A Prescription for Caring:
Why Compassion Is the Foundation of Healthcare Leadership

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 102: A Prescription for Caring with Dr. Josh Hartzell. An author interview. Host: Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP. Guest: Josh Hartzell, MD MS-HPEd FACP FIDSA — retired Army Colonel, physician, executive coach, and author. Published March 30, 2026.

Lillian Emlet: We train for clinical excellence, we train for efficiency, and somewhere along the way, the humanity of leadership, the compassion, the culture, the courage gets left behind.

Josh Hartzell: The reality is that people want to feel valued and respected. people aren't scared of bad news, but when you don't tell them things, they fill it in with their own imagination and it's generally not positive thoughts. Every single one of us has multiple interactions during the day, and each one of those interactions is a chance to positively impact the life in front of us. We maybe can't change the whole culture, we can start from the bottom and we can make a difference in that life in front of us.

Lillian Emlet: Think about the last time you felt truly seen as a leader, not just evaluated, managed, but actually cared for. For most healthcare professionals, that moment is really hard to remember. We train for clinical excellence, we train for efficiency, and somewhere along the way, the humanity of leadership, the compassion, the culture, the courage gets left behind. Today, we're sitting down with a retired army Colonel who deployed to Afghanistan, helped shape medical education at Walter Reed, and then asked one of the most important questions in healthcare. "What if the prescription we need isn't for our patients, but for ourselves and for the culture that we lead? Dr. Josh Hartzell is here. This conversation is going to change how you think about what it means to lead well in healthcare. Dr. Josh Hartzell spent 25 years in military medicine holding senior leadership roles, including program director at the Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Chief of Graduate Medical Education at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. And he's also been the Assistant Dean for faculty development at the Uniform Services University. He's deployed to Afghanistan and he's also faculty at the MGH Institute of health professions, and he's delivered over a hundred talks on leadership development and has trained hundreds of students, residents, and faculty. He's also a certified executive coach, and so we are really excited to have Dr. Hartzell here with us. Welcome Josh to the show.

Josh Hartzell: Lilly, thanks so much for having me. And thank you also for just the voice that you give in healthcare leadership and all that you're doing to help everyone rebuild their cultures and help them feel that they can thrive where they're at. So thank you for all you do.

Lillian Emlet: Thanks Josh. So you've spent 25 years in military medicine. You've deployed, you've been teaching. Now, lead pretty large programs for developing faculty. And so when you look back, is there any particular moment where you realized that clinical excellence alone was not enough in medicine?

Josh Hartzell: Pretty early. Actually. I feel blessed. I had a program director, Dr. Greg Argyros really allowed us to have a lot of agency in the way that we were trained. And what that taught me early on was that we had a voice, whether that was in patient care and doing quality improvement projects or suggesting ways that we could deliver the care better or whether that was also thinking about the way that we were trained and changing our residency program. and what I saw even in residency was that patient care obviously was central to what we did, but there's so many other things that, that go into that, besides just the clinical decision making. And you know, a lot of that is system processes in the hospital. The teamwork that is required to deliver the care. All the communication skills. So, I was fortunate that I saw that need early and then that sort of fostered this idea over my career that we have to sort of couple our patient and clinical care with leadership skills.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, and there's lots of different skills to have to develop over our lifetime, and so you've gotten to see many training programs. Now you get to go to many health centers. organizations, what is still missing in how healthcare leaders are developed right now in our training programs and in our faculty development programs?

Josh Hartzell: Yeah, well sometimes everything, the truth is some programs don't necessarily have a lot of this, so it's left to the individual to figure out. and then other programs, I would say the one thing is just the big thing we're really missing in healthcare organizations is this longitudinal approach. So how do we do a little bit of this during medical school and make it relevant to medical students? how do we do some of this during graduate medical education? And then once we become faculty, whether that's in a healthcare organization or private practice or other areas, how do we continue to sort of build upon those skills over the courses of our careers? And, we learn leadership primarily in three ways. One of them is on the job. I think most of us know that the majority of what we learn through the school of hard knocks. But we can couple that with mentoring and coaching. And I know you're a coach and you do that to invest in people. So when we couple the on the job training with coaching and mentoring, that helps. And then, there's formal education, whether that's, certificate programs or master's programs or even courses that our professional societies offer. But to me, in an ideal world, we would have this longitudinal approach to leadership, both within and outside of our organizations to support us over the arc of our career.

