Dr. Lee Sharma interviews Dr. Resa Lewiss author of MicroSkills: Small Actions, Big Impact. Dr. Lewiss unpacks how mastering small, intentional behaviors like pausing, documenting, and recognizing workplace dynamics can transform your career.
What does it take to thrive in medicine beyond clinical excellence? In this episode, Dr. Lee Sharma speaks with Dr. Resa Lewiss about the small, everyday actions that can make a big impact on your career. Dr. Lewiss shares how she turned feelings of being left out of the "professional playbook" into a guide for others, offering practical tools like pausing before reacting, scheduling emails thoughtfully, and recognizing conflict early.
They also explore the deeper cost of unresolved conflict in the workplace, from burnout to poor patient care. Dr. Lewiss explains how to spot gaslighting using the D.A.R.V.O. framework and why having a trusted support circle—your personal board of directors—can make all the difference.
Three Actionable Takeaways:
About the Show:
Behind every procedure, every patient encounter, lies an untold story of conflict and negotiation. Scalpel and Sword, hosted by Dr. Lee Sharma—physician, mediator, and guide—invites listeners into the unseen battles and breakthroughs of modern medicine. With real conversations, human stories, and practical tools, this podcast empowers physicians to reclaim their voices, sharpen their skills, and wield their healing power with both precision and purpose.
About the Guest:
Dr. Resa Lewiss is a board-certified emergency physician, professor of emergency medicine, and a pioneer in point-of-care ultrasound. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, she has trained and taught at top institutions including Harvard and Mount Sinai. She is the co-author of MicroSkills: Small Actions, Big Impact, a guide to practical workplace strategies that address conflict, leadership, and psychological safety. A frequent keynote speaker and advocate for equity in medicine, Dr. Lewiss uses storytelling and strategy to empower healthcare professionals at every level.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/resaelewissmd/
About the Host:
Dr. Lee Sharma is a gynecologist based in Auburn, AL, with over 30 years of clinical experience. She holds a Master’s in Conflict Resolution and is passionate about helping colleagues navigate workplace challenges and thrive through open conversations and practical tools.
Connect with Dr. Lee Sharma:
📧 Email: scalpelandsword@gmail.com
🌐 Website: East Alabama Health - Dr. Sharma
Speaker 1: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the Scalpel and Sword Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst, and I am so excited today to have on the podcast Dr. Risa Lewis. Dr. Lewis is a graduate of Brown University. She did her medical school training at the University of Pennsylvania.
She's a Howard Hughes research scholar, and she also, uh. Worked at the Harvard Emergency Medicine in Mount Sinai, St. Luke's Roosevelt. she also works a point of care of ultrasound in the emergency room, and she is the author of this amazing book, micro Skills, small Actions, big Impact, and we are definitely going to try to mine the gold from this book today.
Dr. Lewis, thank you so much for
being on the podcast. It is more than wonderful to be with you, and I'm not sure I've been in conversation with a conflict analyst
before, so I'm ready. Mm-hmm. Well, I, got a master's in conflict resolution in 2001, when I was in a really rough patch, [00:01:00] professionally, I just didn't know if I wanted to keep practicing medicine and was wondering if I needed a career outside of medicine and went back and got my master's while I was working full-time, raising small kids and a wife of a physician.
but it's been one of the greatest things I've ever done because it literally changed how I practice medicine. It changed how I approached my professional career. It gave me tools and. what I think is so cool about your book and why I'm so excited to get into this today is I think you break this down so beautifully and in such a way that people who are hearing the podcast and hopefully will go get the book, are gonna have not just actionable steps, but a reference that they can go back to again and again and again.
At what point did you sit down and realize it's like this is something, these micro skills. I would love to know how you came up with this definition of these skills and what made you
wanna put it down on paper. Thanks for that question. And when I think about it, it goes way back. It goes way back, I think, first to realizing that.
I've had the [00:02:00] experience, certainly a few in college, but definitely when I got to med school of looking around, number one, I was super excited that I was in med school, like I'm one of those people that wanted to be a doctor my whole life, yet no one in my family is a doctor. So when I got there, I was like, wow.
And there were a lot of children of doctors and there were certainly people that seemed to me knew how to navigate the space. I. More than I did. Sure. I had skills from being a really good stu and listening, paying attention, you know, being a rule follower, but there's so much more to navigating the workplace and doing well in school and then ultimately in your
Job. And I was acutely aware that I felt like I had missed out on certain of these rules. if I were to make a sports reference, the playbook, I felt like there were people that had a copy of that playbook and I didn't get a copy. So. for many, problems, goals, projects, even like habits. When I looked at other people that they seem to be good at something, but I'm like, oh, I must not [00:03:00] be good at that.
