Julie Kennedy Oehlert: Disrupting Healthcare with Love

Can love be a leadership strategy? Dr. Julie Kennedy Oehlert thinks so, and she’s got the experience to prove it.

In this soul-stirring episode of Step Wise, Julie joins Dr. Foster Mobley to explore what it really takes to lead with courage, empathy, and purpose in a system as complex and high-stakes as healthcare. Drawing on her background as an ER nurse, healthcare executive, brand officer, and author, Julie shares the human-centered practices that are reshaping workplace culture, from psychological safety to reverse mentoring and stakeholder engagement.

Together, they dig into:
 – The “new covenant” between leaders and teams
 – Why disruption must be rooted in care, not control
 – How love, listening, and lived values drive high performance
 – Practical ideas for integrating purpose into daily leadership
 – Why experience design matters (yes, even in hospitals)

Julie’s message is clear: When we honor humanity, innovation follows. This is a must-listen for leaders across every industry who want to make meaningful change without losing their heart in the process.

🩺 Learn more about Julie’s book System Innovations: A Holistic Approach to Disrupting with Love and Human Caring, and connect with her on LinkedIn.

https://www.amazon.com/System-Innovation-Holistic-Approach-Disrupting/dp/179358477X

Hosted by Foster Mobley
Learn more about Foster at fostermobleymt.com or follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn at Foster Mobley.
www.instagram.com/fostermobley
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fostermobley/

Produced, Edited, and Promoted by Zettist

Additional support from Amber Jillard Consulting

Music for Season 3 composed and performed by Philip Aaberg. Courtesy of Sweetgrass Music.

Transcript

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 00:01:24:00 - 00:01:52:19

Dr. Foster Mobley

Welcome back to Step Wise, a series of juicy conversations with inspired leaders about their insights, approaches, and journeys. I believe that leadership matters to performance and to people. I also believe that leading best happens in today's complex and changing world. When we bring our best wisdom, something that can be taught and accelerated. Today's guest, doctor Julie Kennedy Oehlert, is someone I've known and admired for a long while.

00:01:52:21 - 00:02:21:08

Dr. Foster Mobley

She's been a thought partner with me and a mentor and helping me better understand how love. Yes, love can be a decisive factor in leadership and culture today. Here's Julie's background. She's an emergency room nurse. In my humble opinion, some of the toughest and kindest people on the planet. She's a health care operator, an expert in all areas of experience in organizations including patient, teammate and leadership.

00:02:21:10 - 00:02:51:20

Dr. Foster Mobley

She holds a PhD in leadership and transformation. She's an author, having released a leading textbook on leadership and transformation through love, as well as the seminal piece called What's Love Got to Do With It. What you learn from this wonderful chat with Julie is, among other things, what listening looks like in today's workforce, given multi-generational needs. You'll hear Julie make the case for love and how it can transform engagement, quality and performance.

00:02:51:22 - 00:03:20:12

Dr. Foster Mobley

You'll hear she and I discuss the new covenant between leaders, their organizations, and their workforces. And she discusses how staying out of judgment and replacing it with empathy is a critical skill for all leaders today. By now, you know my mantra. Set the table. Invite cool people. Magic happens. Julie is one of the coolest. Enjoy the conversation. So Julie Kennedy Oehlert.

00:03:20:14 - 00:03:26:14

Dr. Foster Mobley

It is such a treat always to talk with you. And I'm so looking forward to this.

00:03:26:16 - 00:03:50:15

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Well, and thank you for having me. I would love to just sit and talk to you all day. And as we have. But as we have, as we have. But I have to say that especially during the pandemic, your, reaching out so that we could talk and I could talk about the things that were happening. As a health care leader during the pandemic, I am forever grateful that it stays with me.

00:03:50:17 - 00:03:54:23

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

That was a very that was a gesture of amazing mentorship on your part.

00:03:55:00 - 00:04:12:08

Dr. Foster Mobley

You know, we can never we can never reach out and connect with somebody else without getting tremendous benefit back ourselves. And so I've been incredibly privileged. And to have friends like you that I learned so much from, I get so much energy and so much vision from. It's fantastic. So yay! Yay us.

00:04:12:09 - 00:04:14:02

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

It is how we learn. We learn from each other.

