SixSEED Partners

Coaching

Polarity Approach to Expedite Hospital Integration & DEI

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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.

    8 Steps to Become More Resilient

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    Appreciating The Center for Creative Leadership and DavidMcLean for sharing these insights

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

    Background:  

    As the world experiences a massive “re-entry” after being in fear and reactivity mode for the past eighteen months, becoming more resilient is on many people’s minds. David McLean, Director of People and Organizational Development at Lambton College recently highlighted on LinkedIn, a Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) article on eight steps you can take to become more resilient.  We share David’s interest in resilience as we promote Well-Being for those who work in healthcare.

    Appreciations:

    David’s brief and succinct expansion on the wonderful graphic shared by the CCL in 2016 remains relevant for today.  We notice elements of Daniel Pink’s Drive Model®: Purpose; Autonomy and Mastery; Carol Dweck’s: growth mindset® (learner mindset); Simon Sinek’s: “Why®,” and David Emerald’s work around The Empowerment Dynamic®, amongst others.  These eight steps, as identified by the Leading Effectively staff in November of last year summarize very well actions in our control to become more resilient with whatever comes our way.

    The embedded article expands on these eight steps to include taking care of one’s physical health including getting enough sleep and prioritizing exercise.  They expand on reflection to include a journaling practice.  All great suggestions with proven impact.

    Yes, AND…..

    I can imagine the sarcastic responses I might hear from those who’ve been working tirelessly to take care of others, allowing little time to spend on themselves.  Is it lack of knowledge that prevents leaders from cultivating these habits or something else?  It reminds me of the way we’ve approached “solving” the burnout issue within healthcare.  Within our work at SixSEED Partners, as we take an ecosystem and system-integration approach to dealing with complexity, we advocate individual AND system responsibilities to create a generative culture and resilient leadership.  Well-Being/ Resilience is not only an individual challenge; it is a cultural one as well.

    I most agree with these writers that the mirror has to be turned inward.  We need to abolish blame-filled cultures and ask our individual and collective selves, with courage and compassion:  “how am I / are we contributing to the challenge I /we see before me/ us?”  And we must ask this question when we are rested and healthy.  We cannot see the horizon if we’re still buried beneath the earth.

    Let’s hear from you

    If you’d like to chat about a methodical and systemic approach that supports the individual and systemic change and resilience, we’d love to hear from you. Please message us on our LinkedIn page or send us an email here.

    #culture, #systemintegration, #wellbeing



    Acknowledgment: Centre for Creative Leadership


    #learningagility #leadership #resiliency

    Grounded and Conscious Leadership

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    We declared this in our recent blog addressing systemic racism, which also quoted Angel Kyodo Williams, Sensei: “Love and Justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.” 

    Now is the time for inner change so that we can transform our many economic, social, spiritual and health divides into just, equitable, and healthy systems for all.

    To do this – as human beings and as leaders – we must be grounded and conscious to effectively take on this formidable challenge, in addition to all the usual challenges on a daily basis.

    Knowing that grounded and conscious leadership is a vital competency for our healthcare leaders and teams, SixSEED Partners (SSP) is strategically partnering with Healthy Companies (HC) because of their vast research, tested applications and impactful results from their Grounded and Conscious Leader framework.

    Founded by Dr. Bob Rosen in 1988, Healthy Companies has spent over 30 years culminating personalized, evidence-based solutions that succeed in transforming executives into leaders, staff into teams, and companies into healthy and sustainable ecosystems. Their work has been applied nationally and internationally across the high tech, automotive, banking and healthcare industries, amongst others. Their 2015 research exploring the 6 dimensions of a Grounded and Conscious Leader are proven to predict high performance and improved business outcomes. 

    Due to the tremendous synergy between SSP’s and HC’s missions for creating healthy outcomes for leaders and systems, SSP’s Joy Goldman (CEO) and Petra Platzer (COO) became certified facilitators of Healthy Companies’ Grounded and Conscious Leader framework. This methodology for “Developing Grounded and Conscious Leaders” integrates action learning, behavioral science, social accountability, full-brain learning and an online portal for just-in-time tools, all of which support sustainable behavior change.

