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Pay attention to the personal and organizational factors that erode well-being, drive burnout, and make strategic changes to nourish yourself and your team.
âIâve finally found my passion!â Not every day, my patients walk into my office smiling, but itâs delightful when it happens. Iâd been working with this guy for a while, focusing on mindful self-awareness and kicking his people-pleasing habit. I never intended to help him find his passion, but it happened when he began paying attention to what was genuinely fulfilling.Addressing burnout requires that we toggle between the personal and the organizational. Paying attention to what is fulfilling and deeply meaningful to you and me while at the same time working to address barriers to equitable distribution of workload, leadership practices that erode trust, and challenges that interfere with building community at the team level.
The way weâre working isnât working. So how do we step out of the frame and change how we work to create a system nourishing for us and everyone in our healthcare organizations?
Tune in to learn:
What simple changes will help you realign with your passion for medicineWhat questions to ask to transform your experience as a healerHow to help your team reconnect with passion every dayBio: Adele Wang is an integrative health provider who also mentors professional people struggling with anxiety and physical manifestations of stress. In her current practice, she focuses on helping healthcare providers realign themselves with their passions in life and medicine. Adele is also the host of the All Things Human podcast.
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Earn employees' trust by giving them a life-giving workplace.
Iâd been waiting to catch the attention of my chief of staff all morning. I finally had her on my screen. With my headphones on, I didnât notice the office door creak open until a glitter-encrusted wand was thrust in my face. I was mortified, but she responded graciously, âI have kids too.âCOVID reminded us of our humanity and removed the work-life separation so many of us were used to. So, letâs use that lesson to reshape how we think about healthcare to create life-giving work and resilient workplaces for frontline employees and leaders in healthcare.
I sat down with Dr. Mayan Bomsztyk and asked her to share her thoughts on building trust between executives and frontline clinicians and improving employees' happiness in healthcare workplaces. Her big takeaway, learn the proper lessons from COVID to reconnect with the big picture and reprioritize what is fulfilling about working in healthcare for your frontline.
While she no longer supervises frontline staff, she is still constantly thinking about the needs of her frontline staff. She shared how she approaches frontline concerns at the executive level.
Here are some of her recommendations:
1. Rebalance work duties so employees can thrive.
2. Make allowances for humanity at work.
3. Consider the big picture when looking at metrics.
4. Go the extra mile to re-engage your people and promote change.
**This is a replay of Menders episode 1, originall published in April of 2022.Bio: Dr. Mayan Bomsztyk is an internal medicine physician at an executive leadership level in the public sector.
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If youâre a woman in leadership struggling to prioritize yourself, try Intuitive Eating as a first step to honoring yourself.
You can't be the woman in leadership your people need you to be without prioritizing self-care.
One of the things that women leaders mention is the difficulty they have prioritizing taking time for themselves, especially when that is not being encouraged in their work environment. Leaders (especially women) feel time pressured as they balance the many needs of everybody else: their organization, employees, and family. In this busy context, self-care can feel unimportant.
Victoria and I discussed how the difficulty prioritizing self-care applies to women's relationships with food and their bodies.
You can learn to nourish yourself and your body as you care for yourself, both as, just as humans, as women, as women in leadership, or just as women in healthcare.
Prioritizing yourself can feel selfish, so you may sometimes feel guilty for making yourself a priority. But as Victoria points out, this all-or-nothing mindset of self-denial and service to others is exhausting and problematic. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
Listen to learn:
- The fundamentals of the intuitive eating framework
- How intuitive eating relates to self-care principles
- Why diet culture is so harmful to women and the health of the body
- How to prioritize time for yourself when you are incredibly busy
- Why prioritizing pleasure is healthy for the body
- How self-awareness will reduce your risk of burnout
Watch a clip on YouTube
Read more on my blogBio: Victoria Yates is a registered nurse, and an intuitive eating coach focused on helping women with issues surrounding food and their bodies. Victoria cares about helping women to care for and nourish themselves and develop more calm confidence with who they are and their approach to caring for themselves and their bodies. You can find her at victoria-yates.com.
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Lead with self-awareness and mindfulness to keep your leadership presence in difficult times.
Mindful emotional awarenessFlexible thinkingValues-aligned action
As a psychologist, much of my time is spent teaching people how to regulate their emotions. You could call this skill learning how to manage stress, distress tolerance, or create breathing space under pressure.
Leaders need three skills to stay calm and maintain leadership presence in difficult situations.I use these skills to calm my out-of-control emotional response when my preschooler is obnoxious, with a challenging patient, and when I give or receive difficult feedback. These are also foundational skills for effective leadership.
Transformational leaders are connected to their own emotional experiences and have the emotional capacity to connect with and acknowledge their team membersâ emotions too.Miracle Laurie May and I discussed how leaders could use mindful emotional awareness to stay present and lead people by example during challenging moments.
The five A's of Mindful AwarenessHow mindfulness helps leaders to lead by exampleWhy mindfulness and meditation aren't the sameHow mindfulness practice can help elevate your leadership skills
Listen to find out:Read more at my blog:
Bio: Miracle Laurie May is a mindfulness coach who works with leaders motivated to prioritize joy, integrity, and equanimity in their daily lives. You can learn more about her work and find her at Have Zen Will Travel.
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Leaders Are Trained Not Born.
Why modeling is so powerful as a leadership training toolWhy leadership is a value and not just a roleHow to create developmental experiences for faculty and traineesHow you can equip future leaders to rise into formal and informal leadership positions
It is time to include leadership development as a core component of healthcare training.
Our trainees may have innate leadership skills and qualities, but leadership can also be taught. And as we work to create institutions that reflect our communities, we must equip trainees from diverse backgrounds with the leadership skills our organizations need.
Your trainees and up-and-coming leaders in your organization will benefit from learning to appreciate how their strengths and unique attributes help them to become leaders. And your trainees will learn the most in a warm environment where you and your team provide mentoring, encouragement, and supported experiences in learning to apply themselves in leadership roles.
Listen to find out:Dr. Nicole Torrence is a training director for a psychology pre-doctoral internship training program in a public sector healthcare system.
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Address structural bias to elevate underrepresented employees as leaders within healthcare organizations.
There is a representation gap in healthcare leadership. People with diverse identities and historically marginalized tend to be underrepresented in the pool of applicants presenting for executive positions in healthcare organizations.
Many things must change, including the structural elements reinforcing bias and underrepresentation.
Dr. Chamarlyn Fairley and I had the opportunity to explore these ideas in our recent conversation about how to diversify the pipeline to executive leadership positions in healthcare.Listen to her tips on increasing diversity, reducing bias, and strengthening leadership capacity in your healthcare system:
Increase leadership capacity by developing diverse leaders within your organization.Reduce bias in your hiring and selection process.Let go of stereotypes to identify future leaders.Start with an intentional conversation about why increasing diversity matters to your healthcare system.Ensure the diversity of your applicant pool is representative of the rich diversity of your community.Ensure each candidate is discussed for an equal amount of time.
Bio: Dr. Chamarlyn Fairley is a psychologist and consultant to healthcare executive leaders. She is the founder and principal consultant at the Fairley Consulting Group. -
Invest in employee engagement. You donât have to compromise your bottom line to create a healthy workplace.
You can create change in your healthcare organization when your employees have disengaged. It takes persistent effort, but itâs possible. And the time and energy you invest in employee engagement wonât negatively impact your bottom line. Not if you focus your resources on the right things.Is it possible to re-engage your employees without collapsing your bottom line? Absolutely. Listen to my conversation with Michele Thomson, who has a powerful story about how this is possible. She turned a struggling organization around and transformed employee outcomes on a budget, and you can too.
