In the latest Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) “On Leadership” blog post, Daryn David, PhD, PCC, offers reflections on two “On Leadership” grand rounds lectures at YCSC during the fall semester.
This past semester, we had the pleasure of hosting two “On Leadership” grand rounds speakers whose work envisions the possibility of culture change through leadership that is human-centered, coaching-inspired, and fundamentally concerned with enhancing followers’ well-being.
In September, Michael Pirson, PhD, the James A.F. Stoner Endowed Chair for Global Sustainability at the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University, introduced us to principles of humanistic management and leadership, a movement that seeks to center human dignity, collegial interrelatedness, and planetary flourishing as the central aims of business practices.
In early December, Kerri Palamara, MD, the Gill and Allan Gray Family Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine at Harvard Medical School, who also serves as assistant medical director of well-being for Harvard’s Department of Medicine, showcased her work establishing the evidence base for the benefits of positive psychology inflected coaching for faculty and trainees. The talk challenged us to consider the coach approach of listening sensitively, reflecting back astutely, and asking powerful questions as a tool for enhancing well-being across the training and healthcare enterprises—not just amongst those “receiving” coaching.
What I heard loud and clear in both of these visionaries’ presentations was a call to action. What would the centering of human dignity among the academic medical workforce and trainees look like? How could we begin to elevate dignity and flourishing as a central aim of our daily work together? To what degree does a culture of coaching help to unlock and promote this dignity by allowing colleagues to feel valued, heard, and embraced? Might the coach approach be a tool for instantiating a larger culture shift that has the unlocking of practitioners’ and scholars’ creativity and holistic potential at its core? And then, of course, how do we begin to measure changes in these more humanistic outcomes, at a time when pressures and uncertainties run high in our and other academic medical centers?
Undergirding my own work has been a fervent hope that the coach approach does hold great promise for enhancing well-being and promoting humanistic culture change. By providing coaching to select faculty and, more comprehensively, launching the a-LEAP Coaching Skills Training Program that aims to teach faculty how to utilize a coach approach across their different relationships, colleagues and I have endeavored to begin embedding the coach approach within the fabric of YSM
Preliminary data are promising, with more efforts to come. Please stay tuned—and those who are interested in contributing to and growing a culture of coaching at YSM are invited to reach out to me directly to connect.
The “On Leadership” blog was launched in 2022 to address the importance of connection, collaboration, and embodying a service leadership mindset in professional and personal contexts across Yale School of Medicine (YSM). YCSC Assistant Professor Daryn H. David, PhD, authors the blog and serves as director for leadership development and coaching initiatives in the Office of Academic and Professional Development at YSM.