Navigating Critical Conversations: Conflict, Controversy, Challenging Situations & People

Physician leaders are frequently required to engage in high-stakes conversations involving interpersonal conflict, emotionally charged topics, and difficult personalities. However, many lack training in the communication skills and emotional intelligence needed to manage these interactions effectively. This session is designed to identify what exactly constitutes a critical conversation and arm us with the skills to navigate them. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Understand the nature and dynamics of critical conversations required of physician leaders

• Reflect on personal challenges giving and receiving emotionally charged information

• Gain tools for addressing conflict and controversy with confidence and clarity

• Apply evidence-based strategies for dealing with difficult people and situations

• Practice essential communication techniques in real-world scenarios

Embracing Boundaries: BIG Principles for Physicians

This session provides practical strategies for identifying and setting boundaries that align with personal values and professional integrity. Participants will explore how a generous mindset, coupled with accountability and trust, enhances well-being, strengthens relationships, and fosters a healthier organizational culture. Attendees will leave with actionable tools to navigate the complexities of their roles, leading to greater resilience, job satisfaction, and improved patient care. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Identify and Establish Boundaries – Recognize how to set at least one personal or professional boundary that enhances generosity in assumptions about colleagues and patients, improving relationships and trust. 

• Overcome Relationship Barriers – Discuss specific relationship challenges in healthcare and explore strategies for fostering stronger, trust-based interactions within teams and with patients. 

• Develop a Trust Framework – Create a practical framework for building trust in both professional and personal relationships, using principles of integrity and accountability to cultivate a positive work atmosphere. 

Breaking Free: Overcoming Perfectionism and Shame

Participants will gain a deeper understanding of how perfectionism and shame impact mental, physical, and emotional well-being. They will leave with practical strategies to cultivate resilience, reframe failure, and foster self-compassion. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Recognize the connection between perfectionism, shame, and emotional well-being. 

• Identify the ways perfectionism negatively impacts personal resilience and professional fulfillment. 

• Develop strategies to release perfectionistic tendencies and cultivate self-compassion. 

• Differentiate between healthy striving and destructive perfectionism. 

• Implement at least three practical techniques to reduce shame and foster psychological resilience. 

Adaptive Leadership & Fair Process

Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how to lead adaptively and foster trust through Fair Process. They will gain practical tools for engaging teams, navigating resistance, and making sustainable decisions that drive meaningful change. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes

• Differentiate between technical and adaptive challenges in leadership. 

• Identify the key components of Fair Process and understand how they impact trust and decision-making. 

• Recognize how resistance to change signals an opportunity for deeper engagement rather than an obstacle. 

• Understand the role of polarity management in leadership (e.g., stability vs. change, authority vs. empowerment). 

• Implement at least three strategies for staying alive in leadership, including resilience-building and managing opposition effectively. 

Decide. Design. Deliver. Driving Physician-Led Change Through Adaptive Leadership

Physician leaders are increasingly asked to drive organizational improvement, yet many lack the structured frameworks and adaptive skills required to move ideas from concept to implementation. In complex healthcare systems, technical expertise alone is insufficient; effective change requires the ability to navigate uncertainty, engage stakeholders, and communicate with clarity and fairness. This session addresses these challenges by integrating adaptive leadership principles, structured decision-making, and persuasive communication into one cohesive framework and arms participants with the nuts-and-bolts skills they need to lead change. 

Change Management, Structured Decision-Making & Pitching Ideas

This session empowers physician leaders with the skills to manage change confidently, craft persuasive pitches, and secure buy-in for their initiatives. Through interactive learning, participants will gain practical strategies to advocate for meaningful transformations that enhance patient care and organizational success.

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Master Change Management – Understand the principles and processes for implementing change effectively in a healthcare setting.

• Craft Persuasive Pitches – Develop structured approaches to delivering compelling presentations that inspire action.

• Set and Achieve SMART Goals – Apply SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) criteria to create actionable and measurable plans for change initiatives.

• Enhance Stakeholder Engagement – Strengthen communication skills to effectively engage and influence decision-makers.

• Build Resilience and Adaptability – Cultivate the mindset and strategies needed to lead change while managing resistance.

• Develop a Project Charter – Participants will apply their learning by creating a project charter for a proposed initiative, outlining objectives, scope, stakeholders, and success metrics to drive organizational change.

Physician Leadership in Quality & Safety

This session will introduce participants to the local, national, and historical quality improvement and patient safety (QI/PS) landscape through small and large group activities. Participants will apply common QI/PS tools to case examples, highlighting the role of leaders. We will debate the benefits and burdens of clinical quality measurement and its modern incentive structures, as well as discuss current trends and opportunities for leadership. Finally, participants will be individually challenged to integrate QI/PS into their professional roles and aspirations. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Describe the quality improvement and patient safety landscape, locally, nationally, and historically - including its place within the 12 domains of health systems science. 

