For the latest Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) “On Leadership” blog post and newsletter column, Daryn David, PhD, asked Yale Department of Pediatrics Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs and Professional Development Maryellen Flaherty-Hewitt, MD, to share her perspective on the promise a coach approach may hold for faculty and trainees within her department. Flaherty-Hewitt also serves as medical director for New Haven Pediatric Primary Care.
Thank you so much for agreeing to share your insights on coaching with our readers. First off, please tell us a bit about what you do in your job on a daily basis.
My day-to-day work includes caring for some wonderful children and being lucky enough to earn the trust of their families. I work with a wonderful team to operationalize the care we provide at our Pediatric Primary Care office in New Haven. For the department, I have the privilege to work with our faculty on their career development and also with our department leaders on enhancing leadership skills.
What is your vision for faculty development within the Department of Pediatrics?
In taking on the vice chair for faculty affairs and professional development role, which is new for our department, my hope is to create an environment of support for our faculty. This includes developing resources for their career development through mentorship, coaching, and sponsorship.
How do you envision your department using coaching to foster this career development?
I believe coaching is a critical part of developing our faculty. I have benefited from coaching in my career and found it to be invaluable in terms of helping me find the right path for myself. I am learning that there are many paths of coaching—one-on-one coaching, peer coaching—to name a few. I felt so empowered to move forward in my career in a way that I was happy with through coaching, I hope to develop more opportunities for this for our faculty.
What do you see as the biggest potential benefit of coaching for individuals working specifically in pediatrics?
Many of the challenges we face as pediatricians come up over and over, particularly around career development, work-life balance, and complex clinical demands; a coaching model enables individuals to take some time to develop their own strategies to solve some of these issues that can be utilized over and over, rather than just a one-time fix that someone else gives them.
Something that you and I have been developing together is a program to teach postdocs and early career faculty in our departments the fundamentals of a coach approach. Some of these fundamentals include curiosity and deep listening, empathic inquiry, and supporting the “coachee” in defining and committing to their own goals and course of action. In your opinion, what are the cultural shifts that could occur if we adopted such a coach approach more widely across the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine (YSM)?
I have already seen that our early career faculty are embracing this type of approach through the peer coaching program you and I have worked on together. What I love about this small pilot, besides the empowerment it is providing to our faculty, is its encouragement of cross-departmental communications. My hope is that we can break down some of the silos not only in our own departments, but also across the medical school. While each specialty has its own unique challenges, we can learn from each other and have shared issues that we can provide insight to each other on how to handle. I think building that sense of community within the medical school as a whole will only strengthen the commitment to our mission.
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. YCSC Assistant Professor Daryn H. David, PhD directs the column and serves as director for leadership development and coaching initiatives in the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) Offices of Academic and Professional Development and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion.