209: Changing the Medical Culture One Team at a Time with Leadership Expert Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken

“If we want culture change, we need to bring a new top leader and they are going to kind of drive culture change from the top down. That's not really how it works. It has to be at least a top-down and a bottom-up effort combined.”
- Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken

We're excited to bring back international coach and consultant, Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken. She's a public thought leader and coauthor of the book, “Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transnational NGOs”, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Tosca is an international expert on leadership and has many insights into physicians and leadership. In fact, she's recently developed a course along with us at DocWorking on remote leadership for physicians, and the course is available to international leaders in sectors outside of healthcare.

Our thoughtful conversation includes Tosca’s opinions about organizational culture, the culture of medicine, and how her knowledge of cultures in other sectors intersect with the culture of medicine. We discuss the various problems that we have in our culture, especially the systemic problems that we know need to be fixed, and how that can influence individuals within the culture. The good news is that we as individuals, even in a broken culture, have agency. We know enough about organizational culture and what makes something healthy or not healthy, sometimes even toxic or broken, regardless of whether it’s the healthcare sector or another. If you’re a team leader, you have agency through the modeling of healthy habits, daily practices, and behaviors that you want your team members to demonstrate as well. You can support them by encouraging them, giving them positive feedback, and creating a culture of accountability.

Tosca shares her thoughts on the importance of honoring each other as vulnerable human beings and how to best support each other as we move through the workday. We talk about some of the unique challenges in virtual environments as well as within the healthcare community, especially those barriers to setting aside time to connect with team members outside of the day-to-day work with patients. Tosca also provides her insights into how organizational cultures can change from the bottom up.

What’s Inside:

• Why it’s important for teams to see each other as vulnerable humans.
• How modeling healthy behaviors can help team leaders create positive change.
• Challenges within healthcare systems and barriers to organizational culture change.
• The high costs of turnover, especially within the healthcare sector.
• How organizational cultures can change from the bottom up.

Mentioned In This Episode:

• DocWorking.com
• FIVE OAKS Consulting
• NGO Soul & Strategy Podcast
• Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transitional NGOs
• Virtual Team Leadership Essentials
• Tosca@5oaksconsulting.org
• Jen@DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

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