SixSEED Partners

#wellbeing

Improving Leadership Well-Being in an Academic Medical Center

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Application of polarity thinking and Accountability Structures to Improve well-being & culture change.

Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC: Founding Partner and Advisor SixSEED Partners

Background

In our work with Patient Care and Nursing Senior Leaders at an academic medical center, we have been focusing on two key tensions: care- for- self and care -for -others; and integration for two hospitals and with patient throughput strategic partners. Our design for facilitation has mirrored this interdependency: we have focused for this past year on both well-being and integration, setting the vision that team-member well-being and quality excellence can co-exist.

The Strategy

Over the past year, we have blended in-person and virtual team facilitation for thirty nursing and patient care leaders. We have grounded our work with three powerful and complementary frameworks: Polarity Thinking; The Leadership Circle Profile’s Collective Leadership Assessment and Above and Below the Line from the Conscious Leadership Group. 

The Solution

Applying a blended, action-learning framework and a coaching lens to our work with thirty Vice-Presidents and Directors of Nursing and Patient-Care services, we used time-tested frameworks to support a high reliability culture and decrease blame.  We invited the leaders to suggest real-time work applications so that the learning was in the context of their existing priorities and did not add any undue burden on these already exhausted leaders.  Our emphasis throughout this past year and the past two years has been integrating a focus on well-being in the context of creating sustainable excellence.

The Impact

After nine months of blended facilitation and interim “field work,” we heard the following results in the leaders’ change of thinking, emotions, behaviors, and results: “I’ve reduced my heart rate by six beats/ minute.”  “I’ve been modeling setting boundaries around my time at work and giving myself permission to take the weekend “off” from emails and work and I’ve noticed that my team members are doing the same- what I model they seem to follow.”  “I’ve become more present to who is in front of me and I’m listening more.  Before I would be more concerned about getting somewhere on time and now I realize that the person in front of me is more important.  This sense of presence has also impacted my home life and I am more present there.”

Would you like to hear more about how you can develop your leaders, improve well-being and culture, while you do essential work and not separate from your work? We’d love to hear from you! Please contact us here: https://sixseedpartners.com/contact/

Supporting Clinical Peer Leaders

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A Case for Courage and Compassion In Action

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

Our commitment

At SixSEED Partners, our mission is providing integrated solutions to heal healthcare.  In order to do this in a way that stewards the dwindling resources of money, energy and time, and provides sustainable results with minimal wear and tear, we must challenge existing systems and structures that work in opposition to these principles.  This blog focuses on the need to support a vulnerable population:  physicians, advanced practice clinical leaders, and nurses who are promoted into supervisory and leadership roles where they oversee the performance of colleagues who have been, and may still be, their peers.

The Problem:

In healthcare, we have observed the long -cherished practice of taking high achieving and driven clinicians and placing them in supervisory and leadership roles without preparing them for these roles.  Quite often, these positions require the practitioner to supervise and manage individuals with whom they still must work to care for patients.  As anyone who has been in this role will tell you, this is no easy task.  In one instance, they are working alongside their peers to complete a case and, in another, they are informing their peer when they have to work and when the peer’s requests for schedule changes or other privileges are denied.  Knowing how to both support and challenge one’s direct reports mystifies the most seasoned of leaders!

Our Actions:

As we focus on excellence AND well-being, we work with our clients to apply proven frameworks like The Conscious Leadership Group’s “Above and Below the Line,” and David Emerald’s The Empowerment Dynamic to increase self-awareness and learn how to better compassionately acknowledge the inner persecutor/judger while courageously asserting boundaries and actions that are in service to clinicians and patients alike.

The Impact:

Through our work, the clients are able to navigate these complex dynamics or, in some instances, they decide they might prefer staying in their practitioner role without the added demands of supervising their peers.  For informed organizations, they acknowledge the shift in mindsets and behaviors required for these roles and start preparing these ambitious leaders prior to the actual need.  In this way, the leader is set up for success and the organization, leader, team members, and patients thrive.

Want to learn more?  Contact us at: https://sixseedpartners.com/contact/

SixSEED Partners Message for Valentine’s Day

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Adopt One Action that Demonstrates Loving Yourself

“If you take good care of yourself, you are better able to be of service to others.”

“Sustainable self-care is an inside-out process. It is formed with a clear belief and intention to support and love yourself through the choices you make.”

