People First in Healthcare:
Leading the Team That Delivers the Care

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 83: People First in Healthcare with Amy Lafko. Host: Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP. Guest: Amy Lafko, PT (Founder, Cairn Consulting Solutions; author of People First).

Amy Lafko: I didn't make that pivotal shift. I stayed in my hat of

"I'm an amazing clinician who does good work in the ICU and why can't everybody else?" And so it wasn't until I actually failed in that role that I made the pivotal switch

to say,

"I may be a really good clinician, but I want to be a really good leader. What does that actually look like?"

Lillian Liang Emlet: Hi everyone! Welcome to the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast, and this week I'm super excited to have Amy Lafko of Cairn Consulting Solutions here with us because we're going to talk about leadership primarily from a leaders who care about people first. So we're talking about people first in healthcare.

So Amy, if you could introduce yourself to our audience.

Amy Lafko: Absolutely. Hi everyone. My name's Amy Lafko, and I am a physical therapist by background. And in 2018, I launched my leadership development and training programs. I launched my whole company Cairn and Consulting Solutions where I do advisory services, helping organizations really work on people, strategy and structure, as well as leadership and development training programs.

Lillian Liang Emlet: It's really funny. The people you get to meet via LinkedIn and via other networking opportunities is pretty amazing 'cause you're just like,

"Oh, this is a person who really, I've said these things before."

But now, it's you like finding someone who you can really resonate with and who's taken it to the really the next level with your trainings and your book, which I see behind you people first.

And so for everyone listening if you check us out on the YouTube, you'll see the book "People First" and I really highly recommend everyone going out and getting a copy for yourself. those are the things we're going to talk about today in our podcast. And so I'm curious,

Amy Lafko: sorry.

Lillian Liang Emlet: oh, go ahead. Yeah.

Amy Lafko: I was gonna say, And not only the book, but I'm excited to say even though the book has hit its four year anniversary, I just am launching the audio book. And I'm so excited for that. It's been an interesting time. So the book is really, it's a proven method for an exceptional healthcare practice.

And we'll talk about where I came up with the concepts and how it all came together. But the exciting thing is right now with the book is that the audio book is finally coming out, which I'm so grateful for. Took a little bit longer than I had expected, but that was on my end since I was doing the reading of it.

And interestingly, here it is, August, my book turned four years old. This month and I had four book clubs with different client groups. It's really where they get their leadership teams together and they do a Q & A around concepts of the book and we solve their real issues in real time during those book clubs.

Lillian Liang Emlet: That's super exciting because we might have to invite you to our Med Thrive book rounds, which is, we're actually trying to select our book right now for October, so I'm not sure when this podcast releases whether this will be a moot point or not, but we probably should have you back for doing exactly that, bringing leadership teams together.

I'm curious, Amy, your background in physical therapy and the operational leadership really deeply informs your book and the approach. Can you walk us through some of the main pivotal moments that shifted you from a frontline clinician, a good clinician, highly respected, to authoring this sort of way of seeing how leaders in healthcare really need to put their people first in leading organizational transformation and change.

Amy Lafko: Absolutely. And there are several pivotal moments for me, what's most interesting was that my first time in leadership. I was 27. I'd been in practice for about a year and a half. I ended up cold calling my way into a director a program director role, and it was going well. So within six months they made me the director of the program like for the whole group as opposed to just a program coordinator and I did not have a pivotal moment shift there of saying consciously,

"Okay, I want to be people first."

I just was so excited to be in a leadership role and I was so humble for the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, that I ended up inadvertently being people first, because I just knew I had to make my people happy.

I had to make them have the skills, the support, everything they needed to be really good at their jobs. So I didn't consciously make a pivot there. Then, what happened is I went back into patient care and while I was there, I was really proud to be a fantastic clinician. I was in the ICU every day and I wanted to be the best clinician I could be working with neurotrauma. Different neurological disorders in the ICU as a therapist. And so for me, there was a lot of pride in that skillset. So then in 2010 when I moved into a leadership role again, what happened was I didn't make that pivotal shift. I stayed in my hat of, "I'm an amazing clinician who does good work in the ICU and why can't everybody else?"

And so it wasn't until I actually failed in that role that I made the pivotal switch to say, "I may be a really good clinician, but I want to be a really good leader. What does that actually look like?"

And that was the moment that started me on my journey, a few years later of saying, "Okay, I actually want to be a leader, not a good clinician who's a leader."

