Of all the content Katrina Greene gets to teach in her role as director of leadership and organizational development for HCA Healthcare, Influencer Training® has long been her favorite. Her passion for the course is palpable.

“I live and breathe it,” Greene said. “I really love the idea around the Six Sources of Influence and understanding that poor performance is not just because somebody’s lazy or unmotivated; it could be other factors that are inhibiting them from being able to implement the change that we want to implement. When somebody tells me they’ve got a struggle, I respond with, ‘Alright, well, let’s source this,’ and then I draw up the six-source chart.”

For the past 11 years, Greene has led training and development for HCA Healthcare’s hospital systems in the Kansas City market. Her job “encompasses everything that I love about leadership and organizational development,” she said, including talent management, succession planning, career coaching, executive coaching, strategic planning, engagement, and retention.

But most of all, Greene loves being in the classroom.

“I get the joy of seeing the lives I impact through the knowledge, information, and content I share, in addition to all the other things we do,” she said.

Greene brings to the table a unique background, having been a photographer, broadcast journalist, and print reporter for the U.S. Navy. Pair that experience with her Bachelor of Science in organizational training and development and her Master of Education in human resources development, and Greene has a keen insight for how to develop content, package information for useability and stickiness, and get to the heart of an issue.

This special skillset is a large part of why Greene—along with her HCA Healthcare colleague Michael Cole—was invited to test Crucial Influence in the classroom while the course was being revised.

Greene and Cole teach Influencer Training within HCA Healthcare’s Leadership Institute Academy, which exists “to equip leaders to execute strategy effectively, drive operational excellence, and lead others to effective action,” according to HCA Healthcare’s website.

“I have the benefit of being out in the field and living every single day with my learners, understanding the struggles and barriers that they have to overcome as leaders,” Greene said. “As I teach content like Crucial Influence, I understand the specific scenarios and struggles my leaders have and explore how these concepts will help change a behavior in them and become a better leader.”

When asked about evaluating new courses, Greene said she looks at content through the lens of the ADDIE model: analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate.

Questions she uses when evaluating courses include:

• How does this content impact my learners’ needs?
• Can I facilitate in a way that keeps people engaged?
• How do we ensure people retain what they’ve learned?

At the core of quality content is designing a learning experience that will ultimately lead to behavior change.

“It’s not just, ‘Okay, that was a great training, and Katrina is really entertaining,’” Greene said. “It becomes, ‘Wow, I really learned something, and I’m going to change the way I look at this problem in the future based on the skills that I learned in that particular class.’”

Greene said that because the Leadership Institute Academy utilizes cohorts, she has follow-up opportunities baked into the academy structure. As the group reconvenes for the next course in its six-course curriculum, she’ll ask her learners how they’ve implemented the previous course and where they’re struggling.

Crucial Influence extends beyond the classroom for Greene as well. She said that it’s implemented through conversations every day at work.

“Anytime I’m in a meeting and they’re talking about a change initiative, I immediately draw a six-source box and I work through tackling the personal, social, and structural motivation and then ability needs of this particular situation?” she said. “I ask, ‘Why is a person doing or not doing what we need them to do?’”

She said her learners in the Crucial Influence test course responded positively to the material and experience and left the course with a clear and concise action plan to tackle a real-life problem using the Six Sources of Influence.

“They’re going to be more open and receptive to hearing how they can be a leader of inspiration and influence versus just making things happen and getting things done—which is another big ask of our leaders as well right now,” Greene said. “They’re asking us to teach this because they need help with it.”

Helping with the Crucial Influence beta test wasn’t the first time Greene has partnered with Crucial Learning. She was integral in developing our case study “Research Medical Center Transplant Institute Improves Employee Satisfaction.” The study looks at how employee engagement jumped from 51 percent to 88 percent—an increase of 37 points in just one year—by implementing behavior change strategies inspired by the Delancey Street model showcased in the Crucial Influence course.

Greene said Crucial Learning has played a part in three pivotal moments in her life, for better or worse: she came off of maternity leave early to take Crucial Conversations at a past job, missed her son’s first day of kindergarten while in Nashville for her trainer certification course, and spent her 40th birthday presenting at a Crucial Learning employee retreat at Sundance Resort.

Although these could have been bittersweet misses, Katrina shared the stories with a laugh and a smile, calling them “so fun” and saying she enjoyed learning how to ski as a birthday present from Crucial Learning.