Menders: Lead from Within with Dr. Nicola De Paul

Lead with self-awareness and mindfulness to keep your leadership presence in difficult times. 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.Mindful emotional awarenessFlexible thinkingValues-aligned action 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 members’ 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. Listen to find out: 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 skillsRead 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. 

Leaders Are Trained Not Born. 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: 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 positionsDr. Nicole Torrence is a training director for a psychology pre-doctoral internship training program in a public sector healthcare system. 

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 don’t 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 it’s possible. And the time and energy you invest in employee engagement won’t 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. 

Mindful leaders know that forcing mindfulness on their employees won’t 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. Listen to learn how to apply mindfulness skills within your healthcare system: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.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.

Engage your Employees by Prioritizing Internal Communication.Carley Trotman is the founder of The CarTam Project. She’s 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 employees’ 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.Carley Trotman has organizational messaging tips that you need to hear!Listen to find out: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!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.

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 hospital’s 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!)

You can reclaim your courage, all you need is a map.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: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!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.

Neuroscience and Networking Go Hand in Hand for Women Leaders.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: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 careerBio: 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. 

Lead with Your Whole Life as a Whole Person and as a Woman.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: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 leadBio: 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/).

Leadership takes courage.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: 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 rolesBio: 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. 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: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 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.

Client Spotlight: An Example of How To Create Organizational Well-Being.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!Listen to find out: 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

Create a Responsive Feedback Cycle.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.Listen to find out: Why feedback cycles require daily attentionHow to create sustainable changeHow paying attention to your values will keep your organization sustainable

Empower Your Frontline Employees To Create Change. 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: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

Align Organizational Policies with Employee Needs & Well-Being. Okay, you've invested time and energy in listening to your employees. And you're asking, "now what?" Good news, now it's time for action! It's time to evaluate your organizational policies and realign them with your employees' needs. All that listening helped you rebuild relationships with your people.  And your willingness to listen reignited their creativity. So take those creative ideas (hint, some may be disguised as complaints) and use them to your advantage.Maximizing employees' creative problem-solving will generate cultural shifts and a regenerative employee-centered environment.Listen to find out: Why local policies impact employee well-being What evidence-based principles will help you to align your policies with well-beingHow to go beyond lip service to engage in meaningful action as you work to create change

Commit to a Consistent Listening Rhythm.Guess what? Communication is tricky. We probably can't get our messaging right every time. But when we show up consistently for our teams ready to listen and provide information, we create a robust communication pathway. Showing up at regularly scheduled intervals and in consistent ways allows us to build trust. Consistency also helps us to build relationships, hear employees' concerns, and get our messages out even when we show up imperfectly. Consistency also builds engagement. And it demonstrates our willingness to show up and listen even when what we hear is painful and unpleasant. Consistent communication between leaders and employees allows employees to feel heard,  seen and prioritized as valued members of the healthcare team. Listen to find out:How often is often enough to meet with your teamWhy imperfect communication is typically better than nothingHow to set the precedent for two-way communication with your team

Validate Distress & Desires. Listening is easy, right? You know it's more complicated. Especially when you listen to the perspectives of many people who see things differently. Taking the time to validate the emotions beneath what you hear will help you to build trust. It also helps establish safety within your team and organizational community. You don't have to agree with the feedback you hear to offer your kind attention and validation of your people’s emotional experience. Listen to find out: Why effective listening involves acknowledging the painful and the positiveHow validating people's distress and desires will boost your organization's creativityWhy you'll benefit from taking the time to listen, even when you disagree with the feedback you hear

Develop a Diverse Listening Toolkit.Learning to listen to your whole team requires you to create many opportunities for your team to share their experiences and provide feedback. Don't mistake an annual survey for an adequate communication plan. Build redundancy into your communication with all of your people by creating many different opportunities for two-way feedback. Your people learn and communicate in different ways. Take the time to build listening processes that promote safety and meet your people's needs to be heard. Listen to find out: Why having a variety of listening tools is essential in healthcareHow to improve your ability to listen deeply to your people's challengesWhat formal and informal listening tools will help you connect with your whole care team