SixSEED Partners

Case Study

Extending Compassion for Recovering Fixers: Yes, AND….

by Leave a Comment

By Joy W. Goldman Advisor and Founding Partner

Background:

Quite often, we at SixSEED Partners find this theme arising with our clients:  “how do I stop seeing everything as a problem to fix?” Occasionally, we’ve thought of developing a 12-step program for recovering fixers: perhaps you’d like to be notified if we ever decide to go live? So what’s the “problem” with perpetual problem solvers?  In a complex, rapidly changing world, we need additional thinking tools and different perspectives. Feeling like we are the only ones who can satisfactorily fix problems can be exhausting!

The Challenge:

Simply stated, when every challenge we encounter at work is seen as a problem to fix, we end up in a cycle that drains energy and doesn’t actually eliminate the problem.  You can read our colleague David Emerald’s book: 3 Vital Questions to find out more!  You’ve heard of the myth of Sisyphus who was doomed to be pushing a boulder to the top of a cliff only to have it roll back down and him having to start all over again?  Exactly!

The Strategy:

First, embrace your strength and capacity to problem solve.  It’s a great gift and most likely contributed to your advancing in your field.  Bravo!

Second:  Seek out different perspectives, particularly those that are less visible to you.  Especially when you are absolutely certain that you have the one right answer, approach someone with whom you might often disagree and ask them: “What am I missing here?”  

Third:  Read up on “both/and” thinking:  Polarity Thinking.  This is a powerful thinking tool that allows you to see and map more complex systems where two seeming opposite tensions interact and the sustainable solution lies in leveraging each tension well and noticing early warning signs when your actions neglect the opposite pole.  As an example, for those of you who work for hospital systems that have many distributed hospitals, a common tension is centralizing for efficiency and decentralizing to meet local population needs.

The Outcome:

When you can follow the three steps above, you conserve energy, get results that last, and strengthen the leadership capacity of the entire system.  Want to know more?  You can reach out to us here:  https://sixseedpartners.com/contact/

Improving Leadership Well-Being in an Academic Medical Center

by Leave a Comment

Application of polarity thinking and Accountability Structures to Improve well-being & culture change.

Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC: Founding Partner and Advisor SixSEED Partners

Background

In our work with Patient Care and Nursing Senior Leaders at an academic medical center, we have been focusing on two key tensions: care- for- self and care -for -others; and integration for two hospitals and with patient throughput strategic partners. Our design for facilitation has mirrored this interdependency: we have focused for this past year on both well-being and integration, setting the vision that team-member well-being and quality excellence can co-exist.

The Strategy

Over the past year, we have blended in-person and virtual team facilitation for thirty nursing and patient care leaders. We have grounded our work with three powerful and complementary frameworks: Polarity Thinking; The Leadership Circle Profile’s Collective Leadership Assessment and Above and Below the Line from the Conscious Leadership Group. 

The Solution

Applying a blended, action-learning framework and a coaching lens to our work with thirty Vice-Presidents and Directors of Nursing and Patient-Care services, we used time-tested frameworks to support a high reliability culture and decrease blame.  We invited the leaders to suggest real-time work applications so that the learning was in the context of their existing priorities and did not add any undue burden on these already exhausted leaders.  Our emphasis throughout this past year and the past two years has been integrating a focus on well-being in the context of creating sustainable excellence.

The Impact

After nine months of blended facilitation and interim “field work,” we heard the following results in the leaders’ change of thinking, emotions, behaviors, and results: “I’ve reduced my heart rate by six beats/ minute.”  “I’ve been modeling setting boundaries around my time at work and giving myself permission to take the weekend “off” from emails and work and I’ve noticed that my team members are doing the same- what I model they seem to follow.”  “I’ve become more present to who is in front of me and I’m listening more.  Before I would be more concerned about getting somewhere on time and now I realize that the person in front of me is more important.  This sense of presence has also impacted my home life and I am more present there.”

