From the outside, Terry appears calm and confident. Inside, Terry is carrying an enormous weight.
Terry is a composite of many remarkable leaders I’ve had the privilege to coach: the CEO, the COO, the physician executive, the chief nursing officer, or the senior vice president who genuinely cares about people and believes deeply in healthcare’s mission. They are intelligent, respected, accountable, and compassionate.
Every morning brings a list of competing priorities, from financial pressures and workforce shortages to board expectations and artificial intelligence. Like so many leaders, Terry got here by being the person with the answers.
In an earlier post, I wrote about why healthcare’s toughest problems seem unsolvable or won’t stay solved, drawing from Shifting Toward Unorthodoxy by my colleague, Dr. Michael (Mike) Hein. This time, I want to focus on Terry, and on what leading through complexity asks of the person doing the leading.
The questions healthcare leaders bring to coaching
The leaders I coach rarely ask how to work harder. Their questions go deeper:
- “Why does this feel so difficult?”
- “Why aren’t we making the progress we expected?”
- “Why does every solution seem to create another problem?”
These leaders have plenty of intelligence, experience, and effort. What I hear in those questions is a leader operating in complexity, where the approaches that built a career stop delivering the results they used to.
The human side of change
Leadership transformation is deeply human, and it’s emotional. It asks successful leaders to question the habits that made them successful. It asks decisive leaders to become more curious, and high achievers to get comfortable with uncertainty. And it asks experts to become learners again.
None of that is easy. I’ve watched exceptional executives wrestle with these transitions. I’ve also watched leadership teams stall, with everyone trying to do the right thing and no path forward feeling obvious. And I’ve watched organizations struggle to make sense of complexity together.
Chances are you’ve experienced all three. It’s natural to read the discomfort that comes with them as a sign something has gone wrong.
What the discomfort is telling you
One idea from Mike’s book reframed that struggle for me. Discomfort is often an indicator of where your most significant opportunity for growth lies. Mike calls this a growth edge, an area where you’re challenged and stretched, and can learn and develop new skills.
For leaders like Terry, and perhaps for you, that edge often sits right where expertise runs out. If you pay attention to the discomfort instead of pushing through it, it positions you to change for the better.
What changes when you embrace a learner’s posture
Executive coaching creates space for that kind of attention. With a thinking partner, leaders like Terry can separate what they can control from what they must influence. They become more aware of how they show up when uncertainty increases.
I’ve seen what happens when leaders come through the other side. They become better decision-makers and better listeners, collaborators, and developers of people. They set down the burden of believing they alone must have every answer, and they create environments where better answers can emerge.
Lee Angus, MEDI co-founder and president emeritus, likens it to being a gardener: a leader who doesn’t pretend to control the weather but cultivates conditions, plants with intention, and adjusts to make a good outcome more likely.
Leading from the growth edge
For Terry, growth takes the courage to question assumptions that have served them well for years. It also takes humility to let the best answers emerge from the people around them.
When leaders grow through complexity instead of simply surviving it, they build stronger teams, stronger organizations, and healthcare systems ready for whatever comes next.
If Terry sounds familiar, a conversation with a MEDI coach is a good place to start.
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