Mastering Difficult Conversations in Healthcare:
Why Conflict Is a Vital Sign, Not a Failure

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 107: Mastering Difficult Conversations in Healthcare with Dr. R. Lee Sharma. Host Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP interviews guest R. Lee Sharma, MD, MA, obstetrician-gynecologist, trained mediator and conflict analyst, and host of the Scalpel and Sword podcast. Published May 4, 2026.

Lee Sharma: The first cost of being silent and not learning how to engage in conflict positively is to ourselves that we become more stressed at work. We tend to shut things down. And of course, what do we call it when we're here emotionally, we call that "burnout."

Lillian Emlet: Silent and lack of conflict doesn't mean you have a healthy team.

Lee Sharma: Safe doesn't mean comfortable. We have to talk about some hard things sometimes and psychologically safe spaces, so we're not saying that everybody is still not good in those conversations, but what we're saying is people feel open to having them.

Lillian Emlet: So you're three years into your career and you know medicine, you're good at what you do, but there's this particular other, attending this dynamic in the system that you work that keeps you from saying what you know needs to be said and you just don't say it. And so you just absorb it. You absorb other people's issues and feelings and you adapt and you just tell yourself: "That's just how it must be to work in medicine." And when you talk to your colleagues, it's the same. They just have to deal with that other person. And it's exhausting. But what if silence isn't protection? Is actually the reason why you're suffering at work. Today, my guest, Dr. Lee Sharma, has had spent more than 30 years in clinical medicine and just as long studying the conflict that lives every day inside our workplace. She's an OBGYN, trained mediator, conflict analyst, and the host of her own podcast, Scalpel and Sword. She's seen what happens when doctors don't have the language or the permission to speak up, and she's here to change that. And so this is the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast. And today we're going to talk about what it really means to reclaim your voice in medicine. we are so excited to have Dr. Lee Sharma here with us today. Thank you so much for being here, Lee.

Lee Sharma: Thank you so much, Lilly. I'm so happy to be here. I'm really excited for our conversation.

Lillian Emlet: so I'm curious, before we get started into your frameworks and the tools, I just want to start with you as a person, when did your first realize that conflict in medicine was something more than just difficult personalities or just some odd one-off that's actually a system, a pattern worth studying.

Lee Sharma: So, when I was practicing medicine back in '97, I had made back to my hometown, I rejoined a group practice. And I started exploring other avenues, ways that I could work in a clinical setting and maybe even work on some policy things. And I found a Masters Program in Conflict Resolution, which in the year 1999, 2000, was not very common. But I was really intrigued by the idea of studying conflict because where I felt like health policy was really focused, I felt like conflict is pervasive. It's everywhere. And so, I did a two years master's program and at the end of that program I realized some really important things. The first one was that it wasn't that I didn't like practicing medicine. I didn't like my lack of control and I didn't like the way that I wasn't able to communicate within my practice system. And I realized very quickly that I just didn't have the tools to navigate these things. And these things had a really profound effect on how I felt about practicing. Now, I did end ultimately end up leaving OBGYN practice, and so that has been a huge blessing. But what it really did is it actually changed the way I interacted with people. It changed how I interacted with patients, and all of a sudden when I found that I had the ability to work with these situations and not only helped me, I felt like I have better relationships with my coworkers and my patient. It made me happy at work. Then after doing it for myself, I started talking to other doctors. I started writing articles. I started doing consulting. And so, quickly I realized that this is everywhere. There were so many doctors who were suffering, and you're right, who were suffering in silence because nobody had ever given them those tools. And all of a sudden, when you turn the light on where they could see, there are different ways that I can do the same clinical practice, but I can do it in a way that brings me more joy, brings me more knowledge of who I am, and the patients definitely feel that. And what's the natural outgrowth of that — care gets better.

Lillian Emlet: So interesting. The reality is, we often just bottle a lot of it up inside, and I think you've described medicine, the practice of it is all these untold stories of conflict. And we just keep it all inside. And I'm curious, what have you seen, in terms of the cost to the individual when you stay silent, like you just absorb all of the conflict that we're living in between physicians and nurses, between physician and physicians, between physician and patients, rather than, figuring out a way to use words as tools to navigate it.

