How Great Leaders Help People Grow with Inova Healthcare Executive, Toni Ardabell
On Better Experiences by Design, host Susan Quinn sits down with Toni Ardabell, Chief, Clinical Enterprise Operations at Inova, for a round of rapid-fire leadership lessons on the six things every great leader has to master: people, culture, judgment, courage, change, and self-awareness. The conversation covers servant leadership in healthcare, change management when the old playbook no longer works, and the culture that makes great experiences possible. The journey started at the bedside as a critical care staff nurse, at a time when Ardabell didn’t know there was anything higher in the hospital than the head nurse. Assignments outside nursing led to chief operating officer of Inova Fairfax Hospital, then 11 years at Bon Secours as CEO of St. Mary’s Hospital, Bon Secours Richmond, and Bon Secours Virginia, before a return to Inova. That path gives her a rare view of how decisions made in the corporate suite land with the people delivering care. Ardabell’s answers return to one idea: people do their best work when they feel valued, heard, and psychologically safe. That holds in a professional services firm as surely as in a hospital. Her approach to culture, feedback, and change gives leaders a model for building an organization people choose to stay in. Key Insights Why servant leadership, not authority, earns the trust that every great client and patient experience depends on. How skip-level conversations, pulse checks, and same-day callbacks keep senior leaders connected to the front line and drive employee engagement in healthcare and beyond. What psychological safety in healthcare looks like in practice, starting with one clarifying question: “What would you like from this conversation?” How 360 reviews and open invitations to disagree build leadership self-awareness, and why difficult conversations at work become easier when you treat them as kindness. What change management in healthcare and beyond requires when today’s experts have to learn everything over again. If you lead people through constant change and want them to bring their best to every client interaction, these leadership lessons will reshape how you show up for your team. Better Experiences by Design is a podcast series produced by circle S studio that highlights leaders across a variety of industries dedicated to delivering exceptional brand, employee, and client experiences. © circle S studio, 2026.