Mm-hmm. I started figuring out ways. To achieve these projects, these goals, these habits, these skills. And one way was speaking with people like, How do you do this? And many of us probably have spoken with someone that seemed to be really good at something. And when you ask them, they're like, oh, I don't know, it just happened.
Or, oh, you know, I just tried. And no one gives you actually actionable behaviors or breaks things down into small concrete steps that you can learn. So when I've talked about this book before about writing and how I didn't consider myself a writer. Sure. I wrote essays to get into all those different stages of study, but I never considered myself comfortably, confidently, or competently a writer.
And it all came to a head about seven to eight years as a faculty member. So I got that far along and I was in New York City. And I really thought that an academic path was right for me, but where I was working wasn't [00:04:00] completely structured and set up for academic physicians. Certainly an excellent clinical practice for physicians, but it wasn't a hundred percent academic.
And I knew there were places that were more academic that would support me with resources in that way. So I actually called back to where I had trained in Boston and they had said, let us know when you wanna come back. Mm-hmm. I took them literally. So I called, I was like, I'm ready, Uhhuh. And they looked me up on PubMed, which is, where peer reviewed publications get posted.
And in terms of scientific and medical journal publications, eight years in. I had four publications and one was from, medical school. So I wasn't writing, I was doing all sorts of other things. Productive as an emergency physician, but not publishing, Very much then and there realized, okay, this is a currency.
I don't currently have much currency IE writing and publishing, but I really wanted to, I wanted to have a career in academic emergency medicine, so I [00:05:00] broke how to write down into three steps and. That came from speaking with people, like how do you do this? And the people that were willing to have an honest conversation with me said, you gotta just write.
Yeah. And you know, someone else shared with me that it's good to edit and be a peer review journal editor where you, so then you see other people's examples. Mm-hmm. And the other thing was reading. I've been a lifelong reader. I started deliberately reading books. On
writing. Wow. And all of that gave you such a great framework to start putting your life experience in a context that you could share it with the rest of us.
Also, I love it that as you're talking about writing it's like you didn't look at the fact that you had four publications and go, oh no. Well, that's it. You said, no, I'm gonna actively engage in this process. I'm going to collect the tools that I need to actually become a good writer.
And you didn't shy away from that. I feel like curiosity is such a big part of success that you were curious about the process and being curious led you to [00:06:00] producing something
that's helping so many other people. And it's all about small steps, like small actions, hence micro skills.
and it was like one book or one peer reviewed article. But also when I started doing the writing, it started small. It was like a case report. And by that point you share that within emergency medicine, I did extra training in ultrasound. It was easier to get case reports accepted for publication.
So if you were to look at my publications, now I have a good number, but. These aren't necessarily like out NIH funded research studies. Mm-hmm. Some are case reports, some are case series right. Started small and slowly built from there. And my confidence built and my competence built.
You get better at it the more you do it.
Yeah, that is so cool. I think sometimes there is a tendency to look at people who have done what you have done and are doing and think, oh my gosh, you just woke up one day and wrote a book. Oh no. There was so much that went behind that. And I think the idea of a [00:07:00] micro skill, I don't have to do all the great big things all at once.
Because that's not really feasible. I wanna break it down into small things that I can do every single day. And as I do the small things, the small things add up to the big things, and that becomes something that, oh, okay, well this led me to a place where I actually did something that. I still think the small things are big, but if you perceive them as something being bigger, then that's really cool because that journey led you to that point.
Um, I really wanna jump into your chapter on conflict resolution and I got to hear Dr. Lewis speak last Saturday, so literally I met her four days ago at the State Medical Association meeting in Alabama, and she gave one of the keynotes and was just phenomenal.
I love the fact that you dressed like your icons. You had icons on your slide, and you dressed like the icons, and every woman in the audience was like. Yes. 'cause that was so cool. I loved that. And it made a lot of those icons more memorable. [00:08:00] you were talking about your icon being left-handed and that you're also left-handed.
there was a lot that I think really allowed us to keep those images and take those messages with us. And I loved that about your talk. As we start getting into conflict, I think one of the things I also loved, and I really just wanted to make this its own point because I thought it was so powerful, was having a personal board of directors.
Having people in your life that are your sounding boards that you know will give you an honest answer if you ask them a true question. and surrounding yourself with those people. One of the other doctors in the audience who is a good friend of mine, and we are in a group of about eight women. Most of us are doctors, but we're all medical.
One of the texts that she sent out right after your talk was, I wanna thank all of you for being my personal board of directors, and the next time we get together I'll explain that. Of course, I was in the audience going. Yes. because I thought that was so neat that she immediately translated that to, these are my people.
and we are the people that when we have a [00:09:00] conflict situation, those are the people that we reach out to, to be our honest mirrors, to actually give us true feedback. And I loved it that you spoke about it and immediately there are people in the audience who were texting their personal board of directors.
And saying thank you. and so as somebody who I feel like also has been blessed enough to have that, I hope that's a message that people listening to the podcast can take home. And I wanted to make sure that I brought that out 'cause I thought that was such a cool concept. but I'm referencing that back to your chapter.
In micro skills about conflict, and one of the first statements you make in the chapter is that 85% of us, 85%, and it's probably closer, it's probably a higher number than that will encounter conflict at some point in our career. and that conflict isn't necessarily a big screaming match. This can be very small things that we encounter personally.
You and your co-author, I think, do a nice job of using like narratives from your. personal careers to highlight [00:10:00] this, but one of the ones I wanna bring up is. When we are in conflict or in that situation, one of the most important things that we have to draw out is that we are part of that situation.
And being part of that doesn't mean we've done anything negative or anything wrong. Situations are situations and conflicts exist. And one of the things that you'd mentioned was that you were emailing a colleague, but the email was going on a Saturday. And so because the colleague was getting an email on a Saturday, they were reading it on the Saturday, and then the following, they'd mentioned to you, Hey, this email upset me over the weekend.
I felt like that was work coming in, and I loved how you handled that. I would
love to talk about that more. So thanks for bringing that. Example up and for audience members who weren't in the audience in Perdido Beach and who haven't read the book yet. The book is comprised of 10 chapters and it's a business book.
our audience we think is people that are ready for school, ready for work, and, Skewed a little bit towards [00:11:00] early career, but certainly Mid-career people really resonate with what we talk about and we try to illustrate these micro skills and designate this book is different from all the other business help books, right?
In that we actually break it down and give behaviors. We tell people how you've touched on a few of the micro skills that we have. Spread throughout the book, and that is great because that's actually intentional. These micro skills are additive and they go across skills, and once you learn one micro skill, you bring it with you to the next, and they slowly build upon each other and you don't even know.
Mm-hmm. You're gonna pull out this personal board of directors and then you do, when all of a sudden you find yourself
navigating
conflict. Yeah. Micro skills for self-care. One of those is your board of directors, and for some people who aren't familiar with that term, it's this concept of almost a round table of people that you trust, you respect, and they are committed to you to help you navigate your professional career.
They're the people you call. for specific [00:12:00] things, like maybe you have someone you call when you have questions about managing your finances. Mm-hmm. Say you had a bad shift and there's someone that you call, we use that term failure friend, you had a bad shift or you had a bad patient outcome and you just wanna talk about it.
No judgment. Yeah. And someone who know what you're talking about. Or, as I say, when you're trying to figure out who's on your personal board of directors, who can you name that every single time you speak with them, you just feel better. Yeah. So that's the personal board of directors, and you are spot on that they are with you specifically when you're navigating conflict.
The story which I will share comes from our chapter on Polish communication, talking
about
email and email culture. Mm-hmm. Now many of us think email, like I know how to email, like what's the big deal about email? But oh my gosh, there's so much nuance to email and we can all be better. So I shared this story that I ran, an every Monday meeting and it was the ultrasound section within emergency medicine.
One Monday we all gathered and one [00:13:00] of the team members said to me, Risa, when you send me an email on a Saturday, I get really stressed out. And I was surprised. I'm like, what do you mean you get stressed out? I'm thinking we're emergency doctors. We work all hours. We work days, we work weekends, we work nights, we work holidays.
You know, we just send emails whenever, why does it matter? And he said, I know that when you're sending it to me, it's not emergent because it's an email. Otherwise you text me or call me, but you are my supervisor. So when I see an email come into my inbox, I feel like I need to open it up, read it, and even sometimes get to work on it, even though I know I probably don't.
I need to get to work on it until Monday or Tuesday. And I was so appreciative. That he shared that with me and that he felt comfortable offering me that feedback. Mm-hmm. Now, there's a theme in this book, like I do try to have growth mindset. I try to think of everything you can learn from, we can always be better.
I've always wor had that mantra of trying to be better. Yeah. And so. No one had ever said that [00:14:00] to me, and it made me think how many other people have felt that way, but just not, had the courage mm-hmm. To share that. And it turns out one of the, taking care of self and healthy workplace culture, behaviors that we can all adopt is rather than sending emails at any time that we can really write the email, but schedule the send and the microscale is scheduling the send and.