Lee Sharma: Well, first of all, it's so beautiful having talk about words, using words as tools. We use tools all the time, practice in medicine, but we think about our words as being tools sometimes, and physicians as a group, we don't like conflict. We run from it. But if you look at the different ways people approach conflict, in terms of being conflict avoiders, and conflict evaders. Physicians are conflict avoiders we will keep quiet, we'll say nothing, even if we see something that needs to be changed or something that can be improved. So the first cost of being silent and not learning how to engage in conflict positively is to ourselves. That we become more stressed at work. We tend to shut things down. And of course, what do we call it when we're here emotionally, we call that "burnout." We really have stopped responding in any kind of significant way, so that first cost is always going to be inside, but just as important is the external cost. When we have a conflict situation that potentially there is a positive benefit. Let's say, there's something going on in clinical practice or policy that we know isn't the best thing or maybe not as good as it could be for the patients. Instead of engaging in a discussion that may stir up some conflict, we stay silent. So now the patients are suffering because they're not getting the benefit of that improvement. But the also other thing that we realize is that We are not in silo. We have teams that we work with. We have other clinicians, just like you said, we have nurses, we have residents, we have medical students, we have other healthcare professionals, tech, you know, my husband is pulmonary/ critical care, and so a very big part of that team is respiratory. If you are not able to engage in a situation where we don't agree, but there is a path forward, we just don't know how to find it. We are to walk away from that situation and what would've been maybe an eight hour shift where we can turn it off, go home. All of a sudden you're going home and we're replaying those conversations over and over. We don't turn them off, so we don't get a chance to actually rest. We don't get a chance to actually step away from the practice of what we're doing. Which is still emotionally tied up in it. And so, when we come back again, we don't feel like we've left, and that compounds over time. It just adds and adds.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, so well spoken, and obviously this is from the individual level, but as a leadership coaching company and our clients are usually leaders, I can tell you as being the recipient, obviously I'm on a team, and I'm not always a leader of every single team. And when you're on those teams and you're leaders don't speak up on your behalf, or leaders aren't willing to engage and then people go silent. Silent and lack of conflict doesn't mean you have a healthy team. And so we often talk about that with our clients and and a lot of times we just practice like, what are these words going to be? What could they look like? What are ways you can vary with them? And obviously my work also with Vital Talk, with communication skills for end of life communication with families and their surrogates. Having a toolbox of words, phrases, non-verbals, being deliberate and curious of the entire process, whether you're a leader managing a clinical team, or whether you are working with a family. both are skills you're going to need to have because you want to get everything out on the table. You want to be transparent and show your work.

Lee Sharma: Oh, I love that. There's so many things that you said in there that I just love. I love how you talk about this process being deliberate and curious. I love how you phrase that because I think there's something that's so important about, especially when you said having these phrases in your toolkit, having things that you know, that you actually, if you're in a situation. And you're not quite sure where to start that you have phrases that you have rehearsed practice, even role play with other people that you trust in your clinical circle, or even people that you work with outside of your clinical practice that I have learned how to use certain phrases, especially if I feel conflict starting. I think it's really interesting that when systems look at conflict, they tend to look at conflict as an illness. It's something we have to stamp out. Kind think of it as an illness, it's a vital sign. It means there's something that you have look at within your organization. If this is your tip off, that there's something that needs to be addressed. If you had a patient had a fever, you wouldn't ignore the fever. You would say, "there's something going on here and I need to go investigate." And I think that's where curiosity plays into the process of working with conflict is if we're avoiders, we're going to want to tend to ignore it. If we're curious, we're going to explore. And, and I think, that you can really help people understand that conflict isn't something that makes you bad. It doesn't mean you did something wrong. It is literally your tip off that you need to go deeper.

Lillian Emlet: So good. I love that. Conflict is a vital sign. Conflict is just like fever. And so, know, we're going to get into your frameworks and how you help people in very quick, very rapid paces, like environments that I work in. How do you get there? We'll talk about that at the end. But you know when you were already practicing and you were like, you know what? I need to do something about this. You went back for your master's in conflict resolution and that's not a small decision. So I'm curious what made you go back for the additional training and what did you learn the program that you really couldn't have learned in any other way?