Lillian Emlet: it's very ambitious what you're describing. Which is probably also why I feel like this book is pretty ambitious too. So this book — A Prescription for Caring, it's like a very comprehensive guidebook, where did this idea come from and what does it mean to you to write a prescription for caring in a system that a lot of people out there, there's a lot of narratives out there saying that" "the system doesn't care about us." So I've been curious sort of how this idea came about.

Josh Hartzell: Yeah, so the idea actually came from, I was on a podcast a few years ago, called Leading the Rounds, and at the end of the podcast, the host asked me a question, which was: "what did you learn from medicine that you carry over to leadership?" And as I thought about it, it's centered around this idea that as physicians, nurses, other healthcare providers, we take care of people. That's our job in healthcare. And it was sort of an epiphany moment for me. I was like, "that's what we need to do as leaders is take care of our team." And so that sort of sent me on this pathway to trying to see, what does this idea of taking care of people look like in leadership? And you know, I'd had a lot of that actually baked into me when I was in reserve Officer Training Corps and some of my early and in later Army training. But I don't think it was until that podcast where I was like, "yes, this idea that we have to take care of people is the key to our organizational success.| And you asked after that is how do people feel about that? Well, I think it gets mixed results. I think there are some people who still feel like you have to be, you're the leader. You're in charge, giving orders. the reality is that people want to feel valued and respected. People want to feel their boss and the people they work with care for them. the one question I like to ask people is, you know, think of the best leader you've ever worked with and when you picture that person, did they care about you personally and professionally? and I don't think I've met anyone that the answer wasn't "yes, they cared about me personally and professionally." and so when you have that leader who cares about you personally and professionally. You'll do so much more for that person and to me, like that's what we want. We want to work in organizations where we feel good about working there — we feel valued, we feel respected, and we feel motivated to do great work because we don't want to let our boss down, but we also don't want to let our peers and our organization down. And when we care for people, that's what you can do in an organization.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, so true. what you described is also no matter what leadership style or philosophy or theory you've read about or gone to courses for and that I write about in our newsletter, no matter which one you ascribe to, what you say holds true. And for me, that 'aha moment' came, I think somewhere when I was developing myself as a faculty educator and the idea that I had to shift that it really wasn't about patient care at all. And leading rounds was really about how do you take care of the learners? And so for what, 15, 20 years now all I've been stressing about is how do I interact with the learner as the priority is really not necessarily the clinical question. The question is: how do I help the learner, the person in between me and the patient fully be curious, make the right decisions, learn something, and know what to look up, know what to do in between? So I think there's a lot of great analogies in both medical education world and also clinical administrative leadership.

Josh Hartzell: Yeah, and I love what you just said, which is like when you're focused on a learner, and we could think the same way, like when I'm focused on the person who works for me, and I have that sense of like, what can I do to help them? it creates this sense and whoever that person is. That again, this person really cares about me, so I'm going to take feedback a little bit easier, because I know that they're looking out for my good, I'm going to. I'm going to, work really hard to meet these expectations. because I don't want to let them down. So I think focusing on that individual first, and then you can kind of wrap the rest of the leadership ship stuff around that. But it starts with that one-on-one relationship with the individual.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah.

Josh Hartzell: Yeah.

Lillian Emlet: so when you coach healthcare leaders today, what kind of patterns are you seeing? What are some unhealthy leadership cultures that you are now getting to be like a side view? Because as the coach, you get to side view from to the look inside. what's happening in these cultures and these unhealthy places for the person is experiencing and the people being led experience.

