Building a Values-Driven Culture: How Lightfully Behavioral Health Became a Most Loved Workplace®

I'm excited to welcome Jennifer Krut Steiner, the CEO of Lightfully Behavioral Health, which has recently named one of our most loved workplaces. Jennifer has spent the last decade driving positive change in mental healthcare delivery nationwide. She's not just a healthcare executive, she's also the founder of Lead Like a Chick, C-H-I-Q, uh, movement promoting authentic female leadership. Under her guidance, Lightfully has become a beacon of innovation in behavioral health, known for their unique shining commitments and their embrace of the wabi-sabi philosophy of finding beauty in imperfection. Today, we'll explore how Jennifer's approach to building a values-driven culture has helped Lightfully attract exceptional clinical talent in the increasingly competitive mental health sector. Jennifer, wow, it is awesome to see you. It's awesome to have you. You're such a beacon of hope, as you say, with the light, right? For people who truly have a vision in mind, right? And have a reason for founding a company that does really good in the world, truly good in the world. And you did that with your aligned values and you're just amazing. We're just talking about this Ross School of Business Amazing runner, incredible person. What more can we ask for today from Jennifer? We just love having her today and you're gonna learn so much from her and about what she has done to found Lifelee Behavioral Health Clinic and what she did to become a Most Loved Workplace. Jennifer, great to see you. Thank you for coming on today.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for boosting me up. I feel slightly embarrassed and slightly boosted. So thank you.

It is well deserved. And we're gonna jump into so many different things today and learn from you about how to create this culture after founding it. And I wanna start from the beginning because it's important with a founder story to learn about the why, right? What brought you there? We can then from there dive into some of the specifics around your culture, right? But let's start with the why. I want to learn more about you and what led you to found Lightfully Behavioral Health.

Oh yeah, such a good question. I could answer it in a lot of different ways. Maybe just to set the foundation, I would say, you know, my whole career has been in healthcare services. I didn't really know it when I got started, but the thread in all of in my roles in healthcare services has been like, I just love, like, I feel filled by being of service to people who are in a vulnerable place in life. You know, I think we all have found ourselves there, whether it's a family member or ourselves personally, and it brings me great fulfillment to be of service. So that's kind of the more the general background, but for Lightfully specifically, I had been a CEO for behavioral healthcare companies for about 7 years or so prior to founding Lightfully. And I was mid-COVID. So that's about the timeframe. And I was watching the world around me. And what I saw was just this incredible explosion of mental health conditions. I think we all read about that and everything we saw. And not only was there an explosion of mental health conditions, but there was the levels of acuity, the level of severity of these conditions was going up.. And I felt like there was just a, this really a need for a great care provider to meet that need. And then, so that was sort of one thing happening. The second thing was on the more personal side. I had a family member who was struggling with suicidality and had several suicide attempts and found themselves in the hospital for stabilization and struggled to find somewhere to get care after a hospitalization because they were at such high risk and not many care providers would accept a client like that. So I also just felt this, like, there's gotta be a better way. We need to have options for folks that are struggling so severely. So that's where the concept was born. And yeah, I mean, I'm happy to go into sort of some of the details of how we made it happen, but the why was really to be part of the solution of what was, you know, often called the second pandemic, right? It was this mental health crisis.

Phenomenal. You know, like you said, the acuity of patients, it's just phenomenal. The devastation suicide has on communities and families, it's just incredible. Myself, I've had two friends suicide. The impact on their families and on friends and community was exponential. And the work you do to help people to re— to find the value and purpose and love in their life, their light again, is so needed. I applaud you for doing that and very glad that you are a most loved workplace because it is those aligned values that are so important. We were talking about something too before that was interesting. With such an important purpose, with such an important vision for the world, we were talking about aligned values. How important is it to find that aligned values with partners, with employees? Because you could easily go astray if you have misalignment with partners or misalignment with employees? Because if the purpose is not there, the outcomes won't be there. Tell me more. We were talking a little about that, what your successes are in that area.