Lee Sharma: I think, the first thing I realized really quickly was that my continuing to practice clinical medicine really hinged on having the skillset that if I was going to continue, I was in full-time OBGYN practice. My husband's a physician, has a very busy practice. We had two very small children at that point, and it became really clear that if I didn't do something to improve my professional life. I was going to lose my children, my clinical practice was going to suffer and I wasn't happy and I knew that I wasn't happy. And I have to do something pretty radical to regain my joy of practice, and I'm very, very thankful that I had a husband and I had parents who were very supportive of me going back to this because it was two years of doing course work. I had to try a master program with someone I would be on call. I would deliver a baby, And I come back and would be doing papers. I mean, my family was incredible about that process. But I realized also once I started the master's program, that if I had tried to do this on my own, like if I had said, "I know that something needs to change, and this was well before, physician coaching, I think has become such a staple now for people who want to excel in the practice of medicine and leadership. In 1990, that was unheard of. If you were going to, maybe see a therapist or you would see a psychiatrist, but there was nobody who was really going to help you kind of dial it in on what was going to make you a hack professional. So doing something formal and very structured, I realized was going to be the fastest way, even though it felt like a big undertaking. So it's going to be the fastest way for me to gain the skillset. And I really do appreciate, and I still contact my professors that I went through my master program with, I'm still in contact with and we're still friends. And I was the only physician that was in that program. There were a lot of other people from different walks of life who were studying this curriculum, but I was the only person in healthcare. So I think that also made me realize how desperately we needed this.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah. why the one of the some of the things I find most fascinating about your work is that you give physicians the language that we are really is nowhere else near curriculums, and I'm a program director, like we don't teach any of these things. Meaning that is the benefit of the additional training and to do the deep work of the skills for mediation and managing conflict. what are some of the important words or concepts that you wish every healthcare professional had in training and what do you teach now?

Lee Sharma: So that's such an awesome question. So I think first and foremost, when we first start talking about conflict with anybody, it's getting in away from the mindset the conflict is bad. I think that's something we've all grown up with, and unless you had modeled as a young child or a young adult, a family situation or a personal situation where somebody really taught you how to manage conflict, unless you have that model for you, this is all new stuff. This is all stuff that you've never heard. So we really first and foremost want people to see that conflict can be transformative. And actually understanding that there are positive things that come out engaging in this process. I think that's number one. And then, after we work on this worldview of what conflict is, which having a process that you can use like you find yourself in situation. And one of the things that I talk about when I'm doing these workshops with residents is we feel comfortable before we see it. You feel your chest getting tight. You sort of feel like you've got a little bit a headache. You feel like your breath starts to pick up a little bit, and so you feel it before you're in it, and then tuning into what that feels like. Okay. I'm walking into a conflict situation. And what I used for residents and I really kind of thought about the situation I was in a resident, were very high pressure, very fast, you know, things very quickly. Labor delivery, things happen very quickly in the ICU, operating rooms, ERs. These are places that are very fast paced and when we're having to make decisions and walk through a conflict to get a positive thing going, that it can't happen in hours. It has to happen in minutes or sometimes seconds. So what I teach them is something called "SPARC", which is an acronym it stands for Stop. Pause. Ask don't assume. Reflect then respond, and Create. So we teach them phrases and it kind of goes back to what you were talking about, which I love of having these phrases in your toolkit. So you already kind of have these things in your head. So when we talk about stopping so I need to take a minute. I need to take a break. Can we step outside in the hall? And so my stop phrase, my stop is: "I need a minute." That's mine. But I encourage people, it's like, think about you feel this conflict. We know we need to stop escalating, so let's stop for a second. So stop is really more external. I'm kind of drawing a little bit of a break in the process, but once I've done that, now I'm going to pause. So people think, okay, stop and pause. That sounds very similar, but stopping is an external process. Pausing is internal. I'm now taking a second just, "okay, what's my motivation? Why am I in this conflict right now? What is happening? And am I upset because maybe I have a junior resident that's questioning my decision?" Am I upset because I have a colleague that made a comment to me in front of a patient, and now I feel like my ego's been bruised? Where is my motivation? But then, I can ask. And I want to ask. I don't want to assume what you're thinking. I want to ask you what you're thinking, and after I've stopped and pause I'm giving you the chance to talk. I'm not getting in your face. I'm not okay what's going on? I'm going to ask you to explain to me, tell me your thought process. Tell me what you're thinking right now. And I want to do it in an open ended way. I don't want to assume I know anything I want you to tell me. And then after I've asked, "okay, I've got a much better idea of where your head is." Now I'm going to say it back to you. I'm going to reflect. "So what I'm hearing you say is..." And once I've done that, guess what happens. You feel heard, you thought, "Okay, this person's getting me, this person's understanding where I'm coming from." And then all of a sudden we're starting to become partners. We're no longer here. We're here. Now, I can tell you after I reflected, "okay, so I'm going to respond." So this is where my thought process is. This is what I'm thinking right now. And now that we've both done this, we're going to go on. We both want this patient to be safe. This patient's not oxygenating. We want this patient oxygenating. Patient's blood pressure. This patient's hypertensive. We both know that this is not a good place. We need to medicate this and now we can create a plan. Can we do this? Is this our path forward? And all of a sudden we've move, from being in conflict to being in alignment and we've created a way and a plan for the patient. And for extra credit, a lot of times what we can do is we can create a plan for the next time this happens. So now that we've got on this, so the next time we're having this conversation, the next time I think this patient needs to be intubated, and you think maybe we need to hold off. Can we agree on a parameter or a plan so that the next time this happens, we're not going to end up back in this conflict? And that is where the wins really take off. Because not only have we engaged in the short term. We've got plan for next time because this is conflict in medicine. There will be a next time. There will be, and so now we've got a plan in place that the next time we're in the situation, we can actually have a much faster, more positive process.