Listen to find out:
How Michele re-engaged her staff and transformed a toxic workplace cultureHow moral injury fits into the conversation about employee engagementWhy you should feel empowered to put your people before patientsWhat strategies will make the biggest impact on your employee outcomesBio: Michelle Thomson is an RN specializing in palliative and end-of-life care. Michele is also a workplace culture consultant and the founder of Curis Consulting. In her consulting role, she works with leaders to promote healthy leadership development and transform unhealthy workplaces into positive cultural spaces.
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Mindful leaders know that forcing mindfulness on their employees wonât solve burnout in healthcare.
There is a common misconception about mindfulness popular with healthcare clinicians and leadership. We have gotten caught up in believing that mindfulness will help us be calmer, nicer, handle stress better, and recover from burnout faster.
Mindfulness is a buzzword, and many hospitals and healthcare systems have adopted mindfulness classes as a primary employee wellness tool.
Seeing mindfulness as one tool is ok, but when healthcare systems get caught up in seeing mindfulness as a fix for their employees, we have a problem.
Why mindfulness classes are not a fix for burnout. How mindfulness can help you shift how you work with and motivate distressed or unhappy employees.Why seeing mindfulness as a fix for your unhappy employees blinds healthcare systems to the reality of systemic failures that lead to moral injury and burnout. How leaders can use mindfulness as a leadership tool to engage burnout hotspots successfully.How leaders can become part of the solution to reduce burnout and promote healing in your healthcare systems. How mindfulness can help you create a healthy and high-performing healthcare system aligned with the core values of medicine and its employees.
Listen to learn how to apply mindfulness skills within your healthcare system:Watch clips from the episode
Read more about how to apply mindfulness as a healthcare leaderBio: Colleen Camenisch is the Executive Director of the Nevada Physician Wellness Coalition. She works with healthcare leaders to apply a mindfulness-based approach to well-being within their organizations. She is a certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher and Teacher Trainer.
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Engage your Employees by Prioritizing Internal Communication.
Carley Trotman is the founder of The CarTam Project. Sheâs a communication strategist, a cake lover, expat in the South of France. She brings a wealth of experience working with healthcare organizations on organizational communication and internal messaging to promote employee engagement.Carley started her company to leverage her expertise as an internal communications specialist and employee engagement point person for organizations. Healthcare organizations have a unique opportunity to consider their internal customers (employees). Healthcare has traditionally looked at its external customers (patients and payors) and ignored what it can do to shape employeesâ experiences through its messaging intentionally. So, take a moment to let go of the day-to-day business operations of your healthcare organization and consider what you can do to engage and retain your employees from day one of the employee journey.
Why thinking about the employee journey is critical When you need to start messaging your team about big changesWhy quick decisions and last-minute communication contribute to turnover in healthcare How you can turn around employee engagement by changing your messaging strategyAnd why croissants are better in France!
Carley Trotman has organizational messaging tips that you need to hear!
Listen to find out:Bio: Carley Trotman is a Communications and Employee Experience specialist. She is the founder of the CarTam project and she is a thoughtful change agent. She is deeply committed to understanding what employees care about - their motivations and the challenges that inhibit their ability to change, as the catalysts for identifying opportunities to strengthen their engagement with the organization.
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Becoming a Voice for Change.
Highly trained administrative leaders are becoming more challenging to find. But suppose you're lucky enough to hire someone like Amanda Forrester. In that case, you'll be able to transform your healthcare system by learning to prioritize the well-being of administrative professionals within your healthcare system.
It is easy to forget that clinicians and healthcare leaders are supported by administrative professionals who manage all of the details, from our patients' arrival at our clinics to the behind-the-scenes management of access to care challenges.
Having good administrative support reduces clinician burnout. But administrative staff are often shuffled to the end of the priority list when healthcare systems strategize how to better care for their people. If your admin team is not at the top of your list of people to care for, they should be.
Empower your administrative team to work at the highest level of their ability, and your clinicians will be freed up to work at the highest level of their license. We are all in this together!
Bio: Amanda Forrester is trained in health informatics and healthcare administration. She manages administrative operations for an extensive healthcare system. -
Transitioning care from volume to value challenges us to completely transform how we think about financial incentives in healthcare.
