Rachael Evers didn’t begin her career as a nurse with a plan to end up as an L&D leader. But her career had a “mind of its own,” and she found herself promoted from a practicing registered nurse to nursing home administrator. Along her career path, she learned from experience how in senior health, “people problems” are never separate from business problems. The demand for people skills shows up in staffing, trust, accountability, and resident experience (to name just a few examples).
Now, as the Director of Quality and Leadership Development at Lifespark, she sits in an unusually high-leverage role. She oversees both the technical side of quality—systems, processes, and outcomes—and “the human side,” which includes leadership effectiveness, team culture, and talent development. This gives her essentially three unique angles on her organization: Her view as a patient-facing nurse, her view as an operations leader, and her view as a talent development leader.
Across over 40 interviews with L&D leaders, the very best people programs all seem to have a knack for knowing the real needs of the business and then tailoring their training to those needs. Evers’ team’s work at Lifespark is a best-in-class example of this idea put to the test. As Evers said, “We take care of the people, and the results will come.”
Rachael Evers, Director of Quality and Leadership Development at Lifespark
Lifespark
Lifespark’s Leadership Journey Starts With Self-Awareness And Turns It Into Strategic Aptitude
Lifespark’s Leadership 1.0 program, offered monthly, is the entry point to leadership. It’s open to all senior living employees who are interested in leadership across the vast spectrum of job types (from running the kitchen to clinical practitioners and day-to-day operations). They cover core EI skills like strengths awareness, communication, and navigating a multigenerational workforce. “This program is about leaning in and understanding who you are,” Evers said. “That way you can be the best leader that you can be for yourself and for your team.”
Leadership 2.0 develops leaders with direct reports or formal leadership responsibilities. Leaders build on their strengths, clarify goals, think through where they need support, and learn to align around organizational priorities.
Emotional intelligence (EI) skills are woven throughout both Leadership 1.0 and 2.0. “We don’t look at emotional intelligence as a luxury,” she said. “It’s really what drives our performance, our culture, and our accountability.”
Making EI A Daily Part of Lifespark’s Culture and Rhythm
To bring their formal EI training to life, Evers’ team puts a lot of effort into operationalizing it.
For example, Evers trains leaders to do “relationship rounds,” a practical habit of walking the floor to do intentional check-ins. As she explained it, “Relationship rounding is really about checking in and asking your team questions like, what’s going on with you in your life? What support do you need from me within your role?”
On a broader, company-wide level which includes employees not only in senior living but home health, private-pay, primary care, and hospice, another example is the company’s monthly podcast, In Good Company, which highlights the humanness of the employees who work at Lifespark. As Evers put it, “Our people have a story that’s bigger than the role that they play within the company. Listening to the podcast you learn that some have written books or lived in other countries, and this expands and deepens our humanity as a company.”
Evers’ Top Two EI Strategies
Asked about her favorite emotional intelligence strategies, Evers pointed to two:
1. Assume positive intent. “That doesn’t mean that we’re ignoring things or excusing behavior,” she said. “It means starting from the belief that people are usually doing the best they can with the information or perspective they have in that moment.” Her advice is to “get curious, be hungry, ask questions.” This can help you avoid rushing to judgment, acting with bias, or making hasty emotional decisions.
2. Energy is contagious. Evers told me leaders should “always check their energy before you enter a space.” She compared it to employees crossing the line at Disney, where they step into an environment of performance. Leaders have that same choice every day. What are they bringing into the room? Is it helping? It’s an idea well-backed by the concept of emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is the research-backed idea that a leader’s mood acts like wi-fi, their team members picking up on the emotional signal of their leader and taking on that emotion as their own.
Lifespark’s Culture of EI Within Senior Living Will Be Their Lifeline As They Grow from 50 to 100 Communities in Just One Year
As Lifespark’s senior living business works toward doubling its number of communities from 50 to 100 by 2027, they will definitely need to flex their emotional intelligence skills. With such a mix of formal training and habit-based behavior, it seems likely they’ll be poised to thrive through their rapid growth. As Evers put it, “We’ll need to have our foot on the gas pedal, and our eyes on our people.”
Kevin Kruse is the Founder + CEO of LEADx, an emotional intelligence training company. Kevin is also a New York Times bestselling author. You can take his free EI Assessment here. It’s psychologically validated and gives you a score breakdown across each of the four core skills.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
