Moments That Matter

During the 1990s, I had risen from a desk receptionist to a supervisor, managing non-clinical activities in a hospital department (not at my current employer). I had worked hard, and we had made real strides. At the time, I believed I was ready for more and could not understand why advancement felt out of reach.

But with the perspective that only time and growth can bring, I now see it differently. I was not being overlooked. I was still becoming. There were lessons I had not yet learned, experiences I had not yet lived, and a depth of leadership still being formed in me. What felt like a closed door was quietly shaping the leader who would one day know exactly how to open doors for others.

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At the time, I happened to be meeting with a dean at a local state university, and in passing, I mentioned my efforts to advance. She took it on herself to talk about it. She compared my situation to being an adult, but still living in the house where you grew up. “When you ask to drive or take the lead you are still viewed as the child,” she said. “When you are mature, it goes unnoticed. The organization’s mentality is to look outside for a grown-up, while the best person is already in the house.”

What she said has stayed with me ever since—not as a wound, but as a window. She reflected that organizations sometimes grow so accustomed to the brilliance in their midst that they stop seeing it as something to invest in, and start seeing it as something to rely on. Greatness, when it goes unnamed, can become invisible to the very place that helped shape it.

She was not accusing anyone. She was handing me a lens. And through that lens, I began to see something I had never considered: that my growth might require me to step into spaces where my potential was not yet known, so that it could be fully seen. She planted in me a hunger to keep becoming, to be a lifelong learner, to seek new perspectives, and to never allow comfort to be mistaken for a ceiling.

My first instinct was to take this information in as a victim. Look what my employer has done to me. Then I remembered another moment of connection, from when I was 19 years old. My grandmother had told me never to think of myself as a victim: “not a victim to your circumstances, to your mistakes, or to anything. Use all those experiences to learn and grow.”

It was eye-opening, that moment of connection with the dean. It gave me the confidence to start the next phase of my career. It especially mattered because she didn’t plan it. It emerged naturally, spontaneously, because she had the frame of mind to listen to me and see me clearly. The fact that someone did this for me showed me that I mattered.

Living and Leading with Love

I am now in the legacy stage of my career, and I sometimes find myself on the other side of these moments, doing something similar for others, often without realizing its importance to them. Recently, an employee mentioned in passing that she was taking on a second job. I had worked second jobs myself, but only when I was young, and she was in her 60s. So I asked what was going on.

“Well, prices have gone up,” she said, “and I may be about to lose my house.”

She didn’t ask me to help, but I kept thinking about it, and I sent her a link to a credit counseling agency I knew was trustworthy. The next day, she sent me a copy of the arrangement she had made through them, in which they reduced some of her payments and would help her get back on track. “Lisa, this is a no-brainer,” she said. “I love you.” It caught me off guard. And then I recognized the feeling—it was the same thing I had felt toward that dean years before. A moment of connection, unplanned, resonating in ways neither of us could have predicted.

I oversee patient and community access across the 17-hospital University Hospitals system in Cleveland. The two thousand people who report to me handle intake, the call center, referral management, pre-certification, and collecting payments—every point where a patient first encounters the institution. There is a great deal of formal procedure and technology in our patient interactions, but I’ve come to understand that the core element is moments of connection: conversations between the patients and the people at UH. Every encounter—not just with the doctors, nurses, and therapists, but with the intake, call center, and billing staff—affects the patient relationship in profound ways, ways we don’t always anticipate.

Moreover, our staff experience affects our patient experience. If our staff feel respected, they will pass that on to every individual they encounter. Here, too, moments of connection matter more than we expect.

Since 2021, University Hospitals has undertaken a transformation in how it leads and operates—an initiative called Living and Leading with Love. The name draws skepticism; I have heard people make jokes about it. But the results have been powerful and measurable: improved engagement, lower turnover, stronger outcomes. Its ideas about human-centric care and accountability have raised the stakes for all of us. Yet amidst all of this, the moments that matter are often overlooked.

A moment that matters is an exchange with another human being that changes something in their lives. It helps someone in a way that they remember, and that reverberates for generations. Healthcare is a natural place to experience these moments, because there is always a human element to it. Personally, the presence of moments like this is one of the greatest blessings of my life.

You can’t design those moments or force them. They occur naturally when people trust one another. That’s why, if you want a genuine connection in a healthcare organization, you have to create the conditions for trust. The workplace has to make room for people to show love: to be empathetic, act with integrity, hold themselves and others accountable, provide service to others, and demonstrate courage and compassion.

The Living and Leading with Love initiative has not changed the way I think about leadership. I thought this way all along. It has, however, given me and others more opportunities to act as true leaders, as leaders who understand people. Love and accountability are catalysts; they make us more capable as we work with people. Here are some of the experiences in my life that helped me understand this.

The Why Behind Unconditional Love

Our ability to create moments that matter reflects our own trajectory, starting with early childhood. My mother was a brilliant nurse who gave her life to the care of others. In many generations, love was not something you said; it was something you saw. It was in the sacrifice, the showing up, the dedication to something greater than yourself. And in her final chapter, she found her way to something even deeper: she reconciled, and love became her closing word. That matters to me more than I can express. My father was a steady and loving presence who poured belief into me every single day. Through him I learned what it feels like to be seen, affirmed, and unconditionally valued. From both of my parents, in their own unique ways, I learned that love leaves a mark, and that mark becomes the foundation from which you lead.

As I heard my father’s stories, I understood the “why” behind that type of unconditional love. I decided at a young age that if I had children, I would treat them the same way, telling them how valuable they were. As I grew older, that decision expanded to include people in general. I recognized, early in my life, that people have a craving for connection. They need to hear that someone cares about them.

I started reading about positive psychology: how people can thrive based on what is said to them. I chose a career where I thought I could be of value to others, and help change their lives. I learned how to flip negative views: to take adversity and use it for fuel, as my grandmother had said.

I brought this perspective to my professional practice. Everyone who walks through the door carries a full life with them, things we may never see but that shape every interaction. They have stories, struggles, and strengths quietly present beneath the surface. I learned to lead by looking for the whole person, to seek what was possible in someone rather than what was problematic. Affirmation and empowerment became my practice because I had seen firsthand the transformation that happens when someone is truly seen and believed in.

Faith, Fire, and My First Promotion

There comes a moment in every journey when hard work meets divine timing. For me, that moment did not arrive with trumpets. It came quietly. I was still at the reception desk of my previous employer, seeking to advance myself. I was learning to balance being a young mother, a provider, and a woman trying to build a career in healthcare.

The front desk had taught me discipline. The clinic taught me endurance. I was often the first one in the clinic: turning on lights, checking the day’s schedule, and setting up the workspace so everything ran smoothly. By the time the first patient arrived, I had already handled what felt like an entire day’s worth of preparation.

But here is what most people did not see. I was also a mother trying to hold it all together. I would check my watch between patient calls, counting the minutes until I could make sure the babysitter had picked up my children on time. I was exhausted, but I refused to let that exhaustion show. I wanted people to see my reliability, not my fatigue.

When the opportunity for a new position opened, I did not think I had a chance. I had no degree beyond my medical assisting certificate, no formal leadership title, and no mentor whispering in the right ears. What I did have was consistency. I was about to learn that sometimes God’s favor shows up looking like preparation.

The day my supervisor called me into her office, I thought I was in trouble. Instead, she said, “Lisa, you are the kind of person who holds this place together. I am promoting you.”

I sat in silence for a moment, letting the words sink in. My first thought was not excitement. It was disbelief. Promotions were not something people like me received. I was the girl who worked two jobs, who had two kids by twenty, who still took the bus to work. Yet there I was, being recognized for the very thing I had spent years perfecting: quiet, steady excellence.

That first promotion was small by corporate standards, but it was monumental to me. It changed more than my title. It changed my confidence. It confirmed that diligence could be my currency. It also showed me that I could be humble and still be heard. From that moment on, I promised myself never to confuse humility with silence.

I also saw that the door does not always open when you knock. Sometimes it opens because you have been faithful enough to stay standing there.

Faithfulness, Fire, Favor

As I began managing others, I realized that leadership is not about telling people what to do. It is about helping them believe they can do it. I started seeing my coworkers not as competitors, but as teammates. I learned to listen. I learned that people will forgive mistakes if they trust your intentions.

The climb from that point forward was not easy, but it was purposeful. Every new task, every late night, and every unexpected challenge was molding me into a leader who understood that power means service, and that service is sacred work.

Those early days were full of lessons:

Faithfulness matters. What you do in private eventually speaks louder than what you announce in public.

