Is It Possible to Rest
as a Leader?

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 79: Is It Possible to Rest as a Leader? Gillian Faith, MS ACC SHRM-SCP CPQC interviews Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP.

79 - Is it possible to rest as a leader?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's Transforming Healthcare Coaching podcast, and this week Gillian's gonna interview me so I get to relax a little bit. And we're gonna talk a bit about resting and relaxing. So I'll let Gillian take it away.

Gillian Faith: So our podcast today is all about resting as a leader. And the first question I would like to ask you and given you have had a very progressive and established career as a, as a physician, and I know you also do lots with academics, so your, your schedule is always really full.

And I want to pose the first question to you, and it's, is it possible to rest as a leader?

Lillian Liang Emlet: The answer resoundingly is yes. You actually have to plan it a little bit and. Make sure that you have the white space to be able to rest. I also will say that resting is really important, and I learned this in the pandemic because obviously the pandemic was very intense as a critical care physician.

And the higher the pressure, higher the stakes, higher the problems you're dealing with, more rest and the more exercise you have to do.

Gillian Faith: Yeah, and I think many healthcare leaders believe that rest is a luxury or something that you can only do on vacation, but in reality, there's a very sound neuroscience behind. The the need for your, your brain and your body to rest. And it's all, it's also known as nervous system recalibration. So we want to shift out of our chronic fight or flight into states that support clear headedness and calm and you know, being in the present moment.

So what are your thoughts around rest being more of a. A neuroscience and a nervous system recalibration.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, I would totally agree with you. I think when we think about really high stakes emergencies, right? So as a critical care physician and emergency physician, we often have to become very meta aware. And as things are more chaotic, the more calm we get inside. And so that does take a lot of, mental rehearsal and practice, but probably more importantly the ability to find what anchors you.

So we do know that breathing helps center many people and also be able to get greater focus. People are surprised with the mindfulness based stress reduction program, the MBSR. I still remember going through that course many years ago with a surgeon and they're like, this is amazing because.

It makes me be much more thoughtful and intentional when I then go to operate and where she practiced mindfulness meditation was just in the scrubbing when you wash your hands before you go into the operating theater. And so people don't talk about this enough. Probably the fact that quieting our brain so that we can be simply more focused is probably one of the more important things that we can all do in this very attention distracted. Terrible place for our brains in general. And if we don't pay attention to that, it's no wonder we're making errors in healthcare. And it's no wonder that we are, we emotionally dysregulated. It's no wonder that we're exhausted by the end of the day. And it's that ability to reset our own nervous system through breath, through mindfulness that we're able to be able to execute our job better as a leader, as a healthcare professional.

Gillian Faith: Again, I love what you say about, you know, incorporating. Micro rest breaks into things like hand washing or you know, scrubbing before you go into the or. Because you know, people tell us that they have no time to build additional things into their already hectic schedule. So what you're saying about, you know, just.

Adding these things onto something that we're already doing and we're already in the habit of I believe helps the habit become established and helps us actually make it happen. I mean, would you agree with that?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. And then you just you're highlighting, just made me realize I have actually slipped out of a habit that I had developed in the pandemic, which was the know, cleaning of all the hands, spraying down everything in the car, as you took off your mask and everything. And so I actually, that's when I always recommend in these transition points, before you go into the hospital and after you exit out of your shift, to take just two minutes. And breathe. And in that, again, cleaning my environment I still remember one of my attendings in training

Gillian Faith: clean

Lillian Liang Emlet: before you start the shift. It was something about that ritual of just opening and being present and intentional. Then you open with intention for that whole entire shift. And he would always clean everything. And then one day we, played a trick on him and kept repositioning a particular thing he had particularly organized. But I don't recommend doing that for anyone. But I do think sending the time aside to be intentional, whether you're breathing, whether you're cleaning, is really helpful so that you can

Gillian Faith: be

Lillian Liang Emlet: the best version of you the way you want to show up in that moment and clear the cobwebs, right?

The reality is all kinds of things annoy us.

Gillian Faith: People

Lillian Liang Emlet: cut us off on the highway. tripped and fell in the morning, you're hungry. There's ways to reset that if you're intentional about it.

