Gail Hunt: Meeting the Needs of the Future

(Access show transcript) Gail Hunt prioritizes being approachable and accessible to staff and connecting with the larger healthcare community in her role as President and CEO at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre.
Summary
Gail Hunt’s team at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Ontario describe her as being good at breaking down complicated things from a strategic perspective – a quality that helps lead the organization into the next decade. RVH recently announced a new 10-year strategic plan which has been carefully curated to ensure staff and the larger community feel connected, equipped, and excited long term.
“With the population growth in this area of the province, what do we need to be able to meet the needs of the future, meet the patient expectations, and have the team members here be able to fill all the roles”, says Gail when explaining one of the main priorities with their new strategic plan.
On our newest episode of Healthcare Change Makers, learn more about how RVH’s leadership will keep the momentum going with their strategic plan, ways in which Gail ensures she is approachable to staff, how to balance being an introvert in leadership, and much more! Also, stay tuned until the end to hear about Gail’s love for Jiu Jitsu!
Mentioned in this Episode
- Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH)
- RVH Foundation
- Pamela Ross
- Telus Friendly Future Foundation
- Dancing with Easter Seals Stars
- Adam Grant
Transcript
Imagine you could step inside the minds of Canada's healthcare leaders, glimpse their greatest fears, strongest drivers, and what makes them tick. Welcome to Healthcare Change Makers, a podcast where we talk to leaders about the joys and challenges of driving change and working with partners to create the safest healthcare system.
Michelle Holden: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Healthcare Change Makers. My name's Michelle and I'm with HIROC, and I'm here with my colleague Abi. We are so excited because the last episode was our 70th, and we are on today to our 71st episode. So I feel like we're going to get to 100 soon, Abi. I don't know about you.
Abi Sivakumar: I think so too, and today's episode is a special one. We have Gail Hunt from Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie.
Michelle Holden: Yes, we do. And Gail was here to chat with us a little bit about how she keeps stuff connected to their strategic plan, how she leads as a self-described introvert, and even jiu-jitsu. I was thinking, Abi, we often talk about the interviews like we're having a cup of coffee. We say that to our guests before we start recording. But with Gail, it honestly felt like we were sitting down and having one. I don't know how you felt.
Abi Sivakumar: Oh, I agree. I forgot we were in the podcast for a moment. Our conversations were amazing and I'm sure you'll think so too.
Michelle Holden: And so without further ado, we will let you have a listen. And as always, let us know what you think. If you have any feedback, please rate and review our episode. Hi, Gail. Thanks for joining us today.
Gail Hunt: Thank you so much for having me here.
Michelle Holden: So you've been at RVH for just over two years now. We were hoping to hear about the feeling those first few days and how you feel now when you walk through the halls of the hospital.
Gail Hunt: Yes, it's a lot different from the first few days. The first few days when I first arrived, the team had a 14-page listening tour document ready for me over the next...
Michelle Holden: That's big.
Gail Hunt: Really big. Over the next four to five months, going out through all the different departments in the organization. Some were off-site, some were on on-site, some were virtual. That was just at the tail end of hospitals having still no visitors and things like that. So it was a little overwhelming thinking like, oh my God, I have to meet everybody here in this period of time and still acquaint myself with everything that was happening in the role. So it was a little overwhelming.
These days, it's a really new team. The senior leadership team is new for the most part in the last two years because there was also several retirements just before I started. So building up the team and feeling more well-acquainted with the organization now and the departments and knowing a lot more names than I knew those first few days. It feels like home now, and it's much more comfortable than it was the first couple of days.
Michelle Holden: That must feel good to have that sense of being at home when you walk around. But I was just wondering, at RVH, how would the team describe you if we were to ask them?
Gail Hunt: I think they'd say I'm approachable. I think they say I'm very decisive. That's one of my superpowers probably. And that I'm good at breaking down complicated things into simple steps from a strategic perspective of where we need to move forward. And they'd probably say I have a really good sense of humor too. It's a stressful job. I mean, one of the things you have to have on a team is the ability to laugh and just laugh at yourselves to be able to deal with some of the stress you're under sometimes.
