Rick Evans, Senior Vice President and Chief Experience Officer for New York-Presbyterian, joined Dr. Edna Chun’s Capstone class for a thoughtful and inspirational discussion of leadership in organizations. SVP Evans began by describing things he has learned over two decades in senior leadership as well as new lessons learned during the pandemic. As Chief Experience Officer for a large hospital system with 11 hospitals and 55,000 employees, he discussed both corporate and everyday responsibilities and the importance of influencing organizational culture.
Rick Evans stated that one of the things that he can’t emphasize enough for successful leaders is the ability to self-regulate, an ability he sees as broader than emotional intelligence. Given the many workplace pressures and the need to get work done, self-regulation or the ability to govern oneself is a key differentiating factor in leadership. His own theological training has been helpful in this process.
Another important quality of leadership that Rick Evans emphasized was humility. As he explained, the origins of the word humility derive from being rooted in the earth. In the workplace, humility relates to being expert in one’s own content areas, but also being aware of things one doesn’t know and seeking to learn. It can be generalized more broadly to involve the effort of leaders to enlist peers and others in the process of organizational learning. For example, Evans described his collaborative relationship with the new Chief Marketing Officer and how this relationship has given him new perspectives on the patient experience and its relation to the consumer experience. Because his background was in theology, when Rick Evans began in healthcare, humility was an antidote to the imposter syndrome that he occasionally felt early in his career and enabled him to continue learning. Summing it up, he stated, humility involves “a real true understanding of who you are what you're good at, and what you're not.”
Rick Evans also shared the importance of what he described as “having a point of view in a brand.” Within the context in which one works, having a point of view relates to areas in which one is expected to contribute as well as the areas one is passionate about. His organizational point of view includes culture; diversity, inclusion, and belonging; and wellness. As he explained “I can sometimes be the person in our senior team that will bring up the thing that others can't talk about, because somehow when I say it, because of who I am, it allows the topic to come forward. I choose that [role] very carefully, because you can overplay that. But sometimes I can bring something up and make it safe to talk about because people know my background.”
During the pandemic, Rick Evans described how the searing experiences of loss brought home the importance of being authentic as a leader and being able to speak one’s truth, to share how one feels in an appropriate way, and by doing so, create the space for others to share their genuine feelings and perspectives. He concluded his talk by noting the great talent in the room and with an exhortation to the graduate students as leaders in their organizations to “go on and do great things.”
