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

By Cheryl Foss and Kathy Gibala A client of ours, a Chief Nursing Officer who has been in healthcare for 30 years, recently said, “I was planning on retiring in three years, but given the state of healthcare and the savings plan we have in place, I have moved up the timeline to next month.”...Read More

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

Without effective physician leadership, clinical redesign strategies will fail. A growing number of physicians are stepping into leadership roles in hospitals and health systems. Many health system CEOs are physicians. There is clearly a strong case for clinicians in the C-suite of the future. As a career health system executive CEO and executive coach to...Read More

It is stating the obvious to say that the situation confronting healthcare leaders is as challenging, if not more challenging, than any time in our history.  After surviving the ravages of the emergent stage of the COVID pandemic, we find ourselves facing a landscape which has been dramatically, and permanently, changed. We not only face...Read More

Though the challenges healthcare leaders face aren’t entirely new, there’s no denying our industry is undergoing a season of heightened and accelerated transformation.  As conditions change, how do you inspire your team, reduce resistance, and compel others to follow your lead? And how do you empower employees to create new solutions toward shared goals? As...Read More

In my coaching practice it is surprisingly common for me to encounter experienced and highly accomplished leaders riddled periodically with crippling self-doubt. Known as the “imposter syndrome” or “inner critic,” that internal voice of self-doubt is something that seemingly every leader battles to some extent at some time, regardless of overwhelming, objective evidence to the...Read More

What does it take to develop leaders who are consistently effective in driving transformation, building high-performing teams, and achieving personal, professional and organizational goals? One of the greatest blessings in my career as a former executive in healthcare was working with an executive coach. Talk about a transformational experience. To understand the value of executive...Read More