Insights: Emotional intelligence essential to effective healthcare leadership

In this episode of MGMA Insights, we’re joined by Laurie Baedke, Director of Healthcare Leadership at Creighton University. Baedke is an author, speaker, educator, mentor, and expert on emotional intelligence and leadership development, among other topics.

Don’t quite have time to listen to the entire episode? No worries. We’ve compiled a handful of highlights from Baedke’s interview for your convenience:

• (9:17) “There are so many opportunities to serve and lead — and if you’re a non-clinician leader, if you’re a clinician leader, if you’re a physician leader who’s listening to this and you’re feeling called to lead, but you don’t know because you don’t feel like you look like anyone else that you see leading, my call to action to you is to really look internal first and assess what drives you, what motivates you, what work do you feel most called toward.”
• (16:46) “In leadership, we know that one of the leader’s jobs is that we can’t do each of the individual functions, but to set the expectation, to cast the vision, to be able to help to set a culture and then reinforce it, that’s not just something you do once a year or once when someone joins your team and then you never do it again … it is something that has to be reinforced and consistently visited.”
• (20:37) “I am constantly over every year and decade of my career going to need to continue to learn and grow and adapt. But the good news is that it is a journey, and I can be better tomorrow and next year and 10 years from now than I was yesterday and a year ago and 10 years ago.”
• (26:34) “The higher that we rise, the more visibility others have to the 360-degree view of our personality, our strengths, of our weaknesses, of our leadership style … and so, it is increasingly important to put yourself under the counsel of or on the hot seat of hearing the hard truth about where we’re strong and where we’re weak so that we can grow.”
• (31:10) “A lot of people have a very visceral reaction when they hear that word mindfulness, because it seems very woo woo, doesn’t it? It seems very existential. But on the other hand, it is as simple as being very intentional and getting good clarity on what you want and need. For some people, it is a matter of just taking a moment or two to close your eyes and take a series of five to 10 deep breaths to just kind of calm the noise in our brain.”

Here are some links and references related to this week’s show: 

• Why Emotional Intelligence is Important For Healthcare 
• Self-awareness leads to improved leadership skills and career development 
• The Psychology of Leadership Theories: Trait or Learned? 
• Interpersonal efficiency: A method to increase our leadership effectiveness
• Mentoring Millennials for Future Leadership in Healthcare 

If you like the show, please rate and review it wherever you get your podcasts. We love hearing from listeners about the show. If you have topics you’d like us to cover or experts you’d like us to interview, email us at podcasts@mgma.com or reach out to MGMA Sr. Editor and podcast host Daniel Williams on Twitter at @MGMADaniel. 

MGMA Insights is presented by Craig Wiberg, Rob Ketcham, Decklan McGee and Daniel Williams. 

To further guide your healthcare career, be sure to check out MGMA’s October Book of the Month, “Navigating to Value-Based Outcomes,” by Thom Walsh. To purchase or preview the book, visit mgma.com/navigating.