SixSEED Partners

Six Seeds

“The Last Time” Meditation

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During a recent snowstorm in Baltimore, I recalled a meditation from the app, Waking Up, by Sam Harris. The meditation is called: “The Last Time” and it is narrated by William B. Irvine.

In it, he asks us to imagine that whatever we are doing, we are doing it for the last time. As I prepared to go out shoveling, I paused and looked at the red cardinals, the Bluejays, the nuthatches and chickadees frolicking at my bird-feeders and felt a sense of calm and gratitude pervade my being.

How might a perspective of “the last time” impact you today?

Listen to the meditation at https://bit.ly/3IdYGUb.

Moral Injury: HealthCare’s Public Health Crisis

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A Systemic Lens Perspective

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

Background:  

On March 10th of this year, I published a blog focused on “Caring for the Organization AND Caring for the Workforce.”  The higher purpose of that tension was to support a healthy ecosystem within healthcare.  Writing this close to six months later, not only is that tension still relevant, it has reached a crisis point in healthcare as droves of physicians and nurses leave their organizations and/or professions.  How do we take care of healthcare as a system, as we take care of the public’s healthcare needs?  In this writer’s opinion, right now we are failing.  The purpose of this blog is to invite creative, systemic solutions to this thorny challenge.

Impact and Case for Change:

Panagioti, Geraghty, and Johnson published an article in JAMA Intern Med 2018 (10) entitled: “The Association Between Physician Burnout and Patient Safety, Professionalism, and Patient Satisfaction.  Their review of the literature revealed that there is a 2-fold increase in odds for unsafe care, unprofessional behaviors, and low patient satisfaction amongst physicians experiencing burnout.   Reith published another article in Cureus titled: Burnout in United States Healthcare Professionals: A Narrative Review.   He expands the impacts from both physician and nursing burnout to include higher rates of patient mortality; transmission of hospital-acquired infections; increase in medical errors and an increase in medical student alcohol abuse and suicide.  Of note is that both of these articles were published in 2018:  prior to Covid 19.

One less quoted yet just as serious sequelae for nursing and physician burnout is your ability to get timely and effective care for you and your loved ones.

Complex and Interdependent Challenges:  Variations of Individual AND Team Tensions:

Many of us are familiar with the process of looking at root causes for problems to permanently eradicate the disease.  The challenge with Covid and burnout in healthcare is that they are not problems to solve.  They are systemic and interdependent challenges to leverage that can be boiled down to a tension between meeting individual needs AND meeting collective needs.

Look at the below examples:

Impact (So What?):

  As Einstein said: “The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”  We must facilitate dialogues that address these thorny challenges, and which include healthcare worker well-being. If we don’t, physicians and nurses will do more of what they are starting to do which is saying “no more.”  They are saying this as they submit their resignations; leave for higher-paying jobs; or leave the profession altogether.  This leaves hospitals struggling to manage the finances of healthcare with their mission to serve and meet the needs of their communities.  What solutions are people creating to respond to the fear of closing beds and not being able to meet expense needs?  We hear from our clients their staffing challenges as Traveling Nursing companies are perceived as stealing staff from hospitals less equipped to pay higher salaries and offering to those who can.  I liken this strategy to one that hopes to improve nutritional health by offering organic produce to affluent communities while depriving or limiting healthy food choices to lower socioeconomic communities.  When will we learn that localized or individual approaches will not eradicate systemic challenges?

SixSEED Partners Interdependent Solutions:

We believe that these times of epidemic crisis require a different way of thinking and acting to sustainably impact and transform these issues.  Examples include:

  • Leverage Competition & Collaboration:  bring local hospital systems together to look at community health needs and discuss how blending resources and talent might be able to better meet community needs and organizational needs.  Instead of three hospital systems vying for digestive disorder patients, consolidate and refer specialties across hospital systems, in service to patient care AND provider well-being.
  • Medical and Nursing Professional Associations uniting in lobbying their governments to establish temporary laws that promote access to resources and prohibit possible poaching of scarce resources by any one organization at the expense of others.
  • Leverage social media to impress the public of OUR responsibility.  Just as we’ve seen the near -death lung cancer patient with poor color, on oxygen, doing commercials on TV, healthcare workers should be posting photos on social media of their tears; their marked faces; bodies lining hallways due to lack of beds and/or staff.    The story of healthcare’s reality must be presented unfiltered, visible and in a media venue that the public see’s frequently and consistently.  The public has a role and responsibility for decreasing the demands on our healthcare systems and this is one way to keep the public informed of what is happening behind the scenes in the delivery of healthcare.
  • Gather regulatory, professional and education/ training organizations in dialogue around training that could take place to upskill volunteers or provide jobs for those needing work in supplementing nursing and physician staff.  As with scribes, how can we lessen the burden on our clinicians so that they are doing only the highest acuity patient care needs.  The  other tasks which require less clinical expertise can be done by other members of the care team.   