    As SixSEED Partners’ commitment to provide integrated solutions to heal healthcare, we are excited to co-facilitate a virtual workshop with Healthy Companies where participants will explore these 6 dimensions and apply them to their own situations.

    See here to learn more about this free virtual offering:

    “Grounded Leadership: The Vital Foundation to Lead Through Uncertainty”

    August 5, 2020 | 12:00 – 1:30pm EST

    Register today! 

     

    Transforming our Seeds to help you Succeed

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    The SixSEED Partners Team: Petra Platzer, Cliff Kayser, and Joy Goldman

    Since our inception, we have had one unifying passion: to make healthcare healthier. 

    Two years ago, SixSEED Partners sprouted from a team of colleagues I brought together to work with multiple high potential leaders on a multi-year succession-planning process in a community-based healthcare system. Together, we were able to integrate our specialties of coaching and consulting with a developmental lens, e.g horizontal and vertical development, with the application of polarity thinking to create much more than classical succession planning. We developed a leadership ecosystem capacitation (LEC) model that simultaneously increased individual AND systemic capacities and overall resilience within that organization. As the impact of this multi-pronged model became clear to us – as well as our client – the vision for SixSEED Partners was born.

    As we have continued working with that system, and various other healthcare leaders and systems, we have also continued applying the same leadership and system tools to ourselves – individually and our collective leadership team. Through that iterative reflection, our leadership team has evolved into a new structure this year. And through our continuous feedback processes, we learned that our branding was creating some confusion around our unique service offerings. 

    With those shifts – and with the unprecedented health crisis that we have all been navigating in the past few months – we took this time to again, practice what we preach. We slowed down. We reflected on what matters to us and how can we be in best service to those we are passionate about serving.

    From all those efforts, I am pleased to share with you our new website re-design and re-branded messaging, as a beginning. 

    Our mission is simple: we provide integrated solutions to heal healthcareTM

    Our service offerings are now denoted as 6 unique “seeds”, which can be approached as individual bodies of work, and ideally, as integrated engagements across multiple seeds to create a lasting result. 

    • Leadership Development
      • Team Development
      • System Integration
      • Well-Being
      • Culture
      • Leadership Ecosystem Capacitation Model

    Through this multi-pronged approach at multiple levels, we are able to custom design integrated solutions that leverage the best delivery routes for meeting our clients where they are in their current cycle of work. 

    We are not a “coaching” firm, nor a “consulting” firm, nor “a training” firm. We are an integrated solutions firm that can deliver all those delivery routes in order for our clients to create an expanded skillset, not just additional knowledge. 

    What is still the same is our focus on improving the capacity of healthcare leaders and teams to lead in times of complexity and uncertainty. If there’s one thing the current pandemic has highlighted even more for so many, it’s the need for resilient people and processes to be able to address unpredictable changes for everyone’s well-being and success. 

    What’s important to us and our clients is our integrated approach that includes:

    • Focusing on an overall goal of increasing leadership capacitation within systems 
    • Integrating solutions that address individuals, teams, and entire systems knowing that we need to integrate all aspects to achieve sustainable change
    • Delivering results that impact strategic, operational and cultural outcomes
    • Using a defined, iterative process rooted in evidence-based change strategies

    We invite you to browse around our refreshed site to learn more about our approach, our results, and our team.  During this auspicious month officially celebrating National Nurses Day, National Hospital Week & Healthcare Heroes, we are here and ready to partner with you to help you succeed!

    Leveraging Specialized Knowledge and Shared Knowledge

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    This is the sixth in a series on leveraging tensions during this time of the coronavirus.  For SixSEED Partners, Covid-19 is a powerful reminder of what already exists in our world which is complex and unpredictable circumstances that can cause much pain and expense unless we learn to take a more systemic view and get comfortable leveraging interdependent tensions.  Previously, we covered the paradoxes of:

    • Leveraging Facts AND Faith
    • Leveraging Staying Present AND Anticipating the Future
    • Leveraging Care for Self AND Care for Others
    • Leveraging Assuming Responsibility AND Delegating Responsibility
    • Leveraging Taking Ourselves Seriously AND Taking Ourselves Lightly

    The tensions we are highlighting are coming from your real-world challenges.  We’re asking questions and staying present to your pain points, that, in already demanding circumstances, is taking additional energy that you don’t have to spare.  We want to help make this easier for you, while also increasing your capacity to lead others through this pandemic.

    As I was listening and participating in a recent SixSEED Partners team meeting, I was hearing stories of inflicted trauma to businesses as a result of one or more of their partners contracting the coronavirus or some other illness and becoming either temporarily or permanently disabled.  The trauma inflicted, in addition to the loss of a loved one, was the impact on the business due to a lack of shared knowledge – knowledge transfer. 

    Organizations who understand this tension have been rotating a greater pool of leaders through their Covid-19 Incident Command Centers so that the “show can go on” if one of the senior leaders becomes sick.  As hospitals have struggled with adequate personal protective equipment, and as we’ve learned more about the varying symptom manifestations of the virus, this reality of suddenly having someone out of commission is front and center.

    On a personal level, as I’ve heard of couples contracting the virus resulting in one or both of their deaths, I’ve been moved to have discussions with my husband around “information sharing” that we’ve not previously placed as a priority.  Where are passwords; “important documents;” “house maintenance activities,” etc.?  For a system to be agile and resilient, these processes need to be in place so that immediate adaptation can occur.

    Below is a polarity map, which outlines this tension of Leveraging Specialized Knowledge and Shared Knowledge.

    At SixSEED Partners, we are committed to developing leaders who have the capacity to leverage these interdependent tensions that are here to stay.  We’ve taken the liberty of adding some action steps and warning signs to this map that you can use immediately with your teams.  

    If you’d like your own editable polarity map to give yourself the systemic view of the tension you are navigating, or if you have questions about how you might use this information now, complete our contact form and we’ll respond within 1 business day.

    Leveraging Taking Ourselves Seriously AND Taking Ourselves Lightly

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    This is the fifth in a series on leveraging tensions during this time of the coronavirus.  For SixSEED Partners, Covid-19 is a powerful reminder of what already exists in our world which is complex and unpredictable circumstances that can cause much pain and expense unless we learn to take a more systemic view and get comfortable leveraging interdependent tensions.  Previously, we covered the paradoxes of:

    • Leveraging Facts AND Faith
    • Leveraging Staying Present AND Anticipating the Future
    • Leveraging Care for Self AND Care for Others
    • Leveraging Assuming Responsibility AND Delegating Responsibility

    After hours of speaking with our clients who are on the front lines in hospitals or leading medical practices, the tensions we’re highlighting are coming from them—you.  We’re asking questions and staying present to your pain points, that, in already demanding circumstances, is taking additional energy that you don’t have to spare.  We want to help make this easier for you, while also increasing your capacity to lead others through this pandemic.

    Below is a polarity map, which outlines this tension of Taking Ourselves Seriously AND Taking Ourselves Lightly in service to creating a healthy workplace for all.  What you’ll notice in the below polarity map that is different from prior maps in the series is an action step that is highlighted in yellow.  This is called a “high leverage action step” since it applies to both poles.  Intentional design of meeting agenda and space is necessary to leverage a business focus and a lighthearted/ energy-giving focus. 

    As we’ve spoken to our clients, we see and hear the exhaustion people are feeling as a result of this prolonged pandemic along with the stressors of re-opening elective surgeries while also staying prepared for what could still be a surge in Covid-19 cases.  After weeks of being immersed in fourteen- hour days and incident command centers, your “higher-order thinking” can get worn down by the constant energy out.  Designing in activities that allow you to laugh and keep a “beyond-Covid” perspective helps to build your resilience for the ongoing demands.

    At SixSEED Partners, we are committed to developing leaders who have the capacity to leverage these interdependent tensions that are here to stay. We’ve taken the liberty of adding some action steps and warning signs to this map that you can use immediately with your teams.  

    If you’d like your own editable polarity map to give yourself the systemic view of the tension you are navigating, or if you have questions about how you might use this information now, complete our contact form and we’ll respond within 1 business day.