Coaching the Leader Within: How Healthcare Professionals Can Unlock Their Potential
In healthcare, leadership development has traditionally followed a predictable path: clinicians with strong technical skills receive promotions to leadership positions, often with little formal preparation for the complex people-management challenges they’ll face. But what if there’s a more effective approach to developing healthcare leaders—one that focuses on coaching the leader within?
Dr. Ndidi Musa, a pediatric intensivist at Seattle Children’s Hospital and executive coach, recently shared her journey from coaching skeptic to passionate advocate for coaching in healthcare leadership. Her experience offers valuable insights for healthcare professionals at all stages of their careers.
The Misconception of Coaching in Healthcare
Healthcare has long held a narrow view of coaching. As Dr. Musa explains, “Physicians see coaching with two lenses. One lens is if you’re in leadership or you’re an emerging leader, you get coaching to be a better leader. Everybody else is viewed as a problem. So if you have issues with behavior, then they say, ‘Oh, go get coaching.'”
This limited perception creates a stigma around coaching that can prevent healthcare professionals from embracing it as a developmental opportunity. When Dr. Musa was assigned a coach after transitioning to a new hospital, her initial reaction was resistance: “I was upset when I heard that I was going to be assigned a coach. But as far as I was concerned, I was not a problem.”
Her perspective shifted dramatically after a colleague reframed the situation: “He said, look at it as an investment—an investment that they’re investing in you. And that word actually changed my perception and my approach to coaching.”
This shift from seeing coaching as remediation to viewing it as professional development is essential to coaching the leader within every healthcare professional.
From Skeptic to Advocate: A Personal Transformation
Dr. Musa’s journey from coaching skeptic to champion illustrates the transformative potential of coaching the leader within. After her initial coaching experience, she began to see significant changes:
“I learned a lot about myself. I became very self-aware of how I present myself in places and spaces, and also how I responded. So it transformed my approach to dealing with difficult people as well as people in general. My communication style improved.”
This personal transformation led her to pursue coach training during the pandemic:
“In 2020, when the pandemic happened…I didn’t really have an approach to what I was going to do next after medicine. I attended a conference, a business conference, this was nothing to do with medicine. And I saw these people, and I listened to what they had to say about being in the speaking, coaching, business, training, leadership development phase. And I thought to myself, wow. They think differently. They have a growth mindset.”
This experience inspired her to invest in herself by becoming a coach: “What a good way to invest in myself than to become a coach. Especially in medicine where we don’t view coaching in a positive light, other than for leadership.”
Coaching vs. Mentoring: Understanding the Distinction
One of the critical insights for coaching the leader within is understanding the fundamental difference between coaching and other developmental relationships like mentoring or advising.
As Dr. Musa explains, “In medicine, we have the scholarship oversight committee, which then helps them with making sure that they’re on track to go through the process for promotion…But again, it all depends on the degree to which you use your mentor.”
The distinction is clear:
- Mentoring/Advising: “Your mentor advises you as to what they think, how they think you should navigate the system…the ultimate goal is being promoted.”
- Coaching: “The idea of coaching helps you begin to look for the opportunities within the challenge…it allows you to be able to cope within the difficulty, to see opportunities where there are lots of challenges and to have a self-awareness and a growth mindset.”
Dr. Lillian Liang Emlet adds that coaching is particularly valuable “when there has been not a prior answer or prior path, which is much more common in the advising or the mentoring roles.”
Coaching the Leader Within: Creating a Culture of Coaching
Dr. Musa’s work at Seattle Children’s Hospital provides a model for bringing coaching into healthcare organizations. She created a program specifically for early career faculty:
“The burnout rate is higher in early career faculty than it is in other mid-career or even senior leaders. And I felt like this is an opportunity for them to actually align…have somebody hold them accountable for what it is that they want to do. To gain agency, because that’s one of the things—they’re so used to saying yes, yes, yes, yes to everything. But yes, yes may not necessarily be the best thing for them.”
Her program trained division heads as coaches, transforming the leadership culture:
“I did have coaching clinics every single month so that the coaches had an opportunity to talk about how coaching was going for them…and then also do a practice coaching session that I could look through and give them feedback…helping them coach effectively and stay coaching rather than shifting over to mentorship.”
This approach to coaching the leader within has begun to change the culture at her institution, addressing some of healthcare’s most pressing challenges.
Addressing Healthcare’s Critical Challenges Through Coaching
The healthcare system faces multiple significant challenges that coaching can help address:
“Financial pressure, workforce loss, revenue loss, physician and provider departure because some of them are leaving the workforce, burnout, significant burnout, and also, just poor patient outcomes as a result of that,” Dr. Musa lists.
Coaching the leader within offers a pathway to address these systemic issues at an individual level. As Dr. Musa explains, “Burnout creates a sense of disillusionment…And how can you approach a family or a patient if you’re dissatisfied? It impacts patient care…and therefore impacts the outcome of that patient.”
By helping healthcare professionals rediscover their agency and purpose, coaching can directly impact these challenges:
“If we begin to invest in people through coaching…giving people a sense of hope and a sense of purpose, we would see a difference in healthcare, in patient outcomes and in satisfied physicians. We would see resilient physicians and our retention would go up as a result of that.”
Three Keys to Coaching the Leader Within
Dr. Musa shares three powerful tips for healthcare professionals looking to develop the leader within:
1. Get clarity around your purpose “Clarity around your purpose and aligning your actions with your goals…because then, you can reach your full potential.”
2. Look for opportunities within challenges “Don’t just see the challenge as a big thing, but begin to break it down into what is the opportunity in that challenge that I can avail myself of and allow myself to grow.”
3. Invest in yourself “You deserve it. Invest in your growth mindset, learn new things, and realize that failure is not a stop sign. It’s an opportunity to pivot, to start again, and to grow.”
A Vision for the Future of Healthcare Leadership
Dr. Musa’s vision for coaching the leader within extends to the next generation of healthcare professionals:
“My hope is that we will get to the point where physicians will really find out their why…and what is it that I want to achieve here, where they will become resilient physicians and not allow the stresses in the system to weigh them down. They’ll find agency…we are responsible for our results.”
This vision represents a fundamental shift in healthcare leadership culture—from waiting for external solutions to activating the leader within:
“As we develop leaders, leaders who have been coached, as we develop physicians who have been coached, they will get to that point where not only will there be better patient care because they’re excited about what they do. They show up to work with a mindset of, ‘I’m going to do this job. I’m going to do it to the best of my capacity, and I’m going to see the results improve as a result of that.'”
The Bottom Line: Everyone Deserves a Coach
Dr. Liang Emlet captures the essence of coaching the leader within with her powerful statement: “Everyone deserves a coach.”
Coaching is not just for those with behavioral issues or formal leadership titles—it’s a developmental approach that can benefit every healthcare professional. By shifting our perspective from seeing coaching as remediation to viewing it as an investment, we can transform healthcare leadership culture.
As Dr. Musa’s journey illustrates, coaching the leader within can help healthcare professionals rediscover their purpose, navigate challenges effectively, and create positive change within a system desperately in need of transformation.
Whether you’re an early-career clinician, a seasoned department chair, or anywhere in between, coaching can help you access your internal wisdom, develop resilience, and lead with greater purpose and effectiveness—even if your only leadership role is leading yourself.
Ready to begin coaching the leader within? The Transforming Healthcare Coaching team specializes in supporting healthcare professionals at all levels of their career journey. Book a discovery call to connect with a coach who understands your world.
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