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Improving Capacity for Leading In Complex Times through Both/And Thinking: An Experiential Approach

April 14, 2023 by Joy Goldman Leave a Comment

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

Background:

Joy W. Goldman RN, MS, PCC: CEO SixSEED partners and Dr. Larry McEvoy, Founder of Epidemic Leadership co-facilitated a half-day workshop on both/and thinking- polarity thinking for over forty nurse, physician and administrative leaders at WellSpan Health. This was the third year presenting this workshop to WellSpan’s high potential leaders.  WellSpan has expanded the audience from only physician leaders to all leaders in their leadership academy.  Expanding the audience facilitated the collegial sharing within populations that may, absent both/and thinking awareness and capacity, engage in unnecessary conflict which contributes to burnout.

The Strategy:

Dr. McEvoy and Ms. Goldman designed the half-day workshop so that most of the time would be spent physically walking the interdependent tension of “Care for Self” and “Care for Others.”  Since WellSpan, like so many other healthcare systems, are focusing on clinician wellbeing, this tension was relevant for each participant.  In addition to providing an experience of standing in the upsides and downsides of each tension, the participants also used each other as internal consultants with a designed liberating structure that facilitated effective listening.

The Solution: 

The leaders were asked to progress through the polarity map of “Care for Self” and “Care for Others” in silence.  They were invited to scan their body for images, colors, and sensations experienced as they stood in each quadrant of the map.  This provided a profound and clear experience of their values—“This is like me,” and their fear- “This is NOT me.”  When the participants were engaged in the listening exercise, we noticed their difficulty in turning their chairs around and refraining from being part of their triad conversation.

The Impact:

Organically, the leaders had difficulty being associated with the upside of “care for self.”  Their instinctual reaction was to perceive that as being “selfish,” (the overdone expression of care for self).  Their comfort zone was caring for others and they resonated with the overdone care for others to the neglect of care for self, resulting in burnout.  Because their fear (not me) is in the overdone care for self, they began to see that there are healthy actions they can take to better care for themselves.  A participant commented: “Just the eight minutes tuning into my body was healing and when I stood in care for self, it felt relaxing and healthy.” Self care was the topic for their peer coaching/consulting resulting in clear action steps and peer accountability after the workshop.

If this sounds like something from which your leaders can benefit, please reach out and let us know at info@sixseedpartners.com.  Four hours powerfully engaged in this work can lessen burnout!

Filed Under: Case Study, Six Seeds Tagged With: #bothandthinking, #burnout, #culture, #leadershipdevelopment, #polaritythinking, #teamdevelopment, #wellbeing

Selecting for Self-Awareness

March 15, 2023 by Joy Goldman Leave a Comment

Preventing The Most Common & Expensive Hiring Mistake

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

Background

How often have you hired someone you thought would be a stellar leader; feeling the excitement of believing you now had a leader you could trust and to whom you could delegate key actions, only to have them turn into a Mr. Hyde when you thought they were a Dr. Jekyll? How often have you or your leaders shaken your heads wondering: “How did I miss this in interviewing this person?”  A recent client experience reminded me that hiring for self-awareness is your MOST IMPORTANT screening tool.

The Challenge

According to Partnerwise, in a February, 2023 post: “Unveiled:  The Staggering Cost of Leadership Hiring Mistakes,” citing a recent HBR article indicated that hiring the wrong leader can cost an organization up to 15 times a key leaders’ base salary.  The monetary impact can be considered nothing compared to the demoralization and lost productivity that often results.  During an SOS client call, this leader (“Kate” for simplicity purposes) was distraught having trusted her second-hand potential successor, only to have him undermine her leadership and file a complaint resulting in her need to document every interaction; lost productivity time for she and the successor leader, and time needed for lawyers and human resources.  More than this, Kate was emotionally shaken feeling betrayed and questioning her own actions.

The Solution

Diana Chapman from the Conscious Leadership Group wrote a blog in 2017 titled:  “How to Assess Self-Awareness in a Hiring Interview.”  In this succinct article, she highlights several powerful interviewing questions that include those below:

  • Describe a time when you were tempted to blame someone else for something but instead resolved it by owning your part of the issue.  
  • What’s an example of how you used your emotional intelligence to be effective in your role?
  • What percentage of agreements do you currently keep with the people you live and work with?  What causes you to break agreements the most? How do you approach broken agreements?