00:04:14:02 - 00:04:38:09

Dr. Foster Mobley

We learn. That's how we learn for sure. So, Julie, we can get into all the work stuff you're doing and all that kind of stuff. But I you know, the reason that I really love talking with you is that you are a, a really astute observer of people in organizations. And, you have a particularly experienced and knowledgeable view of leadership.

00:04:38:11 - 00:04:54:13

Dr. Foster Mobley

And of course, that's my that's my jam. I love I love anytime we can explore and change exchange ideas on that. So what do you notice? And today what's going on? I know health care's kind of less crisis but still crisis and but so what are you noticing in your workforce today?

00:04:54:18 - 00:05:21:23

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Two things. The workforce is stressed and fearful. Our, you know, the only way that health care is going to get the kind of results that are patients and our communities deserve is you're taking care of our workforce. And so the workforce is stressed. They're stressed in their home lives, and they bring that stress to work. They work in a large environment that is often polarized because health care issues are polarizing right now.

00:05:21:23 - 00:05:41:13

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And I don't think we we don't need to talk anymore about that. And so we see this level of stress and fear and lack of psychological safety that really hurts, most of our or all of our outcomes. But what's really different for me coming out of the pandemic is the amount of stress and burnout that executives have.

00:05:41:15 - 00:06:07:09

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

You know, we, you know, moral distress for team members is nothing new. And the pandemic was right, you know, acute recognition of a chronic problem to, you know, to quote, Doctor Michael Alter, my, CEO, but executive, I see, you know, the same amount of lack of psychological safety. Burnout. Tired, fearful. And that, you know, that permeates down into the organization.

00:06:07:09 - 00:06:17:00

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And if your workforce is already feeling that, it kind of leads to almost a paralysis of innovation and a paralysis of how do we move forward?

00:06:17:01 - 00:06:29:17

Dr. Foster Mobley

Julie, you know, some cynics could say, wait a minute. The people at the top of the house are the ones that are setting the rules. What do you mean, no psychological safety? What do you mean, they don't feel safe? How does that how does that square. Yeah.

00:06:29:19 - 00:06:50:19

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

It's interesting to think about, isn't it? So right now in health care, according to what I see, is that you have people that have the vision to want to innovate, to want to try new things. And then you have people who are like, we have to keep the lights on. And so at the executive table, there's a lot of positioning.

00:06:50:21 - 00:07:12:22

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And who's going to be the one that speaks out and says, we can't do this anymore. We have to try something new. It's going to be scary. It's probably risky. There's no solid return on investment for it. But there is innovation possibilities. And so that leads to a really interesting dynamic. And of course I sit in the more innovation seat.

00:07:12:22 - 00:07:38:18

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Right. I'm a disruptor. And I always say to people, you know, if somebody is going to disrupt, especially in this environment, it may as well be you. You may as well say it, but there is there is risk in that. So I think that, the psychological safety issues, especially around change is, is very, very dicey right now from the executives and the board all the way down to the team members.

00:07:38:20 - 00:07:51:04

Dr. Foster Mobley

Because people at the executive level and boards cede some taking risks in some case, maybe existentially, like if we screw this up, we could cease to exist, or we could be severely hampered in our ability to serve our patients.

00:07:51:06 - 00:07:53:00

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yep. Exactly.

00:07:53:02 - 00:08:13:07

Dr. Foster Mobley

So, Julie, what? Let's. So, given that this is all about leadership, what are the best leaders doing to take care of themselves and take care of their workforce and allow some modicum of, safety, so that we can try a few new approaches every once in a while.

00:08:13:09 - 00:08:37:05

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I would give my perspective, which is that you need to be with your people and you need to listen. We are not in this alone. I have in my health care organization, 15,000 innovators that work all throughout my organization. That's my entire organization. And if I listen to them and I, try to understand what they're trying to tell me, I'm more connected to them.

00:08:37:06 - 00:09:00:13

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I get re-energized, and I don't feel like I'm alone in making these really hard decisions. So I think right now, great leaders are with their people. They're listening. They are considering. And the other thing I think that leaders are doing right now, to keep their selves at their very best, is that they're taking good care of themselves.

