Topic
Professional Capabilities
1020 articles
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Your Transformation Doesn’t Need an Endpoint
In the August 31 edition of The Insider newsletter, managing editor Gretchen Gavett shares an argument for why organizational transformation should be a learning journey, a formula to gauge your geopolitical risk, and...
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Healing from the Inside Out: How Medicine Must Learn to Share Its Power
Dr. Rana Awdish shares her transformative journey from patient to physician leader, emphasizing the importance of vulnerability, communication, and collaborative healing in medicine.
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Research: How Curveball Questions Can Surface the Insight You’re Looking For
Traditional “tough” questions often elicit polished talking points rather than candid answers. A more revealing approach is the curveball: a question that is closely tied to what someone has said but difficult to anti...
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The Right Way to Deliver Bad Earnings News
Leaders often assume that delaying bad financial news until an earnings announcement will soften the market’s reaction. Early disclosure won’t eliminate the harm entirely, but how the warning is delivered can influenc...
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Our Favorite Management Tips on Setting Strategy When the Path Is Unclear
In this article, we’ve compiled 10 of our favorite tips on setting strategy when the path is unclear, from how to find your organization’s strategic center to how to build your tolerance for uncertainty.
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Filling the Cracks with Gold
A physician leader reflects on an ICU nurse’s opioid use disorder, exploring trust, accountability, patient safety, and the power of compassionate systems that support recovery.
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Boost Your Emotional Intelligence with These 3 Questions
If you’re looking to develop particular EI strengths, it helps to consider areas for improvement others have identified along with the goals you want to achieve — and then to actively build habits in those areas rathe...
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Resigned to Resignation: When Asked to Step Down as a Medical School Dean
Medical school deans face complex roles, balancing diverse relationships and short tenures averaging four years. Success requires strategic planning, viewing the role as a step in their academic journey.
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Leadership is a Journey and Not a Destination
Leadership is an ongoing journey, not a destination. Emphasizing patience, adaptability, and mindfulness, this article explores how these traits foster resilience, innovation, and lasting organizational growth.
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How Can I Increase Patient Loyalty in My Practice?
Discover how healthcare practices can build patient loyalty through trust, empathy, strong communication, and patient-centered care to thrive in a competitive market.
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Harnessing the Power of Social Proof to Maximize Success: How Physician Leaders Can Avoid the Catastrophe of Failed Organizational Change Campaigns
This article provides an innovative and practical approach to the use of social proof theory to enhance the effectiveness of popular models for organizational change.
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Ethical Leadership in Healthcare: A Multilevel Framework for Physician Leaders
This article introduces a physician-specific ethical leadership framework to address challenges like AI, clinician burnout, and financial pressures. It highlights learnable behaviors to foster integrity in healthcare.
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A Journal for This Moment — and Every Moment That Brought Us Here
The Physician Leadership Journal (PLJ), the flagship publication of the American Association for Physician Leadership (AAPL), has been reimagined to address the evolving challenges of healthcare and physician leadership.
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Why Mentoring Matters More in the AI Era
As AI automates more routine work, organizations are losing the everyday experiences that once helped employees develop judgment, pattern recognition, and leadership instincts. To close the gap, companies must redesig...
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Bring Back Managing for Value
After years of cheap capital, many companies drifted away from managing for shareholder value in favor of loosely defined stakeholder models. Now capital costs are moving back toward historical norms, and value maximi...
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Great Leaders Question Philosophical Assumptions
Business leaders increasingly face decisions that are not just technical or financial but deeply philosophical. Questions about what a company is for, what counts as reliable knowledge, and what responsibilities organ...
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Addressing Sexual Misconduct in Healthcare
Matthew Mazurek, MD, discusses his book Sexual Misconduct, Harassment, and Discrimination in Healthcare in an interview with Mike Sacopulos. The book explores systemic issues in healthcare, including power dynamics, g...
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The Two-Organizations Problem
What if the company you’re leading isn’t the one you think it is? Most companies operate as two organizations: the polished version executives see in dashboards and boardrooms, and the messier, more revealing reality ...
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Public Speaking: Creating Presentations that Are Awe Inspiring Not Yawn Producing
Improve your public speaking with practical tips tailored for physicians. Learn how to engage your audience, deliver value, and leave a lasting impression with every presentation.
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How the Best Leaders Respond to Rule Breaking
Misconduct at work is often treated as a simple problem, yet research shows it is anything but. Drawing on more than 250 studies, Michael J. Gill of the University of Oxford finds that employees break rules for a wide...
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Pausing for Celebration
Celebrate your successes and reflect on your journey. Growth comes from appreciating achievements and learning from failures. Pause, honor your path, and move forward with purpose.
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What Companies Get Wrong About Decision Rights
Many organizations use tools like RACI to clarify who should provide input on decisions, who should make them, and who should carry them out. But in practice these frameworks often fail because teams don’t apply them ...
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Between Heartbeats and Algorithms: One CMO’s Call to Reclaim the Human Side of Medicine
As medicine increasingly relies on algorithms and data, genuine healing still depends on human connection. Preserving humanity in healthcare amid artificial intelligence calls for humility, curiosity, grit, and rememb...