You know there's something in the UK called the Athena Swan Charter, and that actually sets rules and guidelines to have healthy workplaces. And one of the specific rules that comes out of that Athena Swan charter is that meetings and emails should really happen and be sent from Monday to Friday, 10 to four.
Meaning business hours. Now to be clear, we're all physicians and we know the workplace does not function 10 to four, Monday to Friday only. But there is an element, like when we really think about it. Are emails that urgent that they can't actually be received into [00:15:00] someone's email inbox during those days and hours.
Mm-hmm. No, I mean that's fine. And it really changed the way I did things. I a hundred percent my mind is on, I'm always thinking about things. We encourage people, go ahead and write the email, get it down on paper. Yeah. But. You don't have to send it right then you can schedule and send it for
Monday at 8:00 AM I love that.
I love it that number one, that we're pulling things from other countries. you talk about what they do in the uk, but the idea of creating a space in which this happens, I have created an actual boundary to say, yes, I respect what you're doing. and I also too, I love the idea of you don't wanna lose the thought.
It's like you obviously had something very good to share. You don't wanna lose that, but I'm also gonna respect that other person's boundary by making sure that it
occurs at a specific time. Oh, I was gonna say if it's that urgent or emergent, then probably email not the right medium.
And so you can text someone, you can pick up the phone. there's a global aspect to [00:16:00] one of the reasons to think about email and sending it respectfully. It came out of an article that my co-author and I wrote where we talked about, rather than thinking about your own email inbox mm-hmm.
We want. A very generous email culture where you're thinking about the other person's email inbox and when people have email coming into that inbox, and it comes off this global notion that, we have a burnout epidemic. Mm-hmm. And it's really important that you protect your own as well as your team members, ability to separate from
work.
Yes, one of the things that you talk about in the chapter on conflict resolution, that I was creating this space of psychological safety one of the things I loved about that, and you kind of open the chapter with it, is the idea that conflict is going to exist. It's going to happen.
And a lot of times I think when we are in spaces that aren't as safe, sometimes people try to deny conflict. You do touch on conflict avoidance because I think that's such a common style that people have when it comes to [00:17:00] conflict. But I also sometimes think the reason why we have. Conflict avoidant cultures, and we do have conflict avoidant whole cultures is because we don't have these skills, we don't have a micro skill to approach communicate.
And rather than get in an uncomfortable space with it, we're just gonna deny that it's even occurring. so creating that space of psychological safety where people do feel comfortable, the person did feel comfortable coming to you and saying, okay, Dr. Lewis, I thank you for the email, but. It does put me in a head space on Saturday that I don't need to be in.
Can we do it? But that person, you created a space where that person could do that. I want to go to the book because I have it marked and I do love how this is broken down. one of the things that she talked about in the micro skills was recognizing conflict. So talk to us a little bit about that particular micro skill and how people can start to break that down to recognize it.
'cause a lot of times conflict happens around us and we may
not even be aware that it's happening. 100%. [00:18:00] I think you know it when you see it. but your eyes have to be open to it and you have to be aware that it's happening. And it's not just happening, but often you're a part of it. So we talk about one of the micro skills is recognizing conflict.
Mm-hmm. And that specific story was shared by my co-author, where she was actually, a tutor, when she was in college or high school. And then that follows by actually. Acknowledging your role in conflict, and I share some stories, in that chapter where there was, a workplace that I was a part of.
And in fact, my mentee would talk to me about this faculty member mm-hmm. That everybody talked about. Everybody would say, how's it going with that faculty person? Because everybody had a conflict with that person. Everybody had a either a verbal type of conflict or even sometimes like a bit of a body language sort of getting in people's personal space.
Mm-hmm. And this person was known to be volatile and [00:19:00] unpredictable and Would throw resident doctors outta the emergency department. And what I observed from hearing about these ongoing interactions was when you don't deal with conflict, it actually decreases morale in the workplace. It really was, you know, we're now hearing this term moral injury.
I really think it was a moral injury to people to know what it was like to work with this person, to know that they were uncomfortable. 'cause they never knew what mood and what volatility was gonna. Emerge from this person, but also I think it had been going on for years, like over a decade, and this person was slowly promoted and almost rewarded for this very toxic noxious behavior that mm-hmm.
Disrupted the psychological safety of the workplace. And as I shared in the talk, when there's not psychological safety. People don't do their best work and people don't feel safe, people don't speak up. And first thank you for even acknowledging I had never seen it, that my team member felt safe to [00:20:00] speak up.
that had never been reflected back to me. So thank you. people didn't feel safe with this person or safe to speak up. And this issue had lingered and been thread throughout the culture of the workplace for over a decade as I shared. And I really saw. What it did to people. And also this is why people will leave the workplace 'cause they don't feel safe and they don't feel like someone who is in consistent cause of conflict is not being dealt with.
