Healthcare Leadership Excellence

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Leo Spector, practicing surgeon and CEO of OrthoCarolina, to talk about what happens when physicians step into real leadership. Dr. Spector shares his path from the OR to the executive seat, why he pursued an MBA, and what it feels like to learn administration the same way we learn medicine: through a kind of internship and residency in real time. We get into t...

In this episode, I welcome back Dr. Joseph Michelli for the fifth time, and we focus on a topic that explains a huge percentage of leadership breakdowns I see in real organizations: emotional intelligence. Dr. Michelli and I talk about why EI is still treated as “soft” even though it solves the hard problems of miscommunication, defensiveness, mistrust, stalled execution, and unresolved conflict....

In this episode, I sit down with Nancy Griffin, founder of Women Worth and Wellness. Nancy began her career as one of the first female managers at Procter & Gamble Canada and later built a successful wealth management practice focused on women. We talk about the connection between financial confidence and self-worth band why health and wealth are leadership issues, not side conversations. When...

In this episode, I sit down with Laura Sicola, author of Speaking to Influence, to talk about something I hear in almost every organization: “We need to communicate better.” Everyone agrees. Everyone nods. And then everyone goes back to the same habits. Laura and I dig into why communication so often misses the mark, especially in healthcare environments where people are tired, rushed, and under r...

In this episode, I sit down again with Dr. Jason Kuhl, Chief Medical Officer at Providence Medford Medical Center, to talk about something every healthcare leader faces: conflict, and how to lead it instead of avoiding it. I open with a moment that’s stayed with me for years: watching Dr. Kuhl navigate a tense physician call with calm, discipline, and persistence until the right outcome happened....

In this episode, I sit down with Amos Balongo, a leadership consultant whose work spans corporate America, senior levels of the U.S. military, and global philanthropic efforts. Amos brings a rare combination of discipline, humility, and clarity to leadership, shaped by years of working in environments where performance, trust, and execution truly matter. We talk about why leadership so often break...

In this episode, I sit down with Kim Bohr, President and Chief Operating Officer of SparkEffect, for a very real conversation about trust and why leaders can’t afford to treat it as a “soft” topic anymore. Kim and I talk about SparkEffect’s newly released 2025 Trust in Organizations Report, and what immediately stood out to me is this: trust is measurable, it affects the bottom line, and it breaks...

In this episode, I sit down with Dianna Anderson, CEO and co-founder of Cylient, and one of the early pioneers in the coaching profession. Dianna brings decades of experience helping leaders step into the conversations they most want to avoid, and shows why those conversations are often the ones that matter most. We talk about the real cost of the conversation that doesn’t happen. Not just in doll...

In this episode, we step into new territory for the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast and take on medical and biomedical ethics as it actually shows up in real clinical life. My guest is Dr. Deborah Kozik, a pediatric cardiac surgeon I’ve worked closely with over the past year. Alongside performing some of the most technically demanding surgeries in medicine, she also earned a Master of Sci...

In this episode, I do something a little different. Instead of sitting down with a single guest, I bring together the team that makes the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast and much of the work I do with leaders, actually happen. With more than 185 episodes behind us, this felt like the right moment to look back, and reflect on the year together. We talk honestly about what stretched us last...

In this episode, I sit down again with Laurie Baedke to tackle a topic that hits close to home for many leaders: control. We start with an honest admission: what makes us successful early in our careers often involves tight control, precision, and personal ownership. The problem is that those same habits quietly stop working as our roles expand. Laurie walks through why high-achieving professional...

In this episode, I turn the mic over to my own coach, Andy Hall, for a conversation about conflict and why leaders struggle with it. Andy and I talk about my path into mediation—from early lessons reading Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes to the intensive week I spent training with the Harvard Program on Negotiation. That experience shaped how I work: long preparation, deep listening, and slowing co...