Michelle Holden: That's definitely important to have. I think we all need it in any role, especially in such a role as yours. But on the other end of it, how would your family or your close friends describe you?
Gail Hunt: Well, my adult children like to remind me every so often that I'm not the CEO of the house. I hear that from time to time when I'm bossing everybody around. But I think they would also say that I am very introverted and I like my quiet time. If the kids see me that I'm out on a weekend evening or something, it would surprise to them as always. If I've left the house on the weekend, it's usually for a work event. I'll try to stay home as much as I can otherwise, but I think that's how they would describe me.
Michelle Holden: So I was just wondering, backing up a little bit, if you can tell us a little bit about the hospital, about RVH, and the organization in general.
Gail Hunt: Yeah, so we are a regional hospital in the Simcoe County Muskoka region, and we had our last expansion I think in 2012. I think when they moved into the site here in Barrie, it was already too small. And so the team since just before I started, was really working on how do we meet the needs of this really growing population. So one of the things that we've been working on is our expansion on the site that we're on in Barrie and also on a site in Innisfil, because that southern end of the Barrie area and south of Innisfil has grown so rapidly.
So it's an interesting time at RVH because it grew from a smaller hospital and it's now so large, and it's a transition in culture as well to be servicing such a large population and have more and more regional programs that are servicing such a wide area and the pressure of that capacity with the population. So it's interesting to see as you need to transition to a different way of doing things sometimes because you're not as small as you used to be and you really need to change the way you do certain things when you're dealing with larger volumes and things like that.
So it's a really exciting time. You can see, we're really excited on the research side to try new things and do new things. And we have a lot of innovation in different departments about how they're dealing with the demands on healthcare as they exist right now. It can be really draining on individuals. But I see here at RVH that we have so many people who are just excited to be able to try new things.
And from a leadership perspective, it's really our job to how can we move barriers out of your way to be able to do these things that are really going to help patients at the end of the day and make this a better work environment for everybody here.
Michelle Holden: I love that and definitely a very big growing community. And I wanted to make sure we capture that because I know that some of our listeners are not necessarily in the local area, so just to get a sense of what the hospital is as a whole. I just wanted to chat a little bit because I know you launched a new strategic plan, a new 10-year strategic plan, which is a big undertaking, just rolling out this year. I wanted to ask how your leadership team keeps that momentum going to ensure that the staff and also the community feel connected to that plan now and then over the next 10 years?
Gail Hunt: Yes, for sure. It is a big role, a big job with the 10-year strategic plan. I think it really starts with the engagement we did beforehand. We did a lot of engagement. And I would say that post-COVID I jokingly referred to it as strategic plan fatigue because everybody postponed during COVID renewing strategic plans, so there was a real rush from a lot of organizations.
And I'll just speak from a healthcare perspective because we do a lot of consult with partners, but we were all getting invitations to provide information for consultations on our partner strategic plans and they were getting ours. So it was a lot of work to make it engaging enough or simple enough that people didn't feel like I don't want to answer another 20-page survey or anything like this.
So really getting to what sparked people's interest and what got them excited about what does healthcare look like, what does hospital and healthcare look like for you in the future? So it started with that and really getting the teams involved. Post-COVID they were really run down and burnt out. Adam Grant would call it the languishing that existed really in the population. So trying to get them excited about the future and what did they see.
We held special events inside the organization. ImagineFest was one of the things that we held for staff to be able to give us their feedback about what do they want to see and where do they see RVH 10 years from now. So we got really great buy-in from the team here. So that was great. We also know with the population growth and this area of the province, what do we need to be able to meet the needs of the future and meet the patient expectations and have the team members here to be able to fill all the roles we'll need as a population doubles over the next 20 years.
