Emotional Intelligence and Character Strength for the Healthcare Leader

Bahar Sedarati, MD, CPE, FCUCM, believes that emotional intelligence is a significant human skill. From her youth growing up in Iran, to her training as an internist, to her passion for teaching and mentoring, and now as a career coach, Sedarati’s message is focusing on what we have versus what we want.

In this interview with Mike Sacopulos, they cover topics on whether courage or empathy can be taught, emotional intelligence and the practice of medicine, her experience with a Managing Happiness Certificate from Harvard University and in earning the Certified Physician Executive (CPE) credential from the American Association for Physician Leadership.

Sedarati mentions the book Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier by Arthur C. Brooks.

This transcript of their discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

Mike Sacopulos: Courage, optimism, patience, and empathy. These are characteristics of successful leaders. For many years, my guest has thought deeply about leadership. She has helped dozens of colleagues improve their skills. Prepare to benefit from a national leadership expert, next on SoundPractice.

My guest today is Bahar Sederati, MD, CPE, FCUCM. Sederati is a nationally known physician leader. She is the creator of thrive Masterclass and has assisted many physicians in the development of their leadership skills. It is my pleasure to welcome Bahar Sederati to SoundPractice.

Bahar Sedarati, MD, CPE, FCUCM: Thank you for having me.

Sacopulos: Oh, it is my absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining me. My brief introduction did not do you justice. Could you please describe your path as a physician leader?

Sedarati: Sure. I think Bahar is enough, just let us just go with first name. I feel more comfortable and at home. Thank you for having me. As a physician leader, well, I am a board-certified internist. I am originally from Iran, born and raised in Iran, did my medical school in Iran, and about 25 years ago I left, and I came and started my journey outside Iran. That started my career as a teacher and a professor in a university, not intended, but that really helped me to really discover or uncover my passion of teaching and coaching and helping.

Then I started my residency in a Yale affiliated hospital in Connecticut. After that, after three years of residency, came to California, worked in private practice about 10 years, and then transitioned from a private practice to an executive role and developed more skill set in the leadership and developing emotional intelligence as a significant human skill that is very aligned in the leadership field.

Sacopulos: Let us look a little bit more at that because I am interested in COPE methodology. Is it possible to teach courage or empathy?

Sedarati: I think we all have courage and empathy. We are going to teach people how to deploy it and how to master it and explore areas that are barriers in fully expressing it. These are human characters. These are human skills. So, I sincerely believe most, if not all people have different degrees of it. One of the greatest, maybe, evolution in my life has been that I came out of this dichotomy on a black and white mindset, and I see everything as a dial. So, it is like an equalizer, and you are creating different sound systems, and in different stages of your life you have different levels of each of these components. The goal is that at each given time, be able to elevate them and deploy them and then reflect and go back and see what the barrier was to deploying them to understand myself better and give me an opportunity to enhance that personal character.

Sacopulos: Are there some personality types that find that easier to do than others?

Sedarati: Well, there is a pop psychology personality type and there is personality type that is being defined by DSM-5. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I really do not have that much depth necessary to judge. But the way I look at it, I look at it from a lens of life, and I believe these are human skills, and human skills, I genuinely believe they are emotional intelligence. And if someone has higher degree of each of these elements or perhaps elements that I'm not including in my model, that goes back to their life experiences, their childhood, their upbringing, the parenting model, what they have seen from either nature or nurture, and then the life experiences in their adolescence and adulthood and what they have cultivated.

Human experiences are the foundation of our wisdom, and they are based on the experiences that we have had. We have two types of intelligence. We have a fluid intelligence, we learn, we study, we are acquiring it, and then based on those we will be facing experiences in our life and then we will have applied intelligence, which is a crystallized intelligence. So that is how I believe the knowledge will transfer and flow through. You have something, you go through life and then you gain some wisdom and then you reflect, and you adjust. This is without any training.

Now, to answer your question, depending what your life story is and what your DNA is, you may have different levels of it, but we are in the 21st century and we need to really activate those more than ever because we're facing an industry, we are facing a war, we are facing an area of our life from work life, media, social media, technology, that they are mastering these skills and how they are taking control of us, and yet we are not there yet.

Sacopulos: Interesting. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about the influence of social media as it comes to these topics. I just want to understand, and this is maybe preliminary, most of your work is with your colleagues that are physicians. Is that correct?

Sedarati: I would say 50/50, either physicians or executives.

Sacopulos: Okay, great. Now as to, my word may be stronger than what your sentiment is Bahar, so you correct me, but it sounds like you are saying that there is some degree of maybe manipulation through social media of people. Am I misunderstanding what you are saying? Maybe you could clarify.

Sedarati: I think we are all being influenced by media and social media. It is the nature of a human being. If you have a limbic system, if you have a limbic primal brain, you are under the influence of your surroundings. That is the nature of humans. We have it and there is a reason why we have it. So, I have a different view. Instead of rejecting it, I embrace that we have an emotional brain, which is our limbic brain, and this is designed to help us to act. Sometimes we really need to act fast. You see a snake, you do not have time to think about what the snake is to escape, so that is why you have that brain. Evolutionary, that was required a lot more because back then you had to probably even escape from the lions. But right now, you do have that and there is a benefit. There is an evolutionary benefit to it. But now we have a different level of threat and different level of stimulation and influence, which is technology and social media. So, if you are human, you have an emotional brain, you are under the influence.

Sacopulos: I read that you earned a Managing Happiness Certificate from Harvard University. I have to say I am intrigued. Can you tell me about the certification and what you learned?

Sedarati: Sure. So, to give you a little bit of backstory, I was sick with COVID, and I had nothing else to do. I came across a podcast that was a conversation between Simon Sinek and Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks is an instructor who teaches that course at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, and he has done a lot of research regarding happiness. He recently had a book with Oprah, which is skipping my mind, but I am sure we can link to your audience in podcast notes.

So that is how I was introduced to that concept. Then I looked and I found this course through Harvard Business Review, which is the Science of Happiness. What I've learned is if we change our mindset, and that was perhaps one of the revolutionary lessons that I learned, if we change our mindset from focusing on what we want to have to what we already have, so to replace greed with gratitude, that's foundational in developing a happier life.

I think this may speak to physicians because as physicians we are programmed, and we have this deep desire and drive and motivation to learn and enhance and just be better and go for it. It is a great attribute to have. But we also have to pause from time to time and reflect and see what we are after? Is more bringing us happiness? Is happiness necessary or not? And as Arthur Brooks explains, as we go to a certain stage of our life, we have gained so much experience and wisdom based on all the knowledge that we have acquired. So, let's see, I go to high school, I go to college in America. I did my medical school in Iran, so it was seven years. But let's go through the college and medical school and residency. You are acquiring knowledge, but then you enter life and then based on knowledge, you have experiences, and you coin, and you build your wisdom.

So, you transition from you are getting, grabbing, learning, kind of also sharing, sharing the wisdom, sharing that crystallized intelligence. That is another viewpoint that will help us to live a happier life. That is perhaps the reason, and I am going to invite all of your listeners to reflect, are we happier when we go after something or are we happier when we give to something? Is service and contribution more meaningful to us, or just accumulating success and building a strong resume of achieving one role after each other? Which one is a bigger driver or a more sustainable drive for us?

Sacopulos: Do you think that the very characteristics that make people successful early in their life, fight against them being happy later in their life?

Sedarati: What is success? I think we have to first define what success means. Is success achievement, or is success happy? To me, success is a happy, fulfilled life. It is not a one-dimensional concept. Achievement is a part of that concept, but it is not all of it. So, if you look at positive psychology, Martin Seligman has coined the term PERMA, which is a foundation of happiness. I did build my own form or framework for happiness. It is based on PERMA, so it is not original, but that is how I understand it. And what I call, I term that FORMM. F-O-R-M-M. So, to be happy, you need five different things. F stands for flow. So, you are in a state where whatever you are involved in, whatever is your career, you are having that flow state. The challenge and joy that you are getting from it, it is creating an equilibrium, so you are not bored, and you are not super anxious. So that is the flow.

And then optimism is a great attribute to happiness, which brings you gratitude, brings you contentment. Then is relationship. R stands for relationship. Cultivating a strong relationship is a significant part of happiness. The longest happiness study by Harvard was done, which was over 80 years, and that showed that the strongest index of happiness is having relationships. Then the first M stands for meaning. What meaning or purpose I am following in my life? Am I just after building a resume, or no, I want to contribute to this world? Do I have a cause? Do I have a value? Do I have a purpose bigger than me? The last M is mastery, and mastery is your achievements. So, there are different components, and each of them has their own value.

Sacopulos: Very interesting. You do coaching. Can you tell me how if someone that is listening to us today is interested in interacting with you, what that looks like and how they can get a hold of you?

Sedarati: I think the best way of getting hold of me is through LinkedIn.

Sacopulos: I was pleased to see that you completed work to become a certified physician executive from the American Association for Physician Leadership, the host of this podcast. Can you tell me about your experience with the AAPL?

Sedarati: It was a very pleasant experience. I consider myself a part of the family. In fact, I am a Vanguard member. It was an interesting journey and it opened my eyes to so many different skill sets that, as a leader, and in my case as a physician executive, you need to learn that perhaps you haven't learned in your traditional medical training, and to be successful, to drive change and also to face this uncertainties and change and learn the nuances of a healthcare system, something that we are not learning the system. We are fantastic and master the art of seeing patients and making a diagnosis. But this is not something that we are actively trained in. And this is a component that I highly recommend for any physician, even if they're not intending to be in a fully executive level, but understand the nuances of healthcare. So, you may not consider becoming a CPE like me, but this AAPL offers a lot of different courses that you can just take on the areas that you feel interests you and will add value to work as an employed physician or as a practice owner.

Sacopulos: Well, that sounds like very good advice to me. Bahar, as our time together comes to an end, I would like to ask you what may seem to be an odd question. You are a gifted artist, and I was very impressed with your work. Can you tell me about art's impact upon your practice of medicine?

Sedarati: On practice of medicine and art? Well, I see everything in colors. Think everything in my life is color coded. My calendar is color coded. My Gmail is color coded. My entire stack of Google Drive is color coded, so everything has a color. So that is how I organize my mind, where each item belongs. Understanding the concepts of medicine early on, I always drew everything. I would create avatars, and I would put different signs on that avatar and that avatar become a disease. That is how I actually taught very complex diseases. I use a lot of charts and diagram and flow charts, and that is how, in fact, I got my Green Card. I got my Green Card as a medical illustrator and contributing author to USMLE board review books, First Aid series. It was an honor to work with the team, and that is how I got my Green Card.

Sacopulos: Well, it is fascinating. You are clearly a very gifted artist, and I would encourage our audience to look at some of your work because, at least to me, I found it wildly impressive.

Sedarati: Thank you.

Sacopulos: As someone who cannot draw a stick figure, I am incredibly jealous. Tell us one more time how people can get a hold of you if they would like to work with you.

Sedarati: Sure. You can reach me on LinkedIn Bahar Sederati, MD. My profile is open. If you would like to follow me, you are more than welcome. You can DM me on LinkedIn and I am accessible.

Sacopulos: Excellent. Well, thank you very much. Dr. Bahar Sederati, thank you for being on SoundPractice.

Sedarati: Thank you for having me.

Sacopulos: My thanks to Bahar Sederati for her time and insights. Dr. Sederati is a true physician leader.

Listen to this episode of SoundPractice .