A CEO's Perspective

(Main image from 123rf.com; Donna Isgett photo provided)

In November of 2020, McLeod Health announced the promotion of Chief Operating Officer Donna Isgett to president and CEO effective March 1, 2021.

Isgett took on the role held by Rob Colones since 2002.

“Donna has the experience, skills and personal qualities needed to successfully address the issues of a complex and rapidly changing healthcare environment,” Colones said at the time. “Working with Donna for more than two decades, I can testify that she is data-driven, an agent of change and a collaborative partner.”

Isgett joined McLeod Health in 1997 and as chief operating officer was responsible for the oversight of administrators at the seven McLeod hospitals.

She holds a Master of Science in Nursing from the Medical University of South Carolina and MBA from Duke University.

She spent the majority of her clinical career as an emergency flight nurse. Since joining McLeod, she has been senior vice president of Corporate Quality, helping McLeod gain a national reputation for quality of care, and also had oversight of McLeod Physician Associates, a network of 90 physician practices stretching from the Midlands to the coast.

Isgett has been the recipient of the Milliken Medal of Quality from the South Carolina Quality National Forum and the Lewis Blackman Patient Safety Award from the South Carolina Hospital Association. She was a 2011 Liberty Fellow at the Aspen Global Institute.

Founded in 1906, McLeod Health is a locally owned and managed, not-for-profit healthcare system which features the strength of more than 900 members on its medical staff and more than 2,900 licensed nurses, and approximately 18,000 team members.

In an interview earlier this year with Integrated Media Publishing Editor David Dykes, Isgett discussed what makes a successful leader, what's led to her success, how she retains, hires, and thrives despite labor shortages.

Here are excerpts from that conversation.

Q. Picture a successful leader and tell me what you see.

Isgett: The most important thing I see in a successful leader is humility. The thing that frustrates me the most, and my leaders have heard me say it multiple times, is when their No. 1 priority is actually themselves. I will often go, you need to get over yourself. What we're trying to do is bigger than you. What I look for first of all is that ideal team player. … And I literally will stop someone's progression if they're not humbled... No. 2 is hungry. Hungry meaning that they're naturally curious, hungry meaning that they don't believe they know everything. ...They're just inquisitive in their work. Not hungry as if I want to step on people. ... It goes with humble. I don't think I know everything, and so I'm curious about how to improve. The natural curiosity and humility to do something greater than themselves are the main things that I look for in a leader, because then they want to do something greater than themselves, which drives them to the mission of the work, particularly for us in health care.

Q. Are you saying one of the characteristics of the best leader is being decisive?

Isgett: Not necessarily. I'm saying it is being humble. I think of decisiveness is I alone in making decisions. I'm saying that they're humble, that they can engage others. They're humble, and then they're curious, and they engage others. Now, in the end, yes, someone has to make a decision. But I worry when you use the word decisive, that it means that someone sits independently and just makes decisions. I do not like people that sit independently without engaging with others. ... I want a collaborator. I want a humble collaborator because it's a mathematical equation that your brain plus my brain knows more than your brain or my ain.

Q. How did you arrive at this philosophy?

Isgett: First of it, part of it's because it's who I am. I'm a natural collaborator. I'm a natural connector. That is my personality type. I just told you it was a mathematical equation. I was on a math team. It's math to me. If you can be humble and get over yourself, and you can truly listen to others and understand their perspectives, you will come out with a better answer, because naturally, that diversity of intellect will make you smarter. But the secret to that, and that's why when you asked me the question, the first thing I said was humble. Someone that can't get past themselves can't listen. If you can listen and hear those variations and opinions, and you're curious about it, you can naturally be smarter. So it's just logic to me. It's a mathematical equation. That's how I came to it. I had a lot of coaches along the way, too, but I will say I had enough confidence without arrogance that I know what I know, but I know there's a magnitude of things I don't know. I'm just naturally curious to learn that, so I ask others.

Q. Who is your most important mentor along your corporate journey?

Isgett: My predecessor, Rob Colones. Rob really believed in me. Rob saw something in me I didn't even see in myself. As I mentioned, many of these characteristics came naturally for me. I'm naturally curious. I mean, if you were to bring up something right now, I'd be over here Googling it. I'm just naturally curious. But Rob really pushed me into environments so that I could stretch and learn things I didn't know and demonstrate that. He was always very supportive. He role-modeled humility, I mean, with a capital H. And so I watched him. My natural curiosity, and maybe even my gift, is that I can really watch a room. I can watch people's expressions. I can read that well. And so he gave me the environment to do that. He put me out a lot and then would help me to see what went well and didn't in that. So it would absolutely be Rob in my professional life, my father in my personal life.

