This past weekend, I traveled to Boston to attend the yearly alumni weekend for the Harvard School of Public Health Master’s of Health Care Management (MHCM) Program. I’m a graduate of the tenth cohort of this program, now in its 18th year. The MHCM was founded by leadership at the Harvard School of Public Health who saw a need for health care-focused leadership programs for physician leaders. Each year, a cohort of approximately 25 physician leaders matriculate into this two-year program.
Although not everyone would be willing to enroll in an intensive master’s degree program while also working full time in a leadership position, I found it very impactful to my career development, and so I try to get back for the alumni weekends each year, if possible. The event is a wonderful opportunity to update my leadership toolkit as the weekend is jam packed with learning sessions and guest speakers. This year, I was invited to participate in a panel along with two other graduates from the program who, like me, are involved with executive coaching and leadership development. Michael Brown, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Acesis, Inc, and Michael Hein, MD, Executive Coach at MEDI Leadership and CEO at KPI Ninja rounded out the panel. The goal of our session was to explore career progression and the role of executive coaching. The panel was moderated by Jack Rossin, who is both a Presentation Trainer and Coach and teaches in the Harvard program.
We started off by exploring the differences between mentoring, advising, and coaching. The way I like to explain this difference is that coaching focuses more on an individual’s journey than on teaching or instruction. Mentors tend to be more senior individuals in ones’ field that help to impart knowledge or give advice. Coaches focus most on assisting the individual to examine what they are doing…the path they are taking, in light of their intentions. A common misperception is that a coach should be an expert in a particular subject area, but this is not the case. A coach should be an expert in coaching. And in fact, particular knowledge of a subject area can sometimes get in the way as the coach may be tempted to move into the role of advisor or consultant.
Timothy Gallwey, a Harvard educator and tennis expert, wrote a book in 1974 entitled The Inner Game of Tennis. The premise of the book was that “the opponent in one’s head is more formidable than the one on the other side of the net.” Galley’s theory was that a coach’s main role is to help a player remove his or her own internal obstacles to performance, rather than to give technical input and advice. Gallwey created a simple equation to illustrate this:
Performance = Potential – Interference
In other words, our performance will be maximized when we can diminish our own internal obstacles and eliminate the factors that are interfering with our own success. This approach to coaching then, is more about the coach helping the leader to understand what he/she is doing that gets in the way of success than to giving tactical advice, often more the role of a business consultant.
During the panel someone asked if working with a coach is more a luxury than a necessity. In responding to this question, I related my own story of working with a coach and the incredible impact it had on my career. Other than participating in the Harvard master’s program, it has been the single most positive decision I have made to improve as a leader. So, in retrospect I would have to say it’s a necessity in order to reach ones’ full potential. A great coach can help leaders get ‘unstuck’ from their dilemmas and transfer these results to the organization. And in the current competitive climate in health care and other industries, a leader needs to be well equipped with a strong “inner game” to shepherd an organization from good to great.
