 photo: Columbia's Valegos College of Physicians and Surgeons The White Coat Ceremony Models Excellent Leadership
How business leaders can benefit from medicine’s celebratory ritual. Healthcare education’s unique White Coat Ceremony models how celebrating teams can promote growth and talent retention in your organization. Once a year, healthcare programs worldwide hold White Coat Ceremonies for students graduating or launching from classroom to clinical learning. The ceremony provides students personalized white coats and incorporates three key elements of celebrating teams:
The ritual of celebrating this transition improves student and even faculty success. Business leaders will benefit from adopting these three elements to develop teams that value learning, value each other, and enjoy improved productivity. WHAT IS A WHITE COAT CEREMONY? Arnold P. Gold, M.D. created the first White Coat Ceremony at Columbia University College of Physician and Surgeons in 1993 to emphasize “compassionate, collaborative, scientifically excellent care from the very first day of training in the healthcare professions.” These ceremonies shift the tradition of physicians taking the Hippocratic oath upon graduation to taking it before seeing their first patient, and taking the oath among peers and family. These ceremonies are now used in healthcare education programs globally. While Harvard’s medical and dental schools use these ceremonies to welcome new students, some place the ceremony at the close of classroom learning, where the students enjoy group learning, and before the start of clinical learning, where the students separate to work in clinical settings. This targeted timing maximizes the ceremony’s benefits. At one Masters of Science, Physicians Assistant ceremony in December 2022, 250 students, faculty, and families gathered in a large auditorium to celebrate their year of classroom learning. Alfred Sadler, M.D., the 2022 Keynote Speaker at California State University Monterey Bay Masters of Science Physicians Assistant ceremony, is founder of the Physician Assistant Program at Yale University School of Medicine in 1970 and co-author of (P)LUCK: Lessons We Learned For Improving Healthcare And The World. He spoke to a room of 250 students, faculty, and families. Dr. Sadler promoted the three key elements of celebrating teams:
All of these elements increase success and talent-retention. CELEBRATIONS REFLECT ON ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND LEARNING “The students were recognized for the effort that they had put in to prepare themselves for PA school in the first place and the work that they had done the past 12 months.” -Alfred Sadler, M.D. Keynote Speaker Sadler and other leaders recognized the difficulties the students faced, the accomplishments they made, and reflected upon the life lessons they learned along the way. Two students also spoke, touching on the special memories the students uniquely shared from having studied, recreated, and learned special medical skills. Speakers recalled late night study groups and unique obstacles, such as broad power outages, along with amusing moments and the gentle ribbing of a faculty member or classmate. They reminded the audience of uplifting moments, such as mastering surgical procedures and diagnostics. Faculty speakers reflected on how much the students learned in the last year, and the obstacles they overcame to do so. This year’s class experienced floods, regional power outages, and the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 on health care, in addition to the rigorous academic program. APPLICATION - Any leader can incorporate reflection and recognition during or after a project. REFLECT - Reflecting on what was done well and what was learned develops a culture of learning, increasing talent satisfaction and innovation while stabilizing long-term growth. Have teams identify their hurdles and accomplishments:
RECOGNIZE - When recognizing a goal reached during or after a project, comment on:
CELEBRATIONS STRENGTHEN PERSONAL RELATOINSHIPS “The families were recognized for the support they gave their students.” -Alfred Sadler, M.D. Keynote Speaker The school first recognized families for their contributions to their students’ learning and success. Higher education comes at an increasing cost for families. The time commitment required to succeed stresses home life and relationships. Family time is often displaced by study groups and special meetings. Classmates and faculty can appear to hijack calendars such that family often feels left behind. Additionally, stressed students can appear overly demanding of their loved ones. They not only are less available to support families, but also require support themselves when they struggle with a rigorous and demanding 28-month program. Recognizing families first increases a family’s positive association with the program and their student’s demanding career choice. Including family in the ceremony’s recognition affirms their continued supportive role and encourages students to recognize their support going forward. The Program Director thanked families in detail for their support, drawing a standing ovation, cheers, and loving gestures from students to their families at the ceremony. At that point, the families knew they were fully vested in the rest of the ceremony to follow. APPLICATION - Work environments benefit from sincere recognition of and respect for a team member’s support network. While team members respond positively, the hidden impact on support networks is equally, if not more valuable. When support networks view an organization positively, they are more likely to support your team members’ success and relationship to the organization. Ask yourself, “what are my team’s families saying about me, our team, and the organization?” In my professional networking training, I ask leaders to consider the impression they leave behind them. Are those family members supportive of your team’s work or are you, the team, or the organization a thorn in their side? I call it the smile test. If they smile when they think of their loved on at work, your team’s productivity and retention will be higher. A few simple actions – sincerely and empathetically executed – will help show that you value your team’s support network:
Team members will work best when their families support their work and see it as a positive part of their lives. When you value your talent’s support network, you value your talent’s talent, and improving that retention improves your firm’s productivity and talent-retention. CELEBRATIONS STRENGTHEN TEAM RELATIONSHIPS “There was a great sense of celebration and accomplishment shared by everyone who attended and we all left with a strong feeling of gratitude for what had been accomplished together as a faculty - student - family team. By taking the time to celebrate, we all had a chance to feel the emotions together and as we talked at the end of the ceremony, this was very powerful.” -Alfred Sadler, M.D. Keynote Speaker The White Coat Ceremony tradition creates a strong bonding moment by celebrating students’ shared experience, closing their didactic training by affirming their relationships before they depart for clinical training at offices, clinics, and hospitals. Strengthening these relationships helps reinforce that students are a support network for each other throughout their careers, and that their training program is their common bond. These strong relationships increase career success for the students and improves loyalty (and future donations) to the school. APPLICATION - Whether your team worked well together or struggled to find harmony, celebrating togetherness at the completion of your project affirms teamwork going forward.
