This video shows a high-functioning team in action. (I purposely chose a video in a language other than English—in this case French—to ensure we don’t get lost in words.) Notice how the two client-facing team members support each other, blend their voices, yet set each other apart. Watch their eyes as they look to the…
To better understand physician disengagement, discouragement, and burnout, we can turn to the work of Alfred Adler and the foundational concept of Adlerian theory, Gemeinschaftsgefühl, loosely translated as “Social Interest,” the belief that humans have a primary need for social connectedness and to feel that they are contributing to the wellbeing of others. Adler taught…
My wife risks blindness without her glaucoma medication. A month’s supply is 3 ml. That’s barely enough to fill a thimble. It was priced at nearly $300. On vacation recently, she bought the same 3-ml of medication from a Parisian pharmacy for 11 Euros (about $11.50). We walked in, presented an outdated prescription from the…
The following is an adaptation of an email I sent to one of my physician clients after I had sent him a poem by Li-Young Lee called “The Gift.” First the poem and then the reply to his reaction: Here is the edited email to my physician client in response to his reaction: I’m happy…
Know how to gauge the complexities you face; the four types of challenges[1] faced by Physician leaders and healthcare executives. It matters because simple thinking applied to complex circumstances squanders opportunity and creates dysfunction.[2] 1.) Known Challenges: Known challenges are the simplest of the four types because cause-and-effect are repeatable, perceivable, and predictable. If you…
“Is there a way to provide mental health services to medical professionals under the guise of coaching?” A colleague posed this question in an email voicing his concern about physician suicide. He asked me because I am a licensed therapist in addition to being a coach who specializes in physicians and healthcare-industry executives, and he…
Primary care burnout results in $969 million in excess annual spending: Mayo researchers analyzed the financial impact of primary care physician burnout and turnover using American Medical Association Masterfile data October 12, 2017, and March 15, 2018. (Primary care was defined as family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, geriatrics, general medicine, general preventive medicine,…
In an ordinary organization, most people are doing a second job no one is paying them for. In businesses large and small; in government agencies, schools, and hospitals; in for-profits and nonprofits, and in any country in the world, most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding.
Know the difference between technical capacity and adaptive capacity: Which filters do you use to make meaning? Carol Sanford says, “[Most] approaches to change are all working from an old mind. We’ve modified what we do, but we haven’t addressed who we are. It’s no accident that nearly every philosophical and spiritual wisdom tradition teaches…
“As we orient on what we most want, we face what we most fear. Always this energy smolders inside. Always the spark of our purpose and passion awaits our commitment.”