Coaching for Physicians Through LEADS

Abstract

Health leadership and coaching are relational processes that focus on achieving results. While the corporate world has embraced coaching as a way to further individuals' leadership potential, physicians have been slow to adopt coaching as a means to fulfil their personal or professional potential. In this chapter, the authors explore how the culture of medicine and physicians' professional identity formation can result in a sense of exceptionalism, invincibility, and sometimes even isolation. As a result, physicians can be deterred from engaging in leadership as a practice and in coaching as a support. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework can help bridge the gap between physicians' understanding and enactment of leadership and their appreciation of the benefits to be gained by coaching.