Celebrating helps to cement good will, especially when it includes expressing gratitude to your team. CELEBRATIONS CREATE PAUSE POINTS Pause Points are spaces for a team-wide deep breath after a milestone. They make your teams feel appreciated and valued, and provide opportunity for deeper learning and reflection. White Coat Ceremonies gather students, faculty, and staff to honor the students and their past year’s work, and blocked time off the school’s calendar after the ceremony for a small respite. APPLICATION - Pause Points validate the importance of the accomplishment you have just celebrated, and give opportunity to recharge before the next task. They create space for subtle learnings to reveal themselves through quiet, passive reflection. A pause could be:
By eliminating pressured focus and distractions, Pause Points let deeper experiences bubble up to conscious awareness, improving individual and group learning. Pause Points also improve talent retention. Your team gave you an extra effort during the project; giving back a little afterward is a concrete way to show gratitude and make your team feel appreciated. CELEBRATIONS BENEFIT LEADERS, TOO The faculty and staff who plan and lead the White Coat Ceremony also benefit from the ritual. They remind themselves why they continue to work hard every year to guide these students toward their healthcare goals. They reflect on the year and their own efforts. They celebrate the joys of watching the students step into their roles and learning. They pause from the rigor of running the program to relish the good fruits of their work. These effects improve the leadership team’s job satisfaction and productivity, increases their loyalty to the program, improves their bonds as a teaching team, and helps retain their talents. ***** Celebrating milestones creates opportunity to recognize and reflect on skills learned, goals reached, and relationships built. It develops a culture of learning and growth. It creates Pause Points for teams and leaders that will benefit your teams, leaders, and organization with increased productivity, loyalty, and retention. Adopting the White Coat Ceremony format can bring these benefits to your organization.
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 When you thank someone else, they benefit from your expression of gratitude, but so do you. In fact, your boosted brain chemistry is
Engage in good self-care this season by expressing gratitude to those around you. The Gratitude Bump improves your success and satisfaction by changing your brain chemistry and by changing the brain chemistry of others. Thanking others is the best way to care for yourself this holiday season. How to Celebrate Accomplishments Using Gary Chapman’s 5 love languages to celebrate your teams. You want to thank your team for their hard work on a special project. Should you throw a party? Give gift cards? A day off? Different people receive acts of appreciation differently. The way to maximize the impact of your recognition is to know your team and know what they like. Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages spells out 5 simple ways people feel appreciated and can help reveal how to reward and motivate your team. His context is family relationships, but his lessons translate well to the work environment. Chapman identifies the love languages as
The latter two, of course, require careful consideration when adapting to the work environment. Some of these create the best impact when combined, as you will see. THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES AT WORK 1. Acts of Service Acts of service include doing tasks for someone that alleviates their burden, even if lightly. For these people, bringing them a cup of coffee, or bringing their mail to them warms their heart. They might provide acts of service to others to show their gratitude (unless they are just savvy at identifying Acts of Service as another’s love language), and will show genuine pleasure when you or others perform acts of service for them. If your team worked hard providing financial data needed to close a merger but their regular month-end data is outstanding, steps you personally take to facilitate that effort is helpful and meaningful to the Acts of Service crowd. Note: simply hiring someone else to relieve them of their work is nice, and a gift on its own, but lacks the same meaning to this group of people as if you did it yourself. It is the personal extension of your own time and effort that has meaning for them. Say your juicing store held an event that kept your team outside serving customers. Starting on what would normally be their inside cleanup shows your gratitude for their effort, and means the world to Acts of Service types. As they wrap up their big project outside, you can share a thank you and say you cleaned up inside so they are free to go. Be sure to communicate that you did that as a thank you to them to get the full impact (otherwise they might think that your cleaning up inside is the new normal for big events). Other acts of service include:
Basically, doing any work you might think is beneath you will bolster the morale of your team and is considered an act of service. Make sure your act of service is an act of service rather than an act of self-indulgence. The point of your focus should be not on your ego but on your team’s sense of feeling appreciated and celebrated. 2. Receiving Gifts Token gifts of gratitude demonstrate thoughtfulness and are often stored like trophies. The Receiving Gifts lover is easy to identify as their desk or office is likely full of proudly displayed memorabilia with associated stories eagerly shared when asked; they might wear necklaces, lapel pins, or cufflinks that are mementos from special events or people. Things carry the importance of the giver and the story behind them. The more personal the gift, the more meaning it carries. If your team is small, or you are thanking just one person for their effort, an individual gift will easily suit that person. Keeping consistency among team members though, helps to reinforce the team identity, so be sure to balance this focus. Gifts can be delivered in a way to give them greater meaning. A public speech when granting a gift, or a personal note accompanying it will deepen the meaning for the recipient. When coupled with another Love Language (Words of Affirmation or Quality Time), the impact of the gift can be quite powerful. 