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Holiday Stories, 2021 Intentions, and Supporting Community

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What a year?!  I’m envisioning many exclamation points for 2020, and also realizing that “What a year?!” can be a reflection of what was, as well as an intention/vision for what is to be.  As a holiday message, our team thought we would offer favorite moments from 2020, share our holiday traditions, present a vision/intention for 2021, and spotlight some nonprofits we’ve supported throughout the year.

Happy Holidays from SixSEED Partners!

JOY

Favorite Story of 2020:  One of my most favored memories from 2020 was pre-Covid when I would see my mom sitting in the lobby of her Continuing Care Community.  As I approached her and she recognized me, she would smile the biggest smile and invite me to “come sit on mommy’s lap!”  She was 88 yrs old and fragile; I was 60 yrs. old and heavier than when I was a child. One day, I decided to ignore any feelings of embarrassment or concern and indulged her invitation, and “silly” became “joy-filled.”

2021 Intention: My definition of one of our seeds, “Well-Being”, comes from what I wrote on my holiday card this year:  “What matters most is someone to love; kindness; laughter; health; a spirit of adventure; inclusion; simple beauty found in nature; gratitude; and enough discontent to take action for a better world.”

Supported Organization: BUILD:  Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development/ Turnaround Tuesday

“Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) is a broad-based, non-partisan, interfaith, multiracial community power organization rooted in Baltimore’s neighborhoods and congregations. BUILD is dedicated to making Baltimore a better place for all Baltimoreans to live and thrive. For more than 40 years, BUILD has worked to improve housing, increase job opportunities, and rebuild schools and neighborhoods, among other issues.”

The secret to BUILD’s success lies in their commitment to identify and develop leaders in every community where they work. They rely on a radical tactic: We meet people face-to-face and build relationships that help to re-knit the frayed social fabric of our life. We don’t seek justice and social change for people, we seek change with people. We tackle big problems by breaking them down into issues that can be addressed. We build power by building community. Donate to BUILD

CLIFF

Favorite Holiday Tradition: My mom makes a famous Christmas Tree cinnamon roll that is absolutely legendary in my family. Not just for its taste but for the consistency and persistence. I’ll speak for myself that no matter where I’ve been over the past 30 years – that amazing Christmas Tree shows up at my door via overnight delivery. The gratitude I feel for the persistence that gets that tradition of love from one home to mine is something that makes the holiday season what it is, for me. And for which, I’m grateful.

Crazy Holiday Story: One holiday season just before Christmas, I took a bus from the east coast to Colorado for a skiing vacation. On the way, the bus broke down in a major snowstorm in sub-zero temperatures. It was quite late at night, and there were no lights visible in any direction. Within 30-minutes, the temperature inside the bus was the same as outside, but minus the wind. Unsuccessfully, the bus driver tried to contact the bus company and forbade anyone from calling 911. When people began to panic and insisted we get help, he began screaming at the passengers. The passengers then lashed out at the driver and from there the situation started to spiral, when… headlights and flashlights began to appear through the frozen windows. Somehow, the word had gotten out in the small local community, and that triggered a small convoy of trucks and cars that began transporting people to the home of a local person who offered their home as a temporary refuge. There was hot chocolate and Christmas cookies spread out for everyone.  There was holiday music and signing of Christmas carols. A few hours later, a local school bus to transport us to a local Church, where beds and cots had been set up in the basement community room. Santa was there to give out presents. The next morning, a replacement bus from the bus company arrived, and we continued the final leg of the trip.

Supporting Organization: Martha’s Table

Martha’s Table has operated from the belief that every Washingtonian deserves the
opportunity to thrive. They support improving the strength of children, families, and
communities by increasing access to quality education, health and wellness, and family
resources. Between 1989-1998 I lived around the corner from Martha’s Table’s humble
beginnings at 14th Street NW location and I volunteered to support their after-school
meals program.

They’d been operating for nearly a decade at that time and since then,
and it’s inspiring to watch their programs expand to support strong children, strong
families, and strong communities — now operating nationally accredited education
programs that begin at birth; fighting for food justice and increasing access to healthy
meals and fresh produce for over 15,000 residents; and promoting family
success through our no-cost community store and engagement programs. Donate to Martha’s Table

ASHLEY-DIOR

Holiday Traditions: The holidays are always important to me because everyone lives all over the country. It’s a time for us to gather and enjoy each other’s time together. We also play Holiday music and decorate the house.