Fire matters. Passion does not need permission. It burns quietly in people who have something to prove: not to others, but to themselves.

Favor matters. When it is your time, no one can block what God has written with your name on it.

Telling the Truth

I am deeply grateful for the organization where my career began. They gave me my start, and everything I learned there became the soil from which I grew. At the time, there were moments when I felt I was being overlooked. But maturity has given me a different lens. Looking back now, I can see that I was not being passed by. I was being prepared. There were lessons still taking shape in me, capacities still developing, wisdom I had not yet earned. The very experiences I once questioned were quietly building the leader I would need to become. I left with a full heart and a clear sense of purpose, carrying every lesson as a gift I did not fully understand until much later.

What that season taught me is that leadership decisions, when left unexplained, can leave people feeling unseen. I began to reflect on how often we lead from what is familiar and comfortable rather than from what is possible. I asked myself: what would it look like to lead differently? What would it mean to truly see people, to invest in their potential, and to be honest enough to help them grow even when the answer is hard to give? Those questions became the foundation of how I lead today.

People are a leader’s most sacred responsibility. Surrounding yourself with talented, diverse thinkers whom you can teach, inspire, and prepare is not just strategy; it is stewardship. And when someone asks why they were not selected for a role, I believe we owe them a real answer, one that is honest, specific, and given in love, so they can use it to grow. That is not a difficult conversation. That is a moment that matters.

There are moments in leadership that are deeply difficult, including times when you must make decisions that affect someone’s livelihood. I have learned that how you show up in those moments defines your character far more than the decision itself. You get ahead of it. You sit with people. You explain the why with honesty and compassion. You do not deflect or distance yourself from the weight of it. You carry it with them, because that is what love in leadership looks like.

I have come to understand that when leaders speak of wanting to be feared, what they are often expressing underneath is a longing to matter, to be taken seriously, to have their leadership felt. That longing is deeply human. The pivot is learning to channel it. Fear may produce compliance, but it never produces commitment. What people truly crave from their leaders is not fear; it is safety. Safety to be honest, to take risks, to grow, and to bring their whole selves to the work. Amy Edmondson captures this beautifully in The Fearless Organization, a book I have shared with many leaders as an invitation to see their influence differently.

When leaders make that shift, something remarkable happens. Trust grows. Honesty flows. People stop performing and start contributing. The culture changes not because of a mandate, but because someone chose to lead with love instead of leverage. That is the kind of leader I aspire to be every day, and the kind of culture I believe every organization deserves.

Confidence

Confidence is one of the most misunderstood gifts a leader can carry. I have come to see it not as a declaration, but as a quiet act of love toward yourself and toward the people you serve. When you know who you are, you create space for others to discover who they are.

As I grew in my leadership, I learned that how others receive your confidence is often a reflection of their own journey, not a judgment of yours. There were moments when my assurance was received in ways I did not expect. Rather than retreating, those moments became invitations for me to go deeper inward, to ask myself what I truly knew, and to let that knowing steady me. My confidence was never arrogance. It was conviction, rooted in purpose.

Confidence is built in the quiet hours. It is shaped by every early morning, every late night, every system learned and every challenge faced with integrity. It is not something you announce. It is something you become. And when you have done the work, using your voice is not a right you claim; it is a responsibility you carry on behalf of everyone who needs to hear it.

True confidence is not born in moments of applause. It is forged in moments of silence, when you must believe in what God placed inside you even before the world acknowledges it. It grows when you make the hard call, stand on principle, and choose what is right over what is comfortable. And it deepens when you realize that your steadiness gives others permission to find their own.

I remember sitting in one particular meeting, having prepared deeply, when someone said to me, “You seem very sure of yourself.” I smiled and said, “I am sure of the work.” That moment became a pivot for me. It was not a confrontation; it was a clarification.

Confidence anchored in preparation is not about pride. It is about purpose. When you have done the work, lived the problems, and brought your whole self to the table, your assurance becomes a gift to the room, not a disruption of it. It invites others to rise to the same standard. That is not arrogance. That is alignment.

My confidence has never been in myself alone. It is rooted in the God who called me, equipped me, and walked with me through every door. Confidence anchored in calling is unshakable because it does not belong to you alone; it belongs to every person you are meant to serve. You cannot shrink to make others comfortable when your fullness is exactly what they need.