Yeah, well, I would be as bold to say, I think that alignment of purpose and alignment of values, which we call Shining Commitments, because it's very on brand, but it means values. But alignment of those things is foundational and fundamental. In fact, it was the very first thing that we established as a company. Even before we fine-tuned the actual model itself, the pro forma, the care model, we said, what do we want the values of this business to be? We committed to being true to those through thick and thin. You and I were speaking before we started live, and I was sharing with you when I founded Lightfully, you know, one of the things I needed to do was to get capital funding to start the business. And, you know, I decided I was going to work with a private equity partner and I went seeking a private equity partner with the primary criteria was that they shared the values of Lightfully and they shared the values of what we were trying to accomplish. And that was hard. Actually, it was quite hard. But we were very fortunate to find a partner that is truly committed to being of service to this population of folks. And then as we launched the business, really value alignment has always been a fundamental part of how we hire folks. We actually do an assessment to determine if we share the same values. And then as we've built, the inner workings of the business are very, very rooted in values and how we do everything that we do. So it's like the epicenter of everything.

It is, you know, and that's where I really wanted to get to is about, you know, what happens if it's not right? We lose psychic wealth, the psychic wealth we need to drive our energy, to drive our own light, to use your terms. And, you know, this really is a movement as I see it with Lively Behavioral Health. It's a movement. It's even bigger because, you know, you're known for these shining commitments. You're known for one of them, which is the Wabi-Sabi principle philosophy, right? And, you know, when you go to a clinic or behavioral health, and we want to hear more about the actual work. Because I want to hear more about that. When you go, you assume that you're kind of getting that in some degree, right? You're in the hands of folks who are on another side of helping you. So you, you have a certain level of expectation, right? So tell me about your shiny commitments, how that love of workplace that you've achieved really helps to cement that feeling and outcome for your patients.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I often say that it is our people that is our service or product, right? It is the human beings that are in our centers and clinics who are supporting clients in their healing journey to find their light, to find hope again, through a variety of different modalities that we use, supportive programming to get them there. But the vehicle, right, of that care is our folks. And so the more that we pour into our teams. And the more inspired and fulfilled that our teams feel, the better the care. And, you know, I always caution this concept that a company, a healthcare delivery company can have a toxic or unhealthy corporate culture, for example, but, you know, say that care is excellent because it's just, it can't be, you know, there is so much congruency between how we interface as a team and what our clients are experiencing from us that you can't separate the two. So I believe that, I mean, we are an extremely high-quality provider. Our clinical outcomes demonstrate that, and that's not by accident. It's because this value chain has just sort of followed its way all the way through to our clients or our patients.

It is part of the value chain, isn't it? And it's the people like you who make it part of the value chain. That have the best outcomes. Tell me about the experience. We definitely had the first one, first point we had was very important is choose the right partner that's aligned with your values. Very important. The second is people are our product. The third I want to get into here is what's the product and how is it different as a result of the people? Tell me more about that.

Yeah, such a good question. So it's important sometimes when we're in our own field, we get so insular that we forget that we need to explain what we do to the outside world. But yeah, so Lightfully Behavioral Health is we are a provider of mental health services for clients who are struggling with things like depression, anxiety, trauma disorders, PTSD, personality disorders, suicidality, self-harm. And we do that in a variety of care settings. So we have our sort of most intense services, our residential care services, where a client will come and stay for 24 hours a day, roughly, for, you know, a month's worth of time. And then our middle level of acuity, we call it, is day treatment services where clients will come a certain number of days per week and get servicing during that time. And then we also have a virtual program, which is similar to our day treatment, but that's online. And so when a client is in care, they will be getting individual therapy, they will be doing a lot of group therapy, they will be doing experiential therapy. They will have a psychiatrist for medication management. So it's a really wraparound approach that we take to supporting someone on their journey of getting to a place where they can be really active and engaged in their life again.

So let's talk about the operationalization of it, right? Yeah. Is that really exciting to— is how do you operationalize shining commitments with your psychiatrists and with the care they give? Tell me more about that.

People say like, what does that even mean? Operationalization. That's kind of a business-y word, but really what it means is that we utilize the different things that we do as a business. The integral processes that we have include attention to our values. So I'll give you a couple of examples. When we hire someone at Lightfully Behavioral Health, as part of the hiring process, we have that person share with us what their two values are. And that helps us to understand, is this person really aligned with our value system? And then as part of an onboarding process, we'll have employees take the Enneagram test. I don't know if you guys have spoken about that at all on your podcast, but that's a, it's really a leadership profile test. And they will know their Enneagram number, they will know their values, and then they will be sharing that with their teams. There are different meetings where we will talk about these things. There are trainings that we have. Every person from the CEO to a psychiatrist, to a frontline patient care technician is speaking about and aware of their own values and then how those connect to Lightfully's values.