Josh Hartzell: Probably, I would say the two most common things, and they're related and it's, unrealistic demands of workload and then that is married up with the do more with less. And I think what we see is that over time, the amount of work we have to do hasn't decreased. Like it actually in some cases increases. But in some organizations, some of the support staff, the help for example, like if you have physician extenders that help your team? Well, if you lose those physician extenders, who now is doing that work, who is helping to run your front desk? so I think the idea that we really need to support. You know, the physicians and nurses and others who are delivering the care, remove some of the administrative burden. one of the things that I actually think is going to help a lot is where artificial intelligence is now basically writing people's notes in the clinic room. I saw this post the other day about pajama time where a lot of physicians end up writing notes at night when they're should be in bed because they're not done during the day. and a lot of that has to do with, did they have scribes or they didn't have scribes and what was the support? But this tool is now going to hopefully put some of that time back in their court to help them. But yeah, too high of demands and then not the support to help meet those.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah. And I do think is really interesting that most. Workplaces don't have organizational industrial engineers to help with that process. For any of those of us who've been involved in any kind of system change, there's an entire profession and discipline for change management who really does micro-analyze, where the ways technology, personnel, equipment structure, ergonomic comes in together. And so I think to simplify it down to it's just the system or you just need more people is a myopic view of things. And so I think what you bring out, in your anecdote is the fact that there's going to be a lot more ways that we can help with this. And AI is hopefully going to be one of those solutions.

Josh Hartzell: Well, and I really want to like just emphasize or foot stomp what you just said, which is leveraging the expertise of everyone in healthcare. Whether that is those, organizational experts, those organizational engineers, whether it's our pharmacy colleagues, whether it's someone else, a speech pathologist. I love our speech pathologist. I think every time I'm on service, I mean, they just do tremendous work. And look, they're the experts in that area and do we leverage them to do that work and to have those discussions with patient families. do we bring in experts to look at our system? We really need to work as a team, because there's just too much to do and healthcare is too complicated to think that one of us, or a few of us, somehow magically have it all figured out. but that also requires humility, humility of leaders and humility of all of us to say, "Hey, I need your help. can you make this better for us?"

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, I am excited for all of our documentation workflows to get better so that we can actually hang out and do the work together, and rather than be stuck somewhere and all closet, typing. so there's often another invisible pressure in healthcare, and that is to lead the way you were led, meaning that to re replicate the culture that you inherited, even if it wasn't healthy. So very often too, for many, I mean I've been in the same organization for 20 years now, and there can be probably some perception that there's some things that maybe, us, old timers don't necessarily want to change. And so when you work with so many different people across different places in their career. Some have stayed, some come in new. How do you help someone break that cycle when they haven't really ever seen anything else different?

Josh Hartzell: So another really good question. two things come to mind. one of the things about coaching and you probably see this, is to help people to think outside of their own box and to sometimes give them a different perspective. for example, what would it look like if you went to work and you felt like people valued each other? what would it require in your organization to make that happen? so asking questions in ways that maybe gives them a different perspective. and sometimes that's simply saying like, "Hey, I want you to go talk to people at different organizations and see what they're doing." Look, I was at Walter Reed for. I'm still at Walter Reed clinically. So we have ways we do things there, but it's helpful for me when I go to outside places and see like, "oh, this is how they do it here." the other thing that I think we can leverage in this, and I used to tell this to my interns every year because we would get interns from across the country, is I would say, "look, you have a different lens. You've trained at different hospitals, different medical schools. I want you to look at the way we do things. And tell me what's stupid. Tell me what we're doing that doesn't make sense and we can do it better." I think it as a leader to your initial question, you have to be able to ask those questions and then empower people to bring ideas and then be willing to change and implement. the other thing with culture change when we know it's hard, but it's intentional. So if we want our culture to change, it starts with these small daily intentional acts of what we actually want our culture to look like. And you know that for one example that I can think of is just respect. you're in the clinical arena, so you know, you call consultants or you talk to the emergency room. and I think all of us know that at times, not all of those discussions are maybe as respectful as they should be, but that's an easy thing that honestly we can fix, doesn't require more money. That just requires us to make a commitment to say, "look, when Lilly calls me with a consult and has a question about infectious disease. I'm going to, be helpful. My goal is going to be helpful." So I think, all of us have that ability to influence change at our own level, and then we have to obviously think about larger system changes that might be needed.

