School of Health Sciences

Executive Education

Executive Education in the Simmons School of Health Sciences (SHS) is designed to promote the development of effective leadership skills for clinicians and administrators working in health care settings. Our programs emphasize:

• Intense participant-participant and participant-faculty interaction
• A focus on action-learning as opposed to traditional discipline learning
• A philosophy of instruction that emphasizes frameworks, approaches, and methods rather than answers

All SHS executive programs are customized, usually by means of a process that involves a needs assessment such as 360-degree feedback surveys. In our customized programs, participants benefit from tailoring of the interaction and content to actual organizational challenges. In line with our philosophy of facilitating evidence-based management, at the conclusion of the program, there should be demonstrable and sustainable improvements as measured by a post-program administration of the 360-degree survey and by organization sponsor feedback. Because the Health Administration Program in the School has been a model program for the National Center for Healthcare Leadership competencies, executive programs generally focus on:

• Strategic orientation (appreciating forces that are shaping health over the next decade; developing long-term strategies to position the organization for success over the next decade; helping to shape the organization's competitive position through, for example, policymaking forums)
• Process management and organizational design (mapping and analyzing operations; identifying benchmarks and best practices; assessing organizational structure and systems; creating new structures and systems and measuring actual improvements)
• Change leadership (identifying the need for change and expressing a vision of change; challenging the status quo; energizing others for change)
• Innovative thinking (recognizing patterns; using analogies and metaphors; creating new concepts not obvious to others)
• Conflict resolution (diagnosing roots of conflict; effectively confronting differences; seeking common ground; negotiating for improved behaviors and performance)
• Communication (staying on topic; engaging in nondefensive intellectual challenge; active listening; facilitating group interactions with regard to good meeting and time management)
• Relationship building (developing informal contacts; establishing important relationships with key leaders; sustaining strong personal networks)
• Interpersonal understanding (recognizing and interpreting emotions; attending to the feelings of others; creating greater diversity in problem-solving)
• Self-development (routinely seeking feedback from others; reflecting on impact of self on others; analyzing own future developmental needs)

For individual participants, our programs should demonstrably improve their confidence, visibility, and credibility, both as mentors and coaches for other professionals and for their teams, and in support of organizational change. Demonstrable improvements in participants' competencies, as described above, should improve clinical and services operations and the institution's position in the complex interorganizational network in which it operates.