I agree with you. It's human nature, I think to avoid conflict. 'cause it might be difficult. People aren't comfortable with the conversation. Difficult conversations are hard. And I'm gonna circle back to the personal board of directors. Your personal board of directors contain people who are great people with whom you can role play conversations.
Mm-hmm. And can tell you, Say you don't recognize your role in conflict. You can say, this happened at work and be honest with me. Be radically honest, like what was my role? And those people you trust [00:21:00] and you feel safe to actually say to you, Hey, from what you're sharing, here's where I think you actually did play a role in that conflict.
So that goes back to even again, having those people in your life that you can really
have honest
conversations
with. Wow, that is so great. The idea of, if we're gonna learn to have difficult conversations, that we have an opportunity, we build our board, our personal board of directors to practice that, you know, we're building a skillset to be able to engage that way.
also, I. I think it is so cool drawing that parallel between moral injury and these systemic, 'cause moral injury is a systemic issue. That's what makes it different from burnout. Moral injury is systemic. It is the system asking somebody to do something that goes against their own moral fiber and burnout, where it's more characterized as something that's more of a personal.
And when the system starts to take ownership of conflict, and especially if there are specific actors that are involved in creating that toxic culture. When the system lets that go, it is basically [00:22:00] telling the person who is the victim or complicit in that conflict. We really don't care that you're suffering.
We're letting this go. We know it's affecting your work. We know it's affecting your personal life. We know it's affecting your emotional functioning. But one of the things that you also bring up in the chapter, which I think people sometimes don't think about, is conflict has a cost that's also financial and also related to patient care.
We are not gonna do our best work when we are caught in a toxic conflict culture and we are being, purposely gaslighted, then no one's going to put their best workout. If you're really trying to get people well trained and have good patient care, having this system that perpetuates moral injury is.
Basically the fast track away from that. you also talk about an acronym to recognize gaslighting. And I think one of the things when you talked about conflict, it's not always great, big and bad. Sometimes it can be more subtle. And being able to recognize that we're in that situation is so [00:23:00] important.
can we talk about dvo because I think that's such
a great thing for people to learn about. Yeah. I'm really glad you brought up Dvo and. There is an amazing PhD psychologist who, this has been her life's work. Her name is Jennifer Fried. Mm-hmm. And she has a website and has a lot of published work and some books on these.
sort of workplace phenomenon that she has put a name to. And I find often having a name helps us feel better 'cause we can actually call it out. Yep. So she talks a lot about institutional betrayal and that is what happens when bad actors are allowed to be in a workplace, not have any professional.
Improvement plan. Mm-hmm. Get actively promoted and everybody knows that they are bullies or they have verbal violence seeing or they are sexual harassers. that causes betrayal for people. And I think ultimately moral injury, institutional courage is what we'd love to see the [00:24:00] institutions doing the right thing.
Yeah. And the individual agents of those institutions are the leaders, the supervisors, the people that need to have the difficult conversations. Gaslighting. I think the audience is probably familiar with, I think it was the word of the year in 20 20, 22. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So DVO is a kind of gaslighting and it's an acronym as you state.
It's D-A-R-V-O, deny attack. Reverse victim and offender. I became familiar with this because I witnessed a phenomenon, an incident where I worked, and I really struggled with what it did to the true victim. Mm-hmm. And I'll explain what it is, and I ended up, we wrote an article about it.
And so when I became aware of this. Term it perfectly described a scenario that actually we wrote about as I shared, and I don't know that we use that example in the book, but [00:25:00] essentially there was an unstable patient. A bunch of people were called to the room to help with resuscitation in the act of resuscitation.
A more senior supervisor, verbally.
Violated, a trainee and actually mm-hmm. Was witness to have put hands on the trainee Oh no. As a way to protect. Basically flipped it and proactively tried to control the narrative, wrote to a bunch of people, basically, tried to paint the trainee as having, professionalism, challenges the trainee needed to be spoken to.
But meanwhile, this was a witnessed incident. So I was shocked. I was shocked that basically the perpetrator reversed it and tried to make the true victim,
the offender. Wow. Deny attack, reverse victim and offender. And I was shocked 'cause I'd never seen this play out real time. Mm-hmm. [00:26:00] I guess impressed with how.
