Week 2: Transformational Leadership in the Healthcare and Insurance Industry

Week two of my internship with CVS was a little easier than week one, but still quite heavy on intern group programming and orienting. Most of my time has been spent in large meetings with speakers and panelists, which has been interesting but I am excited to get started on my individual work. On Monday I was able to meet with my manager to get a better sense of the things I will be working on within his team and how I can best contribute my skills and my perspective to the enterprise. Since the first meeting with my manager, I could sense he was a strong leader who earns the respect and admiration of his team and direct reports. The more I get to know him and see his relationships within his organization, but also with customers and those working under him, the more I can confidently say he fits the criteria of a transformational leader.

Burns, who coined the term transformational leadership after his experience in the military, defines transformational leadership as situations where “leaders and followers help each other to advance to a higher level of morale and motivation” (Burns, 1978). As opposed to transactional leadership when leaders and followers participate in a give and take relationship, transformational leadership promotes learning, development, and influence on both sides in order to build a strong culture of respect and trust while encouraging healthy challenges. Bass, who built on Burn’s theoretical introduction, later asked the question of whether transformational leadership could be measured. Bass created the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) which measures four key factors: intellectual influence, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration (Bass, 1997).

Although transformational leadership was borne from a military context, it is certainly applicable to more than that. I believe many leaders within the CVS enterprise exemplify transformational leadership on a daily basis; from engaging with real members in order to better learn about the perspective of the consumer to re-evaluating the enterprises mission, vision and values to better reflect the products we offer, CVS and its leadership at every level exemplifies lots of transformational qualities. Facts circulating the internet about the healthcare and insurance industries often lead to public sentiments of distrust and skepticism. As a leader in both of those industries, CVS, through their transformational leadership is making strides to find the lost sense of public trust and lead their members to happier and healthier lives.

Specifically, within my team, my manager leads with a transformational focus. Although he and the rest of his team may not know the term or recognize the specific qualities that make him a transformational leader, they can certainly feel the impacts. Taking inspiration from Bass’ MLQ, I will build on my manager embodies each of the four key factors and how certain behaviors illustrate transformational leadership theory.

Individualized Consideration – even after just the first two weeks it is very clear that my manager genuinely cares about his followers on all levels of the organization. From his direct reports (team leaders) to front line staff (service operations representatives), he is attentive to what each person needs and how different individuals work, learn and respond to feedback. One key behavior showcasing his attention to individualized consideration are his 1:1 meetings with me. I have heard stories from other interns, both in and outside of CVS, where their manager goes into a 1:1 meeting with their intern with no camera on or seems distracted. When I meet 1:1 with my manager I respect his time as much as he respects mine. I’m sure our relationship will strengthen because of this and I truly believe that he wants to hear my fresh perspectives about his team as much as I want to learn from his experience within the industry.

Intellectual Stimulation – Similar to individualized consideration, my manager seems to encourage constant learning and value opportunities for improvement. The team does great work and there are ample opportunities for kudos, but my manager certainly embodies the “but what can we do better next time” mentality.

Inspirational Motivation – After meeting with my manager just twice the first two weeks, the degree to which he articulates the vision of the organization but also the enterprise as a whole is inspiring to me as an intern, but many others as well. I think his ability to communicate but also be comfortable with others taking on that responsibility is one behavior that I was able to witness just within the first two weeks that speaks to his ability to lead and transform at the same time. There is a quote we heard during one of our speaker series last week that went something like: you want to be good at your job but not so good that the people who work with/under you could not continue your work when you are gone. I think this speaks volumes about my manager’s leadership style. He trusts his team leaders and his team leaders trust him which is one of the most important foundational qualities of a well-working team.

Idealized Influence – I have always found this particular subtype of transformational leadership very interesting because it is really up to the leader’s followers to decide whether their leader carries that idealize influence. To me, my manager definitely embodies the typical idealized influence characteristics of instilling pride in their followers and promoting trust, pride and also humility. For me, my manager has been a great role model in the sense that I could see myself being the type of leader he is someday. Between his openness, clear communication, motivation and thoroughness, I would definitely consider my manager as a transformational leader according to idealized influence.

With respect to how COVID has changed the nature of work I do not believe my manager has had to adapt his leadership style much as his team was mostly remote before the pandemic. This is an interesting concept to contextualize with transformational leadership because we often jump to the conclusion that real trust and real connections cannot be built from a WebEx or a Microsoft Teams call. Of course I would love to meet my team on day in person, but I think the fact that my team has been mostly remote since before the pandemic speaks volumes about my manager’s transformational leadership capabilities and makes it even more apparent to me just how strong of a leader he really is.