Unlike your typical questions that focus on technical competence for a given role, these questions ferret out actual experiences that demonstrate whether the candidate can take ownership for their learning and growth, or whether they may be at risk of playing victim and blaming everyone else.

The Impact

As was so clear with my former client, I don’t have to belabor the impact of a poor leadership hire:  you can FEEL it in your bones.  That trauma, and I don’t say that lightly, lives on in your muscle memory as something you do not want to repeat.  As I discussed with this senior leader, investing time and energy in validated behavioral assessments and in conducting a strategic interview that goes beyond assessing for technical competence pays dividends.

Please read the article from @TheConsciousLeadershipGroup and email us If you’d like to learn more about designing a selection process that will save you time and money. You can reach us at:  SixSEED Partners.

Filed Under: Case Study, Six Seeds Tagged With: #hiringforfit, #partnerwise, #selection, #theconsciousleadershipgroup

Leveraging Creative and Reactive Thinking for Leadership Impact

March 13, 2023 by Lisa Hompe Leave a Comment

Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Development Case Study: Academic Medicine

SixSEED Partners Affiliates: Lisa Hompe RN, MSOD, ACC; Vinay Kumar, PCC

Background

SixSEED Partners (SSP) co-created and facilitated two virtual leadership sessions working with an Academic Medical Center Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Director and her team of over 25 frontline clinical Nurse Practitioner (NP) and Physician Assistant (PA) leaders.

The Director desired to improve the capacity and leadership skills of her leadership team to then cascade the learning within their teams. These leaders had been stretched with multiple demands, including COVID-19 and staffing shortages. The intent was to provide leadership development for the APP leaders that would be rejuvenating, thought-provoking, and result in a greater sense of team and compassion.

The Strategy

The engagement consisted of two targeted two-hour virtual sessions, held four months apart. The structure supported dyad and small group activities and fieldwork assignments between the two sessions.

The sessions focused on providing the leaders with a framework for creating a mindset shift in perspective and allowing for less reactive behavior and more outcome-focused and purpose-driven creative expression. The content illustrated how majority of leadership happens through communication and conversations.

The first session used the content from the Conscious Leadership Group: Above and Below the Line thinking with practical solutions to switching from below the line to above the line behaviors. The second session reviewed the shared individual and collective learning results that happened between the sessions and focused on the additional content of David Emerald’s Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) and The Empowerment Dynamic (TED).  The sessions supported the noticing of oneself to make the shift from a victim mindset to that of a creator mindset.

The Solution

The work created a virtual space for connection, renewal, and rejuvenation. Through interactive dialogue and reflection, the sessions targeted the level of thinking that creates energy that is generative and not draining.

The introduction of small mindfulness exercises at the beginning of the sessions helped shift the team to being present and focused and offered tools for use in the leader’s day-to-day work. The facilitation and content structure supported partnering, shared accountability, and self-awareness.

The models supported a forward-looking, solution-oriented common language for noticing individual and collective leadership behaviors and created a container for exploring relational team dynamics and interactions.

The Impact

The work explored the relationship between a leader’s mental, emotional & physical state and the quality of their conversations, interactions, relationships, results, and effectiveness. This translated to the leaders’ ability to intentionally apply coaching and listening skills with their own teams for a greater, more positive impact.

Through interactive dialogue and facilitation, the participants were able to do courageous work in expanding their own thinking to add purpose-driven, authentic expression to an already strong foundation of problem-solving leadership behaviors. The group walked away with insights to put into practice in their day-to-day work.

The Director said, “this team, in their roles, is always focused on ‘getting to yes ‘ and this work has helped the team to find calm and joy and helps us recover from exhaustion” and it helps them notice “where they are” at any given moment. Others reflected that what was meaningful was learning to notice on purpose and being able to “be at the eye of the storm with courage and confidence”.