Lillian Emlet: I love that. I like to stop, pause, and I really appreciate your spending some time on that because I always talk about how we have to slow down, take a breath, take some emotional regulation time for ourselves. But I think adding on that pause to actually think about what it is I'm feeling like I'm actually hangry, or I am really frustrated because the last person really was demeaning to me. Like I'm still carrying some things or I'm just frustrated because I also know I have another emergency. I have to be taken care of, and I'm being called away from that and I really am just really stressed right now. So just having that pause of awareness. I think a lot of times in the moment, like while we're walking down the hallway, we often don't stop to do that. So I think that's a really elegant explanation that you provided.

Lee Sharma: I think it's something you say that so beautifully. We're not taught to do it. The idea of emotionally regulating is very new, I think, to us, and so vital to how we interact with people. And I also love how we take that internal pause and when you just said it, it really resonated with me that it's not just an awareness of where I'm in conflict situation. It's an awareness of where I'm in life right now. Like I've got five different things going on. I'm really worried about my kid. The last thing I had was coffee when that was 12 hours ago. And all of those things play into our response and how we interact and it's going to play into how we escalate in conflict, so that's amazing. I love that.

Lillian Emlet: I think it's probably coming from the way I coach. Because the way we coach at Transforming is the fact that leadership plus wellbeing are intertwined and that awareness. You can't improve your own wellbeing so you have capacity to be the best leader if you don't first also have great awareness, new action, so that you can deliberately do something the way you want to be done. Because we all have a fantasy of how things should be. And at the same time, well, reality becomes a little different whenever we're working on not enough fuel and not enough rest and things like that. And I guess, to move into my next question, the reality is I think most people would argue it's always the system's fault. I love this excuse that many people have, that it's always about the system. So my understanding is that you do something called "Dispute System Design". So Dispute System Design, something I had never heard of. You do it for hospitals and physician groups, and for other listeners, just like myself, who's never heard of this term, what does it mean to design a system for conflict? And what does that healthcare environment look like when it actually has a well designed system?

