Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013 - 12

Managing Your Career in Transformative Times
form healthcare will take is ambiguous, waiting to take charge of your
career is an untenable position.
Following are some insights to help
you manage your professional path
in these transformative times.

Identify and Align Values
George v. Masi, FACHE, Coo of
Harris Health Care System,
Houston, believes effective career
management begins with identifying
your personal values and correlating
them to the organization’s values.
“When we see lack of congruence of
values in the workplace, it’s often
because personal and organizational
values are not aligned—and that’s a
prescription for marginalized performance,” he says. “I find it amazing
how often we fail to make sure our
personal values are in consonance
with the organization’s values set.
And when they are not, we wonder

why our career development is lagging.” More than ever, taking stock
of your competencies and skills on a
regular basis will help you continuously adjust to new and evolving
expectations. Several techniques can
provide “snapshots” of your current
status and serve as the basis for
developing a career development
plan, including:
Create a personal values set.
As clear as you may believe you are
about your personal values, thinking
them through and listing what you
consider to be your “nonnegotiables”
can bring clarity, purpose and
direction to your career development
plan. Masi suggests creating a
“Personal values Set” (see sidebar
below) as the basis for charting a
career development road map.
“values are the foundation for your
leadership philosophy,” he says. “The

Personal Values Set
1. Determine your personal values.
2. Share your personal values with your team.
3. Live your values. Hold yourself strictly accountable: everyone else
around you will.
4. Do a self-evaluation every day. Ask others frequently if you are or are
not living up to your values.
5. Use your values to determine what and who is important to you.
Focus most of your time and energy on these two questions:
• What is most important to me today?
• Who is most important to me today?

Healthcare Executive
nov/DEC 2013

best leaders have a very thorough
understanding of themselves.
They possess self-awareness and
a clear sense of direction, which
are two essential factors in leader
effectiveness.”
Strive for a mutually beneficial
relationship. ACHE’s Broscio
believes that delineating your organization’s requirements or expectations and correlating them to your
values and skills provides focus and
a framework for managing your
career (see sidebar on page 15). Such
a heightened level of insight will be
increasingly important as the provider’s role in our nation’s health system evolves. This exercise can also
help ascertain how your individual
requirements for fulfillment or satisfaction relate to what your organization provides.
What makes this frame of reference
particularly effective is that it goes
beyond just identifying personal
needs. Balancing personal needs
with those of the organization
results in an aligned definition of
success. With this model—which
can be used in tandem with insights
gained creating a personal values
set—Broscio suggests asking:
• What is required of me by my
organization to be successful?
• What do I contribute to my
organization’s success?

Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013