and living that and will continue to metaphorically climb that ladder, not for the sake of the title and the money and the prestige, but again back to a broader group of influence. Um so if my if my sphere right now is 3000 employees that I can kind of feel like I can wrap my arms around and say this is what I'm all about and together we can accomplish this.
But if I could do that on a scale of 10,000 employees and 50,000 employees, my gosh, that's what gets me jazz to say, Okay, yeah, I'm going to climb the ladder in air quotes here, that's your fire now, that's my fire now. Absolutely, yeah, that's the one that's lit and I am going for it. And I think that's where sometimes people can get a little scared of robert because they look at and say, well he seems pretty, you know, gung ho about just climbing the ladder and back to the stereotypical millennial, right?
It's you am I putting two and two together now that he's doing that for once. Self serving kind of need and I've now just forgotten all that and said, people will think what they want to, think who I am is absolutely the kind of person that gets that level, so I can explain that vision, get the meaning behind it and just get people excited. While we conclude here, I now see the parallels between your passion and barbecue, because obviously it has potential. Yes, it does. And it takes nurturing low and slow.
It takes a lot of love and the love and time right to get that right? So, I get it now. Yeah, your hobby. It happened bromance. Yeah, I might have Mhm love at first sight. Well, hey, we're so thankful you came in and talked to us today. It's been great to get to know you, I loved all these stories you shared with the passion you shared from your family to the work and how you managed all that together. Uh definitely intriguing Pleasure robert, I have no doubt you really will do this.
You will change the way we think of health care, if anyone can do it, It is you guys are kind, thank you. Yeah, guiding growth conversations with community leaders, Ben, let me ask you a question. How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast? This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us.
So I think there's many opportunities at hand whether you want to again be on the show, reach out to us, let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you, reach out, let us know, and we'll see if we can make that connection.
