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The Healthcare Leadership Excellence podcast was created to share valuable insights around leadership, communication, emotional intelligence and conflict resolution. Karl Pister, with over 30 years of coaching experience, is a passionate advocate of excellent and influential leadership. In each episode, Karl discusses real-life leadership challenges through the lenses of outstanding healthcare professionals. He is committed to empowering every healthcare leader lead with integrity, excellence, and inspiration.
184 Episodes
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In this episode, I sit down again with my friend and what may soon be our “periodic co-host,” Dr. Rob Orman. Rob is a physician, coach, and host of the Stimulus Podcast, and he works extensively with physicians facing burnout, behavioral challenges, and high-stakes pressure. We focus on one central idea: how to expand the space between stimulus and response. So many talented clinicians and leaders aren’t struggling with competence, they’re struggling with reactivity. Rob walks us through prac...
In this episode, I sit down with Lee Angus, President of Medi Leadership, a firm that has spent the last 25 years coaching healthcare executives in one of the most complex leadership environments in the world. Lee’s journey is not a straight line. With a master’s in accountancy from Brigham Young University, he began at Deloitte auditing and implementing SAP systems, watching firsthand how leaders either created the conditions for integration or sabotaged it. He saw something early in his ca...
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Leo Spector, practicing surgeon and CEO of OrthoCarolina, to talk about what happens when physicians step into real leadership. Dr. Spector shares his path from the OR to the executive seat, why he pursued an MBA, and what it feels like to learn administration the same way we learn medicine: through a kind of internship and residency in real time. We get into the hard parts quickly: how to invite younger physicians into leadership when they don’t want “ex...
In this episode, I welcome back Dr. Joseph Michelli for the fifth time, and we focus on a topic that explains a huge percentage of leadership breakdowns I see in real organizations: emotional intelligence. Dr. Michelli and I talk about why EI is still treated as “soft” even though it solves the hard problems of miscommunication, defensiveness, mistrust, stalled execution, and unresolved conflict. We get specific about what emotional intelligence actually is: regulating personal emotions, rea...
In this episode, I sit down with Nancy Griffin, founder of Women Worth and Wellness. Nancy began her career as one of the first female managers at Procter & Gamble Canada and later built a successful wealth management practice focused on women. We talk about the connection between financial confidence and self-worth band why health and wealth are leadership issues, not side conversations. When leaders have clarity around their health, finances, and long-term plan, they lead with greater ...
In this episode, I sit down with Laura Sicola, author of Speaking to Influence, to talk about something I hear in almost every organization: “We need to communicate better.” Everyone agrees. Everyone nods. And then everyone goes back to the same habits. Laura and I dig into why communication so often misses the mark, especially in healthcare environments where people are tired, rushed, and under real pressure. We talk about the illusion that communication has occurred, and why what you inte...
In this episode, I sit down again with Dr. Jason Kuhl, Chief Medical Officer at Providence Medford Medical Center, to talk about something every healthcare leader faces: conflict, and how to lead it instead of avoiding it. I open with a moment that’s stayed with me for years: watching Dr. Kuhl navigate a tense physician call with calm, discipline, and persistence until the right outcome happened. It’s a clear example of what this episode is about. Conflict isn’t the exception in healthcare, ...
In this episode, I sit down with Amos Balongo, a leadership consultant whose work spans corporate America, senior levels of the U.S. military, and global philanthropic efforts. Amos brings a rare combination of discipline, humility, and clarity to leadership, shaped by years of working in environments where performance, trust, and execution truly matter. We talk about why leadership so often breaks down when it becomes overly complicated, and why simplicity is not a lack of sophistication bu...
In this episode, I sit down with Kim Bohr, President and Chief Operating Officer of SparkEffect, for a very real conversation about trust and why leaders can’t afford to treat it as a “soft” topic anymore. Kim and I talk about SparkEffect’s newly released 2025 Trust in Organizations Report, and what immediately stood out to me is this: trust is measurable, it affects the bottom line, and it breaks down faster than most leaders realize. We explore why trust rises and falls most dramatically a...
