Steve McLaughlin’s approach to leadership: Balancing people, purpose, and operations

UNM alumnus Steve McLaughlin has built a 30-year career in healthcare, moving from the bedside to executive leadership and developing a perspective that extends beyond clinical expertise.

McLaughlin currently serves as interim vice president for Clinical Affairs at UNM Health Sciences, following his tenure as chief medical officer of The University of New Mexico Hospital. He was recently named CEO of UNM Hospital and vice president of Clinical Affairs, with both appointments effective Dec. 6.

Originally from Seattle, WA, McLaughlin has strong family ties to New Mexico and fond memories of visiting his grandparents in the state as a child.

His career at UNM began in 1995, when he came to New Mexico after earning his medical degree from Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, to complete his emergency medicine residency.

He stayed at UNM, building a career as a physician, teacher, and researcher before becoming chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine.

In late 2022 and early 2023, two opportunities converged: McLaughlin began pursuing an MBA at the UNM Anderson School of Management, now The James & Gail Ellis School of Business Leadership, while also stepping into the role of chief medical officer for UNM Hospital.

"I wanted a program that was rooted here in New Mexico," McLaughlin said. "I really feel like being able to be here on campus, the networking with the students and the professors was great."

The MBA gave McLaughlin new tools for approaching challenges and reshaped how he thinks about leadership and ethics.

"My ethics class was really transformative for me in terms of thinking about ethics as an organizational systemic output," McLaughlin said. "You can build systems that actually lead to good ethical behavior in organizations."

Those lessons have become increasingly relevant as McLaughlin has taken on more complex leadership roles. One of his guiding principles is that leaders need to communicate honestly, particularly during times of uncertainty.

"I think often as leaders, we don't communicate the vision well enough," he said. "I think we often try to polish it, so it looks too neat and clean."

He saw the importance of the honest approach firsthand while leading the Department of Emergency Medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. As information changed rapidly, McLaughlin began sending daily emails to his approximately 250-person department.

As the pandemic continued, his messages evolved to include leadership, organizational culture, and stories about what the department was experiencing together. McLaughlin realized that consistent communication did more than share information.

"If you don't share what is happening with people, people feel alone, right? They don't feel part of a team," he said.

That sense of connection also shapes McLaughlin's approach to mentorship.

"The connections that we make with people at work, whether it's mentors, mentees, colleagues, formal or informal, are essential, really essential to us being effective at what we do," he said.

As his career has progressed, McLaughlin's definition of success has evolved. Rather than focusing primarily on individual accomplishments, he measures success through the people and organization around him.

"Success in your job is the success of the organization," he said. "It's getting out of your own head and really focusing on the people around you and focusing on the organization."

McLaughlin describes effective organizational leadership through a concept he encountered in his reading: "plumbing and poetry."

The plumbing represents the systems that keep an organization functioning - financials, accounting, operations, and processes. The poetry represents the human side of leadership: mission, relationships, passion, and purpose.

"A mixture of operational effectiveness and visionary leadership, that's the secret combo that makes everything work well," he said.

That balance is particularly important in healthcare, where organizations must navigate financial pressures, workforce challenges, and access to care without losing sight of the people at the center of the work.

For students considering careers in health care leadership, McLaughlin's advice is straightforward: get involved.

"There's no substitute for actually doing the work," he said.

He encourages students to pursue projects, research, teaching opportunities and mentorships, and to learn by doing.

"We absolutely, truly need dedicated, young leaders in healthcare," McLaughlin said.