When Leadership is a Team Sport
At the recent Quest for Excellence Conference in Baltimore, I was reminded—again and again—that when leadership is pursued as a team sport, rather than as an individual endeavor, truly extraordinary things can happen.
As you know, my work involves supporting organizations primarily in healthcare and human services who are pursuing ambitious visions—sometimes quietly, sometimes boldly, but always with deep commitment. This year’s Quest conference brought that reality to life in powerful ways and offered a vivid illustration of what it looks like when a leadership team plays full out together in pursuit of excellence.
A Leader Who Shares the Spotlight
I had the honor of attending Quest this year with Dell Anderson, his leadership team from Renew Grant Behavioral Health & Wellness in Washington State, and our colleagues from Thriving Together NCW. Dell received the Baldrige Foundation Leadership Excellence Award in Government, yet in true Dell fashion, he viewed the recognition not about him, but as an organizational achievement.
Dell invited his entire senior leadership team and closest advisors to the Quest in Baltimore. In his mind, this award belonged to the people who have been doing the hard work together—day after day—to guide Renew’s transformation to become a model of excellence in behavioral health & wellness.
For the past three years, Dell and his team have been pursuing a clear, ambitious vision. Together, we have:
- Clarified what “excellence” means for their organization, clients, and community
- Used principles, tools and processes of organizational excellence to guide continuous improvement
- Employed a structured approach (PuMP) to define the results and measures that guide their work and demonstrate their community impact
- Stayed grounded in the real purpose of their work: their clients—individuals and families across Grant County struggling with substance use or serious mental health challenges.
What stands out about Dell is his humility. As Renew’s reputation grows and the recognition accumulates, he consistently shines the light on his team, partners in the community, and the clients they collectively serve. His leadership is a vivid example of lighting the path, a phrase our mutual colleague Michael Gerharz uses to describe great leaders. Dell doesn’t just light the path; he walks it alongside his team.
Turning Continuous Improvement Into a Team Sport
Another highlight at Quest was reconnecting with Maulik Joshi, a colleague from graduate school, and seeing the work of his team at Meritus Health, a finalist for the Baldrige Performance Excellence Award.
What struck me about Meritus is how intentionally they have embraced the idea of leadership as a team sport. Given their affinity for sports, they don’t just talk about strategy, improvement and execution—they talk about their work as a playbook, complete with:
- Clear plays (strategic initiatives) that everyone understands
- Scorecards and scoreboards that make performance visible
- A shared understanding of what winning looks like for their patients, team members, and community.
They have taken a disciplined, team-based approach to continuous improvement and performance excellence. Maulik and his colleagues have used this mindset to:
- Align leaders around a common game plan
- Engage staff at multiple levels in executing and refining that plan
- Track progress in real time, adjusting their “plays” based on what the data and their people are telling them.
The result is a remarkable transformation at Meritus Health—one that they clearly attribute to playing “full out” as a leadership team rather than relying on any one individual. Their example shows that when you make the work of excellence tangible, visible, and shared, you invite more people into the game and dramatically increase your organization’s capacity to improve.
Learning From a Multi-Decade Team Journey
Quest is also a place where you can see what happens when leadership as a team sport is sustained over decades.
I was delighted to reconnect with Tom Raffio, CEO of Northeast Delta Dental and Chair of Excellence North Alliance (for VT, NH, ME). Tom is one of those genuinely selfless leaders whose influence you feel immediately. I first met him around 2002, when he and his senior leadership team welcomed my colleagues and me from Rutland Regional Medical Center (VT) to New Hampshire.
At that time, we were just getting started on our own excellence journey at RRMC and newly acquainted with the Baldrige framework for performance excellence. Tom and his team didn’t simply present slides; they opened up their playbook—sharing what was working, what they had learned along the way, and how they kept their team engaged in the journey. They invited us into their story so we could begin to write our own.
Fast forward to this year’s Quest, and Tom was there with a colleague, sharing lessons from their multi-decade commitment to excellence, having received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award last year. What stands out about Northeast Delta Dental is:
- Their long-term commitment to exceptional customer service and organizational excellence
- The way Tom and his team show up together, reinforcing that excellence is a shared responsibility
- Their openness in sharing not only achievements but also what they learned along the way.