We knew what are the big moves we need to do and an academic health science center is one of those big moves. We do a lot of learning from all levels, medical learners and nursing and allied health and pharmacy. We do learning all across. We need to really focus that and strategize and develop a relationship with the medical school. That really helps us get to that end goal over the 10 years, because we know it's a journey.
It's a change in how we do things, and we need to slowly build our way up there. The relationship with medical schools really helps you ensure that you have that feeder system coming in that's going to help you make sure that you have the specialists and the physicians that you need as you grow. So having that is really a big deal, and really increasing on the research side. RVH does so much research right now.
We have an amazing team here and we run the largest clinical trials for community-sized hospitals. So that solidifying that Academic Health Science Centre will allow us to even grow that bigger and more robust. We're excited about those things. So really for us, it's we mapped out what some of our big moves are, and everything we do now we tie back to where is it taking us, where is that big move so that the team here can feel connected.
A lot of times a strategic plan can be so vague that it's hard as a frontline worker who's with the patients or cleaning the facilities or taking care of somewhere in the organization to really identify with the strategic plan, which means it ends up as this dusty document that you don't really deal with. One of the things that we're really trying to do is tie every goal we take on an annual basis back to this is part of the journey along to this big move that we all imagined previously that we get to and now we've put our stake in the ground that this is where we're headed and this is where we're going.
So we've really tried to relate that back to the team and embed our values as action oriented, be kind, team up, be bold, the things that we need people to be able to step up and do to be able to realize the things we want to get done.
Michelle Holden: Are those values new to the same timing as the strategic plan or were they always around?
Gail Hunt: They're all brand new. The previous strategic plan was 10 years old. And we felt like the environment had really changed post-COVID, and we felt we needed to really embed our values in actions that people could relate to. We have do great things and inspire trust, be kind, the things that we felt we could imagine ourselves doing. And that's how we make our choices.
On a day-to-day basis, the team faces different challenges and what was something they could root themselves in to be able to know if they were making the right decision when they're dealing with patient care or families' questions and things like that. Unusual things always pop up in healthcare and we can't have a manager at somebody's side throughout the day. So we want to empower the teams with action-oriented values that helps guide them to make the right decisions for themselves and for our patients and families.
Michelle Holden: That's great. No, I think that's important that they can feel connected to that and have those values with them. So you mentioned that you share the strategic plan with other organizations and you also do provide input on others, and you mentioned some really good pieces there, but do you have any advice for other healthcare organizations who might be undertaking a new strategic plan, something that you've learned in the last little bit?
Gail Hunt: Always getting engagement on your strategic plan is always a little bit difficult because it can seem too high level or it doesn't perhaps speak to somebody. Like healthcare, if you're not an active immediate user of hospital care at that point in time, you might not feel a sense of urgency or need to participate in a strategic planning process.
So it's finding different ways to engage with different stakeholders and really what speaks to them. So we spent a little bit more time trying to figure out what that looks like, and it's not always a traditional manner in which you would do that engagement, but it really made a difference. I would say even the ImagineFest that we held internally with the team, it had a Willy Wonka style theme and it was set up.
And really our communications team here at RVH did a really great job of translating that to something fun and in bite-sized pieces that could help guide us, but it was bite-sized so that it really wasn't overwhelming and too vague for people to identify with. So I would say take that time to make that engagement piece fun for the different parties that you're going to be speaking with, and the benefit was really great for that.
Michelle Holden: So back a little bit to you, a part of your leadership style that you've highlighted before in the past is being approachable and accessible to all the staff. Something you've been chatting about already, but what's something that you've implemented at RVH since you joined as CEO that makes this possible?
Gail Hunt: I think that one of the things I implemented was I'd like to once a year meet with the direct reports of my direct reports. Too often in the 24 years that I've been in healthcare, sometimes you find there's a difference in the messaging that you're sending out and what perhaps... Hospitals can be very hierarchical and sometimes your message gets somehow misinterpreted along the way.