• Apply 5 common quality improvement and patient safety tools at the leadership level to case examples. 

• Debate the benefits and burdens of clinical quality measurement, including its use in pay-for-performance, public reporting, physician tiering, and value-based payment. 

• Integrate the above learning goals with your professional leadership roles and aspirations. 

Financial Essentials for Physician Leaders

This session equips physician leaders with essential financial knowledge and tools to make informed decisions that align clinical excellence with organizational sustainability. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Interpret key financial reports (e.g., profit-and-loss statements and budget vs. actual reports) to assess the financial performance of a unit or department. 

• Explain the fundamentals of healthcare budgeting and resource allocation, including how to develop a budget that aligns with broader organizational goals. 

• Apply financial principles to strategic decisions such as evaluating the return on investment of a new clinical program 

• Access resources to continue to learn the language of business – Finance and Accounting. 

Health Policy

This session will provide an overview of policy levers and government action in health care policy. A policy lever refers to legislation or government regulation that is used (or “pulled”) to affect behavioral or institutional change. In health policy, key policy levers can be found in government financing of public programs, provider payment policy, regulation of health care providers and health systems but also in internal organizational strategies, and community education or public awareness campaigns. Being an effective change agent requires a basic understanding of health care financing and regulatory authority across interdependent federal and state government systems.

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Understand the roles of state and federal government play in the financing and regulation of US health care.

• Describe the conditions in which government intervention is justified, distinguishing between cases of market failure vs action to promote social justice, equity, or equal opportunity.

• Identify key policy levers at state and national levels related to health policy change.

Advocacy Strategies

Effective advocacy is an important skill set for healthcare leaders. The decisions of elected officials and regulatory agencies have significant impact on the delivery, access, and financing of healthcare and on the medical profession. Policy makers need to hear and understand the experiences of physicians and the insights of our health care leaders. This session will provide participants with an understanding of the opportunities by which physician leaders can elevate their voices and expertise to inform public policy as well as practical tips for impactful advocacy. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Identify effective strategies for influencing and shaping public policy. 

• Examine the role of storytelling and data to enhance advocacy.

• Understand the importance of relationship-building in long-term advocacy success.

Innovation in Healthcare: Physician Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is being deployed across clinical settings today, often with limited physician input into how it's evaluated, governed, or trusted. This interactive session equips physicians and future physician leaders to engage AI as a core clinical leadership competency. Participants will build a working, non-technical understanding of current and emerging AI applications; examine real case studies spanning primary care, hospital medicine, emergency medicine, pediatrics, and global health to identify benefits, risks, and ethical considerations, including algorithmic bias; and apply a structured framework for evaluating AI tools and vendor proposals. The session will close with practical guidance on physician responsibilities in AI governance and an individualized action plan for leading responsible AI adoption within participants' own practice or organization.

Session Objectives/Outcomes

At the conclusion of this activity, participants will be able to:

• Explain fundamental AI concepts in non-technical language and recognize current and emerging clinical applications of AI in healthcare.

• Apply a practical framework for identifying and leading AI-enabled innovation.

• Identify opportunities within their own clinical practice or department where an AI-enabled tool could plausibly improve patient care, workflow efficiency, quality, or safety.

• Analyze a clinical AI case study to identify its benefits, risks, and ethical tensions, including potential sources of algorithmic bias.

• Evaluate an AI tool or vendor proposal against physician-relevant criteria, including evidence quality, bias/equity review, transparency, and human-oversight design.

• Articulate the physician's role in AI governance - including bias mitigation, informed consent, and maintaining patient trust - and identify one concrete step toward becoming an organizational AI champion. 

Negotiation Strategies

Learn the art and science of building winning negotiation strategies. This session covers the basics of planning, distributive and win-win negotiations, group problem-solving, multi-party negotiations. Discover expert tricks of the trade and convert that expertise into a competitive advantage. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Learn and practice critical negotiation strategies and tactics that experienced negotiators use to optimize their outcomes. 

• Discover how to cultivate sustainable relationships through the negotiation process. 

• Harness the psychology of influence tactics to help you formulate a winning negotiation strategy.  

• Understand how your conflict management style influences your selection of strategies and tactics in a negotiation. 

• Convert your negotiation expertise into a competitive advantage for your organization. 

Physicians’ Day at the Capitol (at MN State Capitol)

Leading with Impact: Influence, Persuasion, and the Behavioral Science of Physician Leadership

Physicians and physician leaders wield substantial influence within healthcare systems, yet many lack formal training in behavioral science and evidence-based influence strategies. Cognitive biases, heuristics, and emotional framing often drive decisions unconsciously. By understanding how behavioral economics, influence, persuasion, and charisma affect decision-making, leaders can communicate more effectively, motivate teams, and guide organizations through change with greater clarity and integrity.