00:09:00:15 - 00:09:17:01

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I have seen more leaders now that are more thoughtful about their own well-being and wellness than ever before. It used to be kind of that badge of courage, right? I'll just work myself to death and leave like a bleeding, you know, leave the blood behind as I leave.

00:09:17:01 - 00:09:18:18

Dr. Foster Mobley

Under my desk. Yeah, yeah.

00:09:18:20 - 00:09:33:18

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yeah. And the more emails I send at 130, the more powerful people think I am. But I think that that has really gone away as people have really realized that they can't lead in this really challenging time unless you're taking care of them.

00:09:33:19 - 00:09:52:13

Dr. Foster Mobley

It's almost, it seems to me like a bottom up change, like our workforce is saying, I need a better sense of my life. And, I'm not going to I'm not going to grind it out and sleep under my desk. I'm going to give you everything I've got while I'm there. Make it make it okay for me to do that.

00:09:52:15 - 00:10:04:02

Dr. Foster Mobley

And we've learned, I know some of us have learned from like, you know, the expression and they're not wrong and they're not wrong.

00:10:04:04 - 00:10:30:18

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And we can they can teach us. You know, what I think is fascinating is they used to always say, and you've heard this 100 times. People don't leave their job. They leave their manager. Right? Well, right now, people don't leave their job nor their manager. They leave their senior team. We have seen that engagement is much more connected to the executive brand and presence than it is to the manager these days.

00:10:30:20 - 00:10:39:06

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And I actually think that's challenging. And I think it's refreshing because the the executives can set the purpose.

00:10:39:07 - 00:10:39:19

Dr. Foster Mobley

Yeah.

00:10:39:21 - 00:11:12:23

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

They can set the tone. They can live the values. It's good for us. It's good for our team to see. And it is a better cultural, ideal for the leaders to know that it's me. Right? It's it's me that's setting this tone. So I've seen that. And the other thing that I would say is fascinating that I've seen is if people don't just do work and home, they they're all of our new team members are like, I want home and work to be kind of mixed in together.

00:11:13:01 - 00:11:15:16

Dr. Foster Mobley

It's give me an example to what does that look?

00:11:15:18 - 00:11:37:20

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So I when I'm at home, I want to be home. But I also might want to work from home. And I might want to work part days and go to work and do things I like. And I might, want to have, a workplace that is soothing to me. I want a tranquility room at work.

00:11:37:22 - 00:12:02:21

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I like my workout space at home. I want you to at work to give me healthy food. And I don't want to eat crappy food at work. I don't eat crappy food at home. So it's it's really become very interesting. The new work force, I and I think it's good for us. So I will say that that I think it's good for us that we are challenged to provide a better workforce that's more like what people would want at home.

00:12:03:01 - 00:12:34:00

Dr. Foster Mobley

It seems like. And part of my thesis is that this calls for a new relationship between our workforce and our leaders, and that's you're speaking directly to that. It seems like, this push for greater humanity causes leaders to kind of rethink how they approach their task. You gave an example a minute ago where the best leaders are, the ones that are in touch with, that are connected with, that are listening to as opposed to top down.

00:12:34:01 - 00:12:45:19

Dr. Foster Mobley

And, you know, power over it is really power with what are some of the implications of a partnering kind of paradigm, a part of power with paradigm that traditional leadership hasn't figured out yet? Well, I think.

00:12:45:19 - 00:13:09:15

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

That's where innovation and disruption is going to live. A lot of executives in health care have done leadership in health care a long time, and they struggle to see it in a new way. Get yourself a millennial or a Gen Z advisor. They're very quick to tell you how you can ramp up your recruitment, your retention, your technology for better patient experiences.

00:13:09:19 - 00:13:26:09

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So those gaps in all the different, generations that are in health care, we are better served by listening, to them and letting them be the innovators and, and freeing them up so that they can help us be disruptive.

00:13:26:11 - 00:13:46:05

Dr. Foster Mobley

A couple of points. One, in a dynamically changing industry, if you don't have a reverse mentor relationship with somebody, a shame on you. And B go get one. Yeah, stop making excuses and stop complaining about what different generations don't have that that looks familiar to you. Start learning from them.

00:13:46:06 - 00:13:56:04

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Stakeholders that don't really want to be employees, they want to be stakeholders. And if they're engaged and want to be stakeholders, we should invite them in. Yeah, we should invite them in.

