Leadership and Humanity with Neil Baker, M.D.

Relational Rounds

Neil Baker M.D. is an organizational and leadership consultant and coach and serves as faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He works with healthcare organizations and individual executives to enhance leadership and team impact through In-the-Moment Leadership Strategies. This means using any work situation, even the most complex and difficult, as an opportunity to achieve immediate impact on quality of work relationships and on progress toward results. Listen to this episode and discover how Neil redefines leadership, what positional authority means, and how it can be applied to physician leaders. Humbleness, relations, listening and finding out what people and organizations truly care about — it might be simpler than we think to see a transformation in healthcare hierarchies.

Key takeaways:

[:37] Neil Baker career briefing.

[1:34] How did Neil get into medicine?

[2:15] The sick role: exploring different understandings of being sick.

[3:50] Learn, change, grow and develop.

[4:54] Evidence Guidelines: Systematic process to grade the level of confidence to be able to give recommendations.

[6:11] Every field has its professional and technical side and a human relational side.

[8:15] Definition of leadership: Owning your responsibilities for outcomes and the quality of relationships you’ve done.

[9:00] Positional authority core functions.

[9:35] Followership.

[10:06] Failing as a leader.

[13:48] Self-defeating behavior happens to 100% of the population.

[15:18] Our brains are wired for survival, you need to make a rapid assessment of the environment and take action; this complicates social situations.

[17:13] Responsibility: Leader or Team? Everyone is responsible.

[20:53] Creating norms.

[23:30] People wants to be listened to.

[25:25] Most of the times, experts in conflict resolution are not needed, we just need to listen to each other.

[28:57] Why no one is talking about organizational culture in healthcare?

[30:38] Is it unrealistic to have physician leaders?

[36:17] Role of hierarchy in healthcare.

[39:05] Gallup studies on engagement.

[41:28] Clarity in decision making.

[43:13] Stronger relationship with manager leads to better work.

[45:45] Creating change in healthcare through relations.

[50:19] Advice for the ones struggling to form a team.

[51:33] What do you care about?

[53:09] Rituals to center yourself before meetings: Spend time in preparation and know yourself.

[55:35] What preoccupies Neil?

Mentioned in this episode:

Relational Rounds at Primary Care Progress

Primary Care Progress on Twitter

Neil Baker Consulting