These examples require both/and thinking and require us to get out of our silos, holding our greater purpose and not just our lone survival as paramount.

SixSEED Partners is looking for leaders and systems who are ready to do this work.  We have no time to waste.  The time is NOW.  Will you join us?  If you are curious, please email me directly:  joy@sixseedpartners.com.  

#systemintegration #leadershipecosystemcapacitation #wellbeing #burnout #ecosystem 

A Grounded Approach to Healthy Leadership

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Celebrating the work of Bob Rosen and The Healthy Leader®

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

Background:  

One of our Six SEEDS includes a focus on Well-Being and our passion has only increased given the numerous traumas healthcare leaders and their teams have been exposed to during the pandemic.  It is our firm belief that healthcare delivery can’t be at its best if those working within it are unhealthy.  Therefore, it seemed perfect that we would affiliate with The Healthy Leader® in facilitating their Grounded and Conscious Healthy Leader Content.  Since we’ve been focusing on building resilience, we wanted to showcase the great work that Bob Rosen, Rick Auman, and the team have been doing and the impact it makes in creating healthy leaders.

 The Grounded Leader Model:  Recently, we commented on a posting on Linked In that referenced a Center for Creative Leadership Article on Eight Steps to Become More Resilient.(provide link).  In our work with The Healthy Leader,® we focus on evidence-based research that links the six dimensions of the Grounded Leader to business performance results.  You’ll note in the above graphic that the six dimensions of the Grounded Leader model include: 

  • Physical Health:  How you live
  • Emotional Health: How you feel
  • Intellectual Health: How you think
  • Social Health: How you interact
  • Vocational Health: How you perform
  • Spiritual Health: How you view the world

As we reflect on resilience, we can easily discern that it is the interplay of all six of these dimensions that prepares us for resilience, adaptation and thriving.  Resilience is a root within the emotional dimension yet it is our assertion that one cannot be resilient without growing the other five dimensions as well.

The model also links the six dimensions to the major disruptors of our current world.  For example, the more we attend to the dimension of physical health and energy management, the better able we are to effectively deal with the unrelenting speed of life.  Technology was a gift during Covid 19 isolation yet we would argue that it was an inadequate substitute without the addition of social health and nourishing communities.

All of these resonated with the participants from a Fortune 500 Technology firm for whom we are delivering this content.  Through small group interactions and accountability partners; the support of an online portal with videos and reflection/ journaling exercises, and integration of their organization’s leadership imperatives, the participants are living and learning new habits to support their resilience and that of their teams.

Application: 

To those who might think this content is “soft,” The Healthy Leader® has partnered in conducting research on the impact of healthy leaders to business results.  Ross and Squires published a 2015 article entitled “Tone at the Top: Leadership as the Foundation of Organizational Health and Wellness” in which they describe the impact of leaders who score high in these six dimensions to job performance.  Below you can see two of the charts included in the article.  Of note is the significance of spiritual health to performance.  When’s the last time you discussed spiritual health with your employees?

Let’s hear from you

If you’d like to chat more about The Grounded and Conscious Leader Program, and 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: The Healthy Leader

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

Both/And Thinking Requisite for Post-Pandemic Leadership

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

Background: Three strategists from PwC published in April’s Harvard Business Review: “6 Leadership Paradoxes for the Post- Pandemic Era”. As we await the publishing of Barry Johnson’s:” AND: Making a Difference by Leveraging Polarity, Paradox and Dilemma: Volume 2 Applications,” in which we have contributed numerous chapters, we feel affirmed in focusing on this essential capacity for post-pandemic leaders. We’re also pleased to see that SixSEED Partners has worked with several individual and system clients to measure these exact tensions.

Both/And different from Problem-Solving

As a reminder, (see prior posts) both/and – polarity thinking supplements traditional either/or problem-solving thinking in order to best manage complex, ambiguous, volatile and uncertain situations- all of which are part of healthcare’s NOW. It’s an advanced thinking capacity as it requires a leader to be able to see (the first step of the SMALL polarity process: seeing-mapping-assessing learning-leveraging) what seems like opposing perspectives. Leinwand, Mani, and Sheppard highlight six of these interdependent tensions. Below we’ve highlighted their six and translated them into language we’ve used and measured with our clients:

We take HBR’s leader-focused tensions and expand into individual, team and systemic tensions. We’ve adopted the ethos behind the quote from a GE leader: “you don’t put a changed leader into an unchanged system.” As we partner with clients, we focus on individual, team and systemic tensions to ensure sustainable results.