00:13:56:06 - 00:14:15:05

Dr. Foster Mobley

Yeah, yeah. So what's it look like to invite somebody and how do you develop that kind of partnering relationship with somebody who admittedly may be new to the workforce? This might be their first job. How do should we think about that? How do we develop that sense of partnering with with all members of our workforce?

00:14:15:07 - 00:14:37:17

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So the first thing that is, we have to embrace social media. I love social media. It is the most rawest form of feedback you'll ever get. It's unfiltered. It's not a structured survey. I love it. And so we encourage when our, our new employees for their first day, we put them on our social media platforms.

00:14:37:17 - 00:15:02:16

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

We say, get on our Facebook pages, get on our LinkedIn, get on our news channel and talk to us. And so then I have people that monitor that. So I think social media is a venue. I also am a big fan of crowd sourcing. We just redid our, our values. Coming out of the pandemic, we wanted to see what behaviors best, exemplified our values.

00:15:02:20 - 00:15:38:03

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Well, I can't tell people that, but I asked our team members and over 6000 of our team members voted 73,000 times on what behaviors they wanted to see in their environment every day. And so now I have these behaviors that half my entire workforce said, I believe in these. But, you know, that's just that's magical. And then the other thing I think is intentional work on psychological safety, psychological safety is the antithesis of structured hierarchy, right?

00:15:38:05 - 00:16:04:23

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Because people have to be able to, to feel safe to say things up the food chain down. And it also helps a lot with workplace violence issues. And so having a program where people are actively trained in psychological safety, they know what it is. They believe in it. They know what behaviors foster it. And again, psychological safety is very power, very power with I think those are the things that you can do to start listening.

00:16:05:00 - 00:16:23:07

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

The other thing I would say is that you have to listen multidimensional. So you can't just listen in one place. You it's it's a, you know, and of course, I, I am the I also am the brand officer. I also oversee marketing. And so how many ways can you listen? Let me count the ways you have to be able to listen on social media.

00:16:23:07 - 00:16:43:02

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

You have to be able to listen through email. You have to have a crowdsourcing. You probably have to have an interactive platform. You probably also do focus groups. You also talk to your people in orientation. So you can you have breakfast in person, online, asynchronous. You have to do it all because all those different generations want to tell you things in different ways.

00:16:43:04 - 00:17:11:19

Dr. Foster Mobley

Almost every executive that I've interviewed have talked about the need for listening. If I had done this five years ago, ten years ago, that would not have been interesting. Kind of the thing that is pointing me to this term of kind of the new covenant between workers and their organizations. The New Covenant says the organization promises that I'm going to create a psychologically safe space for you.

00:17:11:21 - 00:17:34:07

Dr. Foster Mobley

The New Covenant says, I'm going to honor and respect you as a whole human being with needs inside and outside these walls. Yes. I'm going to, you know, New Covenant says that I am going to treat with full regard and full respect ideas that you raise, even if we can't feel I'm going to listen and I'm going to give them full regard.

00:17:34:09 - 00:17:50:07

Dr. Foster Mobley

You know, when you think about this notion of the changing relationship, I call it covenant between our agreements, between the workplace and the workforce. Anything else come to mind? What does it take to create this new relationship?

00:17:50:09 - 00:18:26:01

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So, I mean, what you just said speaks to me. I believe it's our way forward. That space is where innovation and disruption is going to live. The other. And I want to just add on what you said about I hold you in high regard, but I also think there's a place in this conversation for love. And I talk about when I talk about love, I talk about the, the way that Doctor Martin Luther King talked about love, the love of humanity and I think that our team members want the structure and they want those things, but they want us to truly love and care about them.

00:18:26:03 - 00:18:41:20

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Not in a paternalistic way, but in a human way. Yeah. And I just I just feel like that is like, you know, that's not a skill. When you when you said we weren't talking about listening. I mean, imagine when you say the skill I bring to the boardroom is love. And if we.

00:18:41:21 - 00:18:44:11

Dr. Foster Mobley

Love,

00:18:44:13 - 00:19:08:12

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

No, well, that is not a skill. That is a weakness. But you know, what's what's love got to do with it, right? But I do think that people are looking for more of a human connection at work and a purpose that we are not wired to give them yet. And so I love the idea of a covenant because it means you give to me, I give to you.