And my vice president said to me one time, she said,

"Listen, Amy, I'm an occupational therapist, and guess what? I was only okay, but I'm a great leader."

I said, "Yes, you are." And she said, "But that's because I let go of being an okay clinician. You're hanging on to being a great therapist." And I had to let that go. And that's a hard thing when you've spent your education becoming that great clinician. But it was more important for me to let go of that in order to be successful, and more importantly, for my teams to be successful.

Lillian Liang Emlet: So much to unpack there in terms of realizing, leadership comes at many different ages, and it's al it's, and even though this is so common in healthcare where you get no training, no development, no coaching. You just because you are good at your job and you are in the right place at the right time.

You are the natural leader. Everyone supports you from below and everybody wants you from above. And they still don't give you any training or development sometimes, and you're just sent suddenly handling 2, 2, two wholly different jobs and you're not sure exactly where to begin.

Amy Lafko: Oh my gosh, that's so true. And that's where I was fortunate where in that first job, where it was going well when I became the director of rehab. What was interesting is, my vice president at that point said to me,

"Listen, have you ever done any of this?"

And I said,

"I've never done any of it."

And she mentored me. She oriented me every week,

"Okay, you've never interviewed anybody. Let's talk about how you do that."

So she gave me that ' T-ball coach approach' where she put the hands on the bat with me and said,

"I'm going to coach you on how to swing the bat."

That's what I needed at that time. And then later on what I needed was someone as my third base coach giving me pointers, seeing the bigger picture than I could see.

And that's where it really came down to the mentors. And you're right, our health systems are trying to be helpful and the ones I worked with offered programs. But with maybe two or three or five people in those learning and development roles, they can't do the trainings to really make change for 1500 leaders with three staff.

So we have to look outside. That's why I ended up going through a program at my National Association for Physical Therapy. Then I became the chair and faculty for that program 'cause that's where I got a lot of it. I found mentors. We have to pull, bootstrap a lot of it ourselves because there isn't enough available to us.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, you highlight some of the my most favorite things that I often tell people that people forget about, which is there are so many places to get information. So here, listening to this podcast is one, but your national organizations, your local organizations, other departments, even within your own healthcare system, and then just being to widen your network.

Means you might have more access to different, both training programs, some degree, some non-degree, but then also the importance of internal coaches, internal trainers, internal HR plus external, right? So you and I are both external companies that come in to advise organizations. You need everyone on hands on deck to be able to make that synergy work.

Amy Lafko: With your team and doing the one-on-one coaching that's vital and there's one-on-one coaching that's vital. In addition to that, there's some group training that's vital, getting a whole cohort. Right now, I'm working with a health system where 40 leaders are going through this content together, which meanss they're actually going to be all on the same page in a way they've not been before.

Because one of the things that can be a downside, if one person's read people first and they wanna implement something, but the rest of the organization isn't coming along with it,

it can be harder. And so that's why we need both internal and external sources for all of this.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, so well said. I'm also wondering you, you flipped the conventional service model, right from the very beginning of the book, you basically say,

"It isn't about patient first. It's really about focusing on team, the healthcare team members to lead to better outcomes subsequently for the patients below the end user and also for the business or the organization or the structure of the place that you're working for healthcare."

I'm curious, how did your own experiences in leadership and healthcare delivery shape this framework? And if you could tell us a little bit more about that.

Amy Lafko: You bet. Absolutely. It is interesting 'cause as a PT and as a physician, we are here all the time. Patient first. That's true when you are treating that patient. But when you're a leader, even if you're a physician leader or a clinical leader. This is where how you think about your mindset.

"Am I a physician first or am I a leader first? Am I a PT first or am I a leader first?"

You have to think about the context. And yes, if I am still treating patients as a leader, then when I'm in front of that patient, when I'm working with that patient, it is patient first. But when I'm not directly with a patient, me being patient first serves no one.

Because guess what? I'm not actually laying hands or supporting or treating that patient. And so my own experience shaped this in that leadership example where I failed because I knew we weren't serving patients in the ICU,

and so my answer was to drag the therapist into the ICU and say,

"This is how you treat them. This is what you do."

I ran right through my staff to get to the patients and then that was my own epiphany after the fact upon reflection. And so in my journey to write the book, I interviewed so many extraordinary leaders of companies, practices, health firms, physician owners of private practices. And you hear from all of them. It's when we pivoted. I remember an O-B-G-Y-N practice that I interviewed. they said,

"We were the physician owners. Private practice. Our board was all the physician owners, but none of us viewed ourselves as owners, let alone leaders. We just were physicians who got paid by a company that we happened to own, and we owned the building."