Seamlessly. This person went into this sort of scenario of painting themselves as the victim when they weren't, and it was witnessed. And then the more I read about it, it's actually, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And you see it in. Industries outside of healthcare, it's not just a healthcare thing by any means.
Mm-hmm. And in fact, if you wanna Google South Park vo, there's a whole scene about vo. Oh, wow. and it's, yeah, but it is a way that, people transfer power and, weaponize power agency and A more senior role or mm-hmm. Uh, more access to resources to flipped, flip that dynamic and use that dynamic to protect themselves.
Mm-hmm. It's very, ugly to see. And it's unfortunate when the person who gets this turned on them somehow suffers, or, the institutions believe that they are the true perpetrator when
they're not. They're truly the victim. [00:27:00] Wow. And it's kind of like when you make a diagnosis for the first time, once you make that diagnosis, once you see that illness script, you'll never unsee it.
You see it again, you'll know it forever. And the same thing with Davo. Once you saw that play out in real time, you couldn't miss it. It's okay, I know what this is now. Yeah. And it also puts you in a place. As somebody who is in medicine has students that you actually can recognize it, and because you have power and agency, because of your career and your professional achievements, that you're able to help other people recognize that and then take agency over it.
you mentioned being um, an institutional agent for change, an institutional. Person who has courage. There's actually a name for that. In the conflict resolution literature. It's called being the agent of reality, that if you are the person that comes in and is speaking truth to that, it's like.
I'm gonna take the mask off the situation and this is what I'm actually seeing play out. That is one of the most powerful things you can [00:28:00] do as somebody who plays witness to that conflict. Because I think very often when people, and I will say especially women who are in that situation, who feel more powerless, who feel like they are in more of a junior role, they feel like they're speaking on their own, and when there are other people who can be agents of reality and say, no, sister,
I saw that happen to you. I saw that play out in a meeting where I work a few weeks ago, where a female leader was being attacked in a meeting and she did beautifully. She held her ground and at the same time, so many women went to her after and said you were. Awesome. Yeah, you handled that conflict beautifully.
And I think that helped her not be in that situation where she was actually able to recognize the davo. She's like, okay, so it wasn't just me, I was in this, like you were in it and you handled it well. So we became her short-term board of directors
and able to give her that support. One of the challenges, unfortunately, Jennifer Fried also speaks about that we [00:29:00] need to honor the whistleblower and what you just shared.
The person that speaks up or that, pulls the mask off, or, comes behind the curtain. Mm-hmm. Too often the whistleblower is not honored. That whistleblower becomes the person they try to quiet or, you know, gets negative consequences. Mm-hmm. For that reason, many people are afraid in institutions to speak up and call things out.
And often you are right. I think we as, Women or people that are trying to create safer, better, more respectful workplaces. Mm-hmm. You know, will come up and tell the person you did great. But ultimately I think these institutions, and this is what we even talk about in the book, the, these institutions are much more powerful than we are as individuals, and also we do have agency.
Mm-hmm. And so this book is also about helping people realize their agency
in the workplace. Yes. one of the things [00:30:00] that you talk about, and I think it is the conflict chapter, one of the micro skills is documenting actually sending emails and ceasing, we talked about using email for specific things, but one of the things you talk about in the book is if we are gonna be that agent of change, if we are gonna be that whistleblower, that one of the things that we do wanna do is make sure that we have.
Another level of documentation or have maybe other people who are witness to what we're trying to do within that system, so that number one, we don't feel alone. I think that's such an important part of it. But the other is that there is some level of, I don't wanna say protection, but some level of paper trail to let us know that this is what we're trying to do.
Unfortunately, you're absolutely right that people who are trying to be those agents of change, so often the system doesn't want change. The system is happy where it is. Mm-hmm. And the people who are in power, who may be using conflicts to either gain more power or to do certain things, situations to favor themselves, they [00:31:00] can use that system for that.
So trying to move within that system, sometimes. and you do. There's a whole part of this in the book. This book is so good. but there's a whole part in there about if, you know, is it time to leave my job? Do I need to leave? that's not really an option most of the time or something we want to do, but we still wanna see systemic change.
So having micro skills to lead us through that systemic change is so valuable. how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And that's
what the micro skills are showing us. It's a good time to actually bring up the three truths. When we wrote this book, we started with truth three Truths. Time can only be spent.
Think of it as a currency. Mm-hmm. The world is not equal. And that taps into what you just shared. I. When we see the world is not equal, not all of us have the same access to financial resources, pedigree, network, or knowing the workplace rules. Mm-hmm. And that's what we're trying to provide here. So what you shared about the paper trail, definitely if you're the whistleblower Sure.