00:19:08:12 - 00:19:13:17

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

But it is a relationship. Yeah, it's a relationship.

00:19:13:19 - 00:19:41:17

Dr. Foster Mobley

Oh, boy. I've got so many questions. I know I love your focus on the way forward. It's so easy to get caught up in pieces of a dysfunctional system, which most people would say characterizes health care pretty well. Yeah. And lose sight of, kind of clear ways forward. I think this new covenant could be one of them was like, let's think about each other differently.

00:19:41:17 - 00:20:05:03

Dr. Foster Mobley

Let's think about the space that we create. Let's think about the love and regard we have for one another. If that is the foundation that characterizes our relationship, it's going to be a very different kind of relationship. How in that, you know, kind of in bed still, they need to be made and patients still need to be cared for and medications still need to be delivered.

00:20:05:03 - 00:20:33:11

Dr. Foster Mobley

And how do we think about or how should we think about creating this environment? And and also at the same time we've got this, you know, high performance needs of the organization. We still got to care for patients. We still want to reduce, you know, inpatient bed time. And we, you know, length of stays. And but when we want to improve clinical outcomes how do we do that if we are having this new covenant with our team.

00:20:33:13 - 00:20:57:15

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

This is it's not mutually exclusive. Because when you love and care for people and they have capacity, they will love and care for their patients and each other. And so the more that we and I think this this is a little struggle that we're having. But how well you take care of your team is how well they're going to take care of patients now that have to be made.

00:20:57:15 - 00:21:16:11

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And if I love my patient and and you've loved me, I'm going to make sure that bed is perfect. And on time. And the patient has a nice dry place and the patient is warm. And I'm going to take care of quality because quality is love, right? Keeping someone safe. Yeah, is a manifestation of a love and a relationship.

00:21:16:13 - 00:21:42:03

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And so I think that they are actually the path versus something that's mutually exclusive. But can our brains wrap around that so that we know that investing in our team members is really investing in all of our other outcomes? And by the way, there is data to support that. That is the key. So that purpose and love and I and I think we also have to add purpose in there.

00:21:42:05 - 00:22:00:00

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yes. Because when people are ignited by their purpose, I don't need to watch them over their shoulder or hold them accountable because they are accountable themselves because they wouldn't do it any other way, because they love their patients, their profession, each other.

00:22:00:02 - 00:22:34:14

Dr. Foster Mobley

I'm a new supervisor come from with a clinical background. How do you help me understand, navigating this balance between love and regard and safe space and that performance? Because there are at times there are tensions between the two. If I'm really caring for patients, it may cause me to work longer, harder. But how do you help me learn to navigate that balance between the environment, my workforce, the needs of the organization, the needs of the patient, all of that.

00:22:34:16 - 00:23:00:15

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

You know, I think it comes back to what we started talking about. It comes back to leadership development. It comes back to developing purpose driven leaders who who can prioritize and jealously guard their hearts in the minds of their people so that they don't have them do things that aren't connected to purpose. Everything we want our clinical team to do is connected to purpose and values.

00:23:00:17 - 00:23:06:13

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

We just don't often take the time to make that connection clear. And that's where we get burnout.

00:23:06:15 - 00:23:22:07

Dr. Foster Mobley

Leaders go first. Leaders develop themselves. We can't be quiet and present if are, we can't expect others to be. If we aren't, we can't be generative. We can't be respectful or, you know, that's we've got to lead and lead and demonstrate.

00:23:22:09 - 00:23:53:13

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So there is enough, scholarly work that shows us the impact of great, loving leadership on hard outcomes. So it's it's all there. We might not want to see it, but they know they'll know it when they've turned over their entire staff, which costs so much money and retention. And they've turned over their executives, and nobody wants to work in a place that's not purpose driven and connected to purpose, because health care is really hard.

00:23:53:15 - 00:23:56:18

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So we have to tell them we just they're just going to figure it out.

00:23:56:20 - 00:24:09:03

Dr. Foster Mobley

This is a question I think you and I have talked about before. I'm going to ask it just for the purposes of this. You are a deep, deeply caring human being. What are the values that have you that have you show up that way?

