Physicians dedicate their young lives to technical growth: pre-med requirements, preparing for and taking entrance exams, medical school, passing boards, residency, and so on. Often, the price of this laser focus on technical growth is neglected adaptive growth. Adaptive growth is associated with wisdom, gravitas, maturity, courage, complex thinking, governance, vision, competent leadership, and confidence. Adaptive…
What about the colleague who is willing to sacrifice the truth if being truthful means being wrong? What about the boss who has no concern about the consequences of his or her manipulative style? What about the employee who is a stranger to empathy and has no problem hurting others? What about unreasonable people?
Power, Control, Revenge, Avoidance, and Attention. These are Rudolf Dreikurs’ five motives for troublesome behavior.[i] We can use them to gain insight into ourselves and to understand some of the difficult behaviors we see in others. Dreikurs taught us to look beyond problematic behavior, identify the unmet need, and resist the knee-jerk urge to use…
Fear of being dispossessed was and is a biological brain function promoted by natural selection. Subsequently, we’re hardwired to fear social estrangement. (In other words, you’re normal.)
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 We walked in, presented an outdated prescription from the…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…