3. Words of Affirmation Affirmation or praise can powerfully impact this group. If you see someone smile, blush, or express deep gratitude in response to praise, this might be someone whose love language is Words of Affirmation. Words of affirmation take two forms: private and public. Public affirmations make the person you are recognizing feel appreciated, and shows the team how you value that person. This helps the team learn to value each other. The award of most valuable player is a public recognition at the close of a game or season. The award helps other players identify what it takes to become the most valuable player. Granting the award comes with a description of why the person won it, with concrete examples of their behavior that made them valuable. For people who cherish Words of Affirmation, creating their moment in the sun gives them a boost for years to come. Combining words of affirmation with a physical gift of a plaque or other memento helps to memorialize the valued words. Private affirmations are helpful to reinforce what you have shared in public, and not all words of praise need or should be shared publicly. A quick one-on-one chat in passing can include a brief expression of appreciation that will motivate this worker for time to come. A reply to any report or communication that includes appreciate for the effort your team member contributed goes a long way to their feeling appreciated. 4. Quality Time (use with caution) We have all seen it. The favorite associate being taken to lunch by the V.P.; casual conversations in the boss’s office where there is laughter and storytelling – clear bonding. These interactions can smack of favoritism for reasons other than performance, but also create opportunities for the boss to learn from the team. Yet Quality Time folks see such time as proof that they are important and are valued and can benefit you when used wisely. Thus, such time is helpful when shared equally. At an event, take time to interact with each team member (when possible). Visit each table, making eye contact and interacting with each person present at the table. If the event is too big, add smaller team events where you can interact more closely. In a public space, you can still create one-on-one conversations with good eye contact and respectful posture to build connection. If shared over a meal, all the better. Including different team members in your golf round at the annual retreat works, too. Ensure that your behavior and circumstances are strictly professional and not misinterpreted. Know your team before launching expensive celebrations. Company-wide parties are sometimes perceived as wasteful, being so broadly shared that they lack personal gratitude. Ensure any large group gathering serves the purpose of celebrating those team members you want to feel appreciated, and does not appear to be your personal party for your own friend circle. If you want to treat team members to special outings, follow these tips to keep Quality Time effective and professional:
If you only take individual team members of your own gender on one-on-one events, you risk creating resentment or subjecting yourself to hostile environment claims. Ensure the access you create for some is appropriate for all, and then provide it to all. 5. Physical touch (use with extreme caution) People who respond to physical touch find a sense of connection and bonding, which makes them feel a sense of belonging and appreciation. This love language is most often addressed in romantic relationships, making it a sensitive topic for the professional environment. Professionally, handshakes are the safest and most effective method of communicating gratitude through touch. A hearty handshake with good eye contact and words of appreciation will carry great weight with those who value physical touch. At the close of a big project, handshakes all around are a great idea. Be sure to make the most of that moment by making eye contact, smiling, and expressing your gratitude and congratulations. With people we see daily in the office, we rarely use gestures in our greetings, which can give them greater significance at the close of a project. Avoid saying “I’m a hugger,” and expecting others to welcome your hugs. Handshakes are the safest form of touching in a professional environment. If someone responds to your attempt to shake hands by presenting a fist bump, high five, hand-on-heart, or other, more limited gesture, respect that gesture and respond in kind. If your goal is to express gratitude and create a bond, responding to their gesture will be most effective at reaching that goal. COMBINE LOVE LANGUAGES FOR EFFECT As you learn your team’s love languages, you can create moments of celebration that check off everyone’s need to be appreciated. Margaret Thatcher used to cook dinner for her ministers in her home. I know other leaders who BBQ dinner for their teams, donning an apron to serve others. But acts of service can include personally arranging something they would appreciate. You can include a public toast recognizing each team member, use individual conversations throughout the night, and send people home with a special thank you gift and heartfelt handshake, and you will have touched every team member’s needs in some form. The better you know your team’s love languages, the more closely you can tailor the event to making them feel appreciated. ******** Once you recognize the need to celebrate your team, Identifying the love languages of your team members will help you celebrate and motivate them. Creating moments where several languages can be combined to express gratitude and appreciation, as part of a team celebration, improves talent retention through bonding.  Megan Mayer celebrates a successful year with her 2020-2021 team. She treated them to a lunch where they shared reflections on the year and she shared special contributions each team member brought to the team. Throughout the year, she sent gifts in the mail to team members, such as a box of ginger bread mix, since they could not meet in person. Gifts of sunscreen might have been nice for this lunch! A volunteer group (not an employment relationship), everyone hugged as we departed. |
Megan Mayer
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