That was literally how they viewed it. It wasn't until they said, "Why are we struggling financially?"

And the administrator said, "You all need to know your numbers."

And suddenly they pivoted and realized,

"We need to take ownership of our business."

And so one was the liaison for HR, one was the liaison for quality, and suddenly they had their own realization around that. So think what happens is either realize,

"Hmm. This patient first isn't working. I've got to try something else."

Or what I invite people to do is take one or two baby steps towards people first, and when you see the progress and the improvement that starts to open your eyes that 'this might actually be the way to get to success.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love that, and I think this is widely applicable to really any business and especially in healthcare.

Amy Lafko: Yeah. And especially because in healthcare, treating clinicians, no, patient first, patient first. It's really having to flip that switch. And the pivotal moment for me when I was in operations was when I started in urgent care operations. I

Lillian Liang Emlet: was

Amy Lafko: asked to go serve in urgent care operations 'cause they had a patient satisfaction issue. Seven to nine patient complaints a week. Press gaining patient satisfaction scores in the one percentile. So I was asked to go fix patient services, but what I realized is that our staff was so miserable that I couldn't fix patient experience unless we fixed the staff experience and once we changed that, then our patients could actually get quality care.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Is a huge big truth that sometimes I think people find really hard to hear.

And that's the reality because it takes time to regain that trust and care for the clinicians. And people just want easy bandaids, both in leadership and the front lines. And often both parties are really impatient with the process of changing the system to be more clinician friendly and healthy,

Amy Lafko: Yeah.

Lillian Liang Emlet: which is why, with.

with us, with the leadership and the wellbeing coaching, we're hoping to begin to make that change when clinical leaders of all ranks from assistant manager or the very first time when you're 27, like you said, all the way to when you're in C-Suite, there's always something that can be developed and grown.

And if you can focus on your own wellbeing, you then become the ripple that helps your entire team become well.

Amy Lafko: Absolute.

Lillian Liang Emlet: strong, yeah, once you have strong teams, and hopefully you inspire other teams to be like, "We want to be like them. You did it already for them. Why can't you do it for us? And then, it just spreads.

Amy Lafko: And that's where each level does have a role that frontline leader has to be able to have that people first mentality as they're getting pressure from above them to implement certain policies and they're getting pushed back from the front line all the way up. I'm so grateful that in that urgent care I was able to have our organization at large agree to the fact that, "Hey, we actually are better off closing a location right now then shutting it every other week because we can't staff it anyway, and frustrating staff who are on the schedule and now off the schedule or have to shift last minute." So I got some really valuable and necessary high level support, and so that's why each level of the chain has to have this same philosophy and mindset in order for it to work.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yes. I think what's also interesting, oh, I'm in an academic center, and so I often train physicians to be educators,

either frontline bedside or in the simulation center. And whenever we think about that developmental journey of a clinician educator, we stop caring so much about what the clinical decision and the outcome is, and we care only about whether we've created an environment where people got to learn, got to experiment and play on rounds, right?

Or out out In terms of thinking through what is the learning objective - meeting people where they're at - because sometimes people have bad days. You just,

Yeah.

it's Certain days are harder. And then because there's always a changing environment, how do we develop clinician educators to be able to find the moments and show people this is the cool thing to see here

to point and look. And so it really does cause the change and shift of, I care mostly about my clinical decision too. I care mostly about my team that is around me, that we're co-working together.

and it is a big mindset component. I was working with one team and the leader said to me finally, she's like,

"I said, "What is the ultimate concern for you?"

And she said,

"It's the patient."

And I said,

"Okay, where do your people fit in?"

She's like,

"They better get on board because the patient's what matters?"

And I said,

"Do you think that's going to be something you can change your mindset around"? And she said, "I don't think I'll ever be able to let go of that. I love being a clinician. And so to me, the patient is the ultimate concern."

She ended up leaving that leadership role because her mindset wasn't gonna allow her to be successful.

And she kept taking class after class. She went through like a conflict training class three times. She went through communication classes. But if your mindset can't come along for the ride, then anything you say or do isn't going to matter.

Yeah, so much of it is being flexible enough to learn new things in healthcare and leadership is no different. Which I think segues into my next question about your framework in the book is "think, say, do, grow." So that's "think, say, do, grow." And so if you could tell us a little bit about why it's this is the framework, and then where, which of these do you think is the hardest for healthcare leaders?