00:24:09:05 - 00:24:31:09

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I it's it's an interesting question, and I think everyone should ask that because it will help them slide into what work they should be doing. I really have a true love of humanity. All humans I have actually all life. I mean, as you know, I also love the pollinators, and I also love the butterflies. And I love everything, you know.

00:24:31:09 - 00:24:59:18

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So I have a true love of of humanity and that love of humanity, draws me to a place that needs humanity and that is bereft sometimes of that humanity, which is health care. Yeah. So, you know, so I think it was a it was a right place for me to go. I think sometimes as an executive who loves humanity, that sometimes that has a different perception for people.

00:24:59:20 - 00:25:31:10

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

But again, that's, that's for me to grow through. But yeah. So I really value humanity and, and just, you know, just as a reminder is I was an emergency trauma nurse before this, and you know what they say about the emergency room. It's where you love the unlovable. And so I spent most of my career in emergency medicine, where the day to day, what you see in the emergency room day to day can just about break your heart.

00:25:31:12 - 00:25:37:07

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Unless you truly love and want that to be better for some.

00:25:37:09 - 00:25:54:16

Dr. Foster Mobley

That's amazing. Truly you. You have a very, very busy and a very busy life. It's always been that way. Pandemic was nuts off the hook, nuts. But yeah. What what are the life hacks that you've adopted?

00:25:54:18 - 00:26:18:01

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Oh, that's such an interesting question. I want to ask you that back on and ask everyone that question. So I think one of the life hacks is, to guard your empathy, just like you would guard your physical health. Be mindful of of guarding your soul and your empathy and treating it like the most important thing.

00:26:18:07 - 00:26:40:06

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Because in my work, it is the most important thing. So that that is one, life hack that I'm really thoughtful about. The other life hack that I think is interesting is that, it doesn't have to be a special day to do special things. So I'm, as you know, I'm I'm an experienced designer, and I love experiences.

00:26:40:06 - 00:27:06:19

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

So my life hack is I can come home on a Wednesday and decide that I'm going to have a birthday party, ask dinner or something. Fabulous. Just just an experiential thing to lift my sense of of value, to make it feel special, to make life feel special. So those that's another life hack that I use on myself quite a bit.

00:27:06:21 - 00:27:13:14

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Is just, you know, it's like it's today is somebody's birthday. Let's let's make it sparkle.

00:27:13:16 - 00:27:22:06

Dr. Foster Mobley

What was the line from Alice in Wonderland? It's, It's your unbirthday. Yeah, yeah. You've got one birthday. You've got 364 on birthdays. Let's celebrate your birthday.

00:27:22:08 - 00:27:28:17

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yeah. Let's make somebody feel special today, because, my goodness, everyone is truly special.

00:27:28:19 - 00:27:52:02

Dr. Foster Mobley

It's never inappropriate. It's never unwelcomed, I don't think, to bring energy into somebody's life. And I think about this a lot because of my station in life. Are you remembered? And are you known as the energy giver, the person that brings life and vitality and possibility into a room or not? Because we have that opportunity every single day?

00:27:52:04 - 00:27:55:08

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yep, yep, yeah. And to make a memory for someone.

00:27:55:10 - 00:27:56:00

Dr. Foster Mobley

Make a memory.

00:27:56:00 - 00:28:13:12

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Absolutely. Yeah. Or to or to empathize with someone who people have judged. I mean, you know, one of the, one of the ways that that I try to stay really connected to my value of loving humanity is to really stay out of judgment and have gratitude.

00:28:13:17 - 00:28:35:22

Dr. Foster Mobley

How do I honor you? I stay out of judgment. I listen to you openly and deeply and, I hear you and really work to understand where my own work, my fear, my biases, my filters are a little cloudy sometimes. It's getting in the way of me really knowing you and seeing you for who you are. Huge. That's huge.

00:28:36:00 - 00:29:01:04

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yeah. And you know, stain stain out of judgment has the element of that. When people say to me there, when people say to me, well, I would have never done that, I that is my signal that I can teach them because they don't even know they're in judgment right now. But they've already made me and other they've, they, they made me another by saying I would have never made that choice.

00:29:01:09 - 00:29:17:23

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And then we have an opportunity to say, but you weren't me, but you weren't them. And that people make decisions for all sorts of crazy reasons, because we're human. And so instead of saying, I would never do that, think about how could I help them right now?

