SAR Snapshot: Mayo's Take 5 Series

An opportunity to share some of my core ideas with medical professionals

This past fall, I wrote about my time speaking to doctors and other medical professionals at a conference hosted by the Mayo Clinic. During that visit, I recorded a short video as part of Mayo’s “Take 5” series. The series is part of Mayo Clinic’s Academy of Educational Excellence and consists of five-minute faculty development videos that include “five memorable strategies, tips, or tools to help you in your role as an educator.”

My contribution to the Take 5 series drew from my work on pluralism and difference, in a script developed largely by my friend, Mayo neurologist Dr. Andrea Leep Hunderfund. As I share in the video:

Learning to disagree well is essential to becoming a good lawyer, and I know the same is true for doctors, biomedical scientists, and other health professionals. For most of us, these skills do not come naturally. Sometimes we are tempted to shy away from disagreement by avoiding certain topics, minimizing differences, or engaging complex issues in relatively superficial ways. Other times we are tempted to entrench or even weaponize our own positions, leaving little space for alternative views—or the people who hold them. We can avoid both extremes. And as teaching faculty, we have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to model a more constructive posture.

I offer five strategies for this posture: (1) Consider the context; (2) Seek meaningful discourse; (3) Invite but don’t demand participation; (4) Remember the person behind the problem; and (5) Model deep listening that is patient, courageous, and humble.

The video is now available online (as a lawyer, I apparently needed six minutes). I invite you to watch it and let me know whether and