The Risks of Transparency: Dr. Richard Winters on Leadership, Trust, and Burnout

Author of the book YOU’RE THE LEADER. NOW WHAT? Leadership Lessons from Mayo Clinic.

Episode page with video, transcript, and more

My guest for Episode #194 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Richard Winters, M.D., an emergency physician at the Mayo Clinic. And he’s the author of YOU’RE THE LEADER. NOW WHAT? Leadership Lessons from Mayo Clinic.

As director of Leadership Development for the Mayo Clinic Care Network and as an executive coach, Dr. Winters provides coaching for Mayo Clinic leaders.

Dr. Winters graduated from the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in 1994 and returned to Mayo Clinic in 2015.

Previously, Winters served as managing partner of a democratic physician group, department chair of an emergency department, and president of an 800-physician medical staff.

In this episode, Dr. Winters tells his favorite mistake story about being a little too transparent with physicians in a meeting at Mayo Clinic. Why did so many physicians get upset about this discussion about data around billing practices? Why did it help for him to admit the mistake? How did he adjust and what did he learn from this mistake?

We also talk about questions and topics, including:

• Was it a mistake to be so transparent?
• Breaking down hierarchy and hearing the perspectives of others
• Burnout in healthcare, not just doctors but nurses and others… bad before COVID, worse now?
• Psychological well-being — 6 dimensions
• What are key signs of burnout? How to recognize it and how to bring it up??
• Is burnout different than depression?
• A mistake to blame the person who is burned out? Resiliency training?
• Fix the person or fix the environment?
• Your book — the “now what?” Implies being thrown into a leadership role… is there enough formal leadership education, development, and mentoring in healthcare?
• How are physicians taught about leading — and being parts of care teams — during medical school and residency? Formal education or seeing the behavior modeled by others?
• Ronald Heifitz – technical vs adaptive challenges
• Key differences in the leadership style at Mayo Clinic?
• Responding to clinical mistakes… medical error, patient harm?
• To you, what are the ideal leader behaviors?
• There’s normally so much hierarchy in HC… what was the “democratic physician group” that you were a part of, what does that mean?

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