 |
| |
| |
| |
| | | |
| | |
FROM THE BOOK
CHAPTER 2: Discipline to Pause: Why Slowing Down Is a Leadership Skill, Not a Luxury
Chapter 1 was about what happens when we push through. Chapter 2 is about what happens when we stop.
It opens on an ordinary morning. The first day of my second year of residency, coffee in hand, half-listening while someone presented a case at the front of the room: a man my age, burning chest pain that radiated into his shoulders and appeared only when he drank alcohol. I had been having that exact symptom for months. I had done what physicians do when something does not fit, but life keeps moving. I solved the problem: I stopped drinking. I kept working. I never slowed down enough to ask why.
Then I learned the phrase "pathognomonic for Hodgkin's disease."
My face went hot. The room did not go quiet, but it went quiet to me. The teaching continued. Questions were asked. I sat completely still, alone in a room full of people, aware that something fundamental had just shifted. That was not a pause I chose. It was the kind your body forces on you when it insists on being heard.
The chapter builds from there into the argument I most want physician leaders to hear. Pausing is not indecision, and it is not weakness. It is the discipline that creates space between what happens to you and what you do next. I break it into three kinds. The tactical pause that keeps you from saying the thing you cannot unsay. The strategic pause that keeps you from solving the wrong problem brilliantly. The existential pause that keeps you from disappearing into a role that is quietly costing you your health or your integrity.
The most important lesson I ever learned about pausing did not come from a book, a mentor, or a leadership course. It came from a woman on our environmental services team, in a meeting she had never been invited to before, in a unit where four patients had already died. She said one sentence out loud. I believe it saved lives. I hope you will join me in Chapter 2 this fall to hear what it was. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |
A LEADER I AM WATCHING: Dr. Shikha Jain
Last time I told you that networking turned out to be nothing more complicated than relationship building. I did not arrive at that on my own. I can trace it to a single assignment.
Last year, at the end of the first day of the Power of Women in Medicine Summit (All Genders Welcome!!), Dr. Shikha Jain gave the room a task: do not leave without three new friends. They should not be contacts or business cards, but actual friends. I remember thinking it sounded both quite simple and quite impossible, and I remember doing it anyway. That assignment changed how I understood the entire enterprise of professional connection, and it changed the tone of the whole conference. The effects are still showing up in my work today.
Shikha Jain, MD, FACP, is a nationally recognized hematologist-oncologist, healthcare executive, and leading voice on the future of medicine. She is a tenured Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago and Associate Director of Oncology Communication and Digital Innovation at the University of Illinois Cancer Center, where she specializes in gastrointestinal cancers and leads initiatives spanning clinical care, communication, innovation, and health system transformation.
Dr. Jain is the Founder and Board Chair of Women in Medicine®, a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing leadership, equity, and systemic change across healthcare. Under her leadership, the organization has grown into a community of nearly 7,000 members and has supported thousands of physicians, trainees, and healthcare leaders through national conferences, leadership development programs, mentorship, research, storytelling, and advocacy.
She is a national spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, host of the acclaimed Oncology Overdrive podcast, a TEDx speaker, and an Emmy-nominated national media commentator. Her writing and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, TIME, Forbes, CNN, MSNBC, Scientific American, USA Today, and The Hill. Her honors include recognition as one of Medscape’s 25 Rising Stars in Medicine and one of Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Emerging Leaders.
What I admire is not the length of that list. It is what she does with the rooms she builds. Shikha creates spaces where connection is the assignment rather than the accident, and then she asks people to actually do the work. Anyone can convene a conference. Very few people can send five hundred physicians home having genuinely made new friends.
I left that Summit with more than three new friends. I also left with a different understanding of the networking that I had been avoiding for twenty years. Find out more about Dr. Shikha Jain here. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |
CONNECT WITH JESS
Upcoming Events:
1. Triservice ACP: Aug 26-28, 2026; Bethesda, MD - Presenting: “Can leaders have a bad day?”
2. Mission Belonging, Day of Belonging: Sep 19, 2026, Rockwood Manor, Potomac, MD - Presenting: “The Space Between Inclusion and Belonging: Psychological Safety as the Missing Piece.”
3. WIM Summit: Sep 24–26, 2026, Chicago, IL, Presenting:
“Leading Under Crisis” Panel Discussion Moderated by LTG (ret) Mark Hertling
“She’s Too Much, She’s Not Enough: Gendered Communication and Feedback in Medicine”
5. American Association of Physician Leadership, Oct 22-24, 2026; Scottsdale, AZ - Presenting: “Across the Divide: A Practical Workshop in Civil Discourse.”
|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |
| ONE QUESTION FOR REFLECTION
How does your body signal to you that you are moving into reactivity, and how often do you notice the shift before you speak or act?
Please consider sharing the newsletter with someone who might like to join my journey. I would love to hear how you like it so far. As anyone who knows me knows, I read, process, and respond to any and all feedback. After all, feedback is love!! I will write again in two weeks.
Warmly,
Jess
|
| | | |
| | | |
|