Which one did they use the least

Amy Lafko: Yeah.

Lillian Liang Emlet: hard to adopt, spend the most time trying to get better at?

Amy Lafko: It does land perfectly because we were just talking about mindset and with my company name being Karen and Karen's, for those of you who don't know, are those piles of rocks that you see when you're out hiking or now they're in every spa and every picture of Serenity. But it's a stack of rocks.

And in order for that. Stack of rocks to stand. It has to have a really solid foundation. And that's why 'think', which is our individual mindset. So as a coach, Lillian, you're working a lot on individual mindset. There's also an organizational think

it's their mission statement, their vision, their values.

Those are, So there's an individual and an organizational component to

'think, say, do, and grow,'

but

'mindset, mission, vision, values'

are the foundation. And so that's why that rock is the largest, and it's why, it's also the base level rock

'say and do' can be switched around depending on the person.

Because what we see from paradigm shifts is you can see your, say your way into a new way of being, or you can be your way into a new way of saying things. So they have some flexibility. When it comes to what I find

in healthcare leaders is each individual is different. A lot of people I work with, we have to start with mindset, and it's getting in your mindset about, "Okay, what's my intention behind whatever activity I'm going to do?

What's my intention by having this meeting?" Oh my goodness. One of my favorites is when I ask people,

"Why are you having that meeting?" And when the leader looks at me and goes,

"Exactly, that's the face they make."

I just had this last week. Actually, I was on doing a book club with there were 25 leaders and this woman started to ask me about a section in the book related to meetings and she said, "I just get everybody looking at me.

There's no real engagement."

And I said,

"What's the intention behind your meeting?" And she went, And then she finally came back to life and said

"It's to introduce new staff. Go over data."

And I said,

"Stop having it."

She goes,

"Can I please stop having it?"

I said, "Of course. This sounds terrible.

Why would we meet?" So for her, it was getting clear on the intention. Then we shifted and determined when she actually needed to have meetings and there were other people in the group going,

"Is she saying we never have to have a meeting?"

And I said,

"No. I'm saying you never have to have an unintentional meeting again. It's about intention."

So oftentimes the think we think we're good with, but we have to get clarity around before we can do anything else.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I do think that a lot of the review of content only happens through these meetings and then we have all these unanticipated concerns that then we never have time to talk about and have to go reschedule as an agenda item for the next time.

Amy Lafko: Yes.

Lillian Liang Emlet: we want, rather than, "Here's just all the data transparently.

Our goal is to just make sure there's no concerns with things people found." Because I think that's what the most amazing thing, if you let people see things before the meeting, it's so much more eff efficient, right? In terms of "I saw on page, 20 something. There was a I have a concern."

Amy Lafko: And this is where you need to understand your team and your people because there

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah.

Amy Lafko: styles where they're never gonna look at an agenda ahead of time, no matter when you send it. And then there's other people who are gonna send it. They're gonna dissect it, they're gonna make notes. we want the people who need the notes to be the ones that have that agenda because gosh, I want them to be able to come ready to speak.

And they're more thoughtful. They need time to think through it. That's all.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. Yeah. And I think what the great thing about all of our teams is, wherever you fall, your strength is still your strength, right? Whether you think on the fly or whether you like to look at things, or whether you're more sensitive, whether you hold back, whether you say, speak up, it's all good. And it's really about trying to figure out what the dialogue needs to be.

So our wisdom is greater together.

Amy Lafko: Exactly. And leveraging your strengths and knowing when they get in your way, putting ' em in your pocket.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Sometimes less talkative. Extroverts need to just wait a second to everyone in the room to have a stand.

Amy Lafko: Hence my mug, whether it's empty or full, is always with me just in case I need to work on staying silent for a moment.

Lillian Liang Emlet: There you go. We just gave everyone a great hint and.

Amy Lafko: Oh yeah.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. So I'm also wondering the practical strategies and tools that are self checks and toolkits to help leaders implement the people first approach. Can you show an example of how you have seen it work in a particular team or practice?

Amy Lafko: Oh my gosh, yes. Going back to the meeting ones I was just doing even in healthcare now, there's a lot more teams that are virtual, whether it's by fact of geography, where they've got locations all over, or whether it be the types of work, maybe a billing department, everybody is working from home. We just went through this exercise and in the toolkit there is a self-check for your meetings and you as a leader. Rate the success of the meeting You rate, you identify what the intentions are and then you ask your staff to do the same thing. And so they have a page in the toolkit where they can say, "I rate this meeting a three out of five."

And you're like, "I scored a five."

Or

"Let's figure it out..."

And that one can really transform then what meetings we have and why we have them. Another aspect similar to meetings is huddles and really getting people to be able to do some of those pieces. And then one of the other things I talk about a lot in the book is that

'quarterly sit down with your staff.'

And in the toolkit we talk about what you can cover with them on a quarterly basis and how you can really build and deepen those connections. And there's also a piece in the toolkit on how to redesign onboarding. So they are literally intended for you just to be able to go and customize it for your practice so that it's easy to apply.

Lillian Liang Emlet: That's a, That's awesome. That's really amazing. Just really practical, tangible ways you can implement it right away rather than having it just be theory and us just chitchatting. I.

Amy Lafko: Yeah. And then some of the self checks truly are, because several chapters of the book are about leadership. And so in the beginning we talk about mindset and I am a curious leader. I am a leader that has humility and, you get to self check yourself on that. And let's be honest and say,

"Okay, let's reflect back on my leadership communication style.

Is it working, is it not working?"

Whatever those cases may be.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love that and there is so much about self-awareness and that is part of the leadership journey.

Amy Lafko: Absolutely. And it's vital. And that's where, when people are challenged by that emotional intelligence or that self-awareness and self-regulation, that's where the coaching that you're offering, those types of coaching programs are so vital for folks.

Lillian Liang Emlet: In terms of both the education and the thinking through of the teams, and then also the one-on-one or the group or team coaching as well, just because it's a iterative process. All of this in general.

Amy Lafko: absolutely.

Lillian Liang Emlet: It's one to adopt this people-centered mindset. You can probably see a small group of people saying,

" I'm all in.

I read the book, it was great. I implemented the checklist."

But then how do you sustain it? Because the reality is, large systems acquire other hospitals. There's time pressure, there's constant burnout in one of your places you're going to have a problem. And also I think the other problem we see in healthcare is that there's this culture, right?

In certain divisions or subgroups, there's really entrenched norms that are very challenging to get through, and sometimes there's not much buy-in. So I'm curious, what do you do for the leaders who are dealing with that? It's great that they themselves are trying to like, make themselves the best version, most flexible, most emotionally intelligent, but then they're dealing with these kind of barriers.

What do you, what advice do you have for them?

Amy Lafko: I think one of the things is what can you keep and still get the ROI that the organization's looking for, and how do I make time for the important things that are ne not necessarily urgent. And so one of the first examples, and I get this all the time, people will say to me, "Amy, we implemented quarterlies and they're going great. These one-on-one sit downs with my staff have been so valuable." And then a couple months later, "Amy. We stopped doing quarterlies. What got in the way? I hadn't scheduled them all, and so to try to figure out how to get them in between patients got really hard." Or "We got backed up on our patient waiting list, and so we had to cancel them. And so some of it is being structured about that if you're gonna implement quarterlies with your staff. And at one point I had 55 people I supported directly. So I can appreciate thinking to yourself, "How am I going to get this many sit downs each quarter?"

Schedule them all right away. And then, don't move them. So one of the things that happens is we say, "Oh, okay, we'll postpone it." Or when I work with practices where maybe the organization doesn't require that you turn in the performance review in those private practices, they never get around to the performance reviews. We intended to do them two years ago, but we never got around to it. Whereas in my health system, I had a whole HR program saying, "This is due. We turn it in."

But really what it comes down to is honoring that schedule. So put your quarterlies in right now. I tell people, "Fine, you can't get 'em done in this quarter. Let's start October. I want you to start scheduling in October, one quarterly, a week per person, and I want you to do that for the rest of the year. And then once they're there, they don't get moved. "Oh, okay" And then something will come up and one of them has to get moved. But boy, is it easier to schedule one than 10 at the last minute? So I think that's some of it is remembering, compound interest and frontloading some of these things.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Oh, that's really good advice. I think, it's definitely one of those things where people often let everything else push them aside is pretty incredible to me how often in healthcare they always let everything else push away their priority. Like, in the exercise, you probably have heard this story when people facilitate with the glass jar, the large big rocks and the medium rocks and the sand, how do you fit it all in?

So this is my greatest time analogy. You put the big rocks in first, and so if your big rock is the foundational trust of your team and making sure that. Everybody's okay and is growing at the rate that they need to grow. The Big Rock is those quarterly one-on-ones, because without everyone growing and being happy in the practice, people start leaving and then that just es a whole different cycle from putting your big rocks first.