So really connecting with a couple layers away from you on a regular basis gives you that feedback about is the culture building the direction that I'm aiming for and what my expectations are? Do people feel they can speak up about things? Do they feel connected to the vision? Is there changes that we've made as a senior leadership team that actually had unintended consequences that is getting in the way of our leaders to really get the things done that we're asking them to?
There's always unintended consequences of a few things. So it allows that opportunity for me to get some unfiltered discussions with the team members that I wouldn't normally get. I meet with the physician leaders as well. It takes a lot of time to get through all these leaders, but it's really well worth it. You just get such a good pulse on what is happening throughout the organization and what they're experiencing.
So it really helps you tweak what you're doing along the way when you find out that what you intended to happen isn't how it rolled out so you can make corrections and also allows you to know whether or not the message that you are sending out is being received that the way you wanted it to. It's really helpful that way and that's something I've implemented.
I think it's been a couple of years now that I've done it, and it seems to be going really well. And people feel a lot more comfortable with it this year than they did in the previous. The first time I did it, they were a little bit nervous about why they were getting called to come speak with me. They thought they had to prepare something or anything else, but it's just a casual discussion.
Michelle Holden: Yeah, I can see how that might happen.
Gail Hunt: Yeah, why does a CEO want to talk to me? I don't know why. What's going on?
Michelle Holden: A new CEO.
Gail Hunt: But it goes really well and they know me now a lot better. So they're a lot better casual discussions now.
Michelle Holden: I imagine you find that it eases over time, but those are in-person conversations that you just have.
Gail Hunt: Yeah, so it's really great.
Michelle Holden: Great. I want to pass things over to my colleague Abi. She might have a few questions for you that I haven't asked and later we'll move into the lightning round. But Abi, go ahead.
Abi Sivakumar: Hi, Gail, it's great to have you on.
Michelle Holden: Hi, Abi.
Abi Sivakumar: This is a bit off-script, but you mentioned earlier that you're introverted. I feel like there's a stereotype that you have to be super introverted to lead and to be successful. So what advice would you give to professionals on balancing being a successful leader while being more on the introverted side? Because I'm sure our listeners would relate.
Gail Hunt: I think I spent a lot of the first half of my career trying to fight against my introverted style and really force myself to do a lot of extroverted things. It can, like you say, keep that balance. It makes you really unbalanced. It's exhausting if it's not your natural state. So I think in the last probably decade or so, I've started to more own my style, which is one of the reasons probably why I'd like to do the one-to-one meetings, because for me developing those more deeper conversations is something that's more comfortable for me.
Other things that I've done as well is I tell the rest of my leadership team, this is an issue for me. I won't naturally want to go and put myself out there and things like that, but I'd love to go along as a buddy or something when you're going to visit with another department that I'm not. I don't know we're buddy in yet. Some departments you get more frequent interaction with. So as an introvert, once you know people well, you're comfortable. So the team is quite supportive of that.
And I've also set things in different really big social environments. Some of my team knows, as we lead up to this date, you know I'm going to whine about it and see if I can get out of going to this, but you have to stay strong and tell me I have to go. I'll be okay once I'm there, but don't let me jerk out of it or anything else like that. So the team's really good for those. I mean, I know what my behaviors are at this point in life, so it's just realizing what they are.
And also even with my own assistant, I have her challenge me when she can see I'm overbooking on things. Because out in the future it's easy to say, "I'm going to feel like doing it then." And as you arrive at that day, you're like, "Why did I schedule all these things?" So it's her giving me feedback. I feel this is one of those things, Gail, that you're going to say yes to now. But when it happens, you're going to say, "Why did I do this? Because I don't have time to manage all these engagements at one time."
So it's really once you own it and realize your own limitations. Because I think whether you're introverted or extroverted, you bring your own strengths and gifts to every role that you're in. And instead of trying to pretend to be something you're not, just owning what you are and letting the team know that that's what you're like and where they have to help lift you up or help support you in different ways to make sure you're still getting out there and doing the things you need to do in a role like this.
