Hiring successful executive directors requires identifying several personal and professional traits and then grooming star leaders for success. Here’s a look at several real-world scenarios, and how certain strategies can help ideal candidates rise to the top.
When Rhonda Lowe was hired as an administrative assistant at
Morningside of Macon, one of the 160 senior living communities owned
and operated by Newton, Massachusetts-based Five Star Quality Care
Inc., in late 2003, moving into the corner
office was the last thing on her mind. Lowe had been in that position
before—and had walked away from it when she and her husband decided to
have a second child. “I had been a director, a manager, a team leader,”
she says of the experiences she had in the four years prior to her
employment at the Macon, Georgia-based community. “I always had people
reporting to me.”
So, after giving birth, “I
decided to stay home with my baby,” Lowe says. Three months later, she
was ready to go back to work. But she wasn’t willing to take just any
job. “I wanted to do something different, dramatic,” she says. “I
didn’t want to be a director or manager. I didn’t want anyone reporting
to me. I wanted it to be all about Rhonda reporting to Rhonda.”
Lowe got her wish when she joined Morningside of
Macon. “I answered phones, greeted people as they walked through the
door, and worked on payroll,” she explains. “I basically helped
wherever I was needed.”
But shortly after Lowe
started, the executive director, having seen something special in Lowe,
pulled her aside and said, “I’m going to train you to run this
building.”
“I thought, ‘That’s fine—as long as I
don’t have to give up the front desk,” Lowe remembers. So she was more
than happy to accept a promotion to the position of assistant executive
director in late 2005. “It meant taking on a few more
responsibilities,” she says, “but, honestly, I had been taking care of
them for some time anyway.”
Lowe faced a tougher
decision a few months later when she was asked if she’d like to take
the top spot. Her reaction? “I didn’t want to be the executive
director. I didn’t want to give up my freedom,” she says. “After
saying, ‘I don’t know,’ more times than I can remember, though, I
finally told myself, ‘Rhonda, it’s time to move away from the front
desk.'”
Today, she’s happy she took the plunge.
“It’s certainly a far cry from my original plans,” she says. “I’m in
charge of an entire building, including 25 employees and many more
residents, but I love it. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Front Desk to Corner Office
Lowe doesn’t offer up any earth-shattering words of wisdom
when asked why her trip from the front desk to the executive director’s
office went so smoothly. “I’ve always asked a lot of questions,” she
suggests. “And I’m never afraid to just dive into things.”
Executives at Pathway Senior Living
LLC look for similar traits while searching for new
managers—most of whom are promoted from within—according to
Maria Oliva, SPHR, vice president of human
re- sources at the Des Plaines, Illinois-based provider.
“We don’t just look for people with previous
experience in senior housing,” she says. Along with looking for people
who can wear many hats, “we also look for people who have the proper
attitude, positive energy, and a genuine concern and empathy for the
people who are our residents.”
They found those
qualities and more in Jean
Alexander-Whitaker, a former business manager who was
hired as a part-time receptionist in early 2003. “We were especially
pleased with the ‘soft skills’ she brought to the table: The ability to
engage with residents and to provide them with excellent service,”
Oliva says.
Because of those skills,
Alexander-Whitaker quickly moved into a full-time administrative
position and then into the dual role of move-in coordinator and
property manager. Less than three years after she was hired, she became
the executive director of a brand-new, start-up community in Chicago.
“We usually pull one of our seasoned executive
directors to run a start-up,” Oliva says, “but Jean had proven that no
matter what position—or positions, since at one point she was doing two
jobs at once—we put her in, she was ready for
it.”
That was all part of the plan,
according to Alexander-Whitaker—at least partially. “I saw past the
initial position and thought that if I did a good job and proved myself
to everyone, I would be able to move from the front desk to somewhere
else within the organization,” she says.
Eventually
becoming executive director, though, “wasn’t even on my radar,” she
adds. Even when she started to move up the so-called corporate ladder,
“I was so focused on the task at hand—serving the residents—that all I
could think about was, ‘OK, what can I do right
now?’”