Amy Lafko: Absolutely. I

Lillian Liang Emlet: I.

Amy Lafko: that video as well. Stephen R Covey made that, that whole video and the rocks very famous. And it is really important that we look at that and keep that in mind that,

"Okay, these are the things that I can't move around because otherwise I'm just going to get filled up with junk."

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. So you're a person who's very deeply committed to helping people grow, and so what's your advice for one mindset shift or daily leadership happen that you recommend For pretty much any healthcare leader that really is gonna have the biggest trickle down effect to other peoples on their team and their organization.

Amy Lafko: That's such a good question because I'm human.. I slip all the time, just like everyone else does. So there's a couple things. If I were to, If I were to move my camera to the left right now, you would see my core values posted on my wall and I'm technically a solopreneur, but I've got my core values posted on my wall.

I've got my mission statement posted on my wall. I have my vision for what I want for the company, making those things visible. One organization I worked for did a phenomenal job of making this one pager, eight and a half by 11 with mission, vision, values, and it was everywhere in the organization. Loved that, because we get off track. So if I were to think about something daily that I wanna institute it's gratitude. For my Gratitude and grace for myself and my team. I had a point where I was really struggling to find the good things happening with my team. I've actually given this advice to someone else and she tried it and it's really helping her. She sees the dark side, the negative pretty easily, but struggles to see the, and remember the good. And physiologically. That's the way we're hardwired. So it's nothing against her. But put three quarters in your left pocket and by the end of the day, those three quarters need to be moved to your right pocket.

And the way they get moved is every time you find something to be grateful for and you thank someone, you get to move a quarter. So at least three times today I've had a moment of gratitude or something along those lines. I think that's really had a big thing. And then the other thing is to schedule those quarterlies and those annuals with my members of my team. We schedule them all at the beginning each year, because otherwise we'd forget and it's "Oh, your quarterly's coming up next week. Okay, let's get ready for it."

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love that. That's a wonderful advice. So thank you so much for sharing so many pearls of wisdom about leadership and being people first especially for the healthcare profession. I'm curious, how can people work with you? How can they get you to come speak for their organization? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Amy Lafko: Oh, you bet. Thank you so much. The simplest way is with organizations that want to read or the book or as I mentioned, maybe check out the audible version. I offer a complimentary book club. This is a Q & A with the author. So if you organization buys at least eight copies of the book, I will provide a free Q & A session. An easy, simple way to interact. And then otherwise, if you want to work with me on putting together a customized leadership and development training program for your organization just feel free to email me and we can talk about that. Let's look at what a program might look like for your team and how we could make that make the most sense. And that's amy@karencs.com. Just email me. You've got my website. Which is cairncs.com,

Cairn Consulting Solutions. And then for speaking engagements, I'm actually speaking at the Medical Group Management Associations National Conference at the end of the month. I'm speaking at a couple other national conferences this year. You can always reach out through amylafko.com,

which is where you can find my keynotes and some of my other sessions for conferences and for organizational keynotes.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I'm so glad that we connected primarily because. Have the same mission in different ways, but the reality is to be in, for you to inspire more people and get through the training that are customized for every organization has unique cultures. And so I think really customizing that training and pathway, both from the coaching perspective with us Transforming Healthcare Coaching, and then also with you, with Cairns, and with you as a speaker to be able to help larger groups of people realize can I do micro shifts.

And with many micro shifts, as leaders, we can make big change.

Amy Lafko: Absolutely. Taking those few ahas and turning 'em into action will, as you said, snowball and keep us moving forward.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. So I thank you so much for being here and for everyone listening, we do have a couple announcements. We do have a special retreat in January in Sedona, and so we'll put a link below in the show notes for those of you who are looking as a leader to do your annual reset. Now is not too early to be thinking about that.

And so if you're a leader, we're only going to be taking 10 to 20 people for this very private reset for healthcare leaders. But we're going actually help you walk through that personal map and journey to think through where do you need, because we are people first for you, the leader, to think about what you want for your coming year coming up so that you can become more people first moving forward.

Amy Lafko: And Sedona, what a beautiful setting, you know, couldn't be even better.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I'm super excited 'cause I've never been yet, our team hasn't been yet, so

we're excited.

Amy Lafko: I love it out there.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Awesome. Please share and subscribe to both YouTube, Apple, or Spotify. Thank you everybody for listening. Oh, I just realized I probably should say please share and follow. Okay.

Amy Lafko: again one more time.