When you’re hiking or walking through unfamiliar terrain, you need to alternate keeping your head up and keeping your head down if you don’t want to trip up, hurt yourself or others. If you never look down, you could step into a hole or miss a step and twist your ankle. If you never look...Read More

A few years ago, I experienced a strange paradox. Despite our rich expertise as MEDI Leadership coaches, our internal team dynamics were suffering. To be clear, each team member was wonderful. And yet, our internal dynamics… not so much. Seeking a solution, I had to recognize we needed an external perspective — our own executive...Read More

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to know the next several months will continue to bring intense pressure, changes and opportunities for healthcare organizations. It’s a season that will reveal extraordinary leaders, and also expose leaders struggling with these new challenges (and, quite honestly, some of the same challenges of the past).  How prepared are...Read More

Leadership can be a lonely experience. That loneliness is a common reason why many healthcare leaders turn to executive coaching. You see, leaders are always in the spotlight in their own organizations. They have few safe places to turn and share their misgivings, their quest, and just be themselves. The coaching relationship provides a safe...Read More

Professional athletes, market innovators and artistic prodigies all have a longstanding tradition of magnifying their skills with expert coaching. Likewise, high-performing healthcare leaders are ideal candidates for individualized leadership growth. Can “born leaders” succeed indefinitely? While some are “born leaders” with innate charisma and good instincts, most leadership skills must be learned or refined, argues...Read More

It’s a common predicament: You attend a conference, watch an online course or spend time with a mentor, hear fascinating insights, take copious notes, and then… nothing. By the time you’re back to work, the ideas you thought could catapult your impact on the job are fuzzy memories, trampled by daily responsibilities and relegated to...Read More

A leader’s brand is how others see — and what they say — about him or her (often when the leader is not around). Ever since Tom Peters introduced the concept in a famous late-’90s article in Fast Company, leaders have worked on building their brands from scratch. They have also attempted to reinvent their personal...Read More

It can happen to anyone. It could be caused by a specific event, or it might be a slow degradation over time. Perhaps it stems from a rumor. Or maybe from a lack of visibility to your team. Often, it’s from a weak or blind spot that is more noticeable to others than it is...Read More

There is no shortage of leadership definitions. In fact, a search on Amazon reveals well over 60,000 book titles on leadership, alone. No doubt many, if not all, of the authors hold and define their own description of the discipline. At the risk of adding to this mix, I would like to discuss mine. My...Read More

Normal, predictable and thankfully, manageable stages of teams “I guess I am not a good leader.” There are times when someone I am coaching – who happens to be a fantastic leader – will turn to me in exasperation and say something along the lines of, “I guess I am not a good leader.  If...Read More