In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, Mike Harbour takes on a quieter, more dangerous breakdown in leadership—what happens when teams believe they’re aligned, but that alignment never reaches execution.

He walks through a pattern seen repeatedly in healthcare organizations: strong strategy, clear intent, and apparent agreement at the top—followed by slow, fragmented execution across the system. Not because leaders don’t care, but because alignment stopped at words and never translated into behavior.

Mike breaks this down in stages, showing how misalignment stays hidden early on, then surfaces through slowed decisions, siloed execution, and increasing pressure on middle leaders. As clarity fades, leaders begin optimizing for their own areas, managers are forced to interpret direction, and frontline teams create workarounds just to keep moving.

The episode challenges a common assumption: that agreement equals alignment. In reality, most teams align on language—not on tradeoffs, risk, or what execution actually requires.

One of the key takeaways: strategy doesn’t fail at the point of intent—it fails in the gap between what’s said and what’s consistently reinforced through decisions and behavior.

If you’re trying to ensure your strategy actually shows up in day-to-day execution, this episode will help you see where that breakdown begins and what it takes to close it.

If you found this episode valuable, be sure to leave a 5-star review and share it with another leader. For questions or to continue the conversation, reach out to Mike at Mike@harbourresources.com.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour sits down with Scott Becker, founder and publisher of Becker’s Healthcare, to explore what separates organizations that grow from those that stall—and why leadership evolution is at the center of it.

Drawing from decades of experience building businesses across healthcare, media, and professional services, Scott breaks down the stages leaders must move through as their organizations grow. He explains why many leaders become the limiting factor without realizing it, and how the shift from doing everything to delegating to building teams that outperform you is what ultimately determines whether an organization can scale.

They discuss where companies—and hospital leadership teams—most often get stuck, particularly in the transition from individual contribution to true team-based execution. Scott highlights the risks of staying too involved, the hidden cost of leadership bottlenecks, and why organizations slow down when decisions, priorities, and direction continue to run through a single point.

The conversation also explores the importance of focus, hiring, and role clarity. Scott emphasizes that growth doesn’t come from doing more—it comes from knowing where you can win, building the right team around that, and consistently reinforcing it. He also addresses a common tension in healthcare: balancing team engagement with patient-centered outcomes, and why both must be held as top priorities.

One of the key takeaways: the true measure of leadership is not how much depends on you—it’s how well the organization performs without you as the constraint.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a 5-star review on your streaming platform. Mike encourages you to reach out to him at Mike@harbourresources.com to share your thoughts and suggest future topics.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour sits down with Tom Dahlborg, healthcare executive and author of From Heart to Head and Back Again, to examine what happens when leadership becomes overly transactional in a system that depends on human connection. Drawing from his experience as both a leader and a patient, Tom challenges the assumption that better outcomes come from better metrics—and instead points to the standard of leadership underneath them.

They discuss why healthcare has seen limited progress in patient safety and experience despite decades of focus, and how an overreliance on measurement, incentives, and control has shifted leadership away from its core responsibility. Tom explains how well-intended systems can unintentionally strip away intrinsic motivation, turning meaningful work into transactional activity—and why that shift shows up as burnout, disengagement, and moral injury across teams.

The conversation also explores the difference between managing outcomes and leading people, and why many leaders default to fixing systems without first examining their own role within them. Tom emphasizes the need for courage, self-reflection, and a willingness to make decisions that prioritize what is right—not just what is rewarded.

One of the key takeaways: organizations don’t get better results from new strategies alone—they get them from leaders who are willing to operate at a higher standard, especially when it’s difficult.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a 5-star review on your streaming platform. Mike encourages you to reach out to him at Mike@harbourresources.com to share your thoughts and suggest future topics.

You can learn more about Tom here and find his book on Amazon.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour sits down with Emily Craig, Vice President of Palliative Care at Constellation Health, to explore what it actually takes to build leaders in fast-growing, high-pressure healthcare environments. Drawing from her experience scaling a multi-state palliative care program, Emily shares how leadership—not strategy—is what ultimately determines whether priorities hold or begin to drift.

They discuss the common mistake of promoting strong clinicians into leadership roles without preparing them for the decision-making demands that come with it. Emily explains why hiring for character and connection matters more than technical skill, and how leaders can identify the qualities that truly translate into effective leadership under pressure.

The conversation also highlights how to develop leaders without compromising productivity, maintain culture across geographic scale, and build trust when you can’t be physically present. Emily emphasizes the importance of strong onboarding, consistent communication rhythms, and treating people with humanity—while still holding high standards.

