The Lead Up Podcast

A resignation hits your inbox from one of your best people.

You didn’t see it coming.

But was the decision really sudden, or was it only sudden to you?

In this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike continues the Leading Indicators series by challenging leaders to rethink how they view employee turnover.

The resignation letter is rarely where the story begins. Long before someone announces they’re leaving, there may be changes in their engagement, frustration that continues to build, missed opportunities for development, or conversations that never happened.

The challenge for leaders is learning to recognize those changes while there is still time to lead.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

Mike also explores an important leadership question:

When did this employee’s relationship with the organization begin to change?

More departures may be preventable than leaders realize—but only if we get better at seeing what’s happening before the resignation arrives.

Clinical expertise can earn someone a seat at the leadership table. But it doesn’t automatically prepare them to lead people, influence peers, navigate change, or shape culture.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, Mike Harbour sits down with Dr. Kristen Woods, a family physician, seasoned healthcare executive, and leadership and strategy advisor, to discuss what has to change when clinical experts step into leadership.

Kristen shares lessons from her own transition from practicing physician to senior healthcare leader—including the moment she realized passion and clinical knowledge weren’t enough to influence decisions at the executive level.

Mike and Kristen explore why leadership requires a different way of thinking and behaving, the cultural risk of promoting high performers without preparing them to lead, and why healthcare organizations need to begin developing future leaders long before a critical position becomes vacant.

They also discuss the hidden costs of disengagement, how leaders can create followership instead of relying on authority, why change efforts often stall, and the importance of learning to be kind instead of nice when giving feedback and having difficult conversations. Pasted text

In this episode, you’ll hear:

About Dr. Kristen Woods

Dr. Kristen Woods is a family physician and seasoned healthcare executive with more than 10 years of senior leadership experience transforming care delivery across complex health systems. Her work includes value-based care, physician engagement, organizational strategy, and trust-centered leadership.

Today, she works with healthcare leaders and organizations to navigate sustainable change and build cultures where caregivers and patients can thrive.

Listen to the full conversation to hear how healthcare organizations can better prepare clinical experts not simply to take leadership positions—but to think, behave, and lead differently when they get there.

If you found this episode valuable, please leave a 5-star review and share it with another leader. To continue the conversation or learn how Harbour Resources can help your organization develop future-ready leaders and create lasting leadership behavior change, reach out to Mike at [email protected].

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour asks a question every healthcare executive should consider:

If we're measuring so much, why do we keep getting surprised?

Healthcare organizations track turnover, engagement, patient experience, quality, safety, vacancies, financial performance, and more.

But when a good employee resigns, engagement drops, or culture begins to deteriorate, leaders can still find themselves reacting after the damage has already been done.

The problem isn't that these metrics don't matter.

The problem is that many of them tell us what already happened.

Take turnover.

By the time an employee appears on a turnover report, the story behind that resignation may have started months earlier.

That's why Mike challenges healthcare leaders to move upstream and look at the repeated leadership behaviors producing the outcomes on the dashboard.

In this episode, you'll discover why two hospital units operating under similar conditions can produce very different results, what your traditional metrics may be missing, and what leaders should begin measuring earlier.

The goal isn't another dashboard with 50 more metrics.

It's identifying the specific leadership behaviors you can see, coach, reinforce, and change before the outcome shows up.

A dashboard can tell you where you landed. It can't lead your people.

If you found this episode valuable, share it with your executive team and another healthcare leader who needs to hear it.

To continue the conversation, reach out to Mike at [email protected].

Better healthcare outcomes don’t start with the metric. They start with the leadership behaviors behind it.

In this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike Harbour sits down with healthcare executives Jennifer Naran and Leilani Scott for a practical conversation about improving retention, patient experience, culture, and organizational performance through better leadership.

Jennifer and Leilani share what this looks like inside a large, complex healthcare organization—from developing frontline leaders and strengthening accountability to building trust and creating greater consistency across teams.

They discuss how their organization uses stay interviews, leadership effectiveness measures, span-of-control expectations, coaching, and greater visibility into performance data to turn leadership expectations into everyday behaviors.

One theme runs throughout the conversation: dashboards alone don’t change outcomes. Leaders do.

Jennifer Naran and Leilani Scott are experienced healthcare executives whose work spans physician leadership, talent strategy, leadership development, culture, and organizational performance.

Together, they offer an inside look at what it takes to translate executive priorities into consistent leadership practices across a complex healthcare organization.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to The Lead Up Podcast and share it with another healthcare leader working to strengthen retention, culture, patient experience, and performance.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour reflects on the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, honoring the lives lost, the families impacted, and the first responders and healthcare professionals who demonstrated extraordinary courage, service, and resolve.