Abi Sivakumar: I'm taking notes. The way you described it's so, so relatable, but I love your point about embracing who you are naturally and learning to work with that. That's so important. And earlier this year you competed in Dancing with the Easter Seals, a dance competition to raise money for kids with physical disabilities. So what inspired you to be part of this competition and how'd it go?
Gail Hunt: It's funny to talk about this right after talking about being an introvert.
Michelle Holden: I was going to say this is very extroverted.
Gail Hunt: I have the CEO of our foundation actually, Pam Ross, to thank for this one. She talked me into this. I have certain I would say underlying values about really supporting our other organizations in the communities. A lot of times the hospital is often the big player in the community for fundraising and things like this and the smaller agencies in the community often have a harder struggle raising money. And she said, "It's really important, Gail, that we participate and help bring some more spotlight to Easter Seals."
This was four months away, so another problem with me saying, "Oh yeah, four months from now, I'll feel like doing this." So I did agree to it. And the thing about me is although I'm an introvert, I'm very competitive as well. So once I said I was going to do it, they had weekly dance lessons with us from a professional because you do dance with a professional when you're there. And you go for an hour once a week and you got to practice at home.
So I was practicing every night doing my steps at home and everything else for this competition because the thought of embarrassing myself publicly was enough to make sure I devoted sufficient time to it. But it was actually a great event. They did a fantastic job. It was a sold out crowd. I think they sell out every year. I didn't even know about it before I participated in it, but they do an incredible job here. And I have to say, usually I don't get anxious about things until the very last minute.
So they do have you out in the hall before they call you out to do your dance. So when they're out in the hall and the announcer is calling you out, before they open the doors, I thought at that moment I might have a heart attack before the door opened. And then you think the only thing you could think about is my mind is going blank and I don't know if I'm going to remember anything once I get out there.
But the fact that if you put enough practice in beforehand, you do remember it when you're out there. And as the professional dancer said, "Nobody else knows if you goofed up one of your steps, so don't worry about it," but it was an incredible event. The judges were good. One of our surgeons here was one of the judges, and the participation from the community was great.
So it was a great event. When it was over, I felt a lot better when it was done. And it went really well. I think I was the top fundraiser for the event. So I'm really proud that under the RVH umbrella we were able to bring some more light to Easter Seals and help them on their fundraising.
Abi Sivakumar: That's amazing being top fundraiser for that, and it's something challenging for you personally to push your personal limitations, I guess. And it's for a good cause. And speaking of good cause, you're also on the community board for the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation. Why is this an important table for you to be at?
Gail Hunt: This is I think another one referring to that same value about really looking out for the other smaller organizations in the community, and TELUS has a really great program. They're a Friendly Futures Foundation about supporting smaller organizations, really about the priority for youth. And they do a great job and it really takes volunteers. There's so many staff volunteers from TELUS that spend their time on this as well to help promote it and put it forward.
And they really do a great job for a lot of these little organizations that wouldn't otherwise qualify for a lot of government funding or things like this because they're smaller, but they really make such a big difference in the community. And I think as you work in a hospital, you really recognize a lot of gaps in the community for service for special groups and marginalized communities.
And a lot of these organizations that TELUS helps fund and lift up, really they wouldn't be able to manage without funders like that. And it makes a big difference even from a hospital perspective that these other agencies receive funding to be able to provide some services to a lot of these specialized, marginalized populations, whether it be adults or children. That really helps all of society out. I'm really proud to be on that board to provide a lens to the table and to help.
It's an education process as well because some of these agencies and organizations I wouldn't really even know about if I wasn't on the TELUS board because they're so specialized and you get those applications. And it's amazing. It's really even to find out about some... There's a lot of agencies that work with animals with children and adults who have special needs. And when you see those ones, it's just like heart-wrenching.
Abi Sivakumar: Amazing that you're on that board. And switching gears just a bit, how do you incorporate wellness into your day-to-day life and how does it help you?