So, and having their own experiences, their own bringing themselves to work must be important. Bringing the full self to work. The self is agent of change, right? And I'd love to hear that too, is wabi-sabi, right? Which is the beauty of imperfection. And some of the best cultures that I have seen embrace that, the beauty of imperfection, and embrace the fact that We learn from our mistakes. We do, and it's an opportunity to be human with others, including our customers and each other. Do you find that, have you, does this also resonate with you with wabi-sabi with your principle? Yeah.

So I switch around of which is my favorite of our values or shining commitments, but right now that one's my favorite. It's so critically important. And when we think about what kind of environment is created when we expect perfection, from folks. What I've observed is that creates an environment where there's fear, there's a lack of creativity, and there's a lot of emulation of behaviors that aren't really true to who the person is. And that none of those things, I think, like match with the environment that I seek to create. So not only do we welcome mistakes, but we celebrate them because that's how we learn and that's how we get better. And expecting any person to not have them is unrealistic. So I shared this with you at one point, Lou, but we have a practice on our all-company call each month where an executive gets a chance to share with the entire business and entire employees, all whole company, a mistake that they made and what they learned from it. And so that's our attempt to not only say that this is important, but to actually model it in front of the whole company. And the objective here is to all of us just to continue to get better and to show up as our whole selves to work. Work because that's where the beauty comes, right?

There's a lot of vulnerability in that too.

Imagine there is—

I made a mistake this week, you know, and it shows that they're willing to learn from it, to get better. And because mistakes are going to happen, like, it's natural for them to happen. And if they don't, there's probably something wrong with just the calculus of the world, right?

So yeah, I have a little nugget too. I just think this is— I get so excited about this. So, you know, when I even practice our values with our board of directors, which some people think, are you kidding? You go into that meeting, everyone has to do a check-in question. You know, we always review our values. My most recent board meeting, I said, okay, I want everyone to share a mistake and what they learned from it. And it was beautiful. I mean, I had every single board member share and some extremely vulnerable about like multimillion-dollar mistakes that they had made and what they learned. And so it was really inspiring. To see that practice even at the highest levels.

Hey, Jennifer, I'm curious, what were some of the themes around the mistakes that you found?

You know, a theme that jumps out to me is this idea that we need to know everything and we don't ask for help when we need it, right? I think the, as we grow in our careers and we think, oh my gosh, I need to appear totally competent. I need to have everything handled and know everything. And folks will sort of get into this zone where they think I better not ask for help because it's gonna make me look like I don't know what I'm doing. That one is one that shows up a lot.

It's huge. It's part of our construct around psychological safety. Do I feel comfortable to say what I need to do, say, or do I have to bend for that matter, to take on these difficult and challenging circumstances on my own? And this has happened since the beginning of time, right? I mean, days of Moses, literally. And you know, we, it's like, let's just give it all. And then it takes shape with 9/11 or the NASA Challenger disaster when you don't speak up. Right?

That's right. That's right. Right. There's a piece of it that where there's even a safety, like you've just brought up, like a safety implication, the more psychologically safe folks feel, right? Like they're willing to speak up and we can avoid patient safety concerns. So it's just an important and critical element of a healthy environment.

You mentioned patient safety. This is interesting. So especially in the cases with mental health, often we go by procedures. Or rules with mental health, right? We see elements of a patient that we know we have to check off a box and do immediately. Yet there's nuances to patient care. There's nuances with heuristic analysis that we have to be careful of. And sometimes we find that— I've seen this happen time and again— we feel like we don't want to say anything to anybody. We have our Hippocratic oath. We have to do exactly what we're told. Don't ask anybody for help. You know the rule book, right? So do you find that that is also something that happens that's with how you've changed your, with your values and how patients can benefit from it by having more of a group of people rather than groupthink help them, right? Groupthink can be negative toward a person, but more than one situation and more perspective can certainly widen and deepen the care of a patient.

