From Burned Out to 91.6% Occupancy. How one ED built a team that ran without him.
A Senior Executive Director at Commonwealth Senior Living was watching census slide and couldn't step away without things falling apart. Eight months later, everything had changed.
The Situation
Census was sliding. The team was struggling. And stepping away wasn't an option.
This Executive Director had a strong track record. But when census started dropping and conflict started rising, nothing they tried was fixing it.
When this ED came to us, their community was at 80% occupancy. That was a number they hadn't seen before in their career. Census was slipping. The leadership team had accountability issues and ongoing conflict. Community partnerships that should have been driving referrals were not producing results.
What made it harder was that this leader was already putting in long hours. They were the kind of person who stays until the problem is solved. But the problems kept coming. Days off meant a phone full of messages. Vacations did not feel like vacations. The building ran on this one person, and everyone knew it.
This was not an ability problem. It was a structure problem. No one had ever given this leader the tools to build a team that could operate without them.
The instinct in situations like this is to look at operations. Staffing ratios. Marketing. Admissions. But when we looked closer, the real issue was one level up. Problems that should have been handled by supervisors were landing on the ED every time. The people who had been promoted into leadership roles were doing their best. They just had no management foundation to build on.
The good news was that this leader was ready to change. They were not resistant to growth. They were hungry for it. That is usually where the real work begins.
What We Did
How Senior Living Executive Coaching Changed the Outcome
Six months of one-on-one executive coaching focused on three things: clear goals, a stronger team, and a structure that did not require the ED to be everywhere at once.
The coaching started at the top. When a building is struggling, the impulse is to fix the operations. But in most cases the real problem is one level above that. How clearly is the leader setting direction? How well are expectations being communicated? How much is escalating upward that should be handled below?
Through a focused series of one-on-one sessions, we worked on three things. First, getting the goals clear enough to actually pursue. Second, building an accountability structure that let the team operate without constant check-ins. Third, helping this leader become a coach to their supervisors instead of a problem-solver their team depended on.
Once the ED had a real framework for leading their team, the right people stepped up. The ones who were not a good fit made themselves visible. Both outcomes moved the building forward.
We used the 5P process to give this leader a repeatable structure for one-on-ones and team meetings. The team noticed. Meetings that used to feel like status updates started feeling like real conversations. Staff could track their own progress. They could work through problems without waiting for the ED to weigh in. That shift changed the energy in the building.
The coaching also extended to community partnerships. This ED had relationships they wanted to build but had never made concrete enough to pursue. Part of the work was getting specific about what those partnerships needed to look like. Those relationships became a real driver of the occupancy growth that followed.
The Result
From 80% occupancy to 91.6%. Without changing the marketing budget.
The community did not change. The market did not change. The staff did not change. The leadership did.
The community reached 91.6% occupancy in eight months. That growth came from two places. The first was internal. The leadership team got stronger. Problems that used to land on the ED's desk started getting handled below. The team became something this leader could actually rely on.
The second driver was external. This ED had wanted to build community partnerships for a long time. The problem was not motivation. The problem was clarity. They did not have a specific enough plan to act on. Part of the coaching work was helping them define exactly what those partnerships needed to look like and building the confidence to go after them. Once that happened, new referral relationships followed. Those relationships moved the census.
The occupancy number was a byproduct. The real outcome was a leader who had a stronger team inside the building and stronger relationships outside it. That combination is what makes results last.
This ED also took a two-week vacation and came back to a building that had not fallen apart. That is not a small thing. It means the team was real. It means the structure held without them in the room.
A year after the engagement ended, this leader was still drawing from the work. Still using the frameworks. Still leading from the same foundation that was built during those six months. That is what good coaching is supposed to do.
Hear It Directly
Watch the leader behind the results.
The results in this case study are not ours to claim. They belong to the leader who did the work. Here he explains what changed and how.
Dr. Arrington's coaching far surpasses the six months to a year that you have it. You are able to draw from it a year later. I went from 80% occupancy to 91.6% and took a two-week vacation with zero calls because my team was that strong. I strongly recommend this coaching. It is a huge investment into any executive's future.
Reuben Canty Senior Executive Director, Commonwealth Senior LivingWork With Us
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