August 5, 2026 Salus Health Care Forum

Bill G

I think I’m the second oldest here and much of my leadership is past, not present. And I find myself withdrawing from leadership, no longer trying to inspire or motivate the people I’m working with. I’m at a point where I’m really just listening and hopefully having some impact going forward. I’m not really expecting much to happen since nothing has happened during my leadership.

Bill B

Wait a minute. Jeremy and I just had a meeting with you and you’re saying, wait a minute. I just witnessed you pushing back and influencing what is occurring in this forum group.

Jeremy

I get what Bill G is saying. What he’s saying is that he is sort of ticked off regarding the slow pace of progress in primary care. I think Howard sort of intimated this as well.

You put all of your life work into something and it’s very hard to see results because the inertia is so massive. And yet the impact is there because I can definitely tell Bill Gillanders that he’s impacted me personally and professionally a lot and still does. He always asks the hardest questions in the most frank and concise fashion that sort of unravels the artifice of what we talked about. So, I think you’re absolutely providing profound leadership still, Bill Gillanders. So, Bill thank you for sharing. That just reflects his humility, I think, in reality.

Bill G

Thank you for articulating that. You’re absolutely right. Despite decades of service and ability to try to influence change, the degree of change that’s being influenced is pretty minimal.

Walt

I want to applaud Bill in terms of his amazing modeling and coaching and mentoring and leading the way and all that. There is another piece to reflect on as we go along, I’m not too many years behind you, Bill G; however, at my age I am asking myself, what are we leading? What are we really trying to do in this world if we are committed only to the physical aspects of the world? Sadly, health care is only sick care. It’s not health care still. It needs to be spiritualized.

It needs to be so much more now. You could say mind, body, spirit, sociology, so forth, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. It was all biophysical. That’s what medicine was all about. So, as leaders, being able to tap into ways to help those who others on the team understand that there’s going to be ups and downs all the way along, but don’t get fooled into thinking what your goals really are on the physical level. Transformation happens on all of those other levels—including the spiritual. And I know you are very inspiring on those deeper levels. So, the master part, that’s what I just wanted to reflect on. The master part of this master adaptive leadership piece is having a better sense of all the different levels of our human experience as we play roles to help make the world a better place.