Hello Reader,
Difference is a design feature, not a defect
I keep meeting leaders who are exhausted by a very particular kind of effort: the work of getting everyone on a team to just get along. Get the disagreement to settle. Get everyone rowing the same direction. Then, finally, do the real work.
I understand the pull. When you are short on people and time, friction feels like the thing standing between you and getting it done. But the personality differences you are working so hard to smooth over are usually the most valuable resource the team has.
This week on the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast, Gillian and I sat down for a conversation. We spend our days leading teams, coaching them, and watching what actually moves them forward. And we keep coming back to the same thing: the differences leaders try to round off are a team's greatest untapped strength.
When agreement becomes the goal, people go quiet
In healthcare, we tend to believe the best team is the one where everyone agrees. So we push for it. We ask, why can't we all get along, can we just align so we can move forward. And the moment a leader signals that dissent slows things down, people stop offering it. They decide it is not worth the discomfort. They keep their head down and contribute less and less, quietly quitting on the inside while still showing up.
That silence can look like harmony. It usually is not.
"Teams that don't show some disagreement or some healthy conflict here and there possibly are not speaking up as they need to speak up."
Healthy conflict is not the failure state. It is often where the better answer is hiding. It takes more time and more energy to work through competing views, and the result tends to be worth it: more angles, fewer blind spots, a decision you got right the first time instead of three different tries.
A personality assessment is a picture, not a cage
A lot of people hear "personality assessment" and feel boxed in, judged, reduced to a four-letter code. I get it. Most of us have taken several of these over the years, from the MBTI to DISC to whatever a past employer handed us.
Here is the reframe I offer: an assessment is a picture, not a verdict. It is one way of describing how you are showing up. The magic is never in the result itself. It is in the debrief, where you get to ask what resonates, what does not, and what you want to do differently.
In our coaching work we use PrinciplesYou for the individual and PrinciplesUs for the team. It is a modern take on trait psychology, organized around three orientations: how you prefer to think, how you engage with others, and how you apply yourself. Thoughts, relationships, and action. The same forces that shape how you show up at home shape how you show up on the unit.
"Understanding what motivates somebody, why they react the way they do or think the way they do, makes it a lot easier to work alongside others."
When a whole team sees its data side by side, the conversation changes. Suddenly there is shared language. People stop anchoring to surface things, like who is also a parent or who loves a plant-based diet, and start talking about what actually lets each person shine at work.
Every trait has two faces
This is the part I wish more leadership trainings made room for. A single trait is neither good nor bad. It helps and it hinders, depending on the moment.
Take the tough trait, the preference for being direct. In healthcare that directness can be essential, even lifesaving. The same directness, in a tense feedback conversation, can land far harder than intended. Now take its near opposite, nurturing: warmth, real attunement to what others need. A gift in one moment, and in another, a tendency to avoid the hard conversation and put everyone else's needs ahead of the goal.
"It gives us indicators about how people like to be given feedback: do they like to be addressed directly, or do they need time to think things through?"
Knowing where you sit, and where your colleagues sit, is what lets you stop taking the difference personally and start working with it.
The real superpower is the variability
So what do you do with all this awareness? Our work at Transforming Healthcare Coaching® always starts with awareness and then moves into new action. That is the heart of the AND Framework™. Awareness on its own is just a nice report.
The skill is learning to flex. To do a little less of your default in one moment and a little more in another. I call it adjusting the spiciness of a trait, dialing it up or down as the room requires.
It is like heart rate variability. The number that matters most is not your resting heart rate. It is your ability to vary, to read the room, to adapt. That range is the real superpower of leadership.
"I've seen teams start to use the traits when they talk to each other. 'Oh, there's your tough showing up again.' It becomes playful, but in a good way."
When a team can name a trait out loud without judgment, the whole thing gets lighter. Feedback stops feeling like an attack and starts feeling like a shared language.
Difference only pays off when someone holds it
Here is the catch. Cognitive diversity only becomes an advantage when the team actually understands it and someone creates the container to hold it. The detail-oriented person catches what the big-picture thinker misses, and the reverse is just as true, but only if both feel safe enough to speak.
Left unnamed and uncoached, those same differences are just conflict. Three-quarters of a team can share a working style and accidentally alienate the other quarter whose approach is every bit as valid. Naming it, out loud and on purpose, is how you make sure every perspective gets heard.
"Doing these assessments and these debriefs can help teams build trust faster and more deeply, because of the shared understanding."
That is the work of holding difference well. It does not happen overnight. But the payoff, in trust and in performance, is real.
What's Inspiring Us This Week
This week's reading came from our medTHRIVE Connect book rounds: Dr. Joshua Hartzell's A Prescription for Caring in Healthcare Leadership. One idea has stayed with me. Sometimes the most caring thing you can do on a team is offer the dissenting opinion, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is the opposite of what everyone wants to hear. Speaking up costs energy and a little courage. It is also a form of care.
A note from me
Early in my own work leading teams, I assumed the colleagues who frustrated me most were the problem to be solved. What changed everything was seeing, on paper, that we were simply built to think and act differently. The friction was never a character flaw. It was information. I still have to remind myself of that on the hard days. That is the work, and I am right there in it with you.
If you are curious what a PrinciplesUs debrief could surface for your team, or what a Systemic Team Coaching® engagement might look like, reach out at hello@transforminghealthcarecoaching.com. Teams can be as small as three people, and the assessment is the first step. Gillian and I would love to talk it through with you. We are only one conversation away.
🎧 Listen to the podcast sneak peek episode below and listen to the full episode on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Podbean, or Amazon Music.
Stay mindful and keep leading,
Lillian
Founder & CEO
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