Leaders like Tom demonstrate that when leadership is truly a team effort, excellence can be sustained and deepened over time, rather than being a short-lived initiative.
Scaling Leadership Across a National Ecosystem
Another notable example comes from Brian Lassiter, whom I met at my first Quest conference about 25 years ago. At the time, Brian was leading the Minnesota quality program, deeply engaged in supporting organizations on their excellence journeys.
Brian has recently been selected as the President and CEO of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, the collective of state and regional Baldrige-based programs. Under his leadership, the Alliance is now taking on an even larger role in the performance excellence ecosystem, including:
- Increasing awareness about the numerous benefits of performance management for organizational and community impact
- Training examiners to provide valuable feedback to organizations and communities
- Leading not only the state and regional awards processes, but now the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program as well.
Brian’s journey is a reminder that leadership as a team sport isn’t confined to a single organization. He is helping to shape an entire network of—leaders, examiners, and programs across the country—who are committed to raising the bar for performance excellence. His work underscores an important truth:
When we equip and connect groups, we don’t just transform one organization—we strengthen an entire ecosystem of excellence.
Player-Coach
My personal reflections this year naturally took me back to my own, first Quest for Excellence conference (in 2003) with my remarkable boss (the late) Tom Huebner, former CEO of Rutland Regional Medical Center. As an organization, we had just committed to integrating two excellence frameworks—the Baldrige framework for organizational excellence with the Magnet framework for nursing excellence—to pursue our bold vision:
To be the best community healthcare system in New England.
Partway through that first Quest together, Tom leaned over, showing me the notepad in his hand, and said, “Kathy, I’ve got my next ten to-do’s, and that’s all I can absorb! I’m going to catch the next plane home. You stay, soak in the rest, and bring it back.”
He darted out of the conference center, and in pure partnership fashion, we not only completed those ten to-do’s over the next year—we accomplished many, many more. Every year thereafter on our excellence journey, Tom ensured that I, and another colleague from Rutland Regional, attended Quest. We intentionally brought others into the journey, inviting them to lead major initiatives and to be inspired—and occasionally challenged—by what excellence truly requires.
Those firsthand experiences as an executive leading an organization-wide transformation to excellence shaped my understanding of what it means to lead an ambitious vision as a leadership team:
- The CEO doesn’t carry the vision alone
- Senior leaders are co-owners, not just implementers
- Change agents are true catalysts
- Emerging leaders shine when given access, responsibility, and support to grow
- AND…the organization’s patients, clients, and community remain at the center of every decision!
Your Ambitious Vision
This year’s Quest felt like a full-circle moment—25 years since I first embraced performance excellence and began a career centered on helping organizations, leaders, and communities genuinely pursue leadership and organizational excellence.
For many of you in healthcare and human services, the stakes are incredibly high. As my former CEO, Tom Huebner, often said:
“What patient wants to go to the 137th best community healthcare system?”
Your patients, clients, and communities deserve the very best!
Achieving that level of excellence is not about a single charismatic leader. It is about:
- Clarifying an ambitious vision and making it tangible and visible to all
- Building a team that plays as one—aligned, accountable, and courageous
- Creating structures for continuous improvement, learning, and innovation
- Establishing and refining approaches for running the organization in exceptional ways
- Honoring and involving staff at every level in the pursuit of the vision.
My hope is that the stories from Quest—and leaders like Dell Anderson, Maulik Joshi, Tom Raffio, Brian Lassiter, and Tom Huebner—will inspire you to consider:
Questions for Creating Your Excellence Advantage
✳️ How are you inviting your leadership team to truly co-lead the vision?
✳️ Where might you need to share the spotlight more intentionally?
✳️ What would it look like for your organization to play full out as a team in pursuit of excellence?
Because when leadership is a team sport, your organization doesn’t just get better—it becomes a model of what’s possible for the people and communities you serve.
If you’d like to receive these Inspirations in your inbox every other week, you can subscribe to Kathy’s Excellence Advantage Inspirations Newsletter.
Kathy Letendre, President and Founder of Letendre & Associates, advises organizations and leaders to create their excellence advantage.
Contact Kathy by phone or text at 802-779-4315 or via email.