If you're struggling with transitioning from being a clinician to a healthcare executive leader, this episode is for you!
Dr. Letitia Anderson, MD, is a practicing cardiologist and a Chief of Staff. She's been in your shoes, and she knows it is not easy to balance the competing needs of clinicians and senior executives. But her story demonstrates that you can care for your team while keeping your hospitalâs financial stability in mind. Listen to her tips and tricks on staying connected to your clinical team while working in the executive suite.
Hear her explain why heart health month helps us to understand the role that health equity plays for every healthcare team member (as people) and not just our patients.
And finally, join the conversation as we dig into hospitals' responsibility to get involved with their community's food bank and healthy food prescription programs.Bio: Dr. Letitia Anderson, MD, is a practicing cardiologist and the Chief of Staff for the Northern Nevada Medical Center. She is also the incoming governor of the Nevada Chapter of the American College of Cardiology. And she is also the Board Chair for the Northern Nevada Food Bank (one of my favorite organizations to support!)
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Aligning Your Actions with Your Values for DEI & Inclusive Leadership
If youâve been wondering how to put your core values into practice and help your healthcare organization transition away from old habits and towards inclusive leadership values. Look no further.
Sarah Bettman shares practical ideas about how to align your healthcare system with deeply rooted diversity, equity, and inclusion values. She will challenge you to understand why itâs not enough to show up in pro-diversity spaces, like your townâs PRIDE parade, or to be a figurehead in your hospital's COVID tent. You must also be willing to learn from and be changed by these spaces.Sarah Bettman is the principal consultant at Bettman Consulting Group. She works with leaders to develop workplace cultures deeply rooted in the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion that don't have a "check the box" vibe.
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You can reclaim your courage, all you need is a map.
Why leaders who model courage create collective psychological safetyWhy you don't want your healthcare organization to need too much courageHow to build courage in yourself!
Courage shows up in places of pain, transition, challenge, and uncertainty! And while women are not socialized to be courageous, we are born into spaces that demand courage and leadership.
Did you know that boys keep a steady level of courage as they age, but girls don't? Girls lose their courage (at least for a while) and tend to build it back in middle age.
Let's skip the early loss of courage and follow Dr. Lucy Houghton, Courage Cartographer, as she teaches us how to reclaim our courage as leaders.
Listen to find out:Bio: Dr. Lucy Houghton is a registered nurse, women's courage researcher, and board-certified wellness coach. She holds a Ph.D. Organizational Leadership & Human Performance and is the founder of Wyld Rootz (https://wyldrootz.com/). She is an award-winning speaker and the author of the Courage Cultivation Theory, the first of its kind specifically focused on how women summon their courage. And she is on a mission to ensure women have the training, tools, and support they need to claim their courage and create the life of their dreams.
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Neuroscience and Networking Go Hand in Hand for Women Leaders.
How neuroscience and networking go hand in handWhy you need to pay attention to your neuroscience needs and create an environment that helps others do the same How you can create stronger social networks that will help you feel supported in every stage of your career
Neuroscience sounds complex, and it is, but the fundamentals of neuroscience come down to caring for your brain in the simplest ways.
Have you ever stopped to think about how your brain health impacts your ability to do your job as a leader in healthcare? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't.
Take a moment to consider your brain's basic needs (food, water, sleep, rest) and you'll find that caring for your brain creates a healthy platform for growth, networking, learning, and the ability to lead others gracefully.
Listen to find out:Bio: Dr. Mary Rensel is a neuroimmunologist and the founder of Brain Fresh (https://www.brainfresh.org/). She is also a productivity guru and keynote speaker focusing on resiliency, burnout, & gender in medicine.
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Lead with Your Whole Life as a Whole Person and as a Woman.
How having an emotionally intelligent and self-aware leader impacts team outcomesWhy the best leaders focus on managing themselves firstWhat you can do to help your team identify what is unique about them as you lead
Self-awareness is the core of effective leadership. And I'm talking about leadership that goes beyond any particular role you may hold. You are a leader in your life as much as you are a leader in your healthcare system.