Lillian Emlet: So many great things there. so when we think about in healthcare, we often talk about compassion as something we interact with our families or our patients. but you argue in your book that it's really about how we lead our teams. And compassion really needs to be a thread that leaders make visible. And so what does compassionate leadership actually look like in practice?

Josh Hartzell: Yeah. For me as I was starting to think about the book and then like titling every chapter sort of care enough to give feedback, care enough to receive feedback. So it's the leadership skills that we normally do. But it's based on the idea that we approach them from a place of caring. So for example, I'll use delegation. because this is a topic that's comes up a lot. when I delegate to somebody, I usually delegate for growth or I delegate for task because it's your responsibility. But if I care about you as a person and want you to get better, well then, part of the reason I delegate for you is to give you the opportunity to improve, and I can be explicit about that. I can say, "Hey Lilly, look, I want you to do this task because I know that maybe in a year or two you might be up for this position, and I want you to have these skills and I care about you, and that's what I want for you." And I just label it as part of the reason why I'm doing this is caring. "hey, look, I know this is your job. this task is something we need done for the program. I appreciate your work and I'm grateful for your greatness." so all of my approach to delegation is done with this idea that I care about the individuals. So I want to value and respect the people who it's actually their work. My program coordinator, when I was the medicine residency program director, used to be like: "Dr. Hartzell, that's my job." and if I wasn't explicit about why I was, maybe doing it for her or not delegating it to her, she thought it meant that I didn't value and respect her work. So I think having these discussions around it and being more open and transparent about our decision making process is part of the caring around delegation. same with feedback. if I care about you, I have to give you this piece of feedback, it would be easy not to give you this feedback because it's going to be a challenging discussion. But if I really care about you, I have to do it. So I almost think that the caring is the precedent, it's like the catalyst for all these things that we do, which, you know, there's a lot of discomfort in the stuff that we have to do as leaders, but when we care about people, it forces us to embrace that discomfort.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, those are really great points. I mean, I think for many leaders it really is how do you have the hard conversations and making the care visible does make it better, because it is coming from a place where you do care about the individual, you care about the work, you care about the team, or you care about the organization, that certain things aren't going to be tolerated or certain things do need to change. and I think the also other thing that, the reality is too, it's conversation, right? In terms of, a lot of times We don't make the rationale visible, and that's when people fill in the blank and use their own imagination and assume differently and then get very upset. And so by when you make it really explicit for why, then we can have a conversation. But, you know, I actually don't want that position or I don't want that. And you didn't know that about me. And so at least, in many ways, it just provides an opportunity to be more clear, both ways in general.

Josh Hartzell: Yeah, absolutely. And there's a great Stanley McChrystal quote, I don't remember it off the top of my head, but it's essentially like: people aren't scared of, bad news, but when you don't tell them things, they fill it in with their own imagination and it's generally not positive thoughts. so I totally agree with you. Like communication, I mean, is essential in leadership.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, and I think the hard thing too is often we don't really realize the reason why we think things. And so I think we often don't prepare enough. I think it's really funny how at some point, as you know, as we teach trainees, it's like, "let's practice it before we go in the room." But oftentimes, you know, as coaches, we often like, let's practice this before you go talk to the system chair or chief. You know what I mean? Because that way, it is not the first time you say something.

Josh Hartzell: Well, I mean, you just mentioned this, but how many times do you role play with somebody you're coaching that actually do that? it's going to be a challenging conversation. we talked about at the beginning, we're not trained. Like really how to do a lot of these things. So coaching offers that opportunity to have a dry run and then maybe another dry run before you actually get in that particular situation.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, it is really funny. I do know a lot of people talk to AI now these days, and so I do think it's kind of interesting because AI is so obsequious that the reality is maybe it would actually make people more professional and courteous, I guess we'll see.

Josh Hartzell: that's a great question. I actually, this is sort of a little bit of a tangent, but I saw a paper this morning on LinkedIn where it looked at does person to person communication still have a better impact than basically, talking to ChatGPT or whatever. And fortunately, people to people communication came out better in terms of connectedness. So at least there's hope for humanity.