Lee Sharma: Such a great question. What's interesting is that if you look at joint commission you look what they're part of hospital. They actually require hospitals have a conflict resolution process. It's one paragraph that they all ask for. And when you look at that, it's like, "Well, what does that actually look like?" And different hospitals will do that in different ways, and they may say, "Oh, well, we have this executive that does conflict. We have ombudsman but by the time things get to that level. They've already really escalated, and sometimes really hardened into a process that's much harder to work with. So what does it look like if we can actually address conflict in a way that people feel safe talking about it, that they have the language to talk about it, and that when we go through the process of dealing conflict, we actually have something that's created on the other side. So, where we start talking about dispute system design is really on a very micro level, so this is taking place in teams. This is taking place in wards that we actually have people who are trained to listen and work through conflict. But the thing is that's everybody. There's not one person who's doing this. This is something that everybody has that skillset to do. So if you happen to witness a conflict, it's like, "okay. Let's see that we're working through this conflict here." We do this a lot with assistant surgeons or people who are assisting in an operating room because if you've got a conflict with an anesthesiologist and a surgeon, but you've got the assistant that's right here and they see it happening, one of the things we want to empower people to do is be able to see, "I feel a conflict happening. I feel that we're in a situation, can we take one second? Everybody bring the room down and can we actually engage in a process to resolve the conflict. And again, it creates the inside spark. This may take, 15-seconds we're not taking a big break away from what's the important thing right now: the patient. I think the other thing that's really important in creating dispute system where you actually taught people a pathway to direct address and create through conflict is making a space safe enough to do this. So people have to feel safe to apply these things. Dr. Jessica Bunin, who works with All Levels Leadership has a beautiful — she calls it Civil Discourse, but it's this idea of having conversations that are very safe. And safe doesn't mean comfortable. We have to talk about some hard things sometimes and psychologically safe spaces, so we're not saying that everybody is still not good in those conversations, but what we're saying is people feel open to having them. And so when you create a culture where people are feeling like they can have these conversations, but they're not going to be punished for having them, that no one's going to demote them or fire them for having this kind of conversation that you actually create a system and a process with people can address the conflict. And once you put that system in place, you don't just drop it and leave it. I've been so grateful to have a great guest on the podcast, Haavi Morreim who is a JD and a PhD who teaches the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, talks about being a guardian of the process. That when people have gone through your dispute system, when you actually have this process and people use that process to actually get positive outcomes from conflict, most important thing at that point, and this is from the hospital, the administration, if you're an attending and you have residents that have learned this process, is that you become the guardian of the process. The process needs to be protected so that people will continue to use it. And once you've made that process sacred within the institution, you've created a safe place to use the process, and then people see the positive outcomes. They feel better at work. The patients can feel it. because patients can tell right? when we're not doing well within our professional realm, patients know. I don't care how often you walk in that room and act like you're smiling and everything's happy. They can feel when things aren't right. All of a sudden everybody knows.

Lillian Emlet: Those are all such great points, and I think, it is funny what you know when you're saying that third person is the one who notices. whenever, like you have conversations and your goal is to support your trainee, for example, and it's the family and the trainee, and you're just the observer, at some point, you notice so much faster what's happening in the interaction when you're not the one actually having the conversation. And so I do think it's really nice when we have our multi-specialty rooms to make sure that we always have that third person. And because everyone has the same training, same awareness, there's ways to interject in a way that neutralizes before it can ever become a problem. And just to slow down the conversation, so that people can, you know, as my kids, guidance counselor said in elementary school, "Put the amygdala up. Put the thinking cap back on the amygdala." And so that we are hot right now. Let's just take a second because just slowing it down actually helps us get a second to do the stop and the pause again.

Lee Sharma: 100 percent. I love that. Put the thinking cap on. Put the amygdala. It's awesome. I love that. One of the things that you also just said, which I love, is that when you as an attending are there with the resident and family and you're watching this interaction and you much more quickly pick up on the nuances of that than the resident who's having that conversation, do you ever, and I'm sure you do, because of what you do in terms of healthcare coaching. Actually comes back to the resident side. It's like, "I'll walk you through", when you saw this interaction and "I'll walk you through how that interaction went. So the next time you have this interaction it's getting better