Twenty-five years later, those values still matter, but the way we lead must continue to evolve.

Healthcare leaders today are navigating a very different kind of challenge—high turnover, rising labor costs, manager burnout, generational differences, and growing disconnection between the executive suite and frontline care teams. The command-and-control leadership style that may work during an acute crisis isn't enough to build a healthy, sustainable healthcare organization for the future.

In this episode, Mike discusses:

Mike also challenges healthcare executives to take an honest look at their leadership pipeline.

Are frontline managers developing the relational skills needed to lead today's workforce—or relying on outdated command-and-control pressure?

Is your organization investing in leadership development that produces lasting change—or continuing to rely on one-time training?

And if your organization faced another significant crisis tomorrow, would your leadership culture remain united and resolved under pressure?

As we remember September 11, this episode is both a reflection on the leadership we witnessed 25 years ago and a challenge for the leaders of today.

We honor the past not by standing still, but by preparing leaders for what's next.

If you're a healthcare executive working to build a future-ready leadership culture where people stay, grow, and thrive, this episode will challenge you to consider whether the way you're developing leaders has evolved alongside the workforce they're being asked to lead.

If you found this episode valuable, please leave a 5-star review and share it with another leader.

To continue the conversation or learn how Harbour Resources can help your organization develop future-ready leaders and create lasting leadership behavior change, reach out to Mike at [email protected].

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour takes on something that is quietly costing healthcare organizations good people, stronger performance, and potentially millions of dollars:

Cultural contamination.

In healthcare, culture isn't soft. It isn't optional. And it isn't simply HR's responsibility.

It's an operational and clinical performance variable.

When culture begins to deteriorate, the impact eventually shows up in the places hospital executives care about most—employee turnover, burnout, engagement, patient experience, safety, financial performance, and organizational trust.

The challenge is that by the time those problems appear on the dashboard, the behaviors contributing to them may have been present for months or even years.

In this episode, Mike identifies 9 cultural contaminants healthcare executives and leaders should be watching for:

But Mike doesn't stop at identifying the problems.

For each contaminant, he shares an Elite Leader Move—a practical leadership response designed to address the behavior before it becomes further embedded in the culture.

Throughout the episode, Mike challenges healthcare leaders to look beyond the metrics and examine what's happening underneath them.

Healthy hospital cultures don't happen accidentally.

They are intentionally built, reinforced, and protected through disciplined leadership behavior.

As Mike shares in the episode, elite leadership isn't about charisma. It's about cultural discipline—the behaviors leaders consistently repeat, reinforce, and refuse to compromise.

So here's the question to take back to your executive team:

Where is cultural contamination quietly being tolerated in your organization?

If you found this episode valuable, share it with your executive team and another healthcare leader who needs to hear it.

To continue the conversation or learn how Harbour Resources helps healthcare organizations develop, reinforce, and measure the specific leadership behaviors that drive stronger culture and organizational performance, reach out to Mike at [email protected].

In this milestone 500th episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour reflects on the lessons, conversations, and never-quit moments that have shaped the show since its beginning in 2019.

But this episode isn't simply a celebration of reaching 500.

It's about the behavior behind the breakthrough.

We tend to see the milestone, the achievement, or the breakthrough. What we don't always see are the small decisions, habits, preparation, discipline, doubt, recommitment, and repeated choices that made that moment possible.

Drawing lessons from 500 episodes and the remarkable CEOs, healthcare executives, authors, founders, coaches, and leaders who have joined him along the way, Mike explores one of the most important lessons the podcast has taught him:

You don't rise to the milestone. You repeat your way there.

Mike connects that lesson directly to leadership. Elite leadership isn't built through one great speech, strategy session, meeting, or big decision. It's built by repeatedly practicing the thinking, habits, conversations, standards, and behaviors that eventually become trust, credibility, accountability, culture, and results.

In this episode, Mike discusses:

As you listen, Mike challenges you to consider your own leadership:

What is your never-quit moment right now?

Where are you tired, discouraged, or questioning whether the effort is worth it?

And perhaps more importantly:

What behavior would prove that you haven't quit?

Because breakthroughs rarely happen in one dramatic moment. They're built through hundreds of smaller decisions stacked on top of each other—one conversation, one habit, one act of courage, one moment of discipline, and one decision to keep leading.

To every guest, listener, leader, and friend who has been part of the first 500 episodes of the Lead Up Podcast: thank you.

We're just getting started.

If you found this episode valuable, please leave a 5-star review and share it with another leader.

To continue the conversation or learn how Harbour Resources helps healthcare organizations turn better leadership thinking into consistent leadership behaviors that drive stronger organizational results, reach out to Mike at [email protected].