Lillian Emlet: yes, definitely. so speaking of person to person communication, we often use 360 and other types of assessments to kind of get a sense because a lot of times it is really hard to tell people, especially people who have direct supervisory roles to you, really how you feel about them. And so you've used the Leadership Challenge 360 as a coaching tool. And so when leaders see their own data, how they're perceived and versus how they see themselves, what are some common gaps that you encounter?

Josh Hartzell: the first thing that I've experienced actually is an appreciation. I think most of them. Because, if you ask somebody, do you want to be a more effective leader? is someone going to say no?

Lillian Emlet: Right.

Josh Hartzell: I mean, hopefully not. so it's often the first thing is, "wow, I didn't know this. I didn't know they felt that way." And so that appreciation then, the idea of feedback is a gift allows them to then, "okay, that's what they think." Or maybe that's like what several people think, "okay, how do I get better?" there are definitely times where there's disconnect and often when there's disconnect, for me that's like sort of the perception versus reality. and then part of that is just again, giving them a different perspective. "Well, do you think they could feel this way?" You know, and asking them questions to get them to sort of see, even though that's not your intent as the leader, that's how you're coming across. and ultimately for us as leaders, that's what matters. I might have a positive intent, but if everyone on my team doesn't see that, what do I need to do differently so that they do see that positive intent. but the beauty to me of the feedback is it actually gives us data on our performance and allows us to improve because I'm sure you know this like most of us, once we finish our schooling and we get in our professional lives, unless we do something really bad, we don't get any feedback. so doing the leadership Challenge 360 or the EQI assessment, or I have my students at MGH, I just ask them to do a branding exercise. I'm like, "email 5 to 10 people and ask them for two or three words that describe you most. And then we look at those and we compare them to how they want to be viewed." And it's just information. So any of these tools that you can actually get that feedback allows us to then take that and be more intentional about how we lead. Yeah.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, a lot of people are very afraid of feedback and I think that's something that obviously we have to work on in terms of why, and the end of the day it's like, "well, feedback doesn't kill you." And so the reality is you'll be able to get through it, and you won't be alone for it. So I think that's the other thing. Thankfully, most of these 360 evaluations do require training to be debriefed on it. You wouldn't go undergo a 360 or get this kind of feedback without a coach or someone who's to be able to sit with, you know, the uncomfortable emotions and the things that come out from all of that.

Josh Hartzell: Yeah, and you just made me think about this, but I wonder, would you rather everyone talk about you at the water cooler and all the things you're doing poorly as a leader, or would you rather them put that in a 360 so that you can change your leadership behavior and lead more effectively.

Lillian Emlet: Right. Very great point. so you've developed hundreds of learners, students, residents, physicians, faculty, and so if you had to distill it down, what do healthcare leaders who truly grow other people have in common, what do they do differently that helps the people around them grow?

Josh Hartzell: You know, the one thing that I've seen universally. I mean, there's lots of them, but the one thing is really this passion for investing in other people. there's just something about some leaders that you know, everything they do is in some way geared to. How do I make Lilly better? How do I make Josh better? what could I do today? And, sometimes that's delegating. Sometimes that's setting a higher standard. Sometimes that's giving feedback as we just talked about. but it's all centered around "how do I make the people around me better?" And you know, the best leaders that I worked with, I mentioned Dr. Argyros before Glenn Wartman, who was my infectious disease program director. they just had this knack for consistently challenging you. So it's not soft, but it's like, "Hey, I know you can do better, so I'm going to challenge you with new things. I'm going to give you new opportunities to stretch you." But to me, and this is something I try to do when I'm meeting with somebody one-on-one. In the back of my mind, I'm just asking myself the question, "what can I do to help advance this person professionally?" Or in some instances "what could I help them personally?" I don't need to get into their personal life, but maybe they need some time management, some prioritization, other things. But what would it look like if every leader in our organization, when they were meeting with their direct reports, was asking that question: "What can I do to help this person personally or professionally?" That would shift our culture a long ways and our performance?

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So for all of the leaders out there realizing, "oh, what do you need to really do?" Its this that one tiny little tweak with your one-on-ones and your quarterlies and it just small little micro adjustments. Well then at the end of the year, make it very easy to fill out the required paperwork and just say, "Hey, yeah, we all are growing. You did grow this year and you are meeting your benchmark and sign off and yay signature to continue go on for another year."