One of the key takeaways: while skills can be taught, who someone is cannot—and that distinction shows up quickly in leadership and decision-making.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a 5-star review on your streaming platform. Mike encourages you to reach out to him at Mike@harbourresources.com to share your thoughts and suggest future topics.

On this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour talks with Joel Sylvester, Partner and Chief Client Officer at Five Star Call Centers, about leadership, workforce challenges, and how AI is transforming recruiting, training, and coaching across large, distributed teams.

For healthcare leaders facing staffing shortages, rising labor costs, and the need for consistent patient experience, this conversation explores practical ways technology can support frontline teams.

Joel shares how AI can dramatically speed up hiring and improve candidate fit by converting resumes into applications, enabling voice-based job applications, instantly screening candidates, and conducting avatar-based interviews. These tools can reduce time-to-hire by up to 70% while improving the experience for both candidates and hiring teams.

The discussion also explores how AI-powered analytics can help leaders coach and retain employees more effectively. By analyzing recorded interactions, sentiment, and speech patterns, organizations can identify performance gaps, predict retention risks, and provide real-time coaching and personalized training.

Mike and Joel also discuss how healthcare organizations can use AI to rapidly build SOPs, knowledge bases, and training resources, helping teams scale through complexity, maintain compliance, and close critical skill gaps across departments and locations.

If you’re a healthcare leader looking for ways to strengthen your workforce, improve operational consistency, and leverage technology to support your teams, this episode offers practical insights you won’t want to miss.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a 5-star review on your streaming platform. Mike also encourages you to reach out at Mike@harbourresources.com to share your thoughts on the episode or suggest topics you’d like covered in future conversations.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour shares four non-negotiables that prevent most leadership failures, arguing that most performance problems stem from management shortcuts made months or years earlier.

He outlines the fundamentals: select with intent, create clarity at the edge, lead through rhythm, not rescue, and develop through truth. Mike emphasizes that hiring is a leadership act and that bad hires carry major costs, while clear, documented expectations and strong onboarding prevent misalignment and conflict.

He explains that consistent leadership rhythm (especially protected one-on-ones) builds trust, engagement, and retention, and that leaders should coach before crises arise. Finally, he stresses frequent, specific, balanced feedback to build psychological safety, prevent surprises in reviews, and accelerate growth through truth delivered with care and consistency.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a 5-star review on your streaming platform. Mike encourages you to reach out to him at Mike@harbourresources.com to share your thoughts on this episode and suggest topics you would like him to cover in the future.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour welcomes longtime healthcare executive Michael Korpiel for a conversation on values-based leadership in today’s hospital environment.

Michael shares insights from a career spanning public, private, academic, and faith-based health systems, including his experience as an interim CEO and how that season reshaped his leadership approach. The discussion explores the power of permission in leadership, the difference between long-term planning and decisive execution, and how servant leadership creates sustainable operational results.

They examine what it means to lead a service-driven organization under financial and workforce pressure, why culture is never an HR initiative but a CEO responsibility, and how mission and values must move beyond statements on the wall to daily operational decisions. Michael also discusses the importance of leader visibility, physician engagement, continuous improvement, and building an organization you would trust with your own family’s care.

The episode closes with practical reflections for the next generation of healthcare leaders on anchoring to values, building trust across all levels of the organization, and leading with both clarity and humility in a high-pressure industry.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a 5-star review on your streaming platform. Mike encourages you to reach out to him at Mike@harbourresources.com to share your thoughts on this episode and suggest topics you would like him to cover in the future.

In this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, host Mike Harbour welcomes Anney Perrine, Partner and Senior VP of Growth at Palm Health, for the Elite Leader Series

The conversation explores how Palm builds leadership capacity and culture through director self-development, cross-department accessibility, leadership training, frequent check-ins around personal values, and shared frameworks like the five dysfunctions of a team. Annie also outlines Palm’s focus on “caring and collaboration,” reinforced through five North Star metrics and day-to-day behaviors that support member retention.

They discuss employee retention strategies, including treating employees as individuals, building community across diverse teams, celebrating wins at individual, team, and organizational levels, and hiring for values fit using a temperament and character assessment emphasizing cooperativeness and reward dependence. Annie closes by emphasizing meaning and purpose as central to sustainable performance, employee engagement, and the future of organizational culture.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a 5-star review on your streaming platform. Mike encourages you to reach out to him through Mike@harbourresources.com to share your thoughts on this episode & to share some topics you would like him to cover in the future.