The Medical Affairs leadership development team works to provide physician leaders with resources and supports to improve their leadership effectiveness to respond to system challenges and improve the quality of patient care.
Executive Coaching
Image
In Photo: L-R Lorie Campbell, Bridget Brownlow, and Verna MacDonald
The Medical Affairs Trio: Making a Difference in the Coaches Corner
Co-Active coaching is an experiential and interactive process focused on building core leadership and relationship skills. It emphasizes the coach and coachee working together to create a difference. This coaching approach involves one-on-one interactions in a safe and confidential space, either in person, by phone, or virtually. Sessions are typically one hour, held bi-weekly for 3-6 months, personalized to the participant’s goals. The coaching journey challenges the coachee's comfort zone to explore possibilities for personal growth and improvement.
Coaching aims to enhance communication skills, foster trust and collaboration, and develop overall capacity for meaningful impacts and positive cultural change. It utilizes assessment tools to identify strengths and growth areas and involves powerful questions that provoke deep reflection, drive action, and encourage accountability. The coaching experience helps individuals respond thoughtfully in challenging situations, aligning their intentions with effective communication and behavior to make a positive impact on the world around them.
In the world of healthcare leadership, the role of coaching has gained significant importance in facilitating personal and professional development. This one-page document introduces you to a trio of dedicated coaches—Lorie, Bridget, and Verna—working in Medical Affairs to empower leaders and physicians to become their best selves, drive change, and create a positive impact on Nova Scotia Health. Here's a closer look at their unique coaching approaches and the value they bring.
Meet our Team
Lorie Campbell fosters high-performing organizational culture through Co-Active Coaching. Her personalized coaching journeys challenge comfort zones and drive growth, enhancing communication, trust, and cultural change in healthcare. Expect powerful questions, deep reflection, and accountability. Lorie's unique value lies in customizing approaches for high-potential leaders to enhance their leadership impact and performance.
Bridget Brownlow’s primary role involves providing specialized coaching in conflict management" for leaders in the healthcare system. Bridget is an expert in helping leaders navigate and resolve conflicts, particularly those that are predictable and preventable in the workplace. She offers skill development, real-time support, and customized guidance to enhance individual capacity for managing conflicts in a more productive and pragmatic manner within the existing organizational structure.
Verna MacDonald’s role is focused on guiding individuals, including physicians and healthcare leaders, to become the best versions of themselves, both professionally and personally. In her role, Verna sees coaching as a means to deepen the understanding of how individuals show up and the impact they have on patients, clients, family members, and co-workers. Her coaching journey is aimed at helping individuals discover and harness their potential to positively impact the world around them, supporting capacity building and cultural change for a better world.
Assessments and Tools
Leadership capability assessments provide important data concerning an individual and their context. We utilize various assessment tools to help our clients gain self-awareness and an understanding of where they are now: current strengths, level of current performance or leader effectiveness, and primary development needs. Leadership assessments are designed to help you reflect on what changes you want to make and to help you create a leadership development plan.
Change is constant, especially in health care. Physicians, as leaders, must help their teams overcome opposition to change, as well as assist in the often difficult transition period that shadows a change project. This page provides resources to build the knowledge and skills needed to champion and orchestrate change, and also to lead people through the complex internal process of transition.
Conflict. It’s normal. It’s inevitable. Working through conflict is a skill, learned through knowledge and practice. These courses and resources will assist you in your journey.
The work of a leader is based on an understanding of how your own mindset, beliefs, values, and intentions contribute to behaviours that define you as a leader. Self-leadership encompasses the critical role of self-awareness and reflective practice, as well as taking responsibility for your own performance and demonstrating competence in emotional intelligence. This page provides resources to help leaders explore the impact of their own emotions, values, intentions, and assumptions on their sense of reality and on the people around them.
Nova Scotia Health is committed to fostering an environment that is healthy, safe and respectful that values diversity, and where all persons are treated and treat others with respect and dignity. We have a shared responsibility to promote and sustain a respectful workplace, where all team members actively welcome diversity and work collaboratively towards ensuring a culture of respect.
The resources on this site are intended to help Nova Scotia Health team members (employees, physicians, volunteers, students, and learners) deepen their understanding of respectful workplace behaviour and provide examples of how we can all contribute to a culture of respect at work.
Please review Nova Scotia Health's Respectful Workplace Policy for definitions of offensive and disrespectful behaviour, and the procedures to follow for formal and informal complaints.
Thinking and acting from a whole systems perspective enables leaders to determine solutions that will create a better health system for the future. This means not only seeing the details, but also the bigger picture of your work. This page provides resources to help leaders consider a broader perspective, looking at the health system both from a complex, organic systems view as well as a clinical, technical systems view.
In an effort to support continuing professional development and lifelong learning, this page provides links to a variety of leadership courses, related organizations, and publications that physicians should find helpful in their ongoing leadership learning and career development.
Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results. Robert J. Anderson & William A. Adams (2016).
Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most. Robert J. Anderson & William A. Adams (2019).
Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. Brené Brown (2018).
The Gifts of Imperfection. 10th Anniversary Edition. Brené Brown (2022).
Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead. Karen and Henry Kimsey-House (2021).
Positive Intelligence. Shirzad Chamine (2012).
The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track. Liane Davey (2019).
