This week on the Healthcare Experience Matters podcast hosted by our Healthcare Experience Federation (HXF) partners, we are exploring the practical application of new research on leader behaviors. This is a fantastic recap on what’s new in this field and how we can apply it to our everyday working environments in patient care.
This episode is a condensed version of a recent live learning event from the HXF’s content team. This learning event has been edited down and repackaged into a friendly podcast listening experience. We hope you enjoy this opportunity to catch up on this important subject matter.
This chat is led by the HXF’s Kathleen Lynam. Kathleen is Executive Coach and Senior Advisor with HXF and PRC Excellence Accelerator® coach. She has dedicated her entire career to patient care and physician coaching.
She is a national speaker, presenter, and champion for patient care. Before stepping into the world of healthcare administration and, specifically, coaching, Kathleen spent over 40 years as a front-line nurse and Chief Nursing Officer at various medical centers and hospitals throughout New Jersey and New York.
In today’s broadcast, Kathleen shares what new research demonstrates are high impact behaviors for this year and beyond. This includes practical implications for leadership agility, teaming, and conflict strategies that foster engagement across staff and physicians.
According to Kathleen, making change starts with looking in the mirror and doing the things that we can control.
“It’s really important to hold up the mirror and begin with the leadership behaviors that we, ourselves, demonstrate,” Kathleen said.
Leading with agility and the power of empathy are other key concepts covered in-depth during today’s discussion.
“We have learned from experience that leaders who lead with empathy and concern are the one’s we most remember, as opposed to those who are more process oriented,” she said.
Kathleen also discusses the art of de-escalating touchy situations in the workplace while offering us some key advice. There are plenty of pearls of wisdom regarding conflict resolution and calming down a potentially hostile environment in this podcast.
“When someone is angry with you, forget the words and focus on the emotion,” she reminds us.
The foundation of most of today’s discussion comes down to strong emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has been covered on our podcast in some other great episodes:
- Practicing Emotional Intelligence as a Healthcare Provider
- Keeping it Simple to Drive Excellent Patient Experiences
- How Physicians Can Mitigate Burnout by Maintaining a Positive Practice Culture
As Kathleen wraps up today’s discussion, she mentions the importance of recognizing the “continuum of incivility” that may be present in our workplaces and she offers solutions about dealing with it.