Leaders are corporate athletes.  Elite leadership performance requires considerable physical and emotional endurance, mental focus, and determination. The demands that a leader places on their body are substantial. However, few leaders take the time to remember that they have a body, let alone pay close attention to caring for it. Over time, many healthcare leaders...Read More

In our coaching engagements across the country, we see common themes in the aftermath of the pandemic: unsustainable operating losses, closed services, decreased engagement scores, nursing strikes, and unprecedented staffing shortages. In the U.S., employee engagement has slipped to 32%, with 17% of the workforce being actively disengaged, which Gallup defines as “disgruntled and disloyal...Read More

Burnout has reached crisis levels among healthcare workers. Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murphy issued an advisory highlighting the urgent need to alleviate the burnout crisis and promote the mental health and well-being of health workers. Addressing the problem begins with identifying what’s fueling it. In this post, we explore five common causes...Read More

Budget cuts? Staffing shortages? Working 12-hour days or longer? Double and triple bookings? All of those stressors likely sound familiar. We thought the height of COVID would be the worst of busyness and demands on healthcare leaders, but since the crescendo of the pandemic, stressors haven’t tapered down. Instead, they continue to climb. In the...Read More

“I am going to make a confession. I too, along with thousands of doctors, once suffered from burnout.” Dr. Sanziana Roman, Professor of Surgery at the University of California San Francisco, posted those words in her Twitter feed earlier this spring, on National Doctors Day. In a thread that garnered thousands of “likes” and hundreds...Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic, staffing shortages and supply chain challenges have thrust us all into uncharted territory. As I talk with healthcare leaders and providers across the U.S., I continue to be impressed with and inspired by their commitment, collaboration, and resourcefulness.  With the Omicron variant wave currently sweeping across the U.S., I continue to hear...Read More

Healthcare workers are hurting, and the American Psychiatric Association anticipates “a great deal of post-traumatic stress” among medical professionals as the pandemic stretches. As a healthcare leader, supporting the mental health of your team is a critical part of your COVID-19 response, warn researchers. In this post, we’ll cover mitigation tactics to help protect your...Read More

You can’t lead well unless you are well. It’s that simple. Almost all the leaders I work with know this. Almost all leaders I work with want to be well. Despite this, many leaders are not well. They are limping in their life and their leadership. In a previous post I pointed out the similarities...Read More

May is National Mental Health Awareness month. It seems like the appropriate time to share my thoughts regarding the stigma that exists regarding Mental Health treatment in the world of Executive Leaders, Physician Leaders, and the like in healthcare. I recently had an intense conversation with a young medical professional, I will refer to him...Read More

I often talk with my coaching clients about “heads-up” versus “heads-down” time. Heads-up time is when leaders shift from doing to being, allowing time to think, to meditate. Heads-down down is the everyday doing. As leaders we need both, but too often we find ourselves stuck in heads-down. This morning I took a walk on...Read More