Great hospital results rarely come from a single initiative. They come from leaders who get clear about what matters, align their teams around those priorities, and then have the discipline to follow through consistently.

In this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike Harbour sits down with Tracey Carson, CNO at UNC Health Johnston, for a practical conversation about the leadership practices behind strong patient experience, employee retention, accountability, and organizational performance.

Tracey and her team have moved patient satisfaction into the top 10th percentile nationally, earned Leapfrog A ratings at both hospitals, achieved a CMS four-star rating, and maintained employee turnover under 14%.

Throughout the conversation, Tracey shares what is happening behind those results.

Mike and Tracey explore how UNC Health Johnston has aligned nursing leaders around a clear set of priorities, created transparency through scorecards and daily measurement, and built accountability into the everyday rhythm of the organization. Tracey also explains why knowing the “why behind the what” is critical when leaders are trying to turn expectations into behaviors that last.

They also discuss one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare leaders today: protecting leaders’ time so they can actually lead. Tracey shares why her nurse leaders have permission to say no to meetings that don’t support their priorities, allowing them to spend more time on their units, rounding with patients, connecting with staff, coaching their people, and removing barriers.

This conversation is a reminder that improving patient experience and building a high-performing culture doesn’t always require another new initiative. Often, it requires greater clarity, alignment, accountability, and consistency around the practices we already know matter.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

About Tracey Carson

Tracey Carson is Chief Nursing Officer at UNC Health Johnston in North Carolina, where she has spent more than 18 years helping advance patient care, nursing leadership, and organizational performance.

Under her leadership, nursing teams have developed a disciplined approach to patient safety, patient experience, leadership rounding, accountability, and continuous improvement. UNC Health Johnston has achieved top-decile patient satisfaction results, Leapfrog A ratings at both hospitals, a CMS four-star rating, and employee turnover below industry norms.

Tracey is passionate about developing healthcare leaders, creating clear expectations, removing barriers for frontline teams, and building a culture where patients remain at the center of care.

Connect with Tracey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-carson-ba784b37/

UNC Health Johnston

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to The Lead Up Podcast, leave a review, and share it with another healthcare leader who is working to improve patient experience, strengthen accountability, and build a culture where both patients and employees can thrive.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour challenges the familiar idea that people quit jobs and argues that, more often than we realize, they’re responding to the leadership environment around them.

Turnover may be the number that eventually gets an executive’s attention, but it’s often a lagging indicator. The conditions that lead a good employee to disengage, lose trust, or eventually leave can begin months—or even years—before a resignation ever hits your desk.

Drawing from more than 30 years of his work with healthcare leaders, Mike shares eight critical leadership failures he continues to see across teams and organizations.

More importantly, he challenges leaders to stop looking only at the metrics and start paying attention to the leadership behaviors that may be predicting where those metrics are headed.

In this episode, Mike discusses:

As you listen, Mike challenges you to be honest about what’s happening inside your organization and ask:

If your best people left tomorrow, what would they say they were really leaving?

If you’re working to improve retention, engagement, culture, and organizational performance, this episode will help you look beyond the numbers and identify the leadership behaviors that may be influencing them long before they appear on your dashboard.

If you found this episode valuable, please leave a 5-star review and share it with another leader.

To continue the conversation or learn how Harbour Resources can help your organization develop leaders who drive stronger organizational results, reach out to Mike at [email protected].

Healthcare doesn't need leaders who are simply prepared for today's challenges.

It needs leaders who are willing to rethink tomorrow.

In this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike Harbour sits down with Marcy Doderer, President and CEO of Arkansas Children's and Chair of the Children's Hospital Association, for a conversation about the future of healthcare leadership, innovation, and organizational transformation.

Throughout the discussion, Marcy shares the mindset that has guided her leadership through more than a decade of change. From developing leaders for jobs that don't yet exist to reimagining how healthcare delivers value, she challenges leaders to move beyond preserving the current system and begin building what's next.

Mike and Marcy also explore the importance of hiring for potential, cultivating curiosity, embracing innovation, and creating organizations that are prepared to thrive in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape.

Whether you're leading a health system, hospital, department, or executive team, this conversation will challenge your assumptions and encourage you to think differently about what leadership requires in the years ahead.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Marcy Doderer is President and CEO of Arkansas Children's and serves as Chair of the Children's Hospital Association. She has led one of the nation's premier pediatric health systems through significant growth and transformation while helping shape the future of children's healthcare across the country. Throughout her career, Marcy has been recognized for her commitment to leadership development, innovation, and the advancement of the health of children and families.

Connect with Marcy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcy-doderer-0100aa18/

Arkansas Children's: https://www.archildrens.org/

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to The Lead Up Podcast, leave a review, and share it with another healthcare leader who is committed to building stronger leaders and healthier organizations.