Leadership & Workforce Management
Leaders of Choice Spotlight: How I’m Building a Leadership Training Program
Editor’s Note: The AHRA Leaders of Choice Program is a 12-month leadership learning experience, sponsored by United Imaging. The program culminates at the Annual Meeting with a capstone project presentation. Throughout the year, Leaders of Choice participants meet virtually and in-person. The following is a story from one of this year’s participants, sharing her experience so far.
hile organizations may find that promoting employees to leadership positions helps boost employee engagement, retention, and succession planning, there is a challenging counter effect. New leaders are generally high performers but can struggle during the transition to becoming an effective manager.
Like many organizations, my team has followed this leadership pipeline. Individuals have been internally promoted from technologist to team lead, supervisor, or manager. However, what they do not receive in the process is formalized leadership training.
I have been fortunate to have completed many leadership training classes over the years. The question that always comes to mind is culture: How do we change the culture in our departments? How do I guide these leaders to connect with our organization’s mission and vision? With these thoughts, the idea for my Leaders of Choice capstone project came to light: developing classes for new leader training.
Understanding What New Leaders Need
Due to limited experience or training, new leaders often lack knowledge when it comes to basic leadership tasks. Some of these topics include:
To start developing classes, I wanted to better understand what format and topics would resonate most, along with the amount of time individuals could commit. I began by delegating a task to a radiology supervisor on my team (one of the first assignments in the Leaders of Choice Program) to create a survey for her peers, asking the following:
- Would they be willing to do homework outside of class?
- How many hours could they commit to?
- What method did they prefer: in-person or online meetings?
- Rate topics of interest provided.
Eleven supervisors were surveyed within the department and asked to mark their top six topics of interest from this list:
- Giving and Receiving Feedback
- Critical Conversations
- Leading in Diversity
- Employee Engagement
- Employee Retention
- Financial Management
- Asset Management
- Operations Management
- HR Topics
- Effective Communication
- Mentoring
The graph below shows survey results, with the most popular topics being guidance on how to have those crucial conversations and communicate effectively. The team was less interested in the high-level topics I had been learning through Leaders of Choice; these newer leaders wanted the basics.
With the information from the survey, I was ready to start planning class topics and move forward with developing a program.
The Path Forward Is Not Always a Straight Line
I started by meeting with key teams at my organization, beginning with human resources (HR). Knowing they offered past sessions that were successful, I wanted to learn what other initiatives they had planned, to avoid duplicating efforts. While they loved my idea, HR had other projects on the horizon and suggested starting with a program just for radiology leaders.
I then met with my director and one of my mentors to share my plan. After receiving their support, I was excited to head to an in-person Leaders of Choice meeting in Houston at United Imaging’s campus and share my capstone project idea.
Over an early breakfast with fellow classmates, we shared our project ideas. When I presented mine, a question that arose was, “Why just limit this to radiology?” Despite early suggestions to focus only on radiology, I was challenged to think beyond our practice and make an impact!
When I returned to work the next week, I scheduled more meetings, this time with a nursing educator who offers annual organizational trainings. They had some resources, but not what I was looking for. I was then led to the person who helped make this class come to life: Nolan Sosa, assistant vice president, people, HR. I gave Nolan my elevator speech. Within the hour, I not only had his support, but he also gave me the name for the class: The Emerging Leaders of Shannon, named after our organization, Shannon Medical Center.
Nolan mentioned a program like this was something our chief operations officer (COO), Pam Bradshaw, RN, DNP, was planning when COVID hit. I set up a meeting with Ms. Bradshaw, who offices at the main hospital campus right next to our CEO. (This is important because it’s where my imposter syndrome began creeping in.)
Imposter Syndrome, Meet Preparation
Knowing that the COO’s time is valuable, I prepared. I developed an agenda, discussed the project, and included survey results around topics. Not only did she support the project, but she helped guide me on next steps and offered leadership books from her personal bookshelf. The lesson here is do not listen to that internal voice of doubt — fight it by being prepared.
During one of our Leaders of Choice meetings, I admitted to my fellow cohorts that I had suffered briefly from imposter syndrome. Our instructor, David Waldron, spoke on this topic and reminded us it is common, but you can overcome it. The Leaders of Choice Program has improved my leadership skill set and boosted my confidence to finish a project of this magnitude.
Our journey for Leaders of Choice is not over, and the road to the 2025 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas has been paved. I cannot wait to report on the first class and learnings from this project in August.