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Dr. Stephen Karpman’s the Dreaded Drama Triangle and the Empowerment Dynamic by David Emerald Womeldorff

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By Joy W. Goldman Advisor and Founding Partner

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pepperextrashot_youve-seen-it-ive-seen-it-weve-all-seen-activity-7217125638887915521-LDZM?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

With thanks to Pepper Wilson for providing this fun and practical post on David Emerald’s work of the Dreaded Drama Triangle and the Empowerment Dynamic. Along with The Conscious Leadership Group’s: “Above and Below the Line,” the DDT and TED are our most commonly used frameworks in working with healthcare leaders and teams. Think about it: as a nurse, I went into healthcare because I wanted to improve people’s health. Some might say, I wanted to “save” or “rescue” people. That’s a noble goal, EXCEPT when I over use it and apply it to all aspects of my life!

At SixSEED Partners, we work with our clients to identify their thinking habits of responding as “heros/ rescuers” and invite them to shift to a more empowering perspective that encourages development in their teams and less wear and tear on them. And we compassionately and with healthy humor, invite them to notice their own inner persecutor and help them shift to a more kind and generous approach to self-management. It is no coincidence that we often see that grace applied to others in their lives, once they have mastered it for themselves.

Would you like to learn how you might apply this framework to your teams? Contact us here: https://sixseedpartners.com/contact/

SixSEED Partners New Year Message for 2024

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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

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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/

    Selecting for Self-Awareness

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    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.

    Leveraging Creative and Reactive Thinking for Leadership Impact

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    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.

    Conscious Leaders Step Up & Take Responsibility

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    Most of the leaders we work with possess an Uber-sense of responsibility– they take on much more than is theirs to do. Yet in their “get it done” spirit, they are quick to act which can also mean quick to direct others without realizing they may be omitting essential data in communicating the conditions of “done” for their direct reports. Our colleagues at the Conscious Leadership Group offer this simple and powerful algorithm for assessing your own actions in contributing to an unsatisfactory outcome, regardless what that outcome might be. Ben and Rosamund Zander, in the “Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life” (buy here: https://tinyurl.com/2jzbd4ky) talk about “looking in the mirror” before blaming others. The Conscious Leadership Group aligns with this thinking in this framework.

    We’d love to hear how this might apply to you. Feel free to offer a comment at: https://sixseedpartners.com/contact/