The introduction of these models and tools helped to support individual and collective effectiveness. It planted seeds for a future filled with possibilities, while creating a psychologically safe space for dialogue, listening, and vulnerability of their shared experiences.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can bring this tool to your leaders, contact us at SixSEED Partners.

Filed Under: Leadership Development, Six Seeds Tagged With: #aboveandbelowtheline, #DDT, #locatingyourself, #TED, #theconsciousleadershipgroup, #thedreadeddramatriangle, #theempowermentdynamic

The Shift from Burnout to a Focus on Purpose and Well-Being

March 2, 2023 by Joy Goldman Leave a Comment

“Far from being out of touch, leaders who work to reconnect the health care workforce to a sense of purpose and restore the meaning behind what we do and how we do it are facing some of health care’s biggest challenges head on. Health care leaders have to understand that their choice is not between addressing all the pressures on the system or supporting the workforce. To improve our whole system and get out of this morass we find ourselves in today, leaders have to first support those who devote their lives to health care.”

Today’s post quotes an article from IHI (the Institute for Healthcare Improvement) titled: “Don’t Talk To Me About Joy in Work” by Kedar Mate. This shift from burnout to a focus on purpose and well-being is the topic of a few workshops that SixSEED Partners will be facilitating in healthcare organizations over the next couple of months. As Mate states in his article, this isn’t an either/or situation. We can have compassion for the numerous demands facing healthcare workers and leaders as we also courageously lead our purpose-driven work.

We’d love to hear what resonated for you. Feel free to offer a comment at: https://sixseedpartners.com/contact/

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Well-being Tagged With: #burnout, #culture, #IHI, #instituteforhealthcareimprovement, #joyatwork, #leadershipdevelopment, #theleadershipcircleprofile

Thank you to our Clients, Partners, Teammates, and Families

December 21, 2022 by Joy Goldman Leave a Comment

Joy Goldman RN, MS, PCC: CEO SixSEED Partners

As a way to express our gratitude to our clients, partners, teammates, and our families, we wanted to provide an experience that might warm your hearts. If you work in healthcare, your minds and bodies might be weary. We culled our favorite youtube videos and wanted to share some with you so that you might take a few moments to breathe in the spirit of this holiday season. Please pause and invite those you love to share in this heart space with you. Know that you have touched our hearts and we are grateful.

https://youtu.be/cEavsIoMxn8: one link: Yo Yo Ma: Birdsong…. playing in harmony with nature.

Filed Under: Culture, Uncategorized Tagged With: healing, healthcare, music, nature, sixseedpartners, song, thankful, well-being, yoyoma

THE INCLUDER PRINCIPLE

October 14, 2022 by Belinda West Leave a Comment

What the Includer Strength Can Teach Healthcare Leaders

Belinda West, OTR, MSML, C-SIPT, CDE® 

Of the 34 talents that Gallup has studied over many decades, the talent or strength, ‘Includer,’ provides some key principles that serve healthcare leaders particularly well. Over my long career as a healthcare leader, I frequently noticed a familiar pattern of behavior that positively impacted the trajectory of patient outcomes. I sometimes noted it as compassion. At other times I felt more definite that it was empathy. Empathy is integral to patient satisfaction, and good clinical outcomes, according to Derksen et al., 2013. Maxwell, 2008, used the term compassionate empathy, which emphasizes deep emotional resonance with another person’s suffering that moves us to action. Inclusive leadership amplifies empathy and compassion while increasing satisfaction and outcomes for all staff and patients.

Inclusive leaders consider customer feedback confirming that their organization delivers excellent care but also the mortality and readmission rates that often tell another story. They search for a complete picture by analyzing data that speaks on behalf of patients and staff that may never complete a satisfaction survey. Includers might approach satisfaction data with a deeper look at why the trends exist. They listen to the stories of even the quietest voices.

Includers, as described in Strength Finders 2.0 by Tom Rath, love to “stretch the circle wider.” Includers embrace a fundamental leadership principle; ‘Watch for the excluded people and invite them in!’. Rath notes that Includers seek opportunities to bring together people from diverse cultures and backgrounds.

