135: Leaders with Heart Lead with Humility

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In this episode, Heather speaks with Dustin Yowell, Director of Operations for Mercy Health Systems about his leadership style on humility and admitting mistakes, his time when he was not the best version of himself and his perspective on resilience in leadership.

Key takeaways: 

• Humility in leadership is essential.
• Setting goals and being clear about expectations is not the opposite of leading with heart—it is leading that way.
• Focus on enduring past the pandemic.

This episode will surely empower your leadership with heart. Listen and learn!
Dustin Yowell’s Full Bio

Dustin Yowell currently serves as the Director of Operations for Mercy Hospital Kingfisher and Mercy Hospital in Logan County.

Dustin has over 20 years of experience in managing healthcare organizations and he is adept at sales management, staff training, customer relations, presentation development, corporate budgeting, financial analysis and forecasting, contract negotiations, and strategic planning.

Dustin earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and a Masters degree in Business Administration at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Always Learning

I am growing as a leader. I have learned over the course of the last 20 years that you can never stop growing. You can never stop learning. That is true in multiple facets of leadership and even personal growth. I would like to think I am in a growing stage and I don’t know if I will ever get out of it. 

There are always something to learn. There are always things to improve on, particularly when you have other people’s lives to affect as a leader or supervisor.

Respectful Accountability

As leaders, our job is to hold people accountable. But you can hold people accountable and be a good human being in the process. That’s important for young leaders to understand.

At times, when people make mistakes, leaders think they have to just hammer someone to hold them accountable. That’s not the truth. There are ways to hold people accountable in ways that make sure they are growing and completing their job in the way they need to. It’s not one or the other.

If you aren’t working side by side with your people to set goals and to give them a path for the things to chase, how can you hold them accountable if you’re not part of that process with them?

My philosophy is more of: “It’s our job to get a, b, and c done. So, let’s figure out how we can do that together.” We all have roles. We all have ways to to spend our time, but let’s do this together. Let’s figure this out together and then we’ll chase it together, too. Things work better and your employees certainly would feel stronger about you if you’re side by side with them, caring about them and how successful they will be.

Collective Success

We have a responsibility when we have folks that work with us. These co-workers work with me and depend on me for good leadership and good support. So, it’s really my job to grow and get better.

I am supportive. When you have leadership responsibility, there are a number of things that come with that, and one is to support your employees in their professional growth and also in personal, like needing to balance their life and their responsibilities.

There’s nobody more important than the next person down the hall. That includes me, my bosses and everybody else. Within a hospital setting, if your environmental services staff aren’t keeping things clean, it doesn’t matter how good your administration is or how good your nurses are.

In my opinion, if you’re not humble, it’s hard to be a good leader. If you don’t have that ability, and the love and care in your heart, it’s really hard to be a good leader. Over time, humility taught me that it’s okay not to know everything.

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