Confidence, at its best, is not loud. It is steady. It is the calm assurance that you belong in every room you enter, and that your presence there is purposeful. When that kind of confidence walks in, it does not intimidate; it illuminates. It makes space for others to believe that they belong too.

And with confidence comes a beautiful responsibility. It means leading with empathy, extending grace to those who are still finding their own footing, knowing when to speak and when to simply listen. It means using your strength to lift others rather than to distinguish yourself. The leaders who change lives are not the ones who talk about themselves. They are the ones who show up prepared and then turn that preparation into a ladder for someone else to climb.

My grandmother used to say, “Let your walk speak louder than your words.” She was teaching me something I would spend a lifetime practicing: that greatness does not need an announcement. Consistency is its own declaration. And when you walk in that truth, you give others the courage to walk in theirs.

I have been called intimidating, and I have been called inspiring. I have learned to hold both with grace, because both tell me that my presence is felt. What matters most is not how I am perceived, but whether the people I lead feel seen, valued, and equipped to become more than they imagined.

So when someone wonders where confidence like this comes from, my answer is simple. It comes from knowing your worth, honoring your work, and walking in your witness. It comes from understanding that you were made on purpose, for a purpose, and that the world needs what only you can bring. That is not just enough. That is everything.

Opening Doors

When I stepped into my role at University Hospitals, I was met with a moment of profound accountability. The turnover in our area was significant, and rather than look outward for answers, I felt called to look inward. What were people not feeling? What was missing? I believed then, as I do now, that when people leave, they are telling us something important. My responsibility was to listen.

What emerged from that listening, and from our Consumer Experience discovery sessions, was a training program called Opening Doors to Better Health. It begins with a video showing ordinary human interactions in healthcare: a patient crying as you walk past, a colleague struggling with a problem, the small choices we make dozens of times a day that we often do not even notice. Then we return to the fundamentals: our emotions, the power of kindness, the lost art of speaking to one another with care. Things that are simple in theory but profound in practice.

We took this work across our hospitals, and what happened in those rooms moved me every time. People would linger afterward, not rushing to leave, but standing in line to share what the experience had stirred in them. Again and again, the response was the same: this brings me back to why I came to healthcare in the first place.

The work grew. Leadership and frontline teams learned side by side, because we believed that culture belongs to everyone. We built curriculum, measured progress, and created pathways for recognition. The engagement moved. The turnover stabilized. But none of that was the goal. It was the evidence that something real had shifted.

Because the numbers are not the point. The point is what happens when someone walks up after the training and says quietly, this is who I wanted to be when I came to healthcare. That is the moment that matters. That is the moment that reminds me why accountability and love are not opposites. They are partners.

The System-Wide Power of a Single Moment

Recently I sat in a meeting of our revenue cabinet, a room full of brilliant senior executives who had dedicated their careers to the financial health of our organization. We were looking at a process diagram for how billing flows through the system, and there was a decision point in the middle: every transaction is assigned to either hospital billing, largely comprised of inpatient services, or physician billing, largely outpatient and clinic-based services. Each team had built expertise and structure around their respective work, doing exactly what they had been asked to do. It was a testament to how much care had gone into building each function.

Then Peter Pronovost, the director of clinical quality and transformation, asked a simple question: “Hospital billing and physician billing always join together. Why is this a decision point instead of a connecting point?”

The room got quiet. Everyone said, “Yes, you’re right.”

That question unlocked something. It was a moment of collective brilliance, the kind that only happens when talented people feel safe enough to think out loud together. What emerged was a recognition that the physicians serving patients in outpatient clinics are the same physicians serving those same patients in the hospital. The work flows together, even when the systems that support it have grown separately. By bringing those systems into alignment, we could remove friction for patients, accelerate payment, and honor the full picture of care that our teams were already delivering.

That question opened a door. The room began to imagine what it would look like to bring every part of the billing ecosystem together: hospital billing, physician billing, anesthesia, nursing, coding, scheduling, all at one table, defining shared procedure names, codes, and standards. One set of mapping rules. A single source of truth. Not because anyone was wrong, but because together we could be so much more right.

The team piloted the approach, starting in one area, then moving to others as the results spoke for themselves. Work became more streamlined. Payment moved faster. But perhaps most meaningfully, people from across the organization found themselves in the same room, talking to each other, discovering shared challenges and building shared solutions. Once that kind of connection begins, it does not stay contained. It spreads.