Josh Hartzell: Well, and I just going back to the feedback thing, a lot of times people are worried about giving feedback because they don't want to make people feel bad.

Lillian Emlet: Mm-hmm.

Josh Hartzell: Some of the feedback we get from students, so our internal medicine rotation, they get more feedback really than almost any other rotation. And the feedback from the students is, "thank you for giving us so much feedback." because I think there's such a shortage of really meaningful feedback, whether it's at the student level, the resident level, the faculty level. That when somebody gives you a piece of feedback that helps you get better, boy you really value that. I can think of, you know, even as a staff, I had a colleague who gave me a really like important piece of feedback and I 10 years later I still think about, "man, that was really helpful for me."

Lillian Emlet: so you're still a practicing physician, you still do the work, and so how do you model what you're teaching? what does sustainable leadership look like to you?

Josh Hartzell: Yeah. definitely modeling and you try to say modeling at all, but, for me it starts with humility. like when I take over, ward team, I just got off the wards two weeks ago. but just approaching it has look, "hey, I do ward medicine, but the resident's probably smarter than I am." You all will probably teach me something. I'm going to teach you something. So modeling humility upfront. also just I think being positive. Part of it is, you know, there's so many different things that are going on and it's easy to get beat down, but making it fun. when you show up for rounds, people are like, "oh, this is kind of fun." it should be fun. and in that, to me, again, I am constantly trying to give pieces of feedback to help people get better. and I tell them that upfront, "look, my expectations for you are this, and I'm going to give you feedback because I want you to get better." And then the other thing that I always think about, you know, mention modeling, we are always being watched. So everything I do when I'm on service. My medical students, interns, residents, fellows are watching me. So when when we stop and talk to another team, how do I treat that consultant when I interact with the nurses and show them gratitude and thank them, when there's a patient in the room that's like six ways to Sunday twisted in the bed, do we stop and help get that patient resettled into bed and get their covers up? Or do we take their dinner tray and bring it over to them and set it on their table so they can eat. I think there's so much role modeling that's really critical. The one point I will make about role modeling that we sometimes forget is that at points you almost need to back up and say, "Hey, what happened in that room? Did you see when I did this?" And a lot of times they'll pick up on it, but I like to just bring it out, and make it explicit. because I want them to learn those things. And if we don't say it explicitly, they may or may not pick it up. I don't do that for everything, but if it's something that I really think is important. I may just ask them like, "Hey, what did you deser observe? Or if my resident does something that, I love, one of the things I think about is you go into the room and the resident sits down next to the patient at the side of the bed, rather than hovering and standing over, you know, I ask the team like: "what did you see?" So I think we can be more explicit about some of the role modeling we do.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, it's really great. We do this obviously in the sim center whenever we're teaching, but I do think when you bring it back to the clinical arena, we do have a lot of missed opportunities for teaching in general. and I call it the noticing skill. we often forget that if we don't have the noticing skill, that we can't actually tell other people to notice it too. Because once we can notice, then the rest becomes a little bit easier.

Josh Hartzell: I love that I will be borrowing the noticing skill in the future.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, obviously, you know, I work in a simulated environment most of the time, and so whenever those, you can, you feel like you can do those things there. But I think what you've mentioned in real life is the role modeling. And so when we role model what we do in the teaching environment where it's safe and maybe a little sanitized, there's a lot of transferability for all of those things. so, as we come to a close, I'd just like to conclude what's one thing I may have missed in terms of asking you, or is there something you just wanted to share with the audience in terms of, this topic with leadership, you've already dropped many great ideas and pearls and practices that people can take away. what would you add?