Q. What did your father do for a living?

Isgett: He owned a small business. He was a Napa Auto Parts store owner in a small community. But he was such a humble man himself who always was giving. One of my favorite stories about my dad is, somebody called on a Sunday afternoon, his store was closed, and they were leaving for Disney with the family, and they need some new windshield wipers. That was before you could go to Walmart or somewhere and buy them. … And so he got up and went to the store and opened the store. … I remember my mother saying, ‘Why did you do that? That's not even a customer of yours.’ And he said, ‘Because the safety of that family depends on them being able to have it.’

And that's what I mean by humble; he just did things for the right reason all the time. … He really role-modeled that for me as a child. He gave me confidence. ‘Kiddo, you can do anything. You can do absolutely anything you set your mind to. I believe in you, and you can do it.’

Q. But in this day and age of labor shortages, how do you hire, retain, and thrive? What's unique about this day and age?

Isgett: It's all about setting the culture of the organization that you're trying to hire into. And so you've got to provide a different place to work. And one of the most important things in providing that different place to work is a place that is engaging. … I have all of these little slogans, get over yourself, better together. Another one is, here we do with, not to. And that's what really matters to employees, whether we're hiring physicians. Our medical staff will quote that back to me all the time. Donna says, we do with, that McLeod does with us, not to us. But that goes all the way. We may come up with ideas, and we socialize those ideas, but we believe we're better together. Or see how it all connects. And so we have an environment that does with, not to. I just finished a meeting with one of our staff members, and my words were, I trust you. You've done a great job on this. Here are some questions to think about. But remember, we're going to do with that group of staff. We're not going to do to them. Let's begin to have an idea, but let's start socializing it, because as we socialize it, it will become a better idea.

If you look at our vacancy rate compared to those around us, people are flabbergasted. We're back to pre-Covid vacancy rates, and we are really using practically no agency staffing. When I say that in the nursing world, people of any health system of size just cannot comprehend it. And it's because we have a culture to do with, not to. People want to work there. We have a culture that we want to do something bigger than an individual. And so that attracts not everybody, but it attracts a certain level of person that then fits with our culture.

Q. Talk about the changing nature of health care, and how do you keep up your budget with the accelerating uncertainty that you're facing in the health care industry?

Isgett: I have a senior team that I call McLeod Health Operations. It's the senior vice presidents, the chief financial officer, chief strategy officer, chief operating officer, chief human resources officer. And yesterday, we looked at some budget numbers and said, OK, where are we going to find the escalation in cost money in next year's budget. So in answer to your question, it goes back to how we started the conversation. That table, I don't know all the answers, but that table is really smart. And we start figuring out together, here's the problem to solve. CFO, what do you think? Where could we find money? Chief human resources officer, what do you see? Chief strategy officer, how could we grow our way out of this? Where are there opportunities to grow our business so we could cover this increased expense? It's operationalizing the concepts I'm talking about. That's how we figure out what the future is. It's so safe at that table. I'll go, Please disagree with me. Please bring different perspectives, please. But it's a math equation. That table is smarter than any one human that exists.

Q. What's on your bed stand that you read at night?

Isgett: I really enjoy leadership books. Here's one of the most recent ones I read, “High Road Leadership.” It's not on my bed stand, it's beside my desk. John Maxwell. This is a cultural book that really talks about many of the things you and I have discussed, humility, how to prioritize the work you're trying to do over those things. … If you came in my office, which you've been here, but I've got books all over the shelves, so I keep some leadership theory book going at all times. I also try to blend that with current events. I'm an avid reader of Apple News every morning. What's popped up in the Atlantic, what's popped up in all of those things, trying to keep abreast of what's happening a blend of current national and international things with a blend of the rootedness in theories of leadership.

Q. Finally, if you could go back over your management career in health care and do one thing differently, what would that be?

Isgett: I probably wish that I knew when I was in my 20s and 30s … get over yourself. I think naturally, when you're young and you're growing, that you want to prove what you know. And I think I would have taught myself earlier that the wisdom is in the group, not in a person. … Now, I've never been an authoritative leader, but my current self could teach my younger self to really stop and appreciate the variation in perspectives and not see that as a conflict, but as an increase in knowledge. Not to think about myself as much. I do think I'm pretty good at that now, and I wish I'd appreciated that wisdom, but that is what wisdom is, isn't it? It is intellect that is gained through experience.