Supporting Organization: Bread for the City

There are a lot of people living with food insecurity, especially with the pandemic. The mission of Bread for the City is to help Washington, DC residents living with low income to develop their power to determine the future of their own communities. We provide food, clothing, medical care, and legal and social services to reduce the burden of poverty. We seek justice through community organizing and public advocacy. We work to uproot racism, a major cause of poverty. We are committed to treating our clients with the dignity and respect that all people deserve. Donate to Bread for the City

PETRA:

Favorite Holiday Memory: Growing up in Germany, the holidays have always felt like a magical time to me with games, laughter, playfulness, gratitude and making time for each other. My fondest memories are of my mom, sister and I being in our PJs all day, watching classic Christmas movies, eating some German treats like Lebkuchen, and being warm, silly & cozy together.  

There are so many valuable organizations who serve those in need, and in thinking about this year, and my fondest memory, I’m highlighting a local non-profit, Family Lifeline, a member of the United Way efforts, who focuses on serving the ecosystem of individuals and families, from kids to parents to seniors, through 3 Programs:  Growing Well, Living Well, and Giving Well. Their new tagline especially resonates with me:  Bringing Health and Hope into the Home.

Supporting Organization: Family Lifeline

Family Lifeline is one of the oldest non-profit organizations in Virginia and an integral member of the greater Richmond community. They have been supporting stronger lives and stronger communities since 1877.

Their tagline: Bringing Health and Hope into the Home.
Their mission & vision: We partner with families and individuals, delivering intensive home and community-based services to achieve an equitable, resilient community where families and individuals are connected, safe and living a healthy, meaningful life. Donate to Family Lifeline

From our team to you, we wish you a happy holiday season with best wishes for a healthy and prosperous new year!

Team Spotlight: Meet Cliff

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Cliff Kayser is the CSO for SixSEED Partners. For the last 25 years, Cliff has been a practitioner and teacher of applied behavioral science theories and applications – most specifically in the area of values and polarity values dynamics. Cliff most enjoys working in partnership with clients who embrace or are ready to embrace both technical and adaptive approaches to leadership.

He says, “With the commitment to supplementing adaptive with technical in a ‘both/and’ leadership approach, generative and sustainable results will follow – and those results are measurable.” Cliff is a founding partner of SSP and appreciates healthcare for its role as a catalyst for well-being and love – worldwide. Current healthcare-related initiatives include work with a foundation in the Middle East and North Africa as part of Ain Shams University to use polarity thinking as part of leadership development for medical educators. (See published research on this work here!) Learn more about Cliff here.

Team Spotlight: Meet Petra

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Meet our COO, Petra Platzer, who started her healthcare career as a cancer researcher over 20 years ago. During her research years, she studied how the internal signaling in our cells create healthy – and unhealthy – results in organ systems, like the colon. In her later leadership roles at the Cleveland Clinic, she translated this “signaling” approach into facilitating highly engaged employees and high performing teams in her institute, and then others.

This work ignited her underlying passion to help healthcare leaders and systems create their own “healthy” signaling. In 2010 she left research to work as an executive coach and a team facilitator in the healthcare and academic settings. Petra’s holistic approach to improving our health also led her to becoming the Program Director of Georgetown’s Health and Wellness coaching certification program, as a complementary means to empower people wanting to directly create health behavior changes.

Petra’s commitment to partnering with individuals and teams to unlock new thinking and create courageous steps forward are fundamental elements in each SixSEED “seed”, or service offering, including individual and team leadership, culture change initiatives and well-being. Her own knowledge and experience of the inter-relatedness of these seeds is what propelled her to be a founding partner of SSP, where she feels energized by working with the team of like-minded colleagues focused on the same mission. Together, she hopes SixSEED can continue improving the signaling within healthcare systems to support the continuous well-being of all the people delivering, and receiving, quality and value-based care. 

Outside of her work, Petra loves playing soccer, running races, traveling, taking photos in nature and spending quality time with her husband, family and friends.

Team Spotlight: Meet Ashley-Dior Thomas

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Meet our Sr. Executive Assistant, Ashley-Dior Thomas! Ashley-Dior is located in Washington, D.C. and before joining our team she worked as an Executive Assistant/Scheduler on Capitol Hill turned full-time entrepreneur. Her passion for helping small businesses become more productive and process-oriented helps our team implement structure as a growing business. 

Ashley-Dior enjoys working at SixSEED Partners (SSP) because of the culture and empathetic nature that the Founders have when it comes to understanding the challenges at hand in healthcare. When envisioning the future of healthcare, she hopes to see a more holistic method used to enact change to the actual structure of the healthcare system. 

When not working, you can find Ashley-Dior running her own R&B club, catching up on articles that pertain to the industry, and most recently, Ashley-Dior got her Certificate in Women’s Entrepreneurship from Cornell University!

To connect with Ashley-Dior on LinkedIn, please click here.

CEO Declaration

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Compassionate AND Courageous Leadership for our Nation’s Healing

“Through this work, I’ve learned that each of us is more than the worst thing that we’ve ever done; that the opposite of poverty isn’t wealth, the opposite of poverty is justice;  that the character of our nation isn’t reflected on how we treat the rich and the privileged, but how we treat the poor, the disfavored, and condemned.”  