The above quotes are from a recent Center for the Empowerment Dynamic blog from our colleagues David Emerald and Donna Zajonc. In our work to help organizations and leaders create healthy cultures, we partnered with Clinical and Nursing executives and middle managers to help them better manage the interdependent tension (polarity) of “Care for Self,” and “Care for Others.” In prior case studies, we’ve discussed the collective habitual response of perceiving “care for self” similar to a foreign body entering the system. All energy in the system went to expel that practice from the system, labeling it, as the article describes, as being “selfish.”

In prior work with physician and nursing leaders in a different system, when we asked the leaders to stand in the quadrant where they felt most aligned of care for self and care for others, the few who found themselves in “care for self” noticed feelings of shame as they stood in prioritizing their own health and well-being. They wanted to run from the quadrant into care for others or overdone care for others.

For this Valentine’s Day, we invite you to read this article and adopt one action that demonstrates loving yourself. It might be saying no and setting boundaries; it might be allowing yourself time to rest; it might be soothing your inner critic that has you constantly coming up short and saying: “I am good enough.”

Why not respond to this message and tell us how you choose to love yourself? And if you’d like a partner to support shifting your culture to one of well-being AND excellence, contact us! 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/

    CULTURE Seed

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    Petra Platzer, PhD, NBC-HWC, PCC: COO SixSEED Partners

    Rethinking Organizational Culture: More than just the “Soft Stuff”

    In a recent LinkedIn post by Siobhán McHale, an acclaimed culture transformation expert and author of “The Insider’s Guide to Culture Change”, she invites us to take a closer look at our definition of organizational culture. In a workplace context, culture is traditionally associated with how employees feel – whether they’re happy, motivated, or satisfied. However, McHale suggests a broader and more impactful definition. Namely, culture is “a critical enabler of optimal business functioning.”

    This broader definition can unlock a missing key for many organizations. Instead of viewing culture as the byproduct of HR policies, employee satisfaction surveys or staff retreats, culture now shifts to a driver and core component of the company’s strategy for success.

    The Misunderstanding of Culture

    McHale’s post acknowledges that research on organizational culture doesn’t always show a clear link between culture and performance. The key reasons for this ambiguity include different meanings and indicators for how culture was being defined. As a result, measuring its impact has been inconsistent and difficult to clearly link.

    Yes, while culture does include how people feel at work, it’s essential to realize that culture is about so much more. Culture impacts every aspect of a healthcare organization, from access strategies and quality patient care delivery to workforce recruitment and vendor relationships. Depending on the system’s objectives, the desired culture could be adaptive, innovative, patient-centric, agile, quality-driven, growth-oriented, accountable, performance-focused, community-minded, sustainable—and the list goes on.

    The real risk lies in relegating culture to the realm of “soft” stuff, as something optional or secondary. When we appreciate culture as a strategic enabler, its ties to performance become more robust and more measurable.

    Our Journey in Re-defining Culture

    At SixSEED Partners, we support our clients in defining, or re-defining, their leadership culture. In partnering with one academic medical center over multiple years, we’ve used validated tools and cross-disciplinary designs to introduce real-time systems that support clinical excellence and promote the well-being of its clinical leaders. This journey wasn’t just about diagnosing the existing culture, but about shaping a desired one that aligns with the organization’s goals. One evident link by this multi-site leadership team’s culture work to their improved performance has been the establishment of system-wide processes that also incorporate distinct and unique hospital entities. In a multi-hospital system where an “us-them” dichotomy existed, they are successfully evolving to a cultural approach that celebrates the best of the individual organizations (“Us”) and also functions as a unified system (“We”).

    The Path Forward

    Culture is multi-faceted. It’s not just about feelings, and it’s certainly not an ‘optional extra’ to address when things settle down or there is more bandwidth. Focusing on culture is the foundation upon which the employees and the systems operate, innovate, and thrive.

    So, McHale’s question remains: Have you seen culture impact performance at your work?

    If you are ready to re-define your culture as a strategic enabler for your system to increase its performance with less challenges along the way, we’re here to make that happen with you. Reach out to us and let’s embark on this transformative journey together.

    Read the LinkedIn post from Siobhán McHale here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mchalesiobhan_culture-activity-7112911972588802048-H5lU?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop