Sharee Johnson - FULL Interview
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Speaker View: I've been so delighted to have the conversations that I've had with our guests so far on Recalibrating with Sharee Johnson. I hope you are learning a lot about the variety of experiences that exist in our healthcare professionals, in our healthcare system.
People have been asking for a little bit more of my story, and so I will bring that to you down the track a little bit. In the interim today's podcast is a shorter version. It's an interview that happened with me in November in 2025. It was as we were beginning our Recalibrate Retreat, our annual alumni retreat in 2025.
And so I wanted to share this with you. This is some of my learning about working with doctors over the last 12 or 13 years, and also a little bit about our Recalibrate program, the experience of the doctors [00:03:00] in that program. I hope you enjoy this short interview. It goes for about 20 minutes. A little bit of life according to Sharee as a coach of medical doctors in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA.
Thanks for joining me on the podcast and I look forward to sharing many more healthcare stories with you over the weeks ahead.
Speaker: Doctors, uh, live a pressured life. They never have enough time when they're talking about coming to do work with us. Doctors are more concerned about the time commitment than they're concerned about anything else. Um, so doctors, uh, feel at the beck and call of the whole community really, and certainly of each other.
They do many more things than the public probably appreciate. So doctors are teachers, they're supervisors, doctors are seeing patients, of course. Doctors do a lot of work in their colleges and, uh, administrative and policy things with governments. And so doctors really feel like [00:04:00] everybody wants a piece of them.
And there's not enough time in the day to deliver what they need to deliver. And they're classically, perfectionist type A people, so they wanna do everything you know perfectly to the nth degree as best as they can. Huge generalization, that's my experience of doctors, that they come often to coaching and the things that we offer because of very high expectations that started from when they were primary school children.
Doctors are humans like everybody else. So all the things that happen to all of us happen to doctors. So most of the doctors we work with are consultants. They come in mid-career, mostly. We, we work with doctors across the whole range of career, but most are in their mid-career, and so these doctors have big mortgages, children, uh, to educate, older parents to look after, marriages under strain and stress.
Um, many doctors are married to other doctors, so they have an amplification of on-call rosters and shift work and those kinds of [00:05:00] things. And they're trained, empathy is trained out of them really in truth. So doctors, um, are taught to be stiff upper lipped, to be in control, to sort things out themselves.
The most common definition from a doctor is I'm a problem solver. If I ask them, what's your job about? What do you do? They'll say, I'm a problem solver, I fix things. And the whole community endorses that. We come to a doctor and we expect them to fix things. So there's a long lead up usually.
A doctor might, sometimes it's three years between when a doctor first contacts me and says, I think I need some help, or I've, been burnt out. I don't wanna be burnt out again. Or I've applied for, um, promotion and I've missed three times obviously doing something wrong. We can have quite serious conversation and then not see them for three years, and then in three years time they arrive and say, I thought I could work it out myself.
And doctors definitely have that mindset. I can work it out myself. I'm the person who fixes things. Um. [00:06:00] So it's, it's a big call to say, actually, maybe I do need some input from somewhere else. Often doctors will arrive at coaching and say, I know exactly what I need to do, I just can't do it. And they might have been living with that for a decade.
So, you know, it does take a long time for a doctor to take that extra step of, I need some help. And the question then is, and who would help me? And it's very often not another doctor. Um, it can be of course, but it's often, I need to speak to somebody outside of this system that I'm in, all the doctors I know are in the same kind of predicament.
Um, and questions of trust. Like if I tell another doctor I'm not coping, what will that mean for my career? There's a lot of career reputational management goes on. I think that's changing and, and that's good. We all need that to change. The younger doctors are much more willing to ask for help. Many of the doctors who come to work with us are mid-career consultants and they say, can we do work with the younger [00:07:00] people?
They wish that they'd known the things they're learning off us at an earlier stage of their career. And so that's a great benefit because those doctors are going out into the community and encouraging the doctors that they supervise the younger doctors to do things like coaching and supervision and peer support much earlier.
The younger doctors themselves are also getting different training at at medical school, so I think we are seeing some shift in this, uh, request for help.
Doctors have spent a long time getting to where they're getting, like they spend 15 years usually to be the specialist or even a GP will have spent years to get to where they are and the threat of, um, somebody challenging or undermining their capacity or their expertise when they've worked really hard to be excellent, to meet all the hurdles that are really tough, I mean, some of the exams have 64% pass rate. It's really tough to get to be a specialist of any kind, so to then be threatened with a [00:08:00] review or an investigation or, um, even just to make something, have an accident and make some minor, uh, um, error in their care of a patient can feel like a really big threat.
Uh, and they will very often talk about their whole family has committed to them becoming a doctor, that their parents are invested, that their partner has moved interstate three or four times with them to train and that they can't let everybody else down. This idea that, um, I, I've worked really hard to be where I am and I can't let anybody undermine it is a very powerful force for keeping up the image of I'm in control, I can cope, I'm an expert.
Well, the reality is that most doctors will make a mistake, probably multiple mistakes during their career, and the sooner they get the skills that they need to manage that situation, the better their health and wellbeing will be and the better care they'll provide their patients.
And the reality is when doctors [00:09:00] tell another doctor, this happened, I, I made a mistake, or A patient died, or there was a misdiagnosis, or, um, there was a, a medical error in surgery. It's very likely the doctor they tell will say, that's happened to me too. So it's much more common than they think.
The cultural story is , don't show any weakness. And there is a long history of shame in medicine. There has been a lot of humiliation and shame used in the training of doctors. Again, that's decreasing and changing. It's still a real experience for many, many doctors.
Well, there's more available than there used to be. If you're coming into our system, it's one-on-one coaching or group coaching, which is a peer structure. A small group, small groups. Um, many doctors go and have counseling and they do it in secret, and so it's helpful of course, but it's not changing the culture or that general idea about, [00:10:00] you know, we need help and we should share, uh, because that normalizes things for all of us. So coming to coaching is a little bit more palatable for doctors to say.
It's a skill building process. It's a forward focus process. Whereas counseling has a reputation, or therapy has the reputation of, you know, I've done something wrong, or I'm weak, or I'm emotional and, and, uh, it's about something that's already happened usually. So I think the option of coaching has opened up a new pathway for doctors that feels easier. And the research certainly says that it's helping doctors have more job satisfaction, less burnout, more self-compassion. So coaching is a great option to to go for. There are lots of training options and supervision and so on in the colleges. Those things have been here for a long time and perhaps have perpetuated some of the cultural issues that we have. No bias here.
It's really awesome to have these doctors here. Some of them have [00:11:00] been here five years in a row. Some of them been to other retreats in between. They can't wait to come here and do the work. And when I started working with these with doctors 12 years ago, I couldn't imagine that anyone would want to come and have coaching, let alone come to multiple retreats and do this work over multiple years.
And we know that development takes years. We're changing old habits. And so they're coming here now with stories of the difference that recalibrate made. In their work life, they show up and they say, , I had a conflict with my boss this year, and Recalibrate really helped me, and that's their shorthand for saying I had the skills to know how to navigate a really difficult conversation, or I had the skills to know how to take care of myself when things were getting pretty toxic at work. It's so heartwarming. It's unbelievable to me. I, I'm a non-doctor. I'm from outside, you know, so to come here and be with 20 doctors who are anesthetists, um, obstetricians, surgeons, [00:12:00] GPs, all kinds of doctors from all different places, um, saying that they love their work. You know, a lot of these doctors came to, to coaching or to Recalibrate, saying, I don't think I can stay in clinical medicine.
Sometimes people say to me, how do you feel about helping doctors leave medicine? And I, it's extraordinary, i'm not. One, less than 1% of the people that we've worked with have left medicine. Most of them have said, this is amazing, i'm glad I'm, I feel happy again to be a doctor. And I really thought that I couldn't go another day.
So it's, it's amazing to be here. I own coaching for doctors and I created Recalibrate, so I guess that's the main qualification. I'm a psychologist, I'm executive coach, I'm meditation teacher. And at the beginning of all of this, I was just curious about how can I use my skills to help doctors.
They looked like they had some pretty big gaps, that they needed some different kinds of skills, and they've [00:13:00] taken up the offer so. I guess that's what qualifies me. I arrived at this work with doctors pretty annoyed and damaged and cross about healthcare and really with the patient in mind, and it became obvious pretty quickly that, that's a drop in the ocean. That's endless. Patients, you know, I could work with 10,000 patients and nothing perhaps would change in the system. It might change for those patients. But if I can work with the doctors, they each can work with 10,000 patients and make a difference. And so for me, ultimately this work is about patient care and patient wellbeing.
The research is really clear. When the doctors are well, it has a direct impact on the patients. The patient health outcome is better. The patient experience of being in the healthcare system is better. The doctor has more longevity because they have more satisfaction in their work. And so now we have a sustainable health system.
If we have doctors and, and other health professionals, if doctors feel like they can [00:14:00] achieve what they actually came into medicine for, the, the meaningful part of their work, which is to help patients get better, then they wanna stay, they love their clinical work. I mean, there's a very small portion of doctors who come for other reasons, but overall, doctors are incredibly invested in the safety of their patients and the wellbeing of their patients. They wanna go home at the end of the day saying, I helped someone, I fixed someone, I improved someone's life. They don't wanna go home saying, um, it's too hard to work in this system. And all, all the problems that we have with health, they wanna go home celebrating.
When doctors are well, their performance improves. When their performance improves, that adds to their wellbeing. It's a, it's a virtuous circle. It's a double-headed arrow. Wellbeing is performance. Performance creates wellbeing. And patients, um, are the winners.
If you know that investing in your own wellbeing is going to give you longer career, [00:15:00] happier career, more satisfying career, um, improved reputation, joy, you know that your family is gonna get you coming home happier, generally a nicer person. Then why wouldn't you make that investment? I mean, it's incredibly frustrating for me to hear, have doctors ring up and say things are not going well for them in whatever version. Uh, or, um, medicine isn't what they hoped it was gonna be, or they're not able to deliver what they thought they could in medicine and then not do anything about it. I think that's devastating actually. That, um, here we are, these incredibly intelligent, driven people who serve the community to the best of their ability. Um, actually can't reach their potential because they don't have the skills. And when they come to work with us in Recalibrate particularly, but also in the one-on-one coaching, they build the skills of emotional intelligence, of [00:16:00] effective communication that's really grounded in human to human connection, not some technical thing in a book, they're present. They, they have all of the information available to them and they know how to use it skillfully. That's what we are teaching at Recalibrate. People hear, oh, I'm gonna learn about communication. And they think, well, I've been learning about communication since first year medical school.
But they haven't really, they, they haven't. I mean, people come to talk to me about their exams and they say, we practice and they say, I'm gonna, um, show that I'm empathic because that's part of the matrix for passing the exam. And I say, how will you do that? And they say, I don't really know.
So even though they've been taught. They don't feel skillful. And when I talk at conferences and places like that, bigger audiences, doctors will say, this is all very well, we agree we need those skills, but how, how do we get them? And that's the niche that we are trying to fill, that we are offering a [00:17:00] way, individually and collectively, in small groups that aren't too threatening and learning these skills of empathy and, um, communication and human trust building requires time. It doesn't happen through osmosis. Unless you've had a really good mentor accidentally, you might not know how to do those things.
I think that our imaginations are incredibly powerful and they run away with us. So when we know that we need to do something or we've got a gap in our skills, our mind is really quick to tell us how, you know, everybody else can do it and I can't, or, um, that's okay for all those other people, but would it work for me? That's a big question. When we launch into a new, anything, any new learning, new course, anything that's gonna cost money and time, it's like, well, will it really work for me? And that's definitely what happens for doctors who are delaying coming to do this work. They're. I think it's [00:18:00] fear that gets in the way and we work really hard to reduce that fear and, and help people feel welcome and safe.
And in fact, the doctors tell me we shouldn't call it a safe place. We should call it a brave place. So there is an amount of, of bravery that needs to arrive here, which is kind of ironic because doctors are doing brave things all day every day in their decision making. For and with other people, you know, I, I have total belief that they have the capacity to come here and learn the skills that they need for more effective intrapersonal, so managing their own wellbeing, their own internal life. And interpersonal, they, they have the capacity to build the skills. They just need to decide that that's gonna make a difference in their life. And the evidence is very clear to me that when they come here, it does make a difference because they come back and we have incredible loyalty.
Our, our doctor clients [00:19:00] often stay for many, many years. Um, not so much because they need, not for some dependency, but because they know that reflective practice happens when you make it a priority and you build in time. If you say, yes, I need to do reflective practice, but you never actually book a time in your diary, it's pretty hard to make it happen.
And actually the medical board require doctors, the medical board in Australia says that reflective practice should be a core competency for doctors. That's what we're trying to do.
A lot of doctors dont know what coaching is because its kind of new in their, in their spectrum. Coaching's been in other industries for 30 or 40 years, but fairly new for medicine. So coaching is a forward focused process. It's a way for doctors to really zero in on what's happening in their life, what matters in their work particularly, but in their wider life. We do a lot of systems work, where we're thinking about how are they interacting with the system and how are they serving it or is it serving them? It's a way to reimagine their future. It's a way to [00:20:00] address limitations and places where they've got stuck. So it's really a place that they can come and talk about what they need, kind of like bespoke professional development really. And the professional development that you do, because it's so, um, specific to you and your needs, it really helps people think more broadly about their, their wider life and how they're interacting with the world.
People do leave coaching feeling really empowered and like they've got agency, they often arrive feeling like they're being done to, and they leave feeling like I'm in control of my own destiny. Not, perhaps control's not the right word, but I, I can have an impact and an influence on my own destiny.
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