Would you like to hear more about how you can develop your leaders, improve well-being and culture, while you do essential work and not separate from your work? We’d love to hear from you! Please contact us here: https://sixseedpartners.com/contact/

SixSEED Partners New Year Message for 2024

by Leave a Comment

Embracing Resilience AND Transformation

As we step into 2024, we at SixSEED Partners extend our warmest wishes for a year filled with growth, healing and health. The past year taught us invaluable lessons in resilience, adaptability, and the enduring power of courageous and compassionate leadership.

In 2024, we continue our commitment to providing integrated solutions to heal healthcare.  Our journey together focuses on developing leaders and teams who can generate well-being and excellence, in real time, in service to creating healthy cultures.

Key Themes for 2024:

  1. Innovative Leadership: Using time-tested and emerging tools and techniques that get results with less wear and tear on those leading and delivering care.
  2. Collaborative Excellence: One cannot succeed alone. Inviting our clients and colleagues to connect and build innovative partnerships for broader and lasting impact.
  3. Well-being and Resilience: Integrating strategies to care for OneSelf while caring for others, to save time and conserve energy for what’s needed most.
  4. Adaptive Strategies: Providing contextualized development within our client’s real-time, on the ground work. The healthcare environment is complex. Integrating development is vital to learn how to adapt and succeed in current and long-term needs.

Let’s join hands in making 2024 a year of remarkable achievements and profound impact. We are honored to partner with everyone striving to take care of themselves, their teams and our communities.

With appreciation and shared commitment!

Developing Leaders As They Work

by Leave a Comment

A Practical Application of Development in the Moment

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

Our Commitment

With thanks to the great thought leaders at @theconsciousleadershipgroup for their simple graphic on knowing when you’re not present but instead responding from a place of fear or a place of playing it safe (“below the line”). Some might ask: aren’t there times when responding in fear or trying to be safe is healthy? Absolutely! The challenge in leadership is knowing that “line” between a healthy, constructive response and a response that is more from habit and one that gets in the way of success. 

At SixSEED Partners, we work with our clients on practicing in-the-moment behaviors that align with their sense of purpose AND their well-being. Read on for more details on how we are partnering in developing leaders within the context of their work and not in addition to their work.

Our Actions

In this succinct graphic, the Conscious Leadership Group highlights five warning signs for noticing when you are responding from what they call – a “below-the-line” response. These behavioral signs include blaming others, black and white thinking, wanting to have THE right answer thereby making others wrong, and shallow breathing, among others. These are normal reactions to the many challenges in our current healthcare that faces workforce shortages, burnout, and very sick patients.

In partnership with our clients, we have designed a leadership development strategy that helps leaders improve their well-being and results as they deal with patient throughput.

Our Results

At SixSEED Partners, we help our leaders lead first, from a place of courage and compassion, and then invite them to choose a way forward that is more aligned with purpose. When we come from “above the line,” as the Conscious Leadership Group describes, we are more able to see possibilities and solutions that create wins for all contributors. We are present in this moment and can think with greater clarity, focusing on desired outcomes.

With that foundation in mind, we created fieldwork where leaders practice centering when they notice their signals of being below the line and then, from a more centered place, choose a more constructive response that aligns with their individual development goals. They are also partnering with other department leaders whose support they need to improve patient throughput. Their partnering involves learning the other department’s point of view so that their empathy improves and they see each other as the human beings that they are.

Our Invitation to you

Would you like to learn more about how you can help your leaders engage others with less wear and tear on them and their teams? You can see some of our case studies here:
https://sixseedpartners.com/resources/

    Polarity Approach to Expedite Hospital Integration & DEI

    by Leave a Comment

    Building Leadership Capacity to facilitate culture change and Improve
    Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

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

    Background

    SixSEED Partners was invited to help build leadership capacity in patient care and nursing leaders to support the integration of two separate hospital entities within one health system. After the first year of facilitated work and implementing a collective leadership assessment, this second year was focused on engaging the leaders in recreating a culture that supported integration while allowing for the retention of what was unique and market competitive for each individual entity.

    The Strategy

    SixSEED Partners designed a two-day workshop that introduced the leaders to both/and thinking as a complementary tool to traditional problem-solving – either/or thinking. We were most concerned about surfacing the fears and concerns from the smaller hospital entity, that also happened to be a microcosm of the lesser served, mostly black community. Leaders were divided according to hospital entities and each had the chance to identify most treasured cultural attributes and worst fears of integration with themselves and then with each other.

    The Solution

    Fears that were identified by the smaller hospital included loss of identity; constant comparison and loss of unique attributes; lack of ability to autonomously act; loss of connection to their geographic community; and lack of influence in decision-making. What they valued and wanted to preserve, for both organizations included their unique histories; their commitment to the patients, community, and each other; a spirit of collaboration; shared knowledge; and diversity of staff and patients.

    The Impact

    At the conclusion of the two days, the leaders created a complete polarity map focused on their integrated one system. They had action steps to leverage retaining the best of current culture while preparing to best meet the future. They also identified early warning signs to alert them when they were overdoing either pole: too much tradition and too much change.

      If you’d like to learn more about bringing this work to your organization, contact us at SixSEED Partners.

      Both/And Thinking

      by Leave a Comment

      Application of polarity thinking to Improve well-being and integration for two hospitals within an Academic Medical Health System

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

      Background

      SixSEED Partners was invited to help build capacity in patient care and nursing leaders for improving well-being and supporting the integration of two separate hospital entities within one health system. We had spent the prior year working with these leaders on strengthening team bonds across functions and service lines, and building capacity for shifting from problem-oriented, reactive thinking to purpose-driven, creative thinking and execution. The nurse executive’s vision was to create a culture of “we” instead of us/them and to decentralize decision-making and empower leaders to lead with less deference to the nurse executive.

      The Strategy

      SixSEED Partners designed an initial two-day workshop that involved walking the leaders through two polarity maps: the first- honoring the nurse executive’s wish to focus on the leaders’ wellbeing, was leveraging care for self and care for others. This map introduced the leaders to the interdependency between those poles and their personal and cultural bias toward care for others, often to the neglect of care for self. The “Me/ Not Me” – value/ fears were somatically felt as each leader stood in the quadrant representing the upsides of care for self and care for others, and the downsides of each. We also facilitated walking the maps of the individual hospital entities, creating a map for the integrated organization.

      The Solution

      Vinay Kumar and Joy Goldman led the thirty leaders through exercises that inspired honest and vulnerable sharing which paved the way for team support in increasing actions around care for self, and early warning signs for when the leaders were at risk of burnout and exhaustion. Some of their takeaways for that first day included: “It’s OK to care for self.” “I’m not alone.” “We’re not perfect and that’s a good thing!”

      The second day was all about integration and the smaller hospital entity leaders who had lost, or was losing two of its senior nursing leaders, was able to courageously discuss what cultural traditions were important to move forward, and their fears of being engulfed by the larger entity and losing their identity. At the end of day two, the leaders had formed a complete polarity map representing the best of both organizations that was important to bring forward AND outcomes that needed to occur to best meet the emerging future.

      The Impact

      At the conclusion of the two days, the leaders created a complete polarity map focused on their integrated one system. They had action steps to leverage retaining the best of current culture while preparing to best meet the future. They also identified early warning signs to alert them when they were overdoing either pole: too much tradition and too much change.

      There were several new leaders in the group who offered these comments:

      • “I appreciate bringing SixSEED in to facilitate this as many organizations don’t do this and it shows that it’s important
      • “I’m impressed with the support and sense of “we” here that often does not exist in other nursing and patient care service leaders/ divisions.” (systems)

      If you’d like to learn more about bringing this work to your organization, contact us at SixSEED Partners.