When the call finally came for her to take
the helm of a new community, though, Alexander-Whitaker was ready for
it. What was her biggest challenge? “We moved in 50 people in the first
30 days,” she answers. “I didn’t feel overwhelmed by it, though,
because I’m used to doing a lot of things at one time.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she adds, “I’m not trying to
say this is an easy job. It’s hard work, and you have to be committed
to it. If you’re not committed to it, when Friday comes, you won’t come
back until Monday—even if you have people who want to come in on a
Saturday or Sunday.”
Committed to Excellence
Commitment is a concept Wendy
Gregg, executive director for the past year at
Castle Senior Living at Forest Hills (one
of Chelsea Senior Living’s 11 communities in New York and New Jersey),
understands well. “My goal all along has been to become a long-term
care administrator,” she says.
Given her history of
working at long-term care communities, nursing homes, and hospitals—not
to mention the fact that she has an MBA with a specialization in
health-care management—that goal shouldn’t have seemed like much of a
stretch. Still, when Gregg joined Castle Senior Living at Forest Hills
in 2005, it was as a case manager.
The position
wasn’t without its perks, though. “It really allowed me to become
familiar with the facility and staff and residents,” Gregg says. As a
result, she had little trouble transitioning from her role as case
manager to ALPS director and then executive director within two years
of her starting date.
That’s not to say she didn’t
have to clear a few hurdles along the way. Gregg says she hit the first
when she realized that “when you have worked with people while in a
particular position within an organization and then, all of the sudden,
you’re the person in charge, it changes the work environment in many
ways.”
She encountered the second, she adds, when
she found herself “having to step back from situations so my case
managers could deal with families and crises. I’ve come to know a lot
of the families of our residents, and some of them continue to think of
me as their social worker or case manager.”
Neither
hurdle is steep enough for Gregg to suggest promoting from within is a
bad way to find new managers. “I think it’s always preferable to
promote people from within the organization instead of bringing them in
from the outside,” she says. “You have a history with those people and
you know their abilities. Your residents and their families have a
history with them, too.”
Lowe and
Alexander-Whitaker agree, which is why it shouldn’t be all that
surprising to hear that both women are busy training employees who may
replace them one day.
“I see something special
within her,” Lowe says of her particular protégé. “I can see it in
something as simple as how she answers the phone or how she greets
people as they walk through the door. My goal is to teach her
everything I know so that someday she can do the exact same thing for
someone else.”
The Three (or Four) Cs of Senior Living
Leadership
When seeking new
leaders, look for the following essential qualities:
- Curiosity. “The older we get,
the less we want to ask questions,” says Rhonda Lowe. “But you can’t be
afraid of that if you want to become the best leader possible.” It’s a
lesson she learned early on. “I asked a lot of questions right off the
bat. I wasn’t trying to be pushy, I was just trying to understand why
things were done the way they were. It helped me learn a lot about this
community and about the industry in general.”
- Composure. One of the lessons
Jean Alexander-Whitaker is trying to teach her protégé is that
“sometimes you have to sit back and think through a situation before
you react. You have to think about how your response is going to affect
the situation. A lot of leaders think they have to react quickly and
decisively, but those strategies don’t always give you the best
results.”
- Compassion (and Commitment).
“You have to care about people to be in this position,”
says Wendy Gregg. “And you have to want to do what you’re doing to be
any good at it at all. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love what I was
doing. I love working with this population and I’ve known for a long
time that this is what I want to do.”
Although the first two
qualities can be taught (to an extent), it’s a bit tougher to teach the
final two. “You can teach people how to read a financial statement or
how to organize a department,” suggests Maria Oliva, “but you can’t
teach them how to be compassionate or how to empathize with residents.
You’re either born with that fire in your belly, or you aren’t.
Tim McConnell, HR strategist with McConnell Consulting Ottawa, discusses succession planning principles. He asserts that a key aspect of overall HR planning is having a systematic process for defining future management requirements, identifying candidates, and matching this demand to supply as a basis for future planning.
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Who’s Who
Contact information for members in this article.
Jean
Alexander-Whitaker, Wendy
Gregg, Rhonda
Lowe, Maria
Oliva