–Bryan Stevenson, Director, Equal Justice Initiative

I write to you today as the CEO of SixSEED Partners; as a nurse who has dedicated her life to providing health and healing to all, and as a growing- in- consciousness white, privileged woman who is deeply saddened by the pervasive demonstrations of systemic racism and violence in our nation.  George Floyd; Ahmaud Arbery; Breonna Taylor; Freddie Gray – too many names to do justice to their lives by listing them here.  While I mean this statement deeply – I also believe strongly that these words of support are not sufficient to create real systemic change. Now is our time to ACT.

The question we are facing at SixSEED Partners is one we ask our clients to consider, too. How do we Act effectively, without “reacting”?  As we shift from our anger and sadness to activism and change, we challenge ourselves to focus on the impact we want to create:  our desired outcome, which is to contribute to a just and equitable culture where health is a right for all.

At SixSEED we partner to create “ecosystems” – environments in which individuals, teams, and organizations can all thrive.  Our approaches and tools-of-our-trade surface and honor differences and differing perspectives while moving forward together with increased speed and more sustainability. Healthy and thriving ecosystems require diversity and integrated solutions. 

A frequently asked question is, “Where to start?”   

We believe leadership comes from a variety of places and is always an inside-out job. Here are 5 essential steps we see as necessary for healing and lasting change, at all levels of a system:

  1. Embrace Courage in Being Vulnerable – Critically Self -Assess:  How are we part of the solution or part of the problem?  How do we know?  Whose perspective is missing in our lives and how do we bring that perspective(s) in?  Whether in reading; watching TED talks or YouTube Videos; engaging in conversations with our neighbors or families, we must take individual responsibility to improve our literacy in racism, implicit bias, white supremacy, and anti-racism.  
  2. Hold Self and Others Accountable, While Resisting Blame: It takes courage to resist blaming others and to recognize that Who and What we criticize lives within us.  What difference could it make if we could focus on accountability for behavior, and love the human being before us – and within us? How might making that shift impact us personally, as a leader,  in our organizations?
  3. Hold a Place for Compassion and Forgiveness:  This is easier said than done, particularly when trying with those we consider our “enemies”. Merriam Webster defines compassion as: “the sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”  Notice there is no judgment here. It is more a recognition of our common humanity.  That is the outcome we are hoping to create in our world! Regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual preference, income, military status, and so many other differentiators – we are one common humanity.
  4. Be a Diversity Leader-by-Example – Imperfectly:   We don’t need to wait for a formal Diversity Officer to start making changes in our organizations. At every level – personally and in our teams – be intentional to bring as many different perspectives in the room as possible.  Make it a habit to ask questions like: 
    1. “Whose perspectives are missing here?”
    2. “What voice/s are being marginalized, and why?
    3. “How do we ensure all voices are heard?”  
    4. “What is the quality of our listening? Are we listening to confirm what we know or to hear what we haven’t yet considered?”
    5. “What shifts do we need to the practices we’ve accepted?” For example, instead of hiring for “fit,” what if we hired for “non-fit?”
  5. Allocate your time, money, and talent in service to living a vision of a just and equitable culture.  Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, Sensei said it best: “Love and Justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.” 

Like all systemic changes, they take intentional learning, development and actions, over time.

To stay connected with what SixSEED Partners is doing to support anti-racism, see  the below key resources and actions we are taking … to be anti-racist and create integrated solutions to heal our nation’s healthcare systems.

In health and healing,

Joy W. Goldman RN, MS, PCC

CEO and Founding Partner

SixSEED Partners 

Self-Learning / Action Resources:

  • How to Be Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi
  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Dr. Robin DiAngelo
  • “Deconstructing White Privilege” with Dr. Robin DiAngelo

Organizational Learning / Action Resources:

  • EQUALITY: Courageous Conversations about Women, Men and Race to Spark a Diversity and Inclusion Breakthrough, by Trudy Bourgeois
  • Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race, by Derald Wing Sue
  • “US Businesses Must Take Meaningful Action Against Racism” LM Roberts & E Washington, HBR, June 1 2020 

https://hbr.org/2020/06/u-s-businesses-must-take-meaningful-action-against-racism

Organizations to Follow / Support:

Creating Systemic Thinkers: Going beyond SBAR

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It has long been recognized that nurses and physicians speak in different ways.  Particularly in Surgical settings where providers may experience a sense of pressure with clinical demands, tools like SBAR: “Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation” have been created to help standardize a communication structure between healthcare providers and improve patient safety outcomes.  We believe there’s more to this story and partnered with a community-based health system to improve learning, performance and vitality in nursing and physician leaders.  In the spirit of SBAR, we present our case study using this format.

