Episode 120
120. #1 Physician Leadership FAIL - and Best Method to Stop Burnout On Your Teams
Are you sabotaging your physician leadership effectiveness by neglecting the single most powerful habit to connect with your team and combat physician burnout?
In today’s chaotic healthcare environment, leaders often feel disconnected from the realities of frontline providers, leading to disengagement, physician burnout, and diminished trust. This episode reveals a simple yet transformative practice that can help you truly understand and support your team while building a culture of trust and well-being.
~~ Learn the essential leadership habit that only 5% of physician leaders implement—but makes all the difference.
~~ Understand why this habit is often overlooked and how to overcome the barriers to adopting it.
~~ Discover how dedicating just two hours a week to this practice can revolutionize your leadership, improve team morale, and enhance patient care.
Hit play to uncover the proven strategy that will transform your leadership and help you become the trusted, effective leader your team needs.
Book a Discovery Session to rise to your full leadership potential: https://bit.ly/SPB-POD-Discovery
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Explore physician leadership tools and strategies to stop physician burnout, enhance physician wellness and give you the power of personal influence in the C-Suite. All the tools you need to play your role in leading the charge to wellness - at three levels - for you, your teams and your entire organization.
Transcript
Podcast Transcript: The Biggest Leadership Fail in Addressing Physician Burnout
In this episode, you'll discover the single biggest fail for physician leaders—the one thing you’re not doing that you must start doing to take better care of your people and address today’s physician burnout epidemic effectively.
Welcome to the Stop Physician Burnout Podcast,
a physician leadership podcast where you’ll learn skills to lead the charge for physician well-being. These are skills to earn respect from your frontline colleagues, skills to exercise true influence in the C-suite, and skills to take back control of your job, practice, career, and life. These tools are backed by my work coaching and training over 40,000 doctors. Let’s get started.
Today’s Episode
In today’s episode, you’ll learn about the number one leadership habit that senior physician leaders overlook. The more senior you are on the organizational chart, the more likely you are to neglect this. It’s a habit that’s holding you back, damaging your ability to lead effectively, and hindering your ability to support your teams.
When you adopt this habit, you’ll:
Better understand how to care for your people.
Take a big step toward reversing the global physician burnout epidemic.
Improve trust and engagement among your teams.
This simple habit will make your people feel seen, supported, and valued—something they may never have experienced from leadership before.
Why Leaders Fail to Adopt This Habit
Before diving into the habit itself, let’s address why you likely don’t do this now. There’s a massive obstacle preventing you: task overwhelm.
Your daily routine is a whirlwind. You’re likely juggling dual roles as a clinical doctor and a leader.
Clinically, you’re seeing patients, answering questions, clicking through EHR systems, and battling schedule delays.
As a leader, you’re stuck in meetings, wading through emails, and reacting to crises as they arise.
This relentless cycle of task overwhelm keeps you from focusing on what matters most—building trust and engaging meaningfully with your teams.
The Leadership Habit You’re Missing: Shadowing Your People
One of the greatest failures of physician leaders—especially those in higher-level roles—is that they have no idea what’s happening on the front lines. Without direct connection, you’re relying on spreadsheets and secondhand reports, which can’t tell the full story.
The habit you need is shadowing your people. Spend two hours a week observing frontline providers in action. Shadow them as they work within your organization’s systems and culture. Here’s why it’s so powerful:
Understand Reality: Spreadsheets and metrics won’t show you the daily challenges your teams face.
Gain a Broad Perspective: Even if you’re still seeing patients, your clinical experience is only a small slice of what’s happening across your organization.
Represent the Frontline Experience: As a physician leader, your role is to ensure C-suite decisions align with the realities of frontline care. Shadowing equips you with the insights needed to advocate effectively.
How to Start Shadowing
Block Two Hours Weekly: Schedule a recurring time that works for you. Defend this time as if it’s your most critical meeting.
Rotate Teams: Avoid shadowing the same person or department repeatedly. Get a variety of perspectives across specialties and roles.
Be Open and Curious: Approach each shadowing session with an open mind and a genuine desire to understand the experiences of your team.
Why Shadowing Works
Shadowing is the shortest path to becoming a great leader. It allows you to:
Identify Improvement Opportunities: See firsthand what’s working and what’s not.
Build Trust: Your presence shows your people you care about their experience and are committed to making things better.
This simple habit can transform your leadership impact. It’s far more valuable than another meeting or yet another spreadsheet review.
The Quadruple Aim Connection
Shadowing aligns with the Quadruple Aim in healthcare. When you take better care of your people by providing supportive systems, they’ll naturally provide better care to patients. Happier, healthier teams lead to better patient outcomes and stronger financial performance for your organization.
Why Only 5% of Leaders Shadow (And How to Change That)
Despite its benefits, only 5% of physician leaders make shadowing a regular habit. The primary barrier is task overwhelm. The solution? Commit to shadowing and protect that time fiercely.
Start small—just two hours a week. The insights you’ll gain and the trust you’ll build will far outweigh the time investment.
Coming Up Next
In the next episode, I’ll guide you through creating a shadowing protocol, including:
Pre-Shadowing Prep: What to do before you start.
During the Session: How to maximize the experience.
Post-Shadowing: Wrapping up effectively and turning insights into action.
This protocol ensures you get the maximum impact from your efforts.
Final Thoughts
The number one leadership failure in healthcare today is failing to shadow your people. It’s a mistake of omission, and it’s holding you back. If you’re committed to being a top-tier, evidence-based leader, shadowing must become a non-negotiable habit.
That’s it for today’s episode of the Stop Physician Burnout Podcast. We release episodes twice a week—Tuesdays and Fridays—each one a quick, actionable nugget of leadership wisdom from my 40,000-doctor coaching practice.
Please subscribe, leave a review if you’re enjoying the podcast, and until next time, keep breathing and have a great day!
