Empathic Leadership  In Medicine

Empathic leadership in medicine is an essential risk and practice management tool in health care management. Without the ability to connect with patients and colleagues quickly and effectively, conflict escalates.

Empathic leadership is a skill comprised of three elements:

• The ability to ignore the words, focus on emotions, and reflect those emotions back
• The ability to problem-solve specific issues once calm is restored
• The ability to create a learning environment that is emotionally safe

This skills must be learned, practiced and honed to be mastered.

Research shows that learning empathic leadership skills will not come from a one-off workshop. In fact, professional development workshops have an abysmal record at changing professional practices and improving student achievement.

Doug Noll offers a curriculum that includes three four hour lessons in the principles and practice of empathic leadership in education, followed by weekly small group or individual coaching sessions. Over a 10 week period, participants begin to master the skills and change the way they see their educational environment.

Topics include:

• The somatic, cognitive, and neurophysiologic components of emotion
• The concept of emotional categorization and its opposite, alexithymia
• Understanding the six needs of victims
• The four levels of reflect listening and why three types of reflection will always make things worse
• The skill of affect labeling to de-escalate strong emotions
• The skill of core messaging
• The skill of results-based listening
• The skill of making accountable agreements
• Teaching the skills forward

Each Empathic Leadership course is tailored for the needs of the client organization.