Coaching Health Care Leaders and Teams in Psychiatry

Ongoing professional development is essential across the career development life span. Coaching is emerging as an effective intervention to support career, personal, and leadership development of both individuals and teams in health care, given the high levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that our physicians and organizations face. Coaches, in contrast to mentors, avoid giving direct advice to clients, while still providing self-awareness and other-awareness and accountability to their goals. The use of coaches increases the flexibility of supporting our psychiatrists with a team of supporters, distilling the time of busy mentors to advise primarily on their content expertise.