Gillian Faith: So you mentioned, you know, handwashing and you mentioned the surgeon that cleaned everything. Are there other ways that you think that healthcare leaders and clinicians can. Build these micro resets into their schedule.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. I think aside from transition times begins ends of your shifts, I think also with your meetings the meetings don't have to last the full 60 minutes, right? I think everybody deserves to get two, two to five minutes back and. a leader that does, that gives you yourself the grace ability to tie up wrap up things.

And I would argue that ideally you should wrap up 10 minutes early. So you do five minutes to actually do all the action items that the meeting generated and then five minutes. Just to decompress, look away from your screen, look out onto nature, get a breath of fresh air. Fortunately, in most hospitals, there's, if you walk down a hallway there is a place where you can get fresh air.

So for some people it's the ambulance bay. For some people, it's like the garden in the middle of the, the fancy suite that you're in the building. For other people it's just the front lobby. Go out and just get a breath of fresh air and walk back up and sit back down again. Not only did you get steps in, you also got a breath of fresh air. so ending your meetings early on purpose, because I think not only will your people love you, you also get the time to take care of yourself.

Gillian Faith: And I'm digressing a little bit here, but you know, 'cause we're talking about rest and, and reset. But also, you know, it reminds me of another episode we had about, you know, decluttering your mind in your workstation because even, although this is slightly different to taking a reset. If you have a cluttered workstation or a cluttered workspace, that doesn't help either, right?

Because you're always thinking, you know, it's always that extra thought about I have to get this cleaned up, or I have to organize this. So in my experience, I think that if we can you know, get rid of clutter or make sure our workstation is as. Clear and as organized as possible. And I know that's hard in your position when you're moving from room to room and patient to patient, but what's your thoughts on the decluttering in terms of helping, keeping your mind decluttered, I guess.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. I think a lot of clinic clinical leaders have found this where their emails, their inbox, the admin, the being pinned simultaneously while being on clinical service is probably the most. Cognitively stressful and emotionally draining part of their day. And so setting some limits and boundaries so that you can know that who else is covering when you're on clinical service.

And then being able to be more focused on the one clinical thing you have to do so that you can buy back some time right before lunch to be able to get caught up on your administrative tasks. Because part of the managing more than one thing and being more than one. Thing in your organization, right? You, to be the ICU director or the chief medical officer simultaneously while taking care of patients. You, the patients deserve your full attention right in that moment. And your administrative tasks deserve your full attention in the right moment. And the reality is administrative tasks, there are some emergencies But they're more rare than clinical emergencies. And so the faster you can process and just focus and get the job done clinically, you can then buy back the time to be able to focus on other things. You do. You do no one anything good by trying to split yourself. And we've all seen it. Someone on rounds, getting a text, answering a thing, following the call, and also trying to take care of teaching and being present. We know they're not present

Gillian Faith: Yeah.

Lillian Liang Emlet: people see it. It's actually. Not a good thing. So the more intentional we can think about how we can be, where we are, where we need to be, and set some guardrails, makes you a more effective leader.

Gillian Faith: Right. So I'm curious also about visioning and how visioning and mindset work together. So do you have any thoughts or any advice for our listeners on how that supports nervous system regulation?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. So if you think about how athletes imagine that play again and again, and when they actually win the Super Bowl, they're like, yeah. seen it a million times. It really is about making the brain pathway exhibit so that you can actually do the action. So when we think about visioning, what it really does is, as we know from functional MRI studies if you're doing the action, the test, and you're imagining it. It is firing the same neurons as though you were doing it or seeing it. So seeing it matters, thinking it matters, and then doing it matters, right? So you have more than one way that you can create those brain pathways. And so when you envision the positive outcome and we mentally rehearse it, and we go over it again and again, and we save different permutations of the same thing, we're then able to execute whatever the presentation is or whatever the procedure is.

And that's why the reps. Really matters. It's actually making pathways inside our brain and the variety with the way we do that is how that gets achieved. And that's why visioning is really important for almost all pro athletes. And I guess I would argue that if you are a leader in healthcare, you too are a pro athlete. And to be able to juggle all of those things with precision means sometimes just mentally. I still even remember before teaching or giving a presentation, or even when I was younger, the first time I had to do a procedure. Surgeons do this as well. You mentally, literally think through every little step just to, it's like a movie in your mind because it will help you in the moment when you actually do have to do the action.

So that's a really great point.

Gillian Faith: That's really interesting how we can relate to professional athletes and their visioning and to how it's helped with all your procedures and, and other, you know delicate, intricate processes that you have to do in your position.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, and I think it's interesting for leaders. I don't think, unfortunately we think about that enough. Whenever we are running our meetings, just willy nilly it. And the stakeholders, for the people who come into our meetings to make decisions for our organization or for our team. We just wing it.

