The Need for a New Approach to Health Care Leadership Assessment

Health systems are navigating a period shaped by margin pressure, workforce strain, digital disruption, and heightened community expectations. These forces are redefining what effective leadership looks like at the system level. Traditional indicators such as professional history, tenure, or functional expertise no longer reliably predict who will succeed in this environment.

The Health Care Potential Index (HCPI), developed by Lotis Blue Consulting and SullivanCotter in partnership with Hogan Assessments, provides an evidence-based way to understand leadership potential grounded in the realities of today’s health care landscape. The model builds on a study of 20 high-performing health systems and highlights the cognitive, relational, and adaptive capabilities that distinguish future-ready CEOs. View the full HCPI research on the SullivanCotter website.

How Leadership Potential Is Evolving In Today’s Health Care Systems

The research underpinning HCPI points to a fundamental shift in how leadership effectiveness is defined. Boards, CEOs, and CHROs from the participating systems describe an environment where pressure, ambiguity, and system-level complexity require leaders who think and connect differently.

The study found that the most important factors of CEO effectiveness are:

• Cognitive capabilities that support systematic thinking, decision-making under pressure, and the ability to read emerging signals.
• Relational capabilities that enable alignment across clinicians, boards, and communities through communication, empathy, and trust.
• Adaptive capabilities that allow leaders to remain steady, agile, and composed amid uncertainty and constant change.

These capabilities informed the development of the Vital Ten: ten integrated competencies organized across four domains validated by industry experts. HCPI brings these elements together into a concise, data-driven framework for evaluating leadership potential in health care.

Lotis Blue’s Role in Advancing Health Care Leadership Assessment Through Behavioral Science

Lotis Blue contributed the behavioral science foundation that supports the HCPI model. This work included synthesizing insights from three personality lenses—the Bright Side (everyday strengths), the Dark Side (risk factors under stress), and core motives and values—to identify the underlying patterns shared by high-performing CEOs.

These insights revealed the enduring traits that shape how leaders think, regulate pressure, build relationships, and mobilize organizations. Qualities such as ambition, intellectual curiosity, emotional steadiness, interpersonal sensitivity, and disciplined follow-through emerged as part of a distinctive leadership signature associated with sustained performance.

By applying Hogan’s personality insights to data from high-performing systems, Lotis Blue helped clarify the underlying attributes that support effectiveness in today’s health system leadership roles.

How HCPI Supports Leadership Evaluation

HCPI offers a structured way to assess leadership potential using objective, data-backed evidence. The model helps boards and executive teams identify the foundational qualities that enable leaders to make sound decisions, build alignment, and navigate uncertainty.

The framework can inform multiple leadership processes, including succession planning, CEO evaluation, emerging-leader identification, and leadership development strategy. It supports a more complete picture of readiness—one that moves beyond past performance to include the underlying attributes that enable long-term effectiveness.

Key takeaway: HCPI strengthens health care leadership assessment by grounding talent decisions in reliable data rather than anecdotal impressions.

Access the Full HCPI Research

The complete HCPI research is available on the SullivanCotter website, including the full set of insights behind how leadership potential is evaluated using objective, data-driven evidence.

Access the full HCPI research!