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The Importance Of Recruiting Executives
Who Embrace Their Role In Providing
Culturally Competent Healthcare
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Neysa Dillon-Brown
Senior Vice-President |
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Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who rose from the housing projects of the Bronx to the top of the legal profession, made history recently when the Senate confirmed her to become the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. Said Dolores Sanchez, publisher of Detroit's El Central Hispanic News, "The Hispanic community is increasing daily. I think it's fitting and proper that there is Hispanic representation on the Supreme Court."
Similarly, minority individuals and groups across the country are beginning to expect that their healthcare practitioners, the organizations' leadership, reflect their cultural needs as well.
Indeed, hospitals and healthcare organizations are seeing the diversity in their communities change dramatically. Unfortunately, the healthcare workforce is often unprepared to handle this transition. As a result, people needing appropriate healthcare may not feel comfortable seeking care if no one on the staff looks like them or understands their cultural needs.
In other words, healthcare organizations must develop strategies to recruit and retain diverse staff at all levels that mirror the patients and the communities they serve.
One solution for an organization that feels the need to offer culturally competent healthcare, says Neysa Dillon-Brown, is to create an inclusive leadership team that is able to develop a more appropriate set of strategic and operational plans, policies, and expectations.
Dillon-Brown is Senior Vice President of Desir/Singleton Executive Search, and developing diverse, healthcare management teams to meet organizational and business priorities has been a hallmark of her career. At Desir/Singleton, she has embraced the firm's mission of collaborating with organizations seeking to reflect the community they serve by recruiting and placing highly qualified, diversity candidates.
"Without inclusive leadership, the team may not have the information and the understanding it needs to develop the appropriate outreach practices and procedures," she explains. "In conducting searches for some of our clients, we have noticed that narrowly constructed plans fail miserably when it comes to the execution stages."
"The healthcare organization's top executives aren't always aware that they are lacking an inclusive leadership."
For example, she says, in the Hispanic culture, it's very common for a patient to bring his or her whole family with them to the hospital. The clinical and non-clinical staff of that hospital needs to understand and appreciate why that's important to the patient and why they may need to explain the patient's health situation not just to the patient, but to their whole family. "That's just an example," she adds, "but there are many, many other cultural norms that impact today's dynamic healthcare environment."
Dillon-Brown and the rest of the Desir/Singleton team specialize in selecting management team candidates whose values, skills, knowledge, and attitudes match their clients' in order to assure the person's longevity in the organization and to meet the organization's goals -- the ROI!
"Many organizations would like to have a much more inclusive leadership and they look to us, as the experts, to provide, at the very least, a competent, culturally sensitive slate," she explains. "As much as possible, we also help our clients see the connection between diversity, cultural competency, and quality, including workforce quality."
Atlanta-based Diversity HealthWorks, a strategic business partner of the Desir/Singleton Executive Search team, has articulated the Diversity HealthWorks' Cultural Competence-Quality Framework for Healthcare Excellence that depicts the cultural competency strategy as a component of the organizations overall quality strategy [see sidebar].
This awareness often starts at the top with the Board of Directors who are establishing the organization's strategic direction and, of course, who hires and oversees the CEO who then implements their directives.
"It's up to the Board as well as the overall leadership to set the direction within the organization, to set expectations, to model the behavior, and to help to engage people in this process," says Dillon-Brown. "If the leadership team isn't comfortable doing all of that, then the workforce won't see it as a priority. Oftentimes, you have to have the right people at the table to help guide the discussion and planning at the initial steps."
But the healthcare organization's top executives aren't always aware that they are lacking an inclusive leadership, and that's where Desir/Singleton can also act as an advisor. "We try to facilitate the presence of that diversity of thought and background," she adds.
"We discuss the organization's strengths, challenges, and goals with them," she says, "and then we conduct our own research. Together we determine whether developing a more inclusive leadership might be a solution for them -- just as it apparently was for our entire country, when the Senate saw fit to confirm Judge Sotomayor as our newest Supreme Court Justice."
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Cultural Competence Is A Strategy
It is the exceptional organization that is talking to those responsible for cultural competence, diversity, and inclusion about nuances based on individual values, beliefs, and responses.
The results ensure a consistently positively patient experience.
Complete story.
When Minorities Become The Majority -- The Vision For 2050
Minorities will become the majority of the national population around the year 2050; many communities have already made the transition. The country is not, however, preparing for this momentous demographic shift.
The most pressing problem is that minorities are getting neither the help they need to fully participate in the entrepreneurial economy nor the education to staff the workforce in the service/knowledge economy.
Complete story.
In Professor's Model, Diversity = Productivity
In his new book, Scott E. Paige, a professor of complex systems, political science, and economics, uses mathematical modeling to show how variety in staffing produces organizational strength.
Rather than ponder moral questions like, "Why can't we all get along?" he asks practical ones like, "How can we all be more productive together?" The answer, Dr. Page suggests, is in messy, creative organizations with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences.
Complete story.
Defining Diversity Requires Inclusion
It wasn't many years ago when diversity in the workplace meant hiring more minorities and women as required by equal employment opportunity mandates. Today it means a lot more. In addition to race and gender -- which now includes gays, lesbians, and transgenders -- diversity also embraces age, disabilities, religion, and national origin.
However it is defined, diversity has moved to the front and center of many employers' interests and issues.
Complete story.
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Desir/Singleton Executive Search is a retained executive search and consulting firm that partners with healthcare organizations to recruit and retain exceptional talent and develop high-performing teams.
Desir/Singleton Executive Search helps clients achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by offering a qualified, diverse slate of candidates for C-level, senior executive, physicians, and middle management positions.
One of Desir/Singleton Executive Search's strengths is its ability to dig deeper into the fabric of our society to find talent that represents the broad community our clients serve.
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| Did You Know? |
Cultural Competence-Quality Framework for Healthcare Excellence
Diversity HealthWorks' "Cultural Competence-Quality Framework for Healthcare Excellence" depicts the cultural competency strategy as a component of the organization's overall quality strategy.
According to Amri Johnson, the organization's founder, "This approach provides a mechanism to firmly embed cultural competency, inclusion, and inclusive leadership in our healthcare organizations in a sustainable manner."
©2009 Diversity HealthWorks
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| Quote Of The Month |
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"Groups made up of intelligent people who are inwardly diverse -- that is, who have different perspectives, mindsets, and ways of solving problems -- can make more accurate predictions and solve problems more effectively than groups of 'experts.'"
-- Scott E. Page, author,
"The Difference: How The Power Of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, And Societies."
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