Oh yeah. I see where you're going. Yeah, absolutely. You're speaking, I think, of collaboration, which is such an integral part of Lightfully. And I know you haven't brought it up yet, but it sort of, it starts this concept that I like to talk about through my Lead Like a Chick movement, which is really the celebration of, for me personally, like this maturity that grew in me around embracing my innate characteristics as a leader, right? In my early years, I thought, okay, leaders look like this. Over here. They might be really strict. They don't really smile very much. They have a directive way about them. I better be that if I want to become a leader. And it felt super incongruent. Like it just, something wasn't right there. And so it's taken time where for me, I've been able to really embrace that I do lead like a chick. I lead with collaboration. I lead with empathy. I like to support and nurture the people around me. So Yes, Lightfleet truly does embrace a collaborative approach to patient care or client care, and that does yield a far more holistic experience for a client or, or frankly for an employee who is involved in various aspects of our company is, is we seek the input and perspective of all types. I strongly believe it yields much better results.

As you mentioned, authentically female leadership and the role of empathy in that, how important for healthcare. To truly put yourself in the shoes of your patients. I mean, wow. To really be there because they're literally on another side of the wall, right? They're on this other side of deep need, as you said, depending upon acuity, but it's real need. They really require help. How can they in the moment realize the deep purpose, right? And requirement for empathy in order to make the best possible decision for that person's life on the line?

Yeah. Well, we often say to in our messaging that a client is not a diagnosis. They are a human being that is struggling with a set of challenges. And so that shift in perspective, that's a deeply empathetic view, right? To say, I'm just here with another human being who I wanna sit with while they are in the dark and I want to help them out of that darkness into the light. I mean, the name Lightfully has so much symbolism, as I'm sure you've picked up on. So, but that mindset is rooted in empathy. I can put myself in this person's shoes and have an understanding of their suffering. And I'm not pitying them. I am just understanding their suffering and sitting alongside them.

You're with them in their journey. It's so important. And I think that's really the pillar there that we're talking about is in your Love Workplace, people love to, their higher purpose, to be with others in their journey. Of bringing them from darkness to light, and they find meaning in that journey itself.

That's right. Yeah. Our company purpose is very simple, our mission statement or purpose statement. It is changing lives compassionately. Very simple. And that is what we seek to do. We seek to change with compassion the lives of anyone we touch, whether that's a client, another teammate, an investor, you, Lou. Maybe I've changed your life in a little way today to demonstrate compassion and to demonstrate empathy. It's quite simple.

Absolutely. And we have a similar vision because ours is to empower organizations who want to put love at the center of their workplace to better serve their customers. And this is really the key. Our merging of our values are quite appropriate for the show.

We didn't plan that.

You can't make that up. It just happened. Wow. So many things to learn and so many things that for other leaders to learn about implementing it in your hiring process and implementing these, your values and operationalization of Shining Commitments in everything from your standups to everything you do within your patient experiences, customer experiences for others. So that's in every part of the value chain that you do, including Jennifer as CEO of her partnerships and the people who work with her. Because when you have this kind of purpose-driven mission-driven company that is essential for people at different acuity levels that where life is on the line, we cannot muck that up with noise. We can't do it either because we're working with, with companies like you with a great vision for helping others. And it's so important to take inventory of all those partners, all those vendors, all those employees, make sure we're aligned. Otherwise we can't help people like you to do the wonderful things you do.

Absolutely.

So Jennifer Krutsteiner, what a wonderful way to, to end this up by learning all of these key points from what you're teaching people and how many HR and CEOs can understand that how important it is to connect values to what is done on a daily basis, operationalization, and take in this concept of Wabi-Sabi, enabling people to be able to say what they need to say when they need to say it and lead like a Czech. Empathize and step into that role to empathize with others so that you can bring them from darkness to light. Jennifer Steiner, what a wonderful day to work with you. And it's been a pleasure interviewing you today on The Leader Show.

Well, thank you, Lou. It's an honor. And I'd like to say actually on behalf of every member of our team, we're just incredibly grateful. We put so much into this culture to create such a meaningful workplace and to be recognized was truly like, we were screaming and jumping when we got the news. And thank you for celebrating us. I love that we have an opportunity to celebrate.

We love celebrating companies with purpose like you and are helping the world. So that's exactly what this is all about. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Have a great day.