00:29:18:05 - 00:29:43:22

Dr. Foster Mobley

I just occurred to me, one of my life hacks is, is this commonality of trying to find I don't I don't play in the poles and the and the polarities. I play kind of right down the middle, like, wait a minute. Let's start with what you and I can agree on and I can begin conference. So one of my life hacks is having wonderful conversations, getting to know people by focusing on what makes us great, what makes us and and what we agree on.

00:29:44:03 - 00:30:08:14

Dr. Foster Mobley

So let's start there. I'm realizing, and this is based on, you know, my own work and my own, where I get tripped up. For me, a life hack is to continue to, understand and explore my fears and stay out of that, stay out of fear based, fear driven behavior, and focus instead on what I'm really committed to.

00:30:08:14 - 00:30:44:08

Dr. Foster Mobley

I'm really committed to people being great. I'm really committed to the the wonderful relatedness between people, all that kind of stuff. Sometimes my fear gets in the way and it again clouds the clouds of the lens and I'm behaving impatiently on behaving brusquely. I'm behaving dismissively, I'm behaving judgmentally all those kinds of things. And so, you know, I work, I my daily habits and rituals to try and, continue to peel away those layers of fear that just are insidious and they hide in different, different spots and different times.

00:30:44:10 - 00:31:25:11

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I think that helps your physical well-being, too, because, you know, the flatter fight, our fear responses, which are, you know, deeply in our, you know, in our DNA as humans, then you have increased blood pressure, you have increased heart rate. You don't feel as well. So I, I like that hack because I think that fear I've been thinking about this a lot with what's been going on and what goes on with health care is the fear is is at the root of a lot of things that are going on that if we could somehow tone it down a little, that we could even think more humanely, reasonably.

00:31:25:13 - 00:31:38:17

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yeah. If we could just tone down that kind of that wild fear monster that, that we have. So I think that's that's the life. Those are the two hacks of our time right now. We need those,

00:31:38:19 - 00:31:59:19

Dr. Foster Mobley

The term that was given to me, by a friend was negative capacity. We need to develop this negative capacity where we don't, you know, this looks attractive and this looks attractive, or this looks good and this looks bad, but we don't we can stay in that tension. That discomfort. I'm not really good at that. I'm really not good at staying in discomfort.

00:31:59:19 - 00:32:10:02

Dr. Foster Mobley

I want to I want to ease the pain as quickly as I can. I want to ease the yeah, I wanted to ease the discomfort. So I work to solve it.

00:32:10:04 - 00:32:36:15

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yeah. From a leadership standpoint, I think that's really important because if you're leading a group that's polarized you, you have to stay in all of those spaces or you actually create worse issues in your own organization. Now, you can have values that are part of the organization. Yeah. But a lot of people can live within those values and still be polarized.

00:32:36:15 - 00:32:57:05

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And then how do we deal with that? I'm very interested in what's going to happen. As we go forward, even within health care, because a lot of the health care issues are so polarizing, because we're going to have literally team members that don't agree there, they don't philosophically agree with what's what the health care issue is.

00:32:57:07 - 00:33:08:11

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

And that could be really challenging for us. And you have to learn to lead through that. I mean, like you got to learn to lead. You got to learn to lead through that because it's real. You can't say, I don't have to lead like that because it's not real.

00:33:08:13 - 00:33:31:07

Dr. Foster Mobley

Well, all the things that you, you and I have talked about for now, months and years, this notion of deep regard, this notion of humanity, this notion of really, truly, truly, deeply listening, the notion of making sure that you're getting your cup filled, you know, all of that coming from purpose, aligning to values. That stuff's not terribly new.

00:33:31:09 - 00:33:58:16

Dr. Foster Mobley

You know, this is from a previous conversation I have with you, but it's certainly more, you know, kind of acute these days. It's not new that we tell leaders to listen to their people. That's not new. But why and how and what layers they're going to have to listen through. That's fairly new. You know, there are a couple of new things where people are demanding more care for their mental health from their organizations than they ever have before.

00:33:58:18 - 00:34:06:12

Dr. Foster Mobley

There's more noise and busyness from social media than ever before. There's, you know, all that kind of stuff. But a lot of the issues are just not now.