And I think that's also probably part of the reason why sometimes meetings feel blah, right? As we make a decision, we're not intentional for how are we gonna co-create and craft this conversation for the next 30 minutes. I think if we had some pre-planning and some thinking through the different stakeholders in our rooms envision this new innovation or a problem or project that we have to deal with, it would be helpful because then you can have, meetings that don't go the way you want, or a project that can be actually more efficient because you've already pre-planned and pre-thought out a structure for how to get from point A to point B as a team.

Gillian Faith: So lots of really good points there. So sometimes people tell me that they get stuck in their thoughts and in their actions. So if as a leader we are feeling stuck and we're in a fight or flight situation, or we're feeling like we're we're shut down and we're not able to think clearly what would you recommend or how would you coach somebody through that?

Lillian Liang Emlet: So I think for me, through when you're feeling stuck and you feel like you're just responding, the question I always ask my clients are, how can you lengthen that time between stimulus and a response? And everyone's a little bit different, right? For some people it's gonna be physical touch, like just rubbing your fingers together. For other people it's breathing. For other people it's prayer. For other people it's getting out and just. Running, like walking just move just get away and just move. and so do what it takes for you to lengthen the time between stimulus and response. So that you don't actually let your amygdala take over and be really emotional and angry and judgmental because the other person, when you're calmer, has a perspective.

You just. in the moment, don't have a way to deal with it. And so often I feel like people are often hungry and tired and emotionally distracted, and that's the reason why we snap at each other. just ' cause someone snaps at you doesn't mean you have to snap back. And so

Gillian Faith: as

Lillian Liang Emlet: long as you're always able to have that capacity, go find what that and go test what capacity lengthen you can find.

For me, it's breath, and for me it's like thinking about anytime I feel the emotions rising, I can feel it somewhere in my body, notice it, and then just think about I'm like running a code, I'm running a resuscitation. How can I step back and see the whole room right now and not jump to.

Gillian Faith: doing

Lillian Liang Emlet: because obviously I love to do things, how can I just pause and take a step back and see the whole mega code?

See the whole room first? Because as a leader, your job really is not to be the doer.

Gillian Faith: Your

Lillian Liang Emlet: job is to see the room and understand where might need to be deployed or where the next chess game move might be. But it isn't to actually do the microaction, if that makes any sense.

Gillian Faith: Yeah. Yeah. So I love how you talk about the awareness and you talk about stepping back and, and some of these emergency situations. Obviously it's not easy to do, it's something you have to work on and practice and, and over time, hopefully it's something that becomes a little bit easier, but probably doesn't ever get easy, I'm guessing.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, because I think everything is always different every single time, and yet at the same time, I think once we try, once we know. We can try again. There's

Gillian Faith: There is another

Lillian Liang Emlet: opportunity.

Gillian Faith: Right. And we can build on that. Yeah, absolutely.

So in your opinion, so leaders who do take rest and do work on emotional regulation. How do you think that helps them show up in, in a position where they can lead their teams more effectively or lead their division, whatever it is for them?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, I think all of us do not want to be led by someone who is emotionally fickle or emotionally intense. We need someone who's gonna be able to match and. F be able to be the harmonizer for very varied opinions. And so I think the more emotionally regulated a leader is, willing to be able to respond with empathy.

Doesn't remove empathy, right? Because you still always have to have empathy for everyone on your team, including yourself. Yeah, but just having the emotional regulation allows you to not jump to conclusions

Gillian Faith: And make

Lillian Liang Emlet: false errors. Because I think the biggest mistake is that most leaders think that they don't have an option or there isn't a solution, or they judge someone too prematurely and that means they've closed themselves off to solutions. It doesn't always feel that way. They feel like I am right. You might be right. And how well is that working for you? You're upset, you're here with me as your coach and you still haven't fixed a problem. Part of emotionally regulation allows you to be a little more neutral and

Gillian Faith: Hmm.

Lillian Liang Emlet: if you can see it from somebody else's glasses, and then somewhere in that. is, maybe they're all missing data and maybe you, if you've just got some additional data or additional resources or additional perspectives,

Gillian Faith: you

Lillian Liang Emlet: find a solution that can make everybody happier. Because we all operate in ecosystem. There are many more people in this relationship making decisions that aren't in the room that we need to think about as we

Gillian Faith: make

Lillian Liang Emlet: decisions, even just for our local team.