In this episode, I sit down with Dianna Anderson, CEO and co-founder of Cylient, and one of the early pioneers in the coaching profession. Dianna brings decades of experience helping leaders step into the conversations they most want to avoid, and shows why those conversations are often the ones that matter most. We talk about the real cost of the conversation that doesn’t happen. Not just in dollars, but in stalled initiatives, broken trust, and teams that never quite move forward. Dianna c...
In this episode, we step into new territory for the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast and take on medical and biomedical ethics as it actually shows up in real clinical life. My guest is Dr. Deborah Kozik, a pediatric cardiac surgeon I’ve worked closely with over the past year. Alongside performing some of the most technically demanding surgeries in medicine, she also earned a Master of Science in Bioethics from Harvard University. We talk about why ethics rarely feels urgent until a...
In this episode, I do something a little different. Instead of sitting down with a single guest, I bring together the team that makes the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast and much of the work I do with leaders, actually happen. With more than 185 episodes behind us, this felt like the right moment to look back, and reflect on the year together. We talk honestly about what stretched us last year. That includes deeper work in team facilitation and mediation with academic medical center...
In this episode, I sit down again with Laurie Baedke to tackle a topic that hits close to home for many leaders: control. We start with an honest admission: what makes us successful early in our careers often involves tight control, precision, and personal ownership. The problem is that those same habits quietly stop working as our roles expand. Laurie walks through why high-achieving professionals, especially physicians and executives, struggle to let go. We talk about the psychology behind...
In this episode, I turn the mic over to my own coach, Andy Hall, for a conversation about conflict and why leaders struggle with it. Andy and I talk about my path into mediation—from early lessons reading Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes to the intensive week I spent training with the Harvard Program on Negotiation. That experience shaped how I work: long preparation, deep listening, and slowing conversations down so people can actually be understood. We look at the most common leadership mis...
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Jason Kuhl, Chief Medical Officer at Providence Medford Medical Center. We revisit a project we did together in Medford that became a model for breaking down silos: getting leaders in a room, listening first, and then building an agenda from what they actually needed rather than what I assumed they needed. Dr. Kuhl walks through how that work continues today through an acute care medical leadership council, an innovation center, and a structured way of th...
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Michelle Griffin, CEO of Griffin Resources and an industrial–organizational psychologist who built her HR firm one year before COVID—and still grew it to seven figures by year three. Michelle brings real, applied experience from navigating healthcare regulations, staffing crises, rapid change, and the financial pressure that hit small and mid-size organizations during the pandemic. We get into what she learned leading clients through chaos, how she approached...
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Scott Ellner, a former trauma surgeon who now leads physicians as president of Integris Health Medical Group in Oklahoma City. We start with a life-changing moment on the Pacific Coast Highway, in southern California, when Scott is a 21-year-old surfer and witnesses a Harley-Davison motorcycle accident. A trauma surgeon pulls over, places a breathing tube in the middle of the highway, and saves a life. That single act changes the entire direction of his ca...
In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence podcast, I sit down with author Graham Alcott to explore why kindness is not soft—it is a driver of real performance. Graham is known worldwide for Productivity Ninja, but his newest book, Kind, looks at how trust, truth, and grace fuel team effectiveness. Graham shares the moment in Rome where an audience of investment bankers asked about the secret to his success. His answer surprises even him: “When you are kind, you win.” That spark...
In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence podcast, I sit down with coach and podcaster Curtis McCullom to dig into human potential—what really changes behavior and how leaders can reach flow on purpose. Curtis shares his path from 35+ years in financial services to coaching with hypnotherapy, NLP, and Mental & Emotional Release (MER). We clear up myths about hypnosis, talk about the conscious vs. subconscious split, and look at why language shapes state, which shapes behavio...
In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Carla Fowler, MD PhD, a performance coach with a medical and research background, to break leadership into four practical buckets: strategy, execution, mindset, and biology. We talk about ten-minute strategy, why dialogue beats top-down directives, how capability, visibility, and influence drive execution, and why biology sets the floor for performance. We also get into how great leaders think: when to trust ...
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