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The Magic of Shared Storytelling
Narrative medicine emphasizes storytelling to bridge gaps between doctors and patients, fostering empathy and humane care. Pioneered by Rita Charon, it humanizes healthcare through shared narratives.
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Research: What Message Are Your Headphones Sending Your Coworkers?
Music listening in the workplace is an inherently ambiguous behavior that triggers specific social judgments from colleagues. When coworkers attribute a person’s music use to leisure or personal enjoyment rather than ...
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Fulfilling Oaths and Following Conscience: Catholic Hospitals
Catholic hospitals often withhold certain medical services based on religious beliefs, creating conflicts between professional oaths and institutional mandates. This impacts physician training and patient care, raisin...
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Our Favorite Management Tips on Giving Feedback
In this article, we’ve compiled eight of our favorite tips on giving feedback, from how to use feedback to give employees a sense of purpose to how to choose the right coaching style for each of your employees.
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What the Doctors Said: The Qualitative Story Within Physician Leadership Development Research
The article analyzes physician narratives from a study on leadership development, revealing themes like trust, communication, and reflection. It highlights how safe environments foster growth and reduce burnout.
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The CPE Credential as a Catalyst for Healthcare Transformation: A Personal and Organizational Perspective
The Certified Physician Executive (CPE) equips physicians with leadership skills to manage complex healthcare systems, enhancing individual and organizational performance.
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Physicians and Impostor Syndrome: Between Selflessness and Self-Mastery
Impostor syndrome affects physicians with self-doubt despite competence, driven by perfectionism and cultural norms. Balancing humility and excellence worsens it, but mentorship and psychological safety can help.
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Improving Physician Organizational Attitudes and Leadership Self-Efficacy
A study on a 12-month chief medical officer leadership program found significant improvements in leader self-efficacy, shared vision, and organizational commitment, enhancing leadership confidence and alignment.
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Conversations with the Past
The article examines 65 years of changes in medicine from one physician's viewpoint, exploring advancements in technology, training, patient care, and bureaucracy, while emphasizing the need to preserve humanistic val...
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A Purpose-Driven Framework for Career Sustainability Among Physician Leaders in Academic Medicine
This review presents a framework to help physician leaders align values, reflect, and make strategic decisions for sustainable, fulfilling academic medicine careers.
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3 Medical Routines That Older People May Not Need
This article explores medical routines older adults may not need, like colonoscopies post-75, actinic keratosis removal, and lifelong levothyroxine for subclinical hypothyroidism, emphasizing risks vs. benefits.
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The Intersection of Technology and Women
Dr. Telle Whitney's journey in tech highlights her advocacy for women in STEM, founding impactful programs like Grace Hopper Celebration to drive diversity and inclusion.
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In Your Medical Practice, Is Your “Nice” Quotient Too High?
Balancing empathy and authority is key for medical leaders. This article explores emotional intelligence, boundaries, and strategies for effective leadership.
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Recognize the Warning Signs of Impending Job Termination
Physicians, like many professionals, face job insecurity in today’s dynamic healthcare environment. Recognizing early warning signs of impending job termination — such as shifts in management behavior, changes in work...
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Are You Meeting the Needs of the People You Lead?
Organizations often assume leadership succeeds or fails because of a leader’s style. But research on follower psychology suggests the bigger issue is alignment: Employees judge leaders based on whether they provide wh...
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Where Will Doctors Train? Residency Applications, Abortion Restrictions, and the Coming Workforce Crisis
The Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision returned abortion policy to individual states, creating a patchwork of restrictions with far-reaching implications for the physician workforce. In this SoundPractice episode, ho...
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Why Effective Leaders Get Branded as Problems
When a leader creates friction, organizations default to a single explanation: the leader needs to change. In reality, that friction usually comes from one or a combination of four different sources—capability, percep...
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Disruptive Behavior in Medicine: History and Definition
Disruptive physician behavior, rooted in historical professionalism issues, persists despite reforms. Clear definitions and policies are vital for effective resolution.
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Blood and Transfusion Centers
Blood transfusion and donation centers play a vital role in healthcare, ensuring a reliable blood supply. Physicians oversee medical aspects, compliance, and patient care, with career paths in transfusion medicine.
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Managing Difficult Directors
Boards often struggle not because of strategy or information gaps but because one director’s behavior disrupts how the group works. There are three main types of difficult directors: passive passengers (who remain sil...
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“I Felt Violated”: What One Patient Complaint Taught Me About AI in the Exam Room
Seanna Thompson, MD, shares a transformative experience involving an AI scribe in her OB-GYN practice. A patient felt violated by its presence during an exam, prompting reflection on AI's ethical, environmental, and t...
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Dealing with Physicians Who Won’t Get with the Guidelines
Healthcare leaders must address noncompliance with guidelines through respectful dialogue, transparency, and teamwork to ensure patient safety, uphold standards, and drive positive change.
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When Dialogue Becomes Data: The Empathy Gap in AI-Driven Physician Recruitment
Generative AI revolutionizes medical hiring by automating sourcing, screening, and communication, but demands ethical oversight to address risks and challenges.