Gail Hunt: Yeah, I think it's super important. I think as I mentioned before, the jobs are stressful, so you got to find something to do on a regular basis that helps you rejuvenate. And for me, the time I can really only protect is the mornings. You can't always protect what time at the night you'll be done and often you feel too exhausted to do everything. So I do protect time in the morning.
I do a variety of different kinds of workouts every day so that I just somehow getting the stress out of my system. I do a lot of yoga as well. I teach yoga as a fun thing to do on the side. And those are all things that are just like you're away from work and you're not thinking about work. And often some great ideas actually come to you about some of the problems that you're faced with when you're finally not thinking about them.
So I try to do a lot of that, and I also try to make sure I have enough quiet time away from lots of people to be able to also get my energy levels back up and things like that so that I can bring my whole self to work.
Abi Sivakumar: Those are great strategies, finding time in the morning or whatever works for you personally, finding quiet time, et cetera. And on the topic, I'm curious if you would consider this part of your personal wellness, but in our research we learned that you're into jiu-jitsu. So how did that start and what's been the most challenging part about it?
Gail Hunt: Yeah, so that started probably 2019 just before COVID when I lived in Midland and was CEO at Georgian Bay General Hospital. My son, he was living elsewhere at the time for school and he had started jiu-jitsu. And he knew that I wanted to do some sort of martial art at the time. Before we had lived in Chapel and there wasn't really access to it. So he told me he started it and he really liked it. So suggested I did.
Actually there's a gym, a jiu-jitsu gym, in Midland, Driven Jiu Jitsu, that I ended up joining and started out. And it was extremely intimidating, I would say, because I've never done any physical contact sport in my life. So jiu-jitsu is basically grappling and wrestling, so it's full contact. And I'm not a very big person, so it's intimidating that method as well. But the coach there, Al, did a really great job of making me feel welcome, and also he just gets you in there right away so you can get over your fear.
I would say the most challenging part of it is really right now it's being as consistent. When I lived in Midland, I lived five minutes from the gym, so it was easy to get to. It's a lot more challenging now when I'm in Barrie. But the most challenging part is really you're never really good at jiu-jitsu. There's always people better than you, which is also a good thing from a perspective of being humble because you will never master it.
You'll get better, but there's always others who are better and that part of it keeps you humble. And when you're in jiu-jitsu, everybody you're there with is really equal. So you're not the CEO of something. Nobody's more important than anybody else. So that part is really humbling. And sometimes showing up to work with weird bruises all over you is sometimes hard to explain as well because it is an aggressive sport.
A lot of time you might get hit in the face or have bruises on your arms and legs and people will look at you strangely. But I think one of the biggest benefits from it is when you're doing it, you can't think about anything else, which is a really nice thing in a job like this is that you want to stop thinking about the problems or challenges that you're facing. So when you're doing a sport like jiu-jitsu, you have to think about your own safety at every minute, so you can't be thinking about anything else. And it clears your mind and it's very refreshing from that perspective.
Abi Sivakumar: I love that you're always trying something new between the dance competition and this. That's awesome.
Michelle Holden: I took a lot from that. I was taking notes. I'm like, I need to figure out if I would like jiu-jitsu and how that works. Also, the bruises, that's funny. That made me laugh a lot. Before I jump into the lightening round, I'm going to be a little bit selfish for a minute. I have small children. I know yours are adult children. As you were growing your career back when your children were small, how did you feel about that balance?
Because I know you mentioned carving out that morning, which works well now that your children are older. But back when that was happening when they were at home and tiny and loud, what worked for you and do you have any advice for young families?
Gail Hunt: Yeah, it's super hard. As they get older and you get more ownership of your time, it gets easier. When they were little, I used to try to just wake up earlier than them. And I think that try to taper your expectations about what you're going to be able to do because what I can do now and what I could do then were very differently, the amount of time you could scroll away to focus on just yourself. If you have a supportive partner, it helps if they can give you 30 minutes or an hour to yourself so you can do something.
