Coaching Stories
Leadership
Michael is a 45-year-old married father of three and physician leader in a large hospital. He chose to become a doctor specializing in the care of critically ill patients after surviving a life-threatening accident in high school. The excellent medical care he received enabled him to return to his life as a student-athlete with a vision of helping others in the same way. But in recent years, his work with critically ill patients had taken a toll on him.
Michael now wanted to develop his career as a physician leader and to create enabling workplaces where doctors can provide outstanding health care in a supportive environment. His hopes included being a stronger and more effective advocate for his clinical team, many of whom were burned out. He also wanted to become a more influential strategic partner with senior leadership as well as exploring a potential job move to a larger and more prestigious hospital system. On the personal side, Michael wanted to live a more balanced life, enjoying warm family relationships and health-promoting activities.
Before he sought coaching, Michael’s days were a whirlwind of scrambling to respond to endless requests, fighting for attention to his priorities during meetings, and the struggle to find time to meaningfully support his team members or engage in strategic thinking. Exhausting days were followed by evenings spent catching up on email in his study while his disappointed family wished he were more present with them. Michael felt stuck, miserable, and unsure of how to shift things in his favor. He longed to feel more in charge of his career and the quality of his daily experience. He wanted to use his time and effort at work to intentionally drive valuable results rather than continually racing to react to the latest crisis. He yearned to make the most of his time with his beloved family and rebuild the health he had enjoyed as an athlete.
“At the end of our nine months of coaching, he was in the enviable position of choosing between a promotion at his current employer and offers from two others.”
Following an initial consultation, Michael and I worked together over a period of nine months. We started by helping him articulate meaningful goals for our coaching work and determine what success would look like, which enabled motivating shots of regular progress. We identified his core values and helped him use them as anchors for his behavior and decision making. We used 360-degree assessment to give him a clear picture of how others at work experience him. This feedback gave Michael greater confidence in his unique strengths and valuable leadership qualities as well as clarity about areas he could develop to have a more positive and consequential leadership impact.
Michael learned to recognize and overcome some limiting narratives and self-sabotaging tendencies such as seeing things in very black and white terms, becoming defensive during difficult conversations, and looking at situations through a lens of scarcity, thereby limiting both his expectations and the approaches he applied. His newfound self-awareness provided a foundation for applying a range of different tools we practiced in coaching. He can now interrupt a negative response pattern in the moment, connect to his strengths, and shift gears into an enabling mindset and inspiring presence. His increased self-mastery makes him more resilient to situations that used to discourage him. Now he sees them as practice opportunities for his expanded set of tools. He feels confident and prepared to deal with any challenge.
Michael learned to build positive, productive relationships rapidly and systematically. With his upgraded executive presence and communication skills, honed through some role-play exercises and feedback in coaching, Michael was invited into a few learning-rich business development conversations with potential organizational partners where he performed admirably and gained the attention and respect of executives as an astute strategic thinker and skillful communicator.
Michael completed a time audit exercise which revealed opportunities to reduce time and attention spent on low-value, de-energizing tasks and capture more time for tasks that contributed to his objectives and boosted his motivation. He learned to spot, harvest, and amplify sources of positive energy for himself and others. He tapped into his team member’s experiences and needs for connection, using them to create new ways of coming together to support each other and share ideas. This built camaraderie, boosted the collective well-being of the team, and enabled them to stay more connected to their motivating sense of purpose. At home, Michael created and honored some boundaries that helped him to be fully present and enjoy his family time without ruminating over work.
We worked together to help Michael clarify and leverage a compelling professional narrative to support his upward professional path as a physician leader.
With a small amount of intelligent networking to refine his professional brand, raise his visibility, and access valuable information, Michael identified a few interesting job targets that offered greater responsibility, impact, and opportunity for continued growth and that appeared to fit the criteria of the type of workplace that would support his motivation and performance. At the end of our nine months of coaching, he was in the enviable position of choosing between a promotion at his current employer and offers from two others.
