Aspen (Colo.) Valley Health has long offered leadership training, but the organization saw an opportunity to develop leaders in a more structured way.
The community-owned, independent health system is now building a leadership development program around six competencies, with plans to launch it in 2027 and reach potential leaders earlier in their careers.
“We did offer leadership development training, but I don’t think it was as focused as we would want it to be,” Tom McCauley, chief human resources officer of Aspen Valley Health, told Becker’s. “And that leads into succession planning. At least if you have someone who pursues other opportunities or retires (the latter of which we’ve seen a lot of recently), and I think that’s great when you have somebody who’s been there 30 or 35 years and they’re ready to hang it up, that you’ve got somebody who’s waiting in the wings and more prepared for the next step.”
The work started in late 2025, when Aspen Valley’s human resources executive team worked with an outside consultant to define what the organization wanted its leaders to be good at. “When we sat down, it defined for us what our secret sauce is,” Mr. McCauley said. “We asked, who are the best leaders in our organization? And they all consistently reflected these six leadership competencies. And we said, let’s go from there.
“The first three are humility, self-awareness and gratitude. Those are somewhat internally focused, but we believe those are a very unique combination of traits.”
The other three are communication, operational excellence and vision. Mr. McCauley said newer leaders will begin with the internally focused competencies, then move toward the others as their responsibilities grow.
“We want to start with the inward ones, where you’re a newer leader, and then finish with a more outward focus: how to run a team, how to run a department, how to run an organization,” he said. “Those 6 competencies provide us an anchor to say any training or offering or anything that we do or prescribe is going to be more focused.”
The competencies are designed to build upon one another. Mr. McCauley said emerging leaders will be exposed to them, managers will be expected to become proficient and more senior leaders will work toward mastery before moving into longer-term strategic thinking.
Aspen Valley defines its current leaders as the C-suite, directors and managers. The program will add a fourth group: emerging leaders.
That group could include supervisors, leads, lab section leads and charge nurses. Mr. McCauley said the goal is to reach employees earlier in their careers and give them an opportunity to determine whether leadership is a path they want to pursue.
“We’re reaching further down in the organization into our emerging leaders,” he said. “So the fact that we could reach people earlier in their career and take them right then and find out, ‘Hey, this sounds interesting,’ or ‘This does not, I just want to continue on my ‘expert path.’… I think that’s the part that will be affected the most.”
The four groups are expected to include 150 to 200 people out of a workforce of roughly 650. Aspen Valley is also expanding its learning management system so full-time and part-time employees outside those groups can access the same content and pursue learning on their own.
Aspen Valley has offered leadership training in the past, including classes, outside trainers and other development opportunities. Mr. McCauley said the difference is those efforts were not organized around a defined set of outcomes.
“I would say this is really a ‘launch’ versus a ‘re-launch’, because it was too scattered,” he said. “And again, there was goodness that came out of it. We had a lot of leadership trainers or leadership experts that would come through, we would share training, or we would go to other sessions to develop leadership traits and qualities. While goodness was happening, it just wasn’t organized.”
The organization is spending 2026 building the program, with the launch planned for 2027.
Mr. McCauley said Aspen Valley expects to spend more on leadership development, though he does not anticipate a dramatic increase. The larger change, he said, is organizing existing resources around a program that builds competencies as employees progress through different levels of leadership.
“I don’t think it’s going to be any kind of doubling or tripling of that,” he said. “We are going to spend more in this area, but not exponentially more. It’s more about the organization and having a cumulative effect of building you as a leader, whereas before we really didn’t have that expectation.”
Mr. McCauley also sees more structured development as a way to show employees that the organization is investing in their careers.
“People really feel valued and wanted when you make purposeful investments in them,” he said. “Did we have a budget before? Yes, but now we have a very clear North Star of how we want to invest in you and help you develop. And hopefully that’s going to resonate with our employees and help them build a longer career path here. We love our people and want them to stay here for the long-haul.”
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