Beliefs are the emotional foundation for excellence and can shape organizational realities. Positive beliefs build energy, enthusiasm, caring and creativity and can increase resilience and influence bottom line results.* Rob Kistler leads nearly 1000 people as the senior director of University Hospital’s support services (nutrition care, environmental services, customer service, safety, and emergency management). Here’s what he believes about his team.

COVID-19 has brought a new challenge to the work of continuous learning in health care: how to teach new information when it is constantly changing and emotions run high. As nurse educators for the emergency department, the pulmonary and palliative care unit, and outpatient clinics, Emma Gauci, Paige Wilson, and Sarah Smith have been thrown into an educator’s quandary: how to help staff feel as knowledgeable and supported as possible.

Crisis requires new ways of doing things, but those who know how to double down on existing strengths thrive in complexity. Case manager Todd Selmer shares two tactics for managing change brought on by the coronavirus that have always served him well.

Redeployment may be a new health care reality, but in the U.S. military, rapid redeployment and tours of duty have always been part of the job. We turned to local veteran and nursing director Trell Inzunza, and the Resiliency Center's Megan Call, to learn practical strategies for supporting our teams as we transition.

The Effective Communicator spoke with Tom Miller, Utah’s Chief Medical Officer, about respectful communication in the workplace. His tips? Go slow, set boundaries, and pick up the phone. Bonus: why he uses Emojis in text messages.

The pace of technological progress can make it seem like solutions to our health care problems are only a click away. Howard Weeks, Utah’s interim chief medical information officer, lauds the virtues of technology with this caveat: you can’t IT your way out of every problem.

Revenue Cycle Support Services is the backbone of Utah’s financial system – from insurance prior authorizations to processing billions of dollars in claims and payments. Their leadership team, led by administrative director Kathy Delis, has been on a years-long journey to make this work better both for patients and employees. Here, she shares how she brought meaning, purpose, and a sense of community to the team.

The Effective Communicator returns to settle the never-ending debate: which form of communication is the best?

Kyle Bradford Jones returns with a review of “Quiet,” Susan Cain’s book about the power of introverted thinking. Although introversion is often viewed as a drawback — “a second-class personality trait,” Cain writes — Bradford Jones believes that reassessing his personality type has helped him better understand himself, his co-workers, and even his patients.

In her five years at University of Utah Health as hospitalist, educator, and medical director of AIM-A and WP5, Karli Edholm led amazing amounts of impactful work. She trained future leaders and improved the safety, experience, and cost of an inpatient stay. Here she shares her lessons for leading and staying focused on improvement: start with your own frustration.

In the new series Book Club for Busy People, Accelerate shares highlights of books we’re hearing about from the community. First up: how thinking about others’ needs strengthens teams and increases civility in The Outward Mindset.

The Effective Communicator returns this week to remedy the bane of our existences: endless, often pointless, meetings. Yes, you can run them better.