CASE STUDY
Coaching a Palliative Care Doctor
The Situation
Kathryn is a palliative care doctor who was building the palliative care department at a hospital. With palliative care being a relatively new field, she often felt she needed to “market” the idea and her work to others. She lived in a world of feeling she had something to prove.
Obviously, as a palliative care doctor Kathryn is a very caring person. But the stress of her job was getting to her.
As always, we conducted interviews with the coaching client’s coworkers, peers, and bosses. We then move the interview notes into themes to protect confidentiality and to make the information more digestible for the client.
The themes – and developing strategies to change them – are the basis of coaching conversations. Examples of the feedback included (actual feedback):
TURNS ON PEOPLE: “She gets angry very easily and she can turn on people easily.” “She has this tendency to really like you and then turn on you.” “People try hard to get on her good side in order to not get the wrath.” “She’s polarizing where there are fans of her and she walks on water, and then others say please keep me away from her.”
CONDESCENDING: “She calls people incompetent.” “There’s a lot of accusing people of not knowing what they’re doing, of questioning what they’re doing, in a harsh way and in the presence of others.” “She will demoralize you right in front of patients and families.” “People feel humiliated by her.” “She dismisses you and treats you like you don’t exist”
DOES NOT LISTEN TO OR CONSIDER OTHERS’ OPINIONS: “She could be a better listener and respond to people’s complaints and concerns rather than ignoring them.” “She comes in and takes over and then doesn’t ask about the other person’s opinion.” “She should say to people, ‘what do you think we should do,’ or ‘how do you think we should handle it,’ even if she doesn’t follow what they say, they will feel valued.”
- Recognizing she can’t do it all, and that delegating and trusting others was going to be the key to her success. To help manage her stress, she stopped working 12 hour days 7 days a week, and created boundaries between work and home.
- Developing internal communication processes to ensure she’s more clear and timely in her responses to people.
- Talking to her boss more regularly to get clarity on his goals for the hospice program and gain the acknowledgement she was seeking from him that she was moving in the right direction.
- Reading a book about employee engagement and creating action items pulled from the book.
- Collaborating with her team to discuss their action items so they knew what she expected from them in growing the department.
- Developing a series of scripts for giving people feedback in various scenarios, so that she had some go-to ideas and could focus on delivery in the moment.
- Developing a personal leadership vision so that she had clarity on the type of leader she wanted to be.
After the eight sessions, we completed a second round of interviews to see how Kathryn’s team thought she was doing. Her new feedback included (actual feedback):
PLEASANT & POSITIVE: “She looks happier in general.” “She is much more pleasant to be around.” “She seems to be in really good spirits and seems balanced.” “I don’t see any negativity from her even when she’s just walking down the hallway she has a smile on her face.”
COLLABORATIVE COMMUNICATION: “I appreciate that she is getting consults from us rather than having us ask her.” “She is good at communicating when there is a team – she ropes everyone in and gets consensus.” “I think that she is thinking first, instead of just blurting.” “She is much more selective on what she comes to speak to me about or issues or suggestions. That can be good. She has reigned that in.”
CONTROLS HER EMOTIONS: “She isn’t having the angry outbursts she used to have.” “She is more patient.” “I think she’s gotten better at managing her response to stress.” “She’s trying to be aware of when she gets stressed and how her response can be affected by her stress.” “She still gets frustrated when others are not holding to the same high standard she would hold to, but she is more actively thinking about how to give that feedback. She’s trying to vent and let it go rather than reacting directly to the person. It gives her time to come up with her response.”
KATHRYN’S CHANGE IS A TRIPLE WIN. She is more effective, her team is more effective, and the CMO doesn’t have to worry about the cost of her bad behavior anymore.