Even though there is often a great desire to master this quality, inclusive leadership doesn’t come easily. Inclusion is hard work and, at first, may feel a bit contrived or awkward, but you can scaffold your way to mastering this skill, even if this one is 34th in your ranking of talents. Those successful behavior patterns I noticed can be defined as rungs on the inclusion ladder.

RUNG 1

Move beyond your usual peers, and ask other clinicians, doctors, therapists, and providers, what they wish other disciplines knew that would make the workplace and care coordination function more effectively. Take the initiative to be the gatherer of diverse ideas and find fun ways to bring people together for sharing and discovery. Allow for anonymity when gathering information around loaded points of tension. And remember to stay focused on leveraging common viewpoints instead of over-amplifying opposing ones.

RUNG 2

Seek to understand ideas and opinions you find confusing or foreign to your lived experience. Although most healthcare leaders, in addition to their clinical expertise, may garner success by combining operational skills and influence, there is a risk that, over time, ruts of knowledge and well-engrained patterns of achievement may create dangerous blind spots. Practice the habit of asking more questions and staying engaged with the other person or group until they verify that you are paraphrasing their viewpoint accurately. Of course, this requires you to come from behind the desk and sit with others in a welcoming environment. For online engagements, dump the avatar and turn on your camera. In all cases, opt to listen twice as much as you speak. Seek deeper engagement and plan time to explore the “why” behind misunderstandings and mistrust.

RUNG 3

Embrace cultural discomfort until it’s no longer uncomfortable. Now and then, I fall off my exercise routine, and it’s painfully more challenging when I get back to working out. However, I know I must push past this stage until I can perform within my usual comfort range. Expanding our cultural flexibility and engagement is no different. Remember that cultural diversity encompasses a wide range of attributes, from ethnic and racial norms within a group to occupational and generational tendencies. One of the most fulfilling moments in my career was when I mastered enough Spanish to engage better with a fantastic team of women who were most comfortable speaking Spanish. We bonded, and I truly felt I belonged because they told me I did in Spanish! My circle had been expanding, but the growth was validated that day, and our relationships blossomed over the years. What started as clumsy attempts to engage became effortless and heartwarming!

RUNG 4+

Practice towards mastery! Rung four and beyond requires practice as you approach a level of proficiency, shifting your Includer strength higher in your ranked list of talents. But, whether your Includer strength progresses or you find that your circle of inclusion has grown, you will be forever changed. By widening your circle, you will find that those standing with you represent more diverse backgrounds and insights. You can become a highly trusted partner in building teams, departments, organizations, and systems that thrive due to the essential trifecta of compassion and empathy amplified by inclusion. Remember that inclusion is attainable and sustainable when you leverage the Includer principle!

References

Derksen F, Bensing J and Lagro-Janssen A. Effectiveness of empathy in general practice: a systematic review. Br J Gen Prac 2013; 63: 76–84.

Maxwell B. Professional Ethics Education Studies in Compassionate Empathy. New York: Springer, 2008.

Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0. Gallup Press.

Belinda West is an affiliate coach/facilitator with SixSEED Partners and the owner of Occupation Humanity, which is committed to promoting humanity in healthcare. She helps healthcare leaders attain personal wellness and peak performance through executive coaching and organizational consultation. 

As an Advanced Certified Personal and Executive Coach, registered & licensed  Occupational Therapist and accomplished facilitator, she also enjoys motivating groups to achieve their goals through custom assessments, experiential learning, and deliberate practice. She also holds a Master of Science in Management & Leadership and is certified in Sensory Integration Praxis Testing and as a Diversity Executive. Connect with me on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/belinda-west-otr-msml-c-sipt-cde%C2%AE-98498630/

We’d love to hear from you:  info@sixseedpartners.com.

Filed Under: Leadership Development, Uncategorized Tagged With: #thefullcirclegroup #accountability #theempowermentdynamic #thedreadeddramatriangle #leadershipdevelopment #teamdevelopment #leadershipecosystemcapacitation #systemintegration, diversity, healthcare, leadership, polarity maps, polarity thinking, retreat, scaling leadership, sixseedpartners, transformative leadership, well-being

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