Paper trail. But we're trying [00:32:00] to empower the reader who might find themselves in conflict in the workplace. And a lot of people are like, I have no idea what to do. I have no idea what to do. Mm-hmm. So we're really trying to give these actual of like start by date time and try to do it as immediate recall as possible.
The day, the time, what happened, and if you remember direct quotes and just keep it, don't put it. On a computer or in an email or on a document that's gonna be found, Mm-hmm. Put it on, write it in a journal or mm-hmm. Put it on a document that you know will never get found. And maybe you'll never need it, but maybe you will.
And, we forget things. And especially in a conflict that goes on over time, it's hard to keep details straight That's never a bad idea. and that's also because maybe you don't wanna ever act upon it, but maybe you do. Mm-hmm. And so if you do decide you wanna act on it, maybe, whatever that means, legal or.
HR and we even talk a bit about, mm-hmm. One of the reminders about who does HR serve mm-hmm. But Right. [00:33:00] I've worked at institutions where there's a Title IX office, or there's an Office of professionalism, or there's an ombuds. There's all different outlets for where, workplace conflict can
potentially be worked out.
Yeah. I also, one of the things that you talk about with conflict that I think is so cool that I think what, you know, it's such a brilliant suggestion, making this documentation, writing things down, but not necessarily to send to somebody as that personal record. Is that part of being in conflict and.
Kind of walking into that as a humble participant is, if I have a role in this, I need to acknowledge it. And doing that kind of documentation slash journaling allows us to be more reflective about what our part in this conflict could be. And sometimes if you sit there and you start journaling and writing things down, it may be oh.
Okay. The light bulb just went off, and I see that maybe I'm complicit in this way, and if we're truly being transparent in the process, people say, okay, well now I see that maybe this is [00:34:00] contributing. Let me try to correct this. Let me go to my personal board of directors. I'm working through this and I was doing some journaling and I see that this may be a pattern.
Do you guys think? And that way you're reflecting for yourself, but you're also collecting data that you can go to your personal board of directors and really see that's, and I think also too, that's taking the ego out of the conflict. So often when we get in these situations, it's our ego that's pushing this forward.
Mm-hmm. And if we can get our ego out of the way, we are much more likely to have a transformative. Solution. Yeah. it's not always about resolving it, it's about trying to get something better on the other side. And I thought that the idea of writing that down and what you just said about keeping that sort of documentation, but not to necessarily to share
is so powerful.
Yeah. And I think when we visualize this personal board of directors, there may be people your age, there may be people much more senior who have a lot of experience. They've seen a lot, perhaps they've been a chairperson. Perhaps they've, [00:35:00] served as a residency director. who knows.
But if they have age on you, they've just probably seen a lot. Right. You referenced another micro skill we talk about a lot is pausing. When we bring up pausing, we talk about pausing before accepting an opportunity, but what you just shared, pausing before you react. Pausing before
you decide
how you wanna react.
Mm-hmm. Just that pause is never a bad
idea. It's always a good idea. Oh, that's abs. Oh, absolutely. I think one of the great object lessons about pausing, which is so cool, is that conflict can be very emotional. And if we. Don't pause and our emotions start to take over.
We can dig ourselves into deeper holes. We're not necessarily going to get good transformative outcomes because when you're talking emotionally, you're not talking. Really trying to get a solution, you're really more being cathartic about the conflict and if you can pause and step back and give yourself get the emotions out of the way, you're much more likely to be [00:36:00] clear with your communication.
You're much more likely to get a more positive outcome on the other side as opposed to just barreling straight through. I'm mad and you're gonna hear about it. I think one of the things that you talked about in the book in terms of, when people like beat the wall we all need to do that, but maybe go to someplace else and go do it.
go to the bathroom and beat the wall in there before you come back out and try to reengage. I think that's. such an important thing. I want to just touch on really quick before we leave, because I love this book so much, that one of the things that you do in this book is that you actually break down the stories, but you're also breaking down the skills.
And we have our. Infographics as well. So the idea is like, I can always go back to this and I can always reference what I need to do if I'm in the middle of a situation. And so I'm taking my pause break, but I can actually go back and I can read the chapter about intentionally holding, practicing these difficult conversations.
And I just, I love that so much. But the one last thing I wanted to touch on was that you're balancing this [00:37:00] idea of competence and confidence that I think especially. if there are younger women listening to this podcast, if women in general may be in a more male dominated workplace that we're balancing, we're owning that we have professional ability, that we're good at what we do, but we also have to balance that with being confident in where we are and what we're presenting.
