It has been two decades, but Saad Ehtisham, DHA, still remembers the meeting clearly. It was 2006, he was 36, and the CEO he worked for at the time pulled him aside afterward.
“I’m a multitasker, and I can process and analyze information extremely fast. The biggest piece of advice was about perception and how I presented myself in meetings. I would be checking emails and processing information while still being able to answer,” said Dr. Ehtisham, now president and CEO of Morristown, N.J.-based Atlantic Health. “It’s very simple, but the feedback was, ‘Saad, that’s very disrespectful to your team members who are speaking and presenting. Allow them the courtesy of being seen and heard.'”
Health system CEOs are constantly communicating with their workforces, colleagues and the public, whether they are laying out strategy or delivering hard news. Part of being a leader is receiving feedback as well, and for many leaders, there are pieces of feedback that still inform how they lead years later.
Becker’s spoke with Dr. Ehtisham, Todd LaPorte, CEO of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based HonorHealth, and Ketul Patel, president and CEO of Marietta, Ga.-based Wellstar Health System, about the hardest feedback they have received as leaders and what they changed because of it.
For Dr. Ehtisham, the feedback from that 2006 meeting still shapes how he runs his own leadership meetings.
“What that did for me is that in my senior leadership team meetings, which have 100 leaders, I tell them three things: We start on time, we end on time, and it’s a badge-free and technology-free meeting, because we need to respect each other and be present,” he said.
Dr. Ehtisham acknowledged that he was initially annoyed and embarrassed by the criticism, even though it ultimately changed his approach.
“That was the harshest feedback. I was annoyed at the time, and probably more embarrassed than anything else,” he said. “But it worked.”
Mr. LaPorte has led HonorHealth for more than a decade. For him, the hardest feedback is often less about a single criticism and more about balancing competing views on how quickly the organization should grow and where it should invest its resources.
“Somebody asked me what the greatest challenge of being a CEO is. It is clearly how to pace growth and allocate resources. Part of that is how you manage with finite assets like cash, and part of it is how you manage the human resources that are going to be necessary to execute well,” he said.
Those decisions can be especially difficult when employees, physicians and other stakeholders have different perspectives on which investments should take priority and how much change the organization can reasonably manage.
“The hardest feedback I would get relates to that. Different stakeholders have different perspectives on what the pace of growth should be, which investments are most important, what the best strategies are given the opportunity cost of anything you pursue, and whether people have the bandwidth or the energy to tackle the issues you put in front of them,” Mr. LaPorte said. “That’s the hardest part, because that feedback is never as easy as a unanimous voice. It often comes from different stakeholders with different vantage points.”
One experience during the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced for him how important it is to seek feedback from a range of people.
A physician on HonorHealth’s medical staff created a sculpture intended to recognize caregivers’ response to the pandemic. Mr. LaPorte said he sought feedback from a focus group before approving the artwork for display and believed there was support for the decision. After it was unveiled, however, some employees and community members raised concerns that an element of the sculpture conveyed anti-Asian American sentiment.
Mr. LaPorte said that was not the intended message, but the controversy affected morale and took attention away from the recognition the organization had hoped to give its caregivers. The artwork is no longer on display.
“The lesson is that you always want to gain feedback from as wide a circle as possible, especially when you’re talking about something that is going to be very public,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the littlest thing that can create the loudest noise, and that was part of my experience as a CEO.”
He said the experience was particularly difficult because the artwork had been intended to celebrate employees who had worked through the pandemic, yet the controversy became a distraction from that recognition. The controversy also helped spur HonorHealth to take a more organized approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, Mr. LaPorte told Becker’s in 2024. Mr. LaPorte said the experience led to greater sensitivity around such decisions and reinforced the value of establishing people resource groups, which bring together employees with shared backgrounds.
“I was so proud of our team for everything they had done to respond very courageously and very effectively during the pandemic, and yet something as little as that derailed things for a while in terms of morale,” Mr. LaPorte said.
For Mr. Patel, the hardest feedback came from an employee he had never met, during what was supposed to be a routine filming of a message to staff.
“This is something deeply personal to me, because it had that kind of impact on me,” he said.
The filming was taking place on a sky bridge connecting an employee parking garage to a hospital. As Mr. Patel answered questions on camera, the communications team was asking employees to wait before passing through to the hospital.
“Midanswer, I overheard one of the team members say something like, ‘His job is to at least allow me to get to my job,'” Mr. Patel said. “I stopped, said, ‘I’m sorry,’ shook her hand and introduced myself, and she did the same. I said, ‘I heard what you said. You’re right.'”
The exchange made him reconsider how even routine activities involving senior leadership can get in the way of employees who are trying to care for patients.
“So many of us think about the sense of responsibility we have as a CEO, executive or leader, but the most fundamental thing is making sure we provide the resources, even something as simple as letting people get where they need to go so they can take care of our patients,” he said.
The immediate lesson was to avoid filming in areas where employees or patients need to pass, particularly during shift changes. But Mr. Patel said the experience also reinforced a broader responsibility for executives to make sure employees have what they need to do their jobs.
“We’re in our leadership roles to make sure we’re giving resources to the staff who are truly connected to patient care,” he said. “It’s something I’ve never forgotten.”
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