Coaching as a Leadership Style: The Art and Science of Coaching Conversations for Healthcare Professionals

The healthcare environment is in flux. On the one hand, doctors are being driven into ever larger group practices by increasing regulatory and administrative burdens and the need for greater negotiating power. At the same time, growing infrastructure costs and the threat of payment reform is pushing them into closer alignment with hospital systems. This rapidly changing environment requires a more sophisticated set of leadership skills.

This book introduces a unique and practical coaching style as a way of interacting with colleagues, managing direct-reports, helping others solve problems, responding to change, making effective choices and developing professionally. It draws from four evidence-based models for interacting with others and facilitating change - solution-focused therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and transactional analysis – and reframes them so that they are congruent with managerial and leadership terminology and provide a practical set of methods and tools for today’s healthcare leader.

Robert F. Hicks, PhD, is Clinical Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Texas at Dallas and is founding director of the Organizational Behavior and Executive Coaching program in the Naveen Jindal School of Management. Accredited by the International Coach Federation, this program provides certification at the graduate level for individuals who wish to coach professionally as an external or internal coach. Dr. Hicks is a licensed Psychologist with a background in both clinical and organizational psychology and holds an appointment as Faculty Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He also directs a specialized master’s program in healthcare organization leadership. He has over three decades of experience as a consulting psychologist and executive coach to many fortune 500 companies and major healthcare systems.