Josh Hartzell: The one thing that I think comes up a lot for me, and it comes up with coaching. You probably also see this, is that, you know, we work in these large systems departments and a lot of times people feel like, "well, I can't change my department," or "I can't change the system." Which I would argue that maybe you can. but the point I want to make to end is that every single one of us has multiple interactions during the day, and each one of those interactions is a chance to positively impact the life in front of us. So that could be me spending five minutes with a medical student going over their note and giving them feedback on it. It could be me spending 30 minutes talking to a senior resident about career plans. it could be me coaching a faculty member, or it could be me going to the nurses station and finding the charge nurse and saying like, "Hey, you know, Mr. Scott is Ms. Smith's nurse today. He's knocking it out of the park. Like, I just want to make sure, you know, like what a great job he's doing." Because all of these small interactions are ultimately what makes our culture. And while we maybe can't change the whole culture, we can start from the bottom and we can make a difference in that life in front of us. And the question I like to ask is, again, what would it look like if all of us approached these interactions with how can I positively impact his or her life? I think we would have a lot stronger and healthier cultures if we started with that.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, so I mean, in many ways we are both aligned because obviously at Transforming, we really believe that we begin with one, we begin with, you. And we can transform a leader. Then it ripples out to others and we'll argue that a lot of people don't identify with the word leader. We actually got pushed back initially when we first started, though "I don't, I'm not a leader. I'm just a team member." Just a team member. The reality is every single person, you know, is really important in all of our places that we work. And when you think about some of the really positive people, I mean, some of the people I think of are like the most amazing, like actually housekeeping service person, right? I mean, it doesn't, you don't have to have an MD behind your name to be an amazing coworker to be able to keep the place running. And we really felt it, obviously in the pandemic. especially, so you can make the world a little bit better, even in your small sphere of influence wherever you think you are right now.

Josh Hartzell: 100%. And I'll add two things to that. The first is that, yes, every member of the healthcare team is vital that I had a cafeteria worker who about a year ago there was this poor little old lady who was like lost and trying to figure out where she was going. And this guy just stopped. He had his cart there, he stopped, talked to her. He is like, "let me take you upstairs where you need to go." Gets in the elevator, takes her upstairs. And like I actually had went up the stairs and when I got there she was just smiling and thanking him. so I saw, actually ran into that guy like a day later and I was like, "Hey, I just want you to know how much I appreciated what you did for that person." because all that's patient care and we need to make the extended team feel like they're part of that mission. so yeah, it's, yeah. and then the other thing, I hate the word 'just'

Lillian Emlet: I know right.

Josh Hartzell: we're all critical, we're all human, we all have roles. so whenever somebody says that, I'm like, "no, no, no. Don't say that."

Lillian Emlet: True it's really funny because I have to admit, that's one thing I do like about, I work at the VA and so I do like about everyone there really, you know, makes eye contact and really greets people and there's a lot of that culture. The culture is there. I mean, it doesn't matter who you are. the first person just greeting people to get people to their appointments, like in general, like you just know, it's a little bit different in that particular building when I walk in, so we'll just give a shout out to all the little people out there. So, I did want to end a little bit, so thank you everyone for listening to the Transforming Healthcare Coaching podcast. And so if you're curious for more, Josh, how can people work with you? How can they find you, and how can they get a copy of your book?

Josh Hartzell: Yeah, so, probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. I think that's actually where we found each other. so I post on there, not every day, but several times a week, and it's always generally about leadership. so that's a great place just to follow me. and if you're interested in leadership topics, I'll put things on there that hopefully will help you grow as a leader. you can always go to my website, which I think will be in the show notes. and then, yeah, I would just encourage people to read the book. it is thick, it's, you know, each chapter is really sort of a standalone almost, and what I've been sort of telling people is, "look, if you're struggling with an area. Pick up the book and read that chapter, and then when you're in a different area that you need help, pick up that chapter and read it, and go back to it." It was really meant to be the book that I didn't have when I was kind of coming up as a leader. And, I've read lots of different books, but this is sort of the one place to go that if you're having a situation that you're struggling with as a leader, pick it up, read a chapter, and hopefully that'll help you.

Lillian Emlet: Awesome. Thank you everyone for listening to the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast. Please like, subscribe, and share with a friend and a colleague, and we actually do read all of your reviews, so please leave us reviews, send us a message at podcast@transforminghealthcarecoaching.com if you want us to cover a topic or get a speaker that you are interested in hearing from.