But that's definitely a recommendation. When I started working in hospitals, my kids were all probably under five at the time. The three kids at that time were under five. And I think that it gave me recognition. Knowing how hard I had to balance that in a CEO role and having small children, it gave me a lot more empathy and understanding for other team members that had small children and were worried about trying to take leaves and being able to attend events for their children or things like that.
It gave me a lot different perspective. I'm very supportive. I try to go out of my way to support young families, young parents, and if their job allows. Obviously you're at the frontlines, it's a little bit harder, but flexing your time to be able to attend to things and those types of things, because you want your team members here for the long term. I'm hoping you're a 20-year employee with RVH.
So if in the next five years you need to go in and out because you have daycare issues, or you need to work from home because your kids are sick that day and the daycare won't take them and they can't go to school, we need to be as understanding and as flexible as we can during that period of time because that's just one part of the time that hopefully you'll be in this organization for. And hopefully if we can help support you with a little bit more flexibility during that time, then you'll be with us for the long term.
I've always tried to do that because I know how it feels when you're racked with guilt about, I didn't get to go. In your mind, you think every other parent attended some event at school for their kids' class and you're the only one who didn't go there and that's not that bad. But a guilt can really make for unhappy workforce as well when they feel like they have to choose between their children and their jobs. So let's try to be as supportive as we can about that.
Michelle Holden: That's great. That's all really good advice. Getting up early is definitely something I'm trying to do now. So taking that part of it actively. I find when I get up earlier, I was saying to my team, that my kids get up early. They hear me or smell me. I have no idea.
Gail Hunt: They have radar for that.
Michelle Holden: I know. I need to get up at 4:00 in the morning. No, it's really good, and supporting our teams just brings that much more empathy. Well, I wanted to move to lightning round, and these are questions that you have not seen before. We were chatting about it earlier, and so we'll just give you the first thing that comes to mind and that's it. So what's the first thing that you do on a Monday morning?
Gail Hunt: I probably complain about how tired I am, and then I go walk the dog and work out on a Monday morning.
Michelle Holden: What's the first thing you do on a Saturday morning?
Gail Hunt: I take it very leisurely. Up until recently, for two Saturdays of the month, I would teach yoga at a yoga studio in Midland, but I've retired from doing that on a regular basis. And so I try to take it easy on Saturday mornings and just leisurely spend some time in the morning watching some TV or reading or doing something very low-key in the house by myself.
Michelle Holden: What's one book if you had to read it for the rest of your life that you would read?
Gail Hunt: I think I would read The Bridges of Madison County.
Michelle Holden: And you mentioned TV, so what's your favorite series right now that you're watching?
Gail Hunt: For a mind-numbing series I like to watch and I don't want to think about anything else I watch Below Deck because it makes me feel better about my own leadership skills.
Michelle Holden: I haven't seen it, but I heard good things.
Gail Hunt: You'll feel better about yourself as a leader if you watch that show because it's just such chaos on a reality show. I think something that I'm watching right now that I really enjoy is Slow Horses probably. That's a really fun series that we're watching.
Michelle Holden: Ah yes, and it just came back out, well, at the time of this recording. And if you weren't in healthcare today, maybe you gave us a couple hints, but what would you be doing?
Gail Hunt: I wonder if I would've gone into law if I didn't do healthcare.
Michelle Holden: Okay, well, thank you so much, Gail, for chatting with us and sharing your lessons with Abi and I and talking about RVH and the organization and what you're doing in the community, all of that. We love it. I loved hearing what our subscribers are doing and the leadership lessons that you can share with us. So I want to just thank you for being on our show today.
Gail Hunt: Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was a wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you for listening. You can hear more episodes of Healthcare Change Makers on our website, HIROC.com, and on your favorite podcasting apps. If you like what you hear, please rate us or post a review. Healthcare Change Makers is recorded by HIROC's Communications and Marketing Team and produced by Podfly Productions. Follow us on Twitter at @HIROCGroup or email us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.