Developing Women Leaders in Medicine
Introduction
Current research strongly suggests that today’s leader succeeds by creating positive and productive relationships, which includes the ability to make strong connections, share a vision, and inspire others toward a common goal. Women physicians can leverage their natural abilities to exercise their leadership skills in a variety of venues, some of which may be in a male-dominated environment.
The gender disparity in health care leadership is pronounced. Globally, it is estimated that women represent 70% of health workers, yet only 26% of representative positions are held by women. Much work can be done to bridge this gender leadership gap.
Your organization will benefit from Women Leaders in Medicine, a leadership program specifically developed for women physicians. The proposed program will be:
- Duration: Two days duration. Can be consecutive days, or two one-day sessions scheduled a week or more apart. While the first session is best delivered in-person, the follow-up session can be delivered virtually.
- Timing: 8 am until 4 pm each day, or as per preference of the host organization.
- Participants: For 24-40 participants is ideal; however, there is no upper limit and we will accommodate all those who are interested in attending.
- Focus: Focused on leadership knowledge and tangible skills development
- Accreditation: Can be accredited by host organization, using learning objectives below
Goals of the Proposed Program
This Women Leaders in Medicine workshop is aimed to bridge the known gender leadership gap, providing an opportunity for women in medicine to reflect and examine their current or future leadership roles, and gain crucial skills for success as a leader. This course focuses on deepening self-awareness and self-knowledge, identifying and developing individual skills and strengths, and highlighting capabilities necessary to address and successfully meet challenges unique to women leaders in health care. Specific topics and cases can be customized for your organization’s needs. Each participant will have the insights and tools to create a customized leadership development plan and identify practical first steps.
The intention is to help strengthen the leadership skills for women physicians by:
- Gaining insight and self-awareness into personal leadership potential through an assessment designed to identify an individual’s strengths and areas for development.
- Identifying their personal leadership style
- Building their confidence, grit, resilience as a leader, which are three critical factors that correlate with success for women leaders (McKinsey, 2016). This will be done through offering knowledge transfer and concrete strategies and tools, via a combination of didactic teaching and case presentations, and rich interaction in small group breakout sessions, and large group discussions.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this leadership course, designed for early or mid-career women in medicine, current or emerging female leaders will be able to:
- Recognize both the internal and external factors affecting the career progression of medical women today
- Identify and leverage their natural strengths to more effectively engage others and address factors that may be limiting their success
- Define their personal leadership style
- Learn specific strategies to become more effective as a medical woman leader
- Confidence: Gain and maintain confidence, with an appreciation of their own abilities and qualities
- How to silence the inner critic and balance negative automatic thoughts
- How to identify and acknowledge their achievements
- How to create an elevator pitch
- How to develop a personal brand
- How to deal with and process mistakes
- How to speak so one is heard
- Grit: Learn strategies to build resolve and courage, and thrive in the workplace, including
- How we perceive ourselves vs how we are perceived by others
- How to create a culture of trust, and an environment of co-alliance
- How to be assertive without being aggressive
- How to resolve conflict productively
- How to respond to change effectively
- How to advance their career: Build and leverage key relationships; identify and enlist mentors, sponsors and allies; Prioritizing your career over your job.
- Resilience: Build and sustain the capacity to recover quickly from setbacks and difficulties
- How to create psychological safety in the workplace
- How to achieve a healthy work-life integration
- How to identify what one can and cannot control
- How to stay connected to the commitment to one’s work
- How to sustain supportive connections at work and home
- How to calm oneself when upset or angry
- How to allow and develop healthy self-care habits
- Identify opportunities to drive and support female physician leadership in our current and emerging complex health care system
- Confidence: Gain and maintain confidence, with an appreciation of their own abilities and qualities
Responsibilities
PEAK MD Inc. will be responsible for the research, development, preparation and delivery of the workshop.