Applications to our current work

SixSEED Partners has integrated these tensions in our individual coaching as part of the 360 feedback and development process; in our culture work with Information Technology and Healthcare organizations and medical groups; and in developing and strengthening nurse and physician leader partnerships. Pasted below you can see the results of measuring the tension of Centralization and Decentralization. At a glance, you can see the opportunity to better leverage centralization in this heart and vascular institute. The White infinity loop represents their actual scores as compared with the ideal grey loop. Through dialogue, it was eye-opening for this group of physicians to objectively see how often they fall into feeling victim to the needs of the larger organization instead of noticing their opportunity to better consider system factors as they plan their decentralized program efforts. In being able to consider and measure the both/and, they save time, energy and resources that go into over focusing on their division needs alone.

Let’s hear from you

We’d love to hear how you are helping your leaders see the both/and of these six paradoxes and others. 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.

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Celebrating Nurses and Healthcare Workers: An Exercise in Diversity and Inclusiveness

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

History of “Nurses and Hospital Week Celebrations”

The first effort to provide national recognition to nurses was in 1954 when Dorothy Sutherland submitted a proposal to then President Eisenhower:  the proposal was rejected.  It wasn’t until twenty years later, in 1974, that President Nixon signed a proclamation indicating that there would be expansion to individual State recognitions of Nurses’ Day to be an entire week.  In 1996, the ANA (American Nurses Association) initiated May 6th as National RN Recognition Day.  

According to the free dictionary, in 1921, the United States declared National Hospital Day to encourage trust in hospitals in the wake of the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918, and to coincide with Florence Nightingale’s birthdate:  May 12th .  The observance was expanded to a week in 1953 to allow hospitals to plan and implement more extensive public information programs.  

I’ve worked in healthcare for the past forty- plus years and during that entire time, I’ve witnessed sentiments of appreciation for both Nurses’ Week and Hospital Week,  AND sentiments of exclusion:  “Why them and not us?”

Adapting To Present Day: Both/And

I was on LinkedIn recently and saw a similar posting expressing emotion around a desire to expand “National Physician’s Day” (March 30th) to other disciplines/ providers.  The perspective of the person posting was resentment that attention would be paid to a broader cadre of professions and that the expansion took away the special recognition that was deserved to physicians.

What do you think?  Some of you might be saying: “I agree.”  That’s the “right perspective.”   What is the “right” perspective in how to offer these well-deserved recognitions, particularly during a pandemic year when so many have sacrificed time, energy, and sadly, their lives, in service to their profession?  Does sharing make the recognition less special because it includes others and is not exclusive?

Honoring Individuals AND Teams:

While many can and will get into an argument of “right/wrong” in solving this problem, at SixSEED Partners, we would say that this is a perfect example of complexity and interdependent tensions or polarities to leverage.  This is also a wonderful variation on the theme of diversity, equity and inclusion.  Is there a way to celebrate and recognize distinct disciplines while also recognizing the whole?  We would say yes…. This is an interdependent tension to leverage:  A both/and.

Looking at the polarity map below, you will notice the universal tension often experienced in organizations around attending to unique disciplines and individual contributions (parts)—diversity in our associates, while also trying to be equitable in our practices (considering the whole).  If we effectively leverage these tensions, we stay in the upper quadrants.  When we overfocus on either pole, we inevitably get the downsides of that pole.

How does this play out with Nurses’ Week and Hospital Week?  We can imagine nurses saying that they don’t want to share their day with nursing support staff because it distracts from the unique profession that is nursing (Value:  the upside of Individual – Fear: downside of Team).  We can hear the same theme (value—fear) with physicians who want to preserve National Physicians Day for their profession alone.

On the other pole, we can see that an overfocus on diversity/ individuals to the neglect of the whole interferes with equity and inclusion.  Why shouldn’t there be a “recognition week” for each unique discipline?

Leveraging the Both/And:

In our polarity map, the next steps would be to identify action steps and warning signs for each quadrant.  Imagine engaging a diverse workgroup in this process:  what would they say means the most to them in how we might recognize their unique contributions while also appreciating the unique contributions of others?  What might the impact be if other disciplines heard from peers what they appreciate about that discipline/ profession?  How might a spirit of abundance… there is enough for all, contribute to cultivating a spirit of appreciation and gratitude for all:  not only for one week a year but every day of the year?

The pandemic has brought the intimate stories of the work of ALL healthcare workers to our attention.  And, truth be told, while scale might be different, saving lives; witnessing and escorting death and everything in between IS The WORK of healthcare.  

SixSEED Partners has had the privilege of witnessing the courageous work of healthcare leaders and their teams for the past forty-plus years. We celebrate your stamina and courage, AND we honor and hold space for your tears, trauma, grief, and fatigue.  Our commitment in offering gratitude to your work is to courageously offer our work which is to provide integrated solutions to heal healthcare.  Working in healthcare HAS to be healthy.  We honor you every day through partnering with you to make it better.  There is no other choice!

Let’s hear from you

We’d love to hear your insights in celebrating unique disciplines while also celebrating the whole of your teams that contribute to patient care and service. 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.