From Autopilot to Awareness: How to Lead Your Team Without Burning Out Hello Reader, Picture this: You're about to walk into a meeting where you know someone's going to push back. Your jaw is tight, your shoulders are up by your ears, and you're already rehearsing your defense. What if you could shift that energy in 10 seconds flat—before you even get into the room? This week, I sat down with Vicki Landers, physical therapist, leadership coach and professional speaker, to talk about something...
7 days ago • 6 min read
When Mentorship Isn't Enough: The Coaching Skills Every Healthcare Leader Needs Hello Reader, Picture this: You're a ship approaching an iceberg. Your mentor shouts, "Steer right!"—because that's what worked for them. Your CME courses teach you everything about icebergs and ship mechanics. But a coach? A coach asks you what you see, what matters to you, and helps you discover your own path forward—whether that means steering, stopping, turning around, or abandoning ship entirely. This week on...
14 days ago • 5 min read
When High-Performing Teams Make More Mistakes (And Why That's Good News) Hello Reader, When was the last time someone on your team said "I don't know" in a meeting? If you're struggling to remember, that silence might be your biggest threat to patient safety. I sat down with leadership coach Gillian Faith to talk about what separates high-performing healthcare teams from everyone else. What we discovered challenges everything we think we know about mistakes, feedback, and what it means to...
21 days ago • 5 min read
Self-Leadership: The Foundation for Transforming Yourself and Your Team in 2026 Hello Reader, Happy New Year! As we kick off 2026, I want to invite you to approach this year a bit differently. Instead of just making resolutions, what if we focused on transforming ourselves first through self-leadership? In this episode, Klaus and I dive into what self-leadership really means - being intentional about how you think, feel and act. It's moving from reacting to the world to being proactive. Some...
28 days ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, What Would You Do If Anything Was Possible? Not someday. Not after you fix everything else. Right now. That question broke something open for one of Vicki’s clients this year. She’d been stuck for months—aware something wasn’t working, unable to name what came next. One question loosened the grip enough for her to finally see what she’d been avoiding. It’s not magical thinking. It’s permission to imagine before you plan. When our team sat down to reflect on 2025, that theme kept...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Seven Conversations That Changed How We Think About Thriving in Healthcare Hello Reader, There's a quote that keeps running through my mind from our conversation with Kim Downey, a physical therapist and cancer survivor who started an entire movement after her doctor died by suicide: "Just tell one person, don't keep it all inside." As I sat down to plan our year-in-review episode, I thought I'd just pick my favorite podcast moments from 2025. But as I listened back through the conversations,...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
When Loss Becomes a Catalyst for Change Hello Reader, Kim Downey didn't set out to become a leader in physician mental health advocacy. She was a physical therapist navigating two years of medical crises—thyroid cancer, complications, and breast cancer—when her world shifted in an unexpected way. At what should have been a routine follow-up appointment, she learned that one of her doctors had died by suicide a month earlier. That moment changed everything. "I got this sick feeling in my...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Hello Reader, This Week Is A Check-In About AI. Full Stop. I sat down with Dr. Maria Abunto, ambassador for the American College of Artificial Intelligence and Medicine, to talk about something that's keeping a lot of us up at night: how do we integrate AI into medical education when we're barely keeping up ourselves? Maria's journey from skeptic to ambassador started during her executive MBA at University of Pittsburgh, where two courses completely shifted how she understood technology's...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
How One Pharmacist Found Wellbeing Through Art (And What It Taught Her About Leadership) Hello Reader, I love meeting and talking with colleagues who are inspiring, real, and authentically following their inner voice. Dr. Trisha Patel is a critical care pharmacist, residency program director, and artist running her own business—all while working full-time. When I asked her how she does it, she was honest: she'd burned out along the way. But here's what kept coming up in our conversation: how...
2 months ago • 6 min read