PeopleStar_Goeffrey Roche: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
PeopleStar Intro/Outro:
Welcome to the PeopleStar Podcast. We deliver leadership perspectives from industry experts on their people, architecture, routines, and culture as they solve HR's newest challenges. And now your host, Julie Rieken.
Julie Rieken:
Hello podcast listeners. Julie Rieken, host of the PeopleStar Podcast. This is my favorite time of the day when I get to speak with somebody new about important topics that are hard in the workplace and how we can help each other and empower them to move forward in their workforce and provide great advice to their people. So today I'm super honored, I've got Geoffrey Roche here. Geoffrey has a distinguished career in healthcare administration. He is focused on healthcare innovation and he sits on a lot of boards, has some great academic background and some amazing positions that he's, that he's held and continues to hold today in healthcare. And so, Geoffrey, I welcome you and would love for you to give a little bit of background on what you're doing today, and then we're going to talk about some HR stuff.
Geoffrey Roche:
Sure. Well, Julie, thank you for, thank you for that introduction and thank you for the warm welcome to be here with you and, and share some, my experience and insights. And let me just say that obviously started as you, as you indicated, my career in healthcare. Served for, for a decade in a healthcare system and then actually moved into higher education in a very kind of similar role. Always have really been focused on roles, focus on strategy, and business development. But one area that I particularly got involved in in my healthcare time and then have continued an important thread, has really built public-private partnerships, particularly around higher education, bringing higher education and healthcare together along with the ecosystem of workforce development. And so a lot of that work, as you can expect, is a lot of engagement with learning and development, a lot of engagement with human resources departments of all different industries. And so today I serve as the senior vice president of what is our national healthcare practice and workforce Partnerships at Core Education, where I work nationally with healthcare systems, but also all types of employers and particularly leveraging the network of all of our academic affiliates. We really support their needs around upskilling, learning and development, corporate education, etc..
Julie Rieken:
That's a lot. And I think you could add value to HR, into human workforce development topics in so many areas. But as you and I were getting ready, we shared a story and I thought, oh, this particular story really resonated with me because I know this is a daily thing that HR people confront. And with your background, I think we could, we could provide some really interesting perspective here. And I wanted to talk a little bit about it and, one of the things that we talked about because you have such, such a strong position in healthcare innovation, you've clearly been in strategic leadership positions. And that means, when I look at you, you're young, for people that are hearing, Geoffrey is young. So clearly he's been in leadership positions early. And we talked about, we always talk about Gen Z, millennials, boomers, Gen Xers, and this convergence of people in the workforce. And one of the topics that we thought about was when you're young and you have older people reporting to you, this is a complicated space and you have, you have some interesting perspective on this to help empower the workforce to have better relationships. And I thought we might just start there, and, and would you indulge us in some of your history with this and what you've learned over the years?
Geoffrey Roche:
Yeah, happy to! Yeah, so, I mean, early in my career, obviously at what was, what was then actually a health system, now Lehigh Valley Hospital, Pocono, I was incredibly fortunate to report to a CEO who cared very deeply and passionately about the importance of mentorship. And obviously because of that work was promoted by our president CEO, because she believed in me, and I, and in many ways, I will look back and I can remember the conversations that we had. And she was always coaching me and empowering me and challenging me to take on new tasks, responsibilities. And ultimately that meant at times some new, to new departments of which I had no experience in. And so I was promoted at a very young age and actually was promoted and skipped several positions in the hierarchy of the healthcare system, ultimately from a coordinator role into a director role, which meant I didn't, I didn't go to a supervisor, manager, senior manager, so on. But, but, when I did that, that meant that in many cases I was also managing and leading a team of professionals who, who often at times had more experience than me. And in one situation, particularly when I was asked to take on the Emergency Management Services team, which included both a clinical element as well as an education element. Obviously I had a manager who was clinical, she handled the clinical aspects, I handled the strategy, the operations aspects. I had members of the team who were, who were quite a bit older and had a lot more years of experience. But in those conversations, what was always important was that we all brought a certain level of experience to the table. But one employee in particular from the start had reported to several people in a short tenure there, was moved to report to me. And in one of our first conversations, this individual said to me, you know, look, I reported to several people, but, but clearly now I'm reporting to you and I've got a lot more years of experience than you, I don't know what you're going to contribute to me. And it was one of those aha moments where I thought, well, okay, I could go to HR and say, wow, he's quite an interesting employee. I could say to him, I'm your boss, listen to me. Or the third option, which is the one I chose, was, you know what? He's right. He does have more years of experience than me. But what I can bring to the table is not necessarily what he can bring to the table. So if we find a way to, if we find a way to channel what we collectively bring to the situation, imagine the teamwork that can occur and imagine the impact that we collectively could do. And so, Julie, in that situation, what it was important was I reflected and I said to him, you know, you are right, you do have many years of experience. But I said, you know, you're a father, you have a son that's not too much older than me, very similar age. And I know that you care deeply about what you've done as a father. So let's look at it from the vantage point of I can learn from you. But at the same time, there are things that I'm certain you can learn from me. And I said, give me a chance to prove it to you, that's all I ask. In the end, if I don't succeed. You know what? We completely can come to some level of an agreement. But give me a chance.
Julie Rieken:
Was he willing?
Geoffrey Roche:
Yeah. And so what I started to do, actually was I started to attend his activities, his education events. I started to see him in his limelight, where he was excited, most passionate. And I just wouldn't sit there as an observer. And I would start to attend other activities and events that he would be a part of and I would advocate on his behalf and I would encourage him. I would ensure that when I wrote him emails, I was always encouraging, inspiring, and, you know, and then as I shared with you, our organization about a couple of years later went through a merger process. And obviously we had been working really closely together, there was so much occurring, and as part of that restructuring, it was decided that that department was no longer going to report to me and, but I needed to be the one to share it with this team. And I will never forget the time I said to this gentleman, you know, we're restructuring and that means I'm no longer going to be your boss. And he looked at me and he said, after all we've accomplished, who made this decision? And I said, well, I'm not going to pinpoint. Obviously, a decision was made. I know we've accomplished a lot together, but the work of what we did together was never about any one of us. It was always about the work we did in support of the EMS. And so you're going to be fine. He said, no, no, but, but all what you did for me, I said, absolutely. That's the privilege that I had to be a part of your team. And so it was a very powerful thing, and it's an experience that I will never forget because I, as a young leader and a millennial, which I don't shy away from saying, needed to be reminded that I don't go in there in a role as if I'm the boss. First of all, I don't think anyone should ever refer to themselves as the boss. I have to go in and meet them where they're at and be more like that coach, that if I bring him with me, we're going to succeed together. And that's what it was. Just a powerful example, and I will tell you now, many years later, where again, I'm leading a team of professionals that have significant years more experience than me, at times much more meaningful experience in certain areas of the profession than me. But I was just talking with a colleague recently and who has more years of experience than me, and she said to me, she said, you know what, though? She said, you bring a unique skill set to every position you've ever been in. And I said, well, what's that? And she said, well, first of all, radical candor, you're pretty honest about everything, you tell people the way it is, but you do it in a loving way. And she said, secondly, I never feel like I have to be serious around you. I always know that you're going to be there to help me, support me in what I do. But at the same time, you're not going to be that type of person that is ever going to be insensitive. You're always going to be smiling and thinking about what we can accomplish together. And it was one of those moments where I thought, wow. But again, I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't have amazing parents, but also amazing leaders who walked alongside of me, mentored me. And that's what's most important in this story is the mentorship part.
Julie Rieken:
Gosh, I'm getting old. Yes. Important. And I'm getting even more important threats in here. Well, not maybe more important, but equally important. I love that this person that you worked with that was older than you said at the end when you, were when you were shifting into a new role, he says, but the work that we did together and I can't help but think that the work that you did together is now paying it forward today with this kind of advice and story that will affect other people going forward, not just the relationship that you two had in that moment or over the time that you were working together. But we're going to be able to share this out on the podcast and let other people benefit from this story. And so, that's exciting for me, I love that.
Geoffrey Roche:
Well, and Julie, you know, it's interesting because from when we first spoke about this to now, I'm reading an incredible book right now, which is really insightful and it's actually insightful on this topic because what came out of what, thus far, I haven't finished it, but what came out of it was and it's by Paul LeBlanc, who you may know, he is president of Southern New Hampshire University. It's his new book called Broken. And in the book, President LeBlanc is is highlighting that essentially the social systems of our society are failing us, education, healthcare, you name it. And one of the central aspects of his book is that we have an embedded into our cultures that everybody matters. And when I reflect on this story and when I reflect on my experience, what what struck me as I read this, this chapter on matters was that if we take that step every moment of our life to help a member of the team, help people we interact with, understand that they matter, intentionally matter, imagine the power of that culture where they know they're listened to, they're appreciated, they're, they're heard. And it was just so powerful as I was reading that, because it was one of those words and I thought, wow, that speaks to exactly what my leaders have done for me. And then it speaks to what I know I must also do as a leader myself.
Julie Rieken:
And you did, I wrote some notes while you were talking. You went and attended events where he was shining. You observed and saw his strengths, and you gave him visibility and honored the work that he had done to show that he mattered. And ultimately, you being a young man and him being someone with more experience, you're able to come together and find a beautiful working relationship. And I think when I take away from that, it's just a really important lesson on how how we can think about building better relationships in a work, in the workplace and bridge generational gaps as well, because those are, they're not easy.
Geoffrey Roche:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and to your exact point, when we think about it today, this, in my opinion, is one of the greatest opportunities an organization has. If we can find ways collectively to bridge generations and benefit from, from the value of all the different generations, we will be in a much better place organizationally and societally than we ever have before. And I was speaking recently at a healthcare conference, and one of the things that struck me in the conversation, it was just about this, was if you look at, if you look at healthcare today, just like education, we have more baby boomers who have been the backbone of the workforce leaving and just completely leaving. Well, imagine if we thought of them as influential mentors and said, you know what? We understand you want to leave, but we want to bring you back, not work full time, but we want to bring you back to mentor our, the next generation of leaders. That's what we have to think about. The military does this really, really well, but we have to be thinking about this in other industries because we're losing that talent, we're losing that passion, and we're losing in many ways, some of the greatest treasures of our society. And if we don't embed it, we'll never get it back.
Julie Rieken:
All right. That's the big thought for today. Mentoring, bridging generational gaps. Take that, HR. That's some amazing stuff for us today. I love it. Geoffrey, this has been super fun. I love this story. Thank you for being a guest.
Geoffrey Roche:
Absolutely. Happy to. And thank you for all that you do as well.
PeopleStar Intro/Outro:
Thanks for listening to the PeopleStar Podcast. For the show notes, transcript, resources, and more ways to get a seat at the table, visit us at TrakStar.com/Podcast.
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