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Jason Kuhl, Chief Medical Officer at Providence Medford Medical Center. We revisit a project we did together in Medford that became a model for breaking down silos: getting leaders in a room, listening first, and then building an agenda from what they actually needed rather than what I assumed they needed. Dr. Kuhl walks through how that work continues today th...

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Michelle Griffin, CEO of Griffin Resources and an industrial–organizational psychologist who built her HR firm one year before COVID—and still grew it to seven figures by year three. Michelle brings real, applied experience from navigating healthcare regulations, staffing crises, rapid change, and the financial pressure that hit small and mid-size organizations dur...

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Scott Ellner, a former trauma surgeon who now leads physicians as president of Integris Health Medical Group in Oklahoma City. We start with a life-changing moment on the Pacific Coast Highway, in southern California, when Scott is a 21-year-old surfer and witnesses a Harley-Davison motorcycle accident. A trauma surgeon pulls over, places a breathing tube in th...

In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence podcast, I sit down with author Graham Alcott to explore why kindness is not soft—it is a driver of real performance. Graham is known worldwide for Productivity Ninja, but his newest book, Kind, looks at how trust, truth, and grace fuel team effectiveness. Graham shares the moment in Rome where an audience of investment bankers asked about th...

In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence podcast, I sit down with coach and podcaster Curtis McCullom to dig into human potential—what really changes behavior and how leaders can reach flow on purpose. Curtis shares his path from 35+ years in financial services to coaching with hypnotherapy, NLP, and Mental & Emotional Release (MER). We clear up myths about hypnosis, talk about...

In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Carla Fowler, MD PhD, a performance coach with a medical and research background, to break leadership into four practical buckets: strategy, execution, mindset, and biology. We talk about ten-minute strategy, why dialogue beats top-down directives, how capability, visibility, and influence drive execution, and why...

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Emma Jones, author of The Phoenix Blueprint and a triple-boarded hospice and palliative care physician in Boston. She brings clear, road-tested practices that work for clinicians in the trenches. Dr. Jones shares her story of hitting burnout a dozen years into practice and how she builds her way back without gurus or gimmicks. We unpack a core distinction: inte...

In this episode, I sit down with my longtime colleague and EOS Implementer Mike Urness for a practical walk-through of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)—a framework that helps leaders run their organizations with clarity and consistency. We unpack the six key components of EOS, focusing on the Vision section and its eight questions: core values, core focus, long-term target, marketing str...

In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast, I’m joined by Oli Johnson, founder of PrescribeLife. AI and a technologist dedicated to preventing burnout and building resilience through innovation and culture. Drawing from his own leadership journey, Oli shares how AI, data, and organizational design can work together to help leaders create healthier, more sustainable teams. He d...

In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Mickey Lebowitz, a board-certified endocrinologist with 40 years of clinical practice and author of The EQ Prescription. Dr. Lebowitz shares how emotional intelligence, often dismissed as a “soft skill,” is actually grounded in science and vital for preventing burnout, strengthening resilience, and improving patient...

In this episode of the Healthcare Leadership Excellence Podcast, I’m joined by Ghazenfer Mansoor, Founder and CEO of Technology River, a healthcare software development firm specializing in HIPAA-compliant applications and AI integration. Ghazenfer shares what it means to build solutions at the intersection of compliance, innovation, and clinical usability, and why trust, not just encryption, is t...

In this episode, Julio Martinez-Clark joins me to talk about how love, forgiveness, and unity can shape leadership especially when the work is hard. As CEO, author, and healthcare entrepreneur, Julio brings both global experience in telecom and a deep perspective from building his own company in healthcare. We start with his journey from Colombia to the U.S., his engineering and MBA background, an...

In this episode, I sit down with Ursula Taylor, former commercial litigator and founder of Conflict Reimagined, to unpack why most of us avoid tough conversations and how to handle them with clarity, courage, and control. Ursula draws a straight line from results to human emotion: every dispute sits on top of fear, pride, scarcity, or insecurity. The work starts inside (observing yourself, noticin...