00:34:06:14 - 00:34:32:00

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

They're not new. But that doesn't mean that they're being executed because know there are people that that wasn't part of their leadership, toolkit because it didn't have to be. And so those leaders are the leaders that will have to learn new strategies. As we move, especially in health care, as we move into the next phase, because people won't work on health care if our environments are so toxic to them.

00:34:32:00 - 00:34:32:22

Dr. Foster Mobley

Right? Right, right, right.

00:34:32:23 - 00:34:37:05

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

They just won't work in health care anymore. We just won't have anyone to care for us.

00:34:37:07 - 00:34:58:17

Dr. Foster Mobley

I will say it's probably not been in the life toolkit of a lot of people. You know, we talk about this as leadership, but like, not everybody's been trained on care for self, on nurturing one's soul, on snapping to a grid called purpose, to be clear on and out loud about what you believe and why you believe it.

00:34:58:17 - 00:35:18:21

Dr. Foster Mobley

And then living in integrity. But like, yeah, who teaches that we're teaching very, you know, like we're just all trying to get by the end of the day, there's a I think it's an Aristotle quote, but it basically says, don't never judge another man or woman. Never judge another person because they're just really struggling to do the best they can to get by.

00:35:19:01 - 00:35:29:19

Dr. Foster Mobley

Yeah. And I happen to live by that. It's it's yeah. You know, very true. Hey, Julie. What what are you trying to promote? What, what can we pitch for you?

00:35:29:21 - 00:35:53:21

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I wrote this book. It's a textbook. It's called System innovations. A holistic approach to disrupting with love and human caring. And I really want love and human caring to be the disruptors of health care. I don't want health care to be disrupted by more business, more financiers. I want health care to be disrupted toward love and human caring for the patients and the team members.

00:35:53:21 - 00:36:17:07

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

I see the potential in health care. I love health care. I've worked in health care my whole life, and it has the potential to be everything that humanity needs it to be, but it's not going to get there in silos. It's not going to get there in its broken, limping state. Yeah. So I wrote that book so that people could take a look at the possibilities.

00:36:17:11 - 00:36:21:21

Dr. Foster Mobley

And then can we follow you on any kind of social media because, you know, you write.

00:36:21:23 - 00:36:41:11

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

Yes. You can follow me on LinkedIn. And then I love when people reach out to me on LinkedIn and want to talk or want to interact. Because I do think that how we, how we interact with each other and how we share with each other is the future. You've had great mentors in your life. I've had great mentors in my life.

00:36:41:11 - 00:36:49:22

Julie Kennedy - Oehlert

You are one of my mentors, and my the mentorship that people have given me has allowed me to do what I do today. So again, we're all in this together.

00:36:49:22 - 00:37:10:09

Dr. Foster Mobley

Well, Julie, you I so look forward to every time I get a chance to chat with you. You are truly one of the most, one of the brightest, most caring and most innovative leaders. Forget health care leaders that I know. I always take away important stuff after every one of our conversations. So for that, I thank you so much.

00:37:10:15 - 00:37:26:19

Dr. Foster Mobley

I thank you for our friendship and, really appreciate the time. Can't wait to share these ideas and thoughts with, with the rest of the world.

00:37:26:21 - 00:37:56:04

Dr. Foster Mobley

That was a great conversation and a very special and unique leader and out-of-the-box thinker that puts care for employees and patients at the center of every consideration as the only way to get superior performance. Julie's caring, creative, and capable. She knows how to get stuff done. But more than that, everything she touches is memorable and golden. Check out Julie's work on LinkedIn and Instagram.

00:37:56:06 - 00:38:13:07

Dr. Foster Mobley

You'll gain greatly as I always have set the table. Invite cool people. Magic happens thanks to Julie Kennedy Oehlert for this incredible masterclass. Until next time leaders. Step wise.

00:38:13:09 - 00:38:42:14

Jana Devan

Thank you for listening to Step Wise. Step Wise is brought to you by Doctor Foster Mobley, edited and promoted by his Zettist. You can listen to more episodes wherever you stream podcasts. Find out more at fostermobleymt.com or follow us on social media at Foster Mobley. That's f-o-s-t-e-r-m-o-b-l-e-y We look forward to having an inspiring conversation with you soon.