Why is leadership coaching important for healthcare professionals? In my experience, coaching is important because it can keep the passion for healthcare lit, help leaders grow their skills and influence, build teams that will achieve the mission-critical goals shared in healthcare, and prevent burn-out.
Professionals in healthcare report that their work offers challenges and rewards that make work meaningful. Despite consistent high reports of meaningfulness at work, up to 47% of U.S. healthcare workers plan to leave their positions by 2025 according to a 2020 survey by Elsevier health.
Bureaucratic demands, interpersonal stresses, difficult schedules and constant exposure to suffering cause fatigue and disillusionment. Imagining and exploring new challenges is helpful. Without planned opportunities to imagine and participate in new challenges in their areas of expertise, highly trained professionals are likely to prematurely disengage at the peak of their talent.
Giving healthcare professionals an opportunity to reflect and reassess how they deploy their talents is preventative medicine. Burnout is not inevitable. The antidote is a return to a strong sense of meaning, and that benefits all of us.
“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born – that there is a genetic factor to leadership . . . that’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”
Warren BennisLeadership development coaching can help establish a complex repertoire of leadership behaviors and an overall leadership style that fits. A personal leadership model will guide the management of pressures and challenges, interpersonal demands, operational responsibilities and essential strategic vision and actions.
Leadership is essential. In fact, leadership is fundamentally a resource for group survival. In addition, there is growing evidence that organization-driven intervention such as leadership training in healthcare has a significant positive impact on professional wellness in the recipient and in the workplace culture.
Leadership is learned, and prepared leaders at every level are essential. Leadership coaching will help.
“Leadership is the ability to step outside the culture to start evolutionary change processes that are more adaptive.”
Edgar ScheinThe Tripartite Mission in healthcare is a commitment to research and innovation, teaching and mentoring the providers of the future, and clinical service that applies the best of current knowledge to all. This mission is expected to be delivered in collaboration with a large group of diverse stakeholders that often evaluate value and quality differently.
The type of evolutionary change processes required to fulfill the Tripartite Mission today can only be achieved with multiples of intelligent and interdependent strong teams. Research has repeatedly asserted that organizations are led by strong, intelligent teams, and these teams thrive as a result of interconnectivity. No one person can create meaningful change without involving the reliable and integrated insights and efforts of others.
“Healthcare is altogether the most complex human organization ever devised.”
Peter F. Drucker“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed. It is the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret MeadThere is always an opportunity for a new chapter in life – one that can energize and invigorate the mind and body. These opportunities can pass without notice. We move quickly and accept the status quo. We are captives of automatic pilot and deep conditioning that stimulates us to repeat the same behaviors without our recognition.
Research supports the idea that leadership development coaching is good for your health. There is growing evidence that organization-driven intervention such as leadership training in healthcare has a significant positive impact on professional wellness in the recipient and in the health of the workplace culture.
Coaching can help leaders, educators and the specialized experts in healthcare to clearly see what is going on around them and to apply complexity thinking principles to their transformational efforts.
Then, it is more possible to be effective change agents and to solve problems with payors, colleagues, administrators, leaders, government agencies and patients who all have different perspectives about how healthcare might be delivered in the 21st century.
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Hogan, R., & Sherman, R.A. (2020). Personality theory and the nature of human nature. Personality and individual Differences, 152: 109561.
Hu, James S, MD, EdD et all. (2022). Physician burnout – Evidence that leadership behaviors make a difference: A cross-sectional survey of an academic medical center. Military Medicine, 00, 0/0:1, 2022.
Mete M, Goldman C, Shanafelt T, Marchalik D. (2022). Impact of leadership behaviour on physician well-being, burnout, professional fulfilment and intent to leave: a multicentre cross-sectional survey study. BMJ Open. 12(6): e057554.
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Schein, Edgar H. and Schein, Peter A. (2023). Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Rathmell, W. Kimryn, Kilburg, Richard R. and Brown, Nancy J. (2019). Transformation to academic leadership: The role of mentorship and executive coaching. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 71:3, 141-160.
Tawfik, D.S., MD et al. Leadership behavior associations with domains of safety culture, engagement, and health care worker well-being. The Joint commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety 2023; 49: 156-165.
Weick, Karl E. and Sutcliffe, Kathleen M. (2015). Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World. New Jersey: Wiley.
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