• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
SixSEED Partners

SixSEED Partners

  • Our Services
  • Our Team
  • Our Results
  • Our Resources
  • Contact

Archives for April 2021

Cultivating Both/And Thinking to Support Clinical Leaders to Effectively Lead through System Change

April 2, 2021 by Joy Goldman Leave a Comment

Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC:  CEO SixSEED Partners

In the beginning :

SixSEED Partners (SSP) was invited to provide team development support to a high profile clinical executive committee in a regional healthcare system. We initially partnered with this physician and administrative leadership team last fall for a full day retreat focused on developing team dynamics and strategies. We introduced them to several frameworks and practical tools that gave them insights for how to leverage their complementary strengths to get their work done even more effectively. The system clearly supported this type of development because all team members were present and committed to this experiential learning process, despite it taking away from their revenue generating clinical work that day. The executive team found it so valuable, that they wanted more.  

Embarking on a Leadership Development Series (LDS) experiential learning process:

SixSEED Partners partnered with the Chief Physician Executive and the Managing Director of Strategy to create a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis for team member input on relevant leadership strengths and challenges. We also used immediate and upcoming leadership transitions as the action-learning platform for the participants to apply their new tools and thinking paradigms. By using our “4D” framework of “Discover-Design-Deliver-Debrief”, the client helped shape a learning design that integrated real-time pressures and systemic forces for change. For practicality, these experiential learning sessions were integrated into their existing monthly strategic meetings to minimize time away from the clinical area and maximize their time together.

Discovering a new Thinking tool for unsolvable problems:

In looking at the real-time pressures and changes this executive team was facing in their system, we knew they could benefit from learning to look at their complexities with Polarity thinking. As mentioned in prior blogs, it has been proven that using polarity thinking (both/and) along with traditional problem-solving thinking has a measurable impact on leading through complexity and change. 

Experiential Learning Module (ELM): Doing S.M.A.L.L. for Measurement and ROI:

We used key themes from their SWOT analysis results to create three unique polarity maps that measured individual, team and system-level tensions for this executive team:

  • Providing Direction and Inviting Participation (Individual)
  • Tactical and Strategic (Team)
  • Centralization and Decentralization (System)

This work took the team through steps 1-3 of the 5-step polarity assessment process known as the “SMALL” methodology, which includes:

  1. Seeing
  2. Mapping
  3. Assessing 
  4. Learning
  5. Leveraging

In our most recent two-hour module, the leaders focused on Step 4 – Learning, about the polarity thinking framework and discussing it in the context of their complementary styles. The learning was deepened when the leaders began to see beyond their preferred perspective within the 3 polarity maps to seeing the broader context within the relative dynamic at hand in their actual work. Most notable was the dialogue around shifting from a place of system “blame” – the downside of decentralization – to better leveraging integration of the health system’s priorities with less energy being wasted in frustration. This traditional “right/wrong, either/or” approach began to shift to “how can we better integrate system factors as we design and execute our work”.

The map below illustrates this team’s scrubbed SWOT analysis, represented as a polarity map. As you can see, the 2 poles to leverage over time to create an effective and high performing team are the Strengths of Current and the opportunities of the Future, while minimizing the weaknesses and threats of both poles. The other scrubbed map shares the executive team’s results, which highlight an opportunity to better leverage Centralization. While these results are valuable as a baseline for this team, what was even more valuable from this experience already was the dialogue that emerged between the participants around an alternative perspective and way of thinking about systemic influences in their work. During our next session, we will take the team through action steps and warning signs to help them best leverage these essential tensions for sustainable change (Step 5 of S.M.A.L.L.).

Let’s hear from you

We’d love to hear your insights in helping clinical executive teams develop systemic thinking applied to current challenges. If this work seems like it could help you and your teams, we’d love to talk with you to explore how this approach might help your clinical leaders. Please post your responses on our LinkedIn page or send us an email here.

Filed Under: Leadership Development, Leadership Ecosystem, Transformational Leadership

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Building Team Norms to Sustain Team Effectiveness
  • Scaling Leadership
  • What Makes Us Different?
  • Loyalty AND Autonomy
  • Dr. Stephen Karpman’s the Dreaded Drama Triangle and the Empowerment Dynamic by David Emerald Womeldorff

Archives

  • April 2025
  • December 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • September 2018
  • August 2018

Categories

  • Case Study
  • Coaching
  • Culture
  • Diversity and Inclusion
  • Epidemic Leadership
  • Leadership Development
  • Leadership Ecosystem
  • Polarity Thinking
  • Six Seeds
  • Succession Planning
  • System Integration
  • Team Development
  • Transformational Leadership
  • Uncategorized
  • Well-being

DRIVING TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE IN HEALTHCARE

Offering a suite of inter-collaborative, interdependent and custom-designed services to increase leader and system-level capacitation within the healthcare industry, SixSEED Partners drives sustainable, transformational change within leaders, teams and entire organizations.

“Life does not accommodate you; it shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition.”  —Florida Scott-Maxwell

[icon name=icon_phone] 443-379-4569
[icon name=icon_mail] info@sixseedpartners.com

[icon name=social_linkedin_square] Join our LinkedIn network.
[icon name=icon_clipboard] Get Insights on our Resources page.

© 2019 SixSEED Partners. All rights reserved.

  • 10431 Patterson Ave | Henrico, VA 23238
  • 443-379-4569
  • info@sixseedpartners.com
  • 2020 SixSEED Partners. All Rights Reserved

Footer

10431 Patterson Ave | Henrico, VA 23238

  804-220-1919

info@sixseedpartners.com

2025 SixSEED Partners. All Rights Reserved

HTML tutorial