Health care leaders are tasked with helping their organizations navigate complex change. The definition of success in leading change evolves over time, and the changes themselves, big and small, are constant. Leaders play a key role in helping their organizations succeed. As one of the California Improvement Network’s priority areas, resilient leadership is key to helping guide health care leaders to make and communicate decisions in a dynamic environment.

This page provides tools and strategies for building resilience, inspiring and motivating, fostering organizational alignment, developing powerful communication, and navigating change.

Resources listed on this page reflect the focus and interests of California Improvement Network partner meetings and will be periodically updated. They are organized reverse chronologically.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
This book offers insight into how leaders can approach constant change by inviting thoughts on how to feel, map, assess, and learn from the environment that surrounds and influences us. (Adrienne Brown, 2017)

Cultivating a Culture of Wellness

Co-Creating a Thriving Human-Centered Health System in the Post-Covid-19 Era
This New England Journal of Medicine article outlines how health care leaders can address the issue of workforce burnout, which has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Brian Park et al., NEJM Catalyst, June 23, 2020).

Leading Change
This seminal book outlining John P. Kotter’s eight-step process for leading change has become the foundation for leaders and organizations across the globe. (John Kotter, 2012)

The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders, 2nd ed.
An essential leadership guide outlining research on the psychology of leadership, a breakthrough case study on measuring improved leadership behavior, and studies revealing the importance of follow-through. (John Zenger and Joseph Folkman, 2009)

Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future
This book offers a look at the development of a new theory about change and learning. It will encourage readers to create a new sense of awareness leading to action that can help shape future learning. (Peter Senge et al., 2008)