Gillian Faith: Right, and curiosity is always a good thing, right? We often jump to conclusions or we make assumptions or interpretations without, like you were saying, without having all of the data. So, you know, if we don't think we know or we, we don't feel like we know the whole situation or the. Everybody's perspectives.

Then we have to be more curious and ask more questions and take it from there.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. Curiosity. I think will probably, it's probably the greatest superpower that any of us can have in

Gillian Faith: healthcare

Lillian Liang Emlet: Just to always be like wondering, 'cause it's pretty neat, like all of the different dynamics that we have and the ability to be able to make change and innovate and work together. I think if we lose curiosity. Then that's when the problems occur. We become too proud of being an expert in whatever field that we are, and we forget to just, appreciate the little miracles that actually happen every single day, every single shift with our entire team.

Gillian Faith: Yeah, to have some humility.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, I think, when we just. I think I always, I have a picture of one of my slides where it's like a little kid jumping into a rain puddle. I think we always ha if we can just remember it, how can we find that's fun and cool? we sacrificed decades of our lives to train to become a healthcare professional.

And then we also. Sacrificed hours to become a leader in healthcare. If you can't find it fun, that's when you have more greater worries. If you can't be curious and just find a way, then you might need to take a, you need to take a big reset. You need to take a big pause and step back because there's a problem.

You have a secret inner problem that's probably worse than burnout, right? Burnout you could recover from. But if you are, unable to see the joy and the fun at all. Then you need a really big reset to figure out what's happening.

Gillian Faith: Yeah, so funny you should mention reset. So we've talked about our micro resets, which are maybe one to three minute pauses, and we try to add these onto something that we're already doing so that we don't increase the amount of things that we have to do. And then, you know, if we think about a medium reset is walking out into the parking lot or getting out into.

Nature having a walk and actually taking a proper break. But then also, you know, we can think about maybe a macro rest where it's, you know, taking a week out or something like that. Or you know, looking at, into retreats that might help to reenergize and reset who we are. So I know we have a leadership reset retreat on the schedule for January.

Would you like to tell our listeners about that?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, so we designed this for leaders in healthcare who are looking for clarity, accountability. And a vision plan forward for 2026 because sometimes we recognize that as leaders, we're just doing the dog and pony show, right? We're just doing things because we have to. We have yet another report we have to give.

We're just chasing after whatever next big picture, innovation, expansion accreditation, all kinds of things that happening in our organizations, on our teams. Sometimes we're just running and we're not stepping back to see how is my career and life. Aligned. How is my health, my mental capacity, my dreams how are my problems that I perceive in the workplace? Is my strategy working for me is my whole entire life. takes a little bit bigger kind of time to really sit and think through things. As coming to the, this business world, I'm starting to realize now how routine and common it is to do strategic planning. And so strategic planning for your own life. Is something that some people find is a luxury they have never heard of or just never do. And so this reset was meant for specifically a curated experience for anyone in healthcare who sees themselves as a leader in development. So you can be pretty junior, you can be just, I'm dreaming of my first assistant nurse manager job. It's good to get in this habit now to begin thinking through how will this year look like? What goals, micro goals what are the action steps to get there? How will I look on my calendar? Where are my values? Who am I? Who am I with healthcare? Who am I without healthcare? So that you always have your own true North Star every year to execute on.

Gillian Faith: Sounds great. So how can people get more information about that if they're interested?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, so we'll put in the show notes below on YouTube and also in Apple Spotify and Amazon Music. We'll go and put the link below and you can also just email us hello@transforminghealthcarecoaching.com and we'll be happy to send you more information.

Gillian Faith: Okay. Sounds wonderful. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed speaking to you about reset Tonight.

Lillian Liang Emlet: So it is been really fun being interview interviewed by you, Gillian. And hopefully all of you enjoy this episode and could have some takeaways. We would love to hear about them, so feel free to comment below in the YouTube or just shoot us an email. And again, we will do whatever topics you'd be curious about.

So just email us at podcast@transforminghealthcarecoaching.com and give us questions, problems. We'll tackle them here on the episodes.

Gillian Faith: Yeah. Love that. Yeah.

Lillian Liang Emlet: We will see you next time. Bye.