How to Be Assertive … Without Alienating Your Colleagues
Asking for what you want—and setting boundaries around what you don’t want—is a key life skill. Are you challenged to ask for what you want? Or so enthusiastic to practice this skill, that you over-do assertiveness and end up with colleagues who shut down, get angry...
Don’t make a New Year’s Resolution, yet…
Not until you know what you really want and why it is important to you. The biggest problem with New Year's Resolutions is that too often we base them on guilt or what others think we should resolve to do. Resolutions based on what other people value are doomed to...
How Being a Leader Can Be Easier
Many physicians are seeing the need and accepting the role of leadership responsibilities. Previously, these doctors have seen colleagues struggle in these roles or have struggled themselves. Although the future of healthcare depends on good physician leadership, the...
Supporting the Community of Women Physicians
“It feels like a war zone out here. I am just trying to survive.” “I don’t know the woman physician I am referring to and would like to.” The stress and desire of women physicians, in private practice and as hospital employees in Lane County, is reflected in these...
Physicians are Leaders
Regardless of their specialty, physicians want decisions that keep patients at the center of healthcare. A daily fear is that focus on the bottom line will remove the soul from medicine. Physicians feel stuck, due to a belief that they don’t have specialized training...
Medicine is a Team Effort
Medicine isn’t an individual act; it is a team process. Harvard Business School researchers, Robert Huckman and Gary Pisano, tracked over 200 cardiac surgeons practicing at 43 hospitals. After analyzing more than 38,000 procedures, Huckman and Pisano found that...
Coaching Physicians for Optimal Performance
Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon and journalist, wrote about his coaching experience in the article, “Personal Best,” in the New Yorker in 2011. He points out that professional athletes at the top of their game have coaches, as do the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies....
Prescription for Dealing With Conflict
Dr. Mary was frustrated because she was not able to focus on her main tasks. When I asked what was diverting her attention, she complained that, as she was a good problem solver, her staff constantly came to her to resolve conflicts and fix problems. This caused a...
Enhance Your Career Satisfaction
“If it doesn’t get better, I’m out of here !” Many physicians have had that thought at some point. Medical practices are much busier, the 15-minute visit remains, insurance companies require more paperwork, administrative mandates multiply, and electronic medical...
Change Your Perception, Change Your Reality
A physician reported at the end of our second coaching session that, “The most important thing I am learning is to focus on what I want, instead of what I don’t want.” My client’s words capture the mindset of most physicians. The rigorous medical training of...
Eight Important Steps to Conflict Resolution
As everyone who has ever experienced change (that's all of us) knows, with change comes conflict. For most of us conflict is uncomfortable- even something to avoid. Conflict is a normal consequence of differing perspectives, styles and goals. When we expect and are...
Resolve Conflict and Create Positive Change
Do you and your partners frequently have difficulty working through operational decisions? Is there internal strife or are there misunderstandings between your office manager and the lead nurse? Is the hospital committee you serve on stalled because of conflict?...
“When women lead in healthcare,
everyone wins!”
- Deborah Munhoz