Women who are aware of their need for boundaries and self-care are better at creating resilient systems that honor the human needs that we all have.
When you live your values and honor yourself daily, you shift the systems we live in and power up the long-term outcomes that your team can accomplish.
Listen to find out:Bio: Dr. Sahana D'Silva is an Integrative Psychiatrist and Transformational Leadership Development Coach. She coaches physicians in effective communication skills and she co-founded Tree of Life Soul-Centered Wellness (https://tolsoulwellness.com/).
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Leadership takes courage.
How she connected with mentors who did not share her racial identityWhat she does to model respect for people from every discipline in her organizationHow you can act with intentionality to identify diverse leaders and empower them within your systemWhat strategies will help you to retain and develop your people for leadership roles
Being a young healthcare CEO is a tough job. But it can be even more challenging (and isolating) for young BIPOC women.
Natalie Lamberton shares the lessons she learned through this experience as a young black female CEO. She found mentors and models who inspired and empowered her to take ownership of this role. And she used grit and courage to find her voice as she learned to fully appreciate the weight of her responsibilities as a healthcare executive.
Listen to find out:
Bio: Natalie Lamberton is the CEO of Denver Springs Behavioral Health Hospital and co-author of The Emerging Leader: A field guide. -
Take Small Steps to Model Self Care & Sustain Your Team.
Why Karla loves working with women leadersHow to identify which of your people are ready to make big changes How you can use your presence to impact your employees' well-being
Your sustainability as a leader or manager is critical to the well-being and resilience of your team. Don't think your well-being, health behaviors, or self-care routine matters to your team? Think again.
Your people are watching you and taking your lead. When leaders model health boundaries and prioritize self-care, they promote their sustainability and elevate the level of sustainability within their whole team. And healthier clinicians model healthier behaviors for patients, which boosts patients' motivation to make healthy behavior changes. Talk about creating a virtuous cycle of well-being!
Join Karla Cauldwell to learn how to make tiny changes to move in a values-aligned direction.
Listen to learn:Bio: Karla Cauldwell is an author, speaker, podcast host, and Live Your Best Life Coach. She brings her expertise in nursing and whole health education to her work, coaching healthcare leaders to improve their quality of life and model self-care for their teams.
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Client Spotlight: An Example of How To Create Organizational Well-Being.
What challenges led her to ask for helpWhy making an investment in her team's well-being was an easy decisionWhy investing in your team's well-being is a worthwhile investment
Whatever the size or complexity of your organization, I hope that you feel empowered to make small changes to start the process of cultural transformation.
The most effective and lasting changes start with the smallest actions. Take the time to consider what tiny action you can take to transform your team.
And enjoy hearing how Dr. Lauren Beste approached this process. Sometimes slow and steady really is the better approach!
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Create a Responsive Feedback Cycle.
Why feedback cycles require daily attentionHow to create sustainable changeHow paying attention to your values will keep your organization sustainable
Congratulations!
You've taken the time to engage, listen, and respond to your employees. Now it is time to ensure that your changes to promote well-being continue making an impact over the long term.
The good news is that your policy changes will pay dividends in employee engagement and workplace satisfaction as long as you pay attention to their impact.
If you stop monitoring policy impacts, you'll risk slipping back into habits that damage well-being.
Commit to a simple feedback process.
A responsive feedback cycle will allow you to gather feedback, make subtle adjustments, and stay the course of organizational well-being.
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Empower Your Frontline Employees To Create Change.
Why it is so important to involve your people in making big changesHow you can take frontline complaints and turn them into creative ideasWhy it is important to listen to feedback, even when it's painful
It is tempting to push the responsibility for organizational change into employees. And, while they play a vital role in this process, employees can only create change when you lead the way.
So how do you get this right?
Take the time to invest in a systemic response. And then empower your employees with the tools and resources to remove the proverbial pebble in the shoe problems.
Employees can bring their creativity and expertise to solve frontline problems when they feel fully supported by you.
Listen to find out: - Vis mere