Situation:

A multi-hospital health system approached SixSEED Partners (SSP), dba Wiederhold & Associates, to conduct polarity thinking training to their physician leadership academy.  This academy consists of approximately 25 physicians who are in leadership roles throughout their system.  As SSP has been working with this system on a multi-year leadership capacity/ succession planning effort, the system has witnessed the benefit of polarity thinking in expanding leaders’ capacity to see the “both/and” along with the traditional, problem-oriented “either/or” thinking.  They now wanted us to present this framework to their physician leaders.

Background:

Since 2015, SSP was asked to create a succession planning program for seven high potential senior leaders, who, at that time, were being considered as possible successors to a CEO who was retiring within three-four years.  SSP partnered with the CEO, COO, CHRO, and another Senior Executive Vice President to create and implement a program that expanded their request to increasing individual, team, and systemic leadership capacity.  Regardless of who may or may not move into the CEO role, we wanted to help position the system to best leverage and respond to increasing complexity within their community, as with mergers and acquisitions, retiring senior leaders, and changing payment models.  Part of our work included introducing polarity thinking and measurement to these senior leaders.

What is polarity thinking?  Barry Johnson introduced polarities in his 1992 book Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems (Johnson, 1992). The term polarity refers to a specific category of paradox. A polarity is an interdependent pair with an ongoing and predictable dynamic. Two questions help us identify a polarity. They are: “Are there two poles which are interdependent?” and, “Is the difficulty ongoing?” (Johnson 1996:2 81). Understanding polarity theory begins with recognizing the fundamental interdependent pair/polarity of “OR” Thinking and “AND” Thinking. This thinking competency-focused polarity distinguishes a polarity as a unique type of paradox that involves an interdependent pair, and from problems that are unsolvable using “OR” Thinking. Polarities are inherently unsolvable, but can be addressed effectively when key stakeholders recognize them.

For example, consider one polarity such as activity and rest.  At some point, if we focus exclusively on activity, our bodies will collapse from exhaustion, and we will be forced to rest.  Over-focusing on rest is unhealthy for our bodies and we will eventually have to move to avoid the downsides of too much rest.  This is an ongoing dance that has no end.

SSP worked with the health system to identify their most common and impactful polarities of mission AND margin; tactical AND strategic; centralization AND decentralization; and continuity AND transformation.

Assessment: 

As SSP considered the request for polarity training for the health system’s physician leaders, knowing that they also have a nursing leadership academy, we saw the potential multiplier benefit of inviting both audiences into the same room.  Getting back to our introduction, nurses and physicians often have different, and complementary communication styles.  These communication differences, like candor and diplomacy, or advocacy and inquiry can lead to challenging conflicts and unnecessary burnout.  As a consultant team, we saw the benefit of inviting the nursing and physician leaders to participate in defining and mapping out their own polarities.  For the same amount of time and monetary investment, they could deepen the penetration of polarity thinking within their system, resulting in greater engagement from these leaders, greater performance (since they could now see a system to better leverage these interdependent tensions as compared to ongoing cycles of reaction), and greater vitality through less energy going to un-necessary conflicts.

Recommendation:

SSP worked with the steering team for the Physician  AND Nursing Leadership Academies to design and implement an experiential day where the leaders could identify their most urgent polarities;  map out in a very visual and somatic way, their perspective, while also being able to see the upsides of their lesser preferred polarity, and the downsides of over-focusing on their preference.  As an example, physician leaders were able to see the upside of candor, while also seeing that overdoing candor can be perceived as arrogant and rude.  Nurses were able to see their preference for diplomacy, while also seeing the confusion that can occur when they overuse diplomacy and lack candor.

Results: 

To our great delight, the health system had to change the venue of the training due to the numbers of leaders interested in participating in the training.  The leaders laughed and physically moved as they were able to see their bodily representation of their different perspectives.  With coaching on inquiry and dialogue, the leaders were able to be curious (as compared with judging) as they interviewed each other about their differing perspectives.  In this way, their partnering was strengthened as they learned a common language and process for better leveraging polarities in service to their greater purpose of providing quality AND cost-effective patient care.

SixSeed Partners offers a suite of inter-collaborative, interdependent and custom-designed services to increase leader and system-level capacitation within the healthcare industry. Email us at info@sixseedpartners.com to learn how we can help you drive sustainable, transformational change within leaders, teams and entire organizations.

Smith, Wendy K., Lewis, Marianne W.,  Jarzabkowski, Paula and Langley, Ann. 2017: “The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox.” Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (Chapter 28: “Paradox and Polarities: Finding Common Ground and Moving Forward Together: A Case Study of Polarity Thinking and Action in Charleston, South Carolina”)  Cliff Kayser, Margaret Seidler, and Barry Johnson