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, we definitely do some debriefing, but I think in the moment the most important thing is to not let it get out of hand because service recovery way late is much harder than service recovery earlier. And so having ways to, "Could I slow down and add something here? could we all agree?" Because usually it's like multiple family members and multiple team members that we've derailed down different rabbit holes. And so something just taking a step back, just having these phrases: "let's just go back for a second and not go down these rabbit holes is helpful." I think you're right. And the debriefing is, it's hard. because when you're in the moment, you really can't see. And then you know, even just having this conversation with you, I've realized, "wait, I deserve to have someone in the room with me. Why do I always have to be the one? Maybe, and this is Atul Gawande's thing?" Like even master surgeons and master operators, attendings should have another colleague be there just to be. It's almost like a safety net to be able to call ourselves out and actually also debrief later afterwards. Like, I noticed this and maybe when we're so busy trying to figure out our words, we don't notice the nonverbals, we don't notice the other body language. We don't notice the between the lines, data that we're being given. So I think what you bring up a great point in terms of, having lots of people debrief with as a team is really important. Sharing the same framework, just like you're saying, like in your groups, in the organizations that you help, you give everyone the same guardianship of the system. And that process alone goes a long way with changing culture, safety, and ability to handle conflict without it ever really bubbling forward to the point where it ends in litigation.

Lee Sharma: Oh, I love that. You're so right and that is such the goal is that if we can actually be very aware of ourselves, I think as you're talking about having these really hard conversations with patients, it's very difficult we're very emotional. Being able to self reflect as we go is hard. And having another person who can not only be the person who can jump up and start that SPARC process for us, we need to stop and pause and having everybody have the ability, no matter who they are, that could be a medical student, that be a nurse. Anybody who sees this conflict start to escalate has the ability to say, "can we just all take just a quick second here?" And it brings the room down, but it also gives everybody a chance to pause, to self reflect, and I think that can be something that can be a verbal to a big room of people. It's like, "can we just all take a second, to stop the fight?" "Can we all take a second, to breathe?" And think in a receptive room that's very powerful being to ask people to do that. And I love the idea that when you have so many people who who emotionally are so invested in the process and who seem like they're going, and you talk about going down a rabbit hole, everybody's going in their own direction, and there's a life and experience that leads us down those rabbit holes as we get in these very stressful situations. But the fact that you're able to bring people back to the reason why we're here. These are the things that we all have in common. These are the things that we all want. We all love this patient in front of us. We all want what that patient wants. We want to respect them. We want to respect them as a human being and as a person, we understand that we're really not in a good situation. I think it does help people to visualize that they all want the same thing. Everybody wants the same. We've got different ideas that will get there. And that's why I think when people talk about mediating working through conflict and use words like 'compromise'. And 'compromise' is one of those words I'm not a big fan of. Because it suggests the idea that I have to give up something to get to a place with you. And I like to think about being aligned with somebody in alignment to me. We're here and there's details working to that we can work that out. As supposed to: you're here and I'm here, so we just going to give up things and maybe we're not going to be as happy with that process that conflict is not going to be resolved. We kind of act like it is, but it really isn't. I would rather get to the root of what you're thinking. I want to get to the root emotionally where you are. And I want you to know that from me too. And once we can do that, whatever we can't agree upon, whatever we get to, that will last. It will be actually be something that has some sustaining power.

Lillian Emlet: This is beyond the scope of this conversation, but that's all the negotiations, right? When we go with the different negotiation courses, like really trying to understand what's behind the person and what are all of the interests, but that'll be a conversation for a different podcast, another podcast that we'll have. To begin to wrap up, all of us are having a conversation that we've been putting off, at some point, either with your supervisor or a colleague, your department chair, what is the best advice for someone who's sitting with that avoidant conversation? like, how do they even begin? Where do they even start? Like, "Okay, I feel energized with Dr. Sharma. I think we should say something, but where do I even begin?"