Unchained: Navigating Grief and Forgiveness

This session will help participants recognize how grief manifests in their professional and personal lives, understand the barriers that judgment creates in processing grief, and explore how forgiveness can liberate them from fear, resentment, and stagnation. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Recognize the various ways grief manifests in career and personal relationships. 

• Differentiate between the emotions of loss, longing, and feeling lost in the grieving process. 

• Identify how judgment prevents the processing of grief and perpetuates emotional distress. 

• Understand how forgiveness serves as a tool for breaking free from resentment and fear. 

• Implement at least three practical strategies to process grief and cultivate forgiveness in their personal and professional lives. 

Finding Purpose, Meaning, and Passion in Physician Leadership

Many physician leaders have had little formal opportunity to examine the experiences, values, and patterns that give their work meaning, or to identify how misalignment between role and purpose may be affecting their well-being and leadership. This session addresses that gap by helping physician leaders explore peak moments of fulfillment, identify sources of frustration and misalignment, clarify the impact they most want to have, and draft a personal purpose statement so they can better understand how purpose, meaning, and passion influence their leadership, resilience, and long-term impact.

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Clarify Leadership Purpose

• Define individual leadership purpose using the Purpose to Impact framework.

• Craft a purpose statement that aligns with career aspirations.

• Turn Purpose into Action

• Apply strategies to translate purpose into measurable leadership impact.

• Leverage key strengths for meaningful contributions in healthcare.
  

• Align Passion with Career Growth

• Explore how purpose sustains motivation and fosters innovation.

• Create a strategic roadmap for long-term career fulfillment.
  

• Lead with Purpose

• Integrate purpose-driven decision-making in medical leadership roles.

• Develop leadership strategies that enhance team and patient outcomes.
  

• Build a Legacy of Impact

• Establish a long-term vision for leadership beyond clinical practice.

• Implement actionable steps to sustain purpose daily.

Inclusive Leadership

This session allows for deep reflection about personal identities, our multiple identities, how those identities move into leadership, and how to better lead people from multiple backgrounds. Moreover, this course explores how identity, power, and privilege playout in leadership. 

Deep Listening, Power, and Impact

This session explores deep listening as a relational practice that reshapes power dynamics, builds trust, and enhances impact. Participants will examine how formal and informal power influence communication, and how self-awareness and intentional listening can foster emotionally safe environments. By learning to suspend judgment and fully attend to others, leaders and clinicians can promote healing, connection, and meaningful change.

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Describe the connection between deep listening and the responsible use of power in healthcare and leadership.

• Identify how formal and informal power dynamics influence emotional safety, trust, and communication.

• Analyze the emotional impact presence and communication style have on others.

• Apply deep listening practices to foster dignity, psychological safety, and stronger relational outcomes.

Culture Starts With Us: Leadership Presence, Behavior, and the Physician’s Role in Shaping Team Culture

Physicians influence culture constantly, not only through formal decisions, but through presence, tone, timing, body 
language, emotional regulation, and everyday responses to challenge. This session helps physician leaders examine how their own behaviors affect team culture in high-impact moments. Participants will reflect on personal tendencies under stress, identify behaviors that strengthen or erode culture, and practice five immediately applicable leadership behaviors that improve safety, trust, accountability, and team functioning.

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Cultivate Executive Presence in Healthcare Leadership – Apply principles of leadership presence, including confidence, clarity, and authenticity, to inspire trust and influence decision-making.

• Align Leadership Presence with Organizational Culture – Understand how presence reinforces cultural values and drives engagement within healthcare teams.

• Develop Charismatic and Credible Leadership – Utilize emotional intelligence to project authority while maintaining approachability and empathy.

• Navigate Cultural Resistance and Influence Change – Strengthen adaptability and persuasion skills to lead cultural transformation effectively.

• Use Presence as a Strategic Leadership Tool – Leverage presence to advocate for systemic improvements, build stakeholder confidence, and drive meaningful change in healthcare.

Capstone Presentations: My Why

Each participant will deliver a 10-15 minute presentation on “My Why.” This is your opportunity to share the reasons behind your leadership journey and where you plan to go from here. 

Session Objectives/Outcomes:

• Summarize Key Learnings – Each participant will articulate the most valuable insights and skills gained from the past year, highlighting personal and professional growth.

• Reflect on the Journey – Participants will share their motivations for joining the program, discussing initial expectations and how their perspectives on leadership have evolved.

• Outline Future Goals – Each participant will present their vision for applying leadership principles in their personal life, practice, or organization, detailing short- and long-term aspirations.

• Foster Peer Engagement – The session will encourage interactive dialogue among participants, providing opportunities for discussion, feedback, and shared reflections on leadership development.

• Inspire Continued Growth – Participants will leave the session with a renewed commitment to leadership excellence, gaining motivation and insight from their peers' experiences.

We will end the day and the program with a celebration of the cohort and of each individual.

*Note that the session date was changed from May 13 to May 20 (June 2026).