That moment shaped a lens that has stayed with me in every room since. Great leadership asks: what is the outcome we are truly trying to create? And then it works backward, clearing every barrier that stands between the people we serve and the care, the service, the experience they deserve.

That meeting was a moment that mattered because it reframed the way a room full of brilliant people began to think. When we shift from asking what went wrong to asking what is possible, everything opens up. Curiosity replaces judgment. Collaboration replaces isolation. People lean in rather than pull back. And the organization discovers that its greatest solutions were already in the room, waiting to be unlocked together.

Understanding the Other Person’s Perspective

We talk a great deal about patient-centered care. In one meeting, a physician made a comment that landed with weight in the room. What he said created immediate tension, and it would have been easy to move past it. But something in me paused. I sensed there was more beneath the surface than what had been expressed.

Rather than assume, I went looking for clarity. I reviewed his patient outcomes, his satisfaction scores, his comments, everything that reflected his practice. What I found was someone deeply committed to the people in his care, one of the most attentive physicians I had encountered. The data and the moment did not match. That gap was worth understanding.

I asked to sit with him, and I came with what the data showed me. I shared that everything reflected a physician who was truly present for his patients. Then I simply asked: help me understand what you meant.

He paused, and then he offered something far more honest than what had been said in the meeting. What he was really expressing was that he felt unseen too. That the focus on patients, while right and necessary, had left him wondering whether anyone was thinking about the people providing the care.

That was the real conversation, and it only became possible because someone chose to ask rather than assume. I thanked him genuinely. And then I asked him to help me understand more, because his experience mattered and his perspective was one we needed to hear.

He shared what his days truly looked like, the weight of the expectations, the documentation that followed him home, the tension between being a healer and meeting every measure. He was not resisting the mission. He was carrying more than anyone had stopped to acknowledge. Hearing that changed something in me.

From that honest exchange, we were able to share a resource, a tool called Signal, that could meet him where he was, offering brief learning moments tied to his own patient interactions and lightening the documentation that followed him after hours. It was not a fix handed down. It was a response to being heard.

He embraced it immediately. But what stayed with me was far bigger than the tool. It was the question underneath the moment: how many conversations like this one are waiting to happen? How much clarity is sitting just beneath the surface of a comment we almost walked past?

Understanding another person’s perspective is one of the greatest gifts we can offer in leadership. It requires us to pause before we conclude, to ask before we assume, and to create enough safety that people feel free to tell us what they really mean. When we do that, we do not just solve problems. We build trust. And trust is the foundation from which every moment that matters is made possible.

One Minute that Changes the Culture

What I have come to understand, after years of leading, learning, and looking inward, is that culture does not shift because of programs or policies. It shifts because people do. And people shift when they feel seen, valued, and safe enough to be curious about one another.

The moments that have moved me most in this work have not been in boardrooms or strategy sessions. They have been in the spaces in between. A physician who paused long enough to say what he truly meant. A board member who chose vulnerability over authority. Two people who stopped, even briefly, to truly acknowledge one another. Each of those moments began with someone choosing to look inward first, and then reaching outward.

Not long ago I walked into a building and heard a woman say good morning. Something in her voice made me curious, and I paused to ask where she was from. In the minute it took us to walk from the door to the elevator, she shared a story about a small town I had never heard of, and I shared a genuine interest I did not know I had. When she stepped onto the elevator, she said, “Thank you for stopping and asking.” I said, “Thank you for letting me in.”

One minute. Both of us walking away changed, even if only slightly. That is what continuous curiosity looks like in practice. It is not a strategy. It is a choice, made in small moments, to remain open to the person right in front of you. And those small moments compound. They become the invisible architecture of trust that holds an organization together long after any program has ended.

Moments that matter are not manufactured. They are not found in training modules, though those modules can awaken us to the awareness that makes moments possible. They emerge when people are willing to look inward with honesty and reach outward with love. They arise when curiosity replaces assumption, when presence replaces performance, and when we finally understand that the most powerful thing a leader can do is make another person feel that they matter. That has been the work of my career. That is the work I will never stop doing. And I declare with everything in me: the world changes one moment at a time, and any one of us can be the one who creates it.

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