Lee Sharma: So first and foremost, I'm very proud of anybody who is sitting with a difficult conversation. And they're now at a point that they want to feel like they approach it. They want to get into that difficult conversation because that takes courage. So even the fact that somebody's thinking about that, I applaud that because that's the big step. And once you've done that, then you need to sit with yourself a little bit about what it is about this conflict that's really emotionally affected you and what you truly are thinking about not even just as a goal, because sometimes goals. In terms of being goal directed versus being relationship directed can be a little bit different. So really approaching this as I want to approach this conflict in such a way that not only do I maintain this relationship with this individual, I want to see this relationship get better. And then, as you prioritize the relationship. The conflicts starts to come into better focus and you're much more able to get something that you can talk about. So that we're going to prioritize the relationship. But then the third thing is we're going to find a buddy. We're going to find somebody that we can roleplay with. It's like, "I really need to have this hard conversation with this individual. I'm really kind of worried about it. Can I practice with you what this is going to look like for me?" And so as you practice this over and over. And you walk me through this really difficult conversation and you say to this person, "I really need to talk with you about this topic, but your relationship is really important to me, and so I want to talk about what we're both in conflict about. But I need you to know how important this relationship is and whatever happens with conflict today, we may not get a resolution today, but I want this relationship to be maintained and strengthened." I don't know that there's any conversation you could walk into with anybody. But if that was the first thing you said that they would not actively start to work with you.

Lillian Emlet: Interesting. And I think this is probably not something that most of us have heard of in terms of just being really that explicit and putting that out there, because I think that is always the fear, right? Is to really expose our greatest, really tiniest internal fear is. "Well, what if this person now hates me and then does things against me or gives me a negative evaluation or backs stabs me on a national stage." There's all kinds of internal fears in the back of our head. But if we just voice them out and be first to the gate to say that is the most important thing. Because it is. At the end of the day, we're human. We are relationship focused. We are not so crazy and stupid to think that whatever goal we have is, more important than maintaining relationships because, for the long run, that's actually how we get through life is the relationships that we have. And even if we don't agree with leadership styles, and even if we don't agree with how they do things, they can be in a different sphere of influence from you. But the relationship being professional, is always going to be first and foremost.

Lee Sharma: Absolutely. And there's so many beautiful things that will grow, out of maintaining that relationship, including getting good resolution with conflict.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah. I love that. So, as we come to a close, I'm curious, could you tell us a little bit more about how people can work with you? How can they find you? Tell us a little bit about your podcast, Scalpel and Sword. What kinds of stories and tips will you find on that podcast?

Lee Sharma: Oh, thank you for asking. Scalpel and Sword. we're coming up on the 1-year anniversary of the podcast. I'm really fortunate with that Doctor Podcast Network reached out to me about year and half ago about launching this podcast and I've been working in conflict now for a while. And the ability to not only meet great guests, but also give people some practical, real world things they can use to work with conflict, I think has been fantastic. What's been really surprising to me, Lillian, is the number of people who are not medical, who listen to the podcast, actually said: "Hey, I listen podcast. You know, I enjoy the content there, it's very helpful." It's like, Oh wow. So there are definitely non-medical people that are using this to look inside our world and actually seeing how much we care about our patients, that we want to address conflict. people can come to my website, rleesharma.com I'm on LinkedIn. but I do all sorts of you know I do residency workshops, I do lectures. This is something that I really believe has the ability to not only make us happier doctors. I believe it has the ability to really radically strengthen our healthcare system.

Lillian Emlet: And then so, to reach out to you if you're interested in bringing the program to where you work, For faculty development, group practice development, your organization, you speak, teach workshops, you'll travel.

Lee Sharma: Absolutely, and message me on LinkedIn, and my website. You can message through my website. I'm always up and ready to talk and really looking forward and I love helping organizations with this kind of material.

Lillian Emlet: Awesome. Thank you so much Dr. Sharma. It's been such a wonderful conversation, and thank you for your work and your honesty and reminding us, the reality is — we can handle this, just one conversation at a time, and to have conflict as a vital sign. It's just a warning sign. And so for all of our listeners, thank you so much for spending this time with us. And if this episode resonated with you, here's what we'd love for you to do. leave us a review, click subscribe, and then share with other friends and colleagues that they too can leave us, review, and share, and tell other people in healthcare all about Transforming Healthcare Coaching. Our goal is to help you one person at a time to be able to live better, lead better, and grow together. We'll see you on the next episode.