The host organization is responsible for:
- Promotion and Registration of the workshop
- Securing the room and AV equipment for the workshop
- Printing workbooks provided by PEAKMD Inc for participants’ use, and pens
- Providing food and drinks for the workshop participants
- All costs associated with these responsibilities
Sample Agenda (can be customized for your needs)
Women Leaders in Medicine
Day 1
7:30 am | Registration and Breakfast |
8:00 am | Welcome, Introductions and Alignment with LEADS Leadership Framework Regardless of where you may be on the leadership continuum, stepping into the role of Physician Leader can be a life altering experience. Barriers to women physician leaders still exist today which will require a shift in both institutional and individual mindsets as well as overcoming structural obstacles and acknowledgement of lifestyle choices. Through personal reflection, a dynamic group structured experience, discussion and presentation, participants will:
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9:15 am | Medical Women’s Leadership in Context Female leadership progression requires understanding of the current state of systemic factors affecting women’s medical careers, as well as past and emerging trends. Challenging the status quo and championing change is needed now and in the future. Through group discussion and personal reflection exercises as well as power point presentation, participants will:
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10:00 am | Health & Networking Break |
10:15 am | Women’s Leadership Styles – How to Make Them Work and When to Adapt A key step to fostering leadership flexibility is to adapt one’s leadership style when encountering differing situations for optimal engagement. Through a structured activity, group discussion and reflection exercise, participants will learn to:
Key Capabilities for Women Physician Leaders – Confidence We need to be aware of how our personal perceptions, beliefs and the extent to which we have been influenced by our past experiences impact our leadership effectiveness. We can all choose to become more confident. Organization culture holds many implicit rules that govern behaviour and will be addressed. Through self-reflection exercises, instructor-led presentations, dyad and group discussions, participants will be able to:
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12:00 pm | Lunch
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1:00 pm | Key Capabilities for Women Physician Leaders – Grit Perseverance through challenging circumstances can shape a woman’s ability to lead. Research shows that grit and a mind-set of growth is valuable for women’s advancement and success. Through a combination of power point presentation, self-reflection exercises and dynamic group discussion, participants will:
There are some specific situations in which women leaders find themselves. Concrete skills to succeed here will be offered to address.
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2:15 pm | Health & Networking Break
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2:30 pm | Key Capabilities for Women Physician Leaders – Resilience Resilience, the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, is built on a foundation of emotional and social competence. Physicians can learn to be more resilient by enhancing the five key building blocks and serve as healthy role models for others. Through small group discussions, instructor-led presentation and personal reflection exercises, participants will learn:
Recognize how identifying and working from strengths as well as investing in others’ strengths significantly enhances leadership effectiveness, satisfaction and resilience.
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4:00 | Session adjourns |
DAY 2: Can be scheduled 1 or more weeks after Day 1; can be delivered virtually.
7:30 am | Breakfast
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8:00 am | Real Lives; Real Lessons – Case Studies of Women Leaders in Medicine
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10:00 am | Health & Networking Break
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10:15 am | Real Lives; Real Lessons Continued
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12:00 pm | Lunch
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1:00 pm | Advancing Your Career Leading in healthcare is a complex journey towards a goal worth striving for. Navigating this leadership labyrinth is not simple nor direct, and requires awareness of the challenges, promotion and persistence,
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2:30 pm | Health and Networking Break
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2:45 pm | Putting It All Together A large group discussion of personal and professional learnings while navigating their medical career. Participants will discuss:
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4:00 pm | Session adjourns |
About Dr. Mamta Gautam and PEAK MD Inc.
Mamta Gautam, MD, MBA, FRCPC, CPDC, CCPE, CPE is an internationally renowned psychiatrist, consultant, certified coach, author, speaker, and CEO of PEAK MD Inc, a company that specializes in Leadership Resilience, and keeping well professionals well. Her two main areas of expertise are Physician Health and Physician Leadership. Focused on Professional Health and Well-being since 1990, she is a trail-blazer in this field, and known as the “The Doctor’s Doctor”. Dr. Gautam founded the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine Wellness Program, the first such program at a medical school globally, and helped to make this a standard of care. In the past 2 decades, she has expanded her work to include leadership development to better address system-level factors that impact professional wellbeing. She is a LEADS Global certified facilitator.
She is especially committed to advancing diversity in medicine, and leadership development for professional women. She facilitates 1 and 2-day courses globally on leadership for medical women, has designed and developed Momentum, a 6-day leadership retreat for women, and recently founded The Raft, an online platform for leadership development and community for women physicians.
She brings her knowledge and expertise to PEAK MD Inc, through which she delivers keynote presentations and workshops, consults to healthcare and other organizations, and coaches senior executive leaders internationally. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards for her innovative work, and has been awarded Distinguished Fellowships in both the Canadian and American Psychiatric Associations.
August 2024
Ottawa, Canada
