“Clarity of purpose at both a corporate and personal level is an essential ingredient in the successful leader model.”
-Karen de Tyson
A New Generation of Business Leaders
Crestwood Behavioral Health, Inc. is an organization that is built by and for people desiring to make a change in the world by creating a continuum of services that empower our clients to live and succeed in their communities. As an organization, we lead the mental health community by example. As individuals, we lead our community of staff, clients, peers, families, business partners, county stakeholders, faith communities, schools and neighbors by example.
Our greatest resource at Crestwood is our human resource. The humanity in human resources is the gift Crestwood brings to this field. The humanity in Crestwood leadership is the cornerstone in the framework of service to others. We exemplify the eight dimensions of servant leadership-listening, empathy, healing, mindfulness, stewardship, growth, and community building, all of which are clearly aligned with our Crestwood values of family, character, flexibility, commitment, enthusiasm compassion, and collaboration. Our values are also linked with our recovery pillars of hope, empowerment, meaningful roles and spirituality. These values, pillars, and dimensions become the lens from which we lead, drive the work we do every day and what we use to develop new leaders from within our Crestwood family. Our staff members embody these values and they serve as the foundation for the programs and services we provide. It is the responsibility of each of our campus Administrators and leadership teams to uphold these values on a daily basis, in all aspects of their positions and roles.
Our Administrators are expected to lead, manage, supervise and demonstrate a wide- array of skills and abilities on a day-to-day basis. Crestwood is a learning community. It is expected that a person in leadership will be trained, oriented, coached, developed and recognized in all areas of their roles. In order to support and grow servant leaders in our organization, we have created a leadership training curriculum and a full mentorship program.
Crestwood’s mentorship program process starts with a robust orientation and onboarding that welcomes our new Crestwood family members. The orientation is designed to create an inviting and compassionate community of employees who care for themselves, each other, and the clients and stakeholders we serve. Orientation is infused with tools for engagement and culturally relevant adult learning methods. After orientation, mentorship continues for our employees with our Crestwood Academy.
Through our Crestwood Academy we engage employees through coaching on the fly, in-services, trainings, workshops, conferences, webinars, environmental practices, demonstrations, mastery of skills and competency building opportunities. Throughout this process, our employees are encouraged to look for ways to achieve their goals, to reach their aspirations, as well as to advance their careers at Crestwood in their field of choice. Our employees are given the opportunity to achieve advanced degrees, licenses and certifications through our Crestwood Scholarship Program. Advancing leaders may also engage in our succession planning process, where management and leadership team members, including Administrators, identify possible new candidates for leadership positions.
Our succession planning at Crestwood involves developing our servant leaders, in all departments, through our comprehensive values-driven mentorship program. Although the mentorship has training, homework, and benchmarks for success, the cornerstone of this program is the relationship built among leaders – a relationship built on honesty, collaboration, compassion, transparency, integrity and love. Crestwood proudly achieved the rare CARF Exemplary Conformance to the Standards for our leadership succession planning process and mentoring to identify future potential leaders in our organization and then providing them with training, education and support to prepare them for these roles.
At Crestwood we are determined and motivated to continue to lead, inspire and keep the humanity in everything we do as we develop our next group of leaders that will take us well into the future and will continue to make a difference in the world we live in.
Contributed by:
Patricia Blum, PhD
Executive Vice President