What are
some micro skills around doing that? There
is
a brilliantly titled Harvard Business Review article from which then a book was written, why do so many incompetent men become leaders? I'm not making that up. That is truly the title Uhhuh. It was based on market research that looked at competence and confidence, and there is a.
Gender dynamic here, men are rewarded, promoted, accepted if they appear confident, and that confident is read as being competent. [00:38:00] However, I. Almost always, women are much more competent leaders in terms of like mm-hmm. Leadership attributes, characteristics, women. in many of the industries that were surveyed, women were more competent.
However, when they tried to act confident mm-hmm. It wasn't received as warmly or as positively. They were thought of as bitchy, as opposed to like, wow, decisive. and we've even seen probably these charts or these breakdowns of one thing that's considered a positive attribute for a male leader.
Mm-hmm. It's a negative attribute for a female leader. So, you know, we have a. tough line to toe. Mm-hmm. There's a book that I recently read that I really like. I think also because of the title itself, Allison Regale is a professor of business at the University of North Carolina, and she wrote a book called Likable Badass.
Mm-hmm. And I think there's an aspect of what she [00:39:00] wrote. That's very true. We, as women, the way we're judged in the workplace is we have to be. Both competent but also sort of kind and warm. And that's the balance that we walk and that chapter when we talk about confidence and competence, we're calling out what we know to be true.
And letting the reader know a little bit of, here are the numbers, here's what happens, and here's how you can make sure. I mean, to be clear, as physicians, in medicine we need to know our stuff. Like you need to be competent. But how do you wear that competence? it's interpreted differently if you're a man versus if you're a woman.
Mm-hmm. And part of the. Intention, I think of sharing that is to just inform, kind of like, again, filling in that, those knowledge gaps that unless you get a copy of that workplace playbook, you may never know and you're like, Why am I not well liked? Mm-hmm. You know, and it may [00:40:00] just be because of things beyond your control, but once you're aware right, of the playbook and of those rules or some people will call it the hidden curriculum.
Mm-hmm. You can navigate professionally much better.
That is so awesome. Yeah. The idea that there is a hidden culture, hidden conflict and being able to find out what that playbook is, that's so important and so helpful. My mom, was a pathologist and one time she had a girl that who was one of her mentees that.
It was a third year at, Johns Hopkins just started the wards and called her mother crying, in August saying, I don't understand why the nurses hate me. I do the same thing the guys do, but they don't help me. They're so mean to me. And the mother didn't know what to do, so she called my mom.
It's like, you know, she's crying. and my mom was like, well, let me talk to her. And so mom called her. She's like, so tell me what's going on. And the medical student told her. She's like, okay, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go bake a big batch of cookies. I want you to take him to the floor, take him to the nurses and say, look, I know we got off on a bad foot, but I really want [00:41:00] to work with you, and whatever I did, I'd like to know what I'm doing so I won't do it again.
And she said after that, the nurses bent over backwards for her. But she also got to know the culture and she got access to the hidden playbook. Mm-hmm. Um, and it was one little thing. It was baking a batch of cookies. Yeah. And that got her access and that served her well, her entire professional career.
But it took somebody who'd been in practice for another 20 years who was her senior to tell her there is a hidden playbook. I'm gonna tell you how to find it. Yeah. So I think that's so beautifully stated. I love that. So this is a special day for your book. Do you wanna share
with us why this is a special day?
Yeah. I was delighted when you invited me to come on the podcast and we selected this day. 'cause today is our one year book release anniversary. I. One year ago was when the book dropped, and it was the first time I had like a mainstream book drop, and [00:42:00] it's been amazing. Fun, fun, fun experience speaking, meeting people like you, and having the opportunity to share the content with the hope that truly it helps people.
It really helps people do better at school, do better at work, have a more successful, fulfilling stress-free. Professional life. And so, yeah, it's lovely
to celebrate the birthday with you. I'm so excited that you're here and just congratulations on having something that's gonna help and has already helped so many people.
you can get the book on Amazon. I have already shared this with a bunch of people. Please go buy this book. if people wanna find you,
Dr. Lewis, how can they find you? I'm on LinkedIn and I welcome, outreaches and connections on LinkedIn. Resa e Lewis md. I have a website, resa e lewis md.com.
I'm also on Instagram and yeah, feel free to check me out, reach out. I love to, speak with people, workshop with people, author, talk with [00:43:00] people, and just, you know, overall, find ways to help. People grow their skills and
fill in their skills gaps. Well, you are definitely doing that, and you've definitely done that with our listeners today.
So thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has been fantastic. Thank you, listeners for being part of our discussion today on Scalpel and Sword. I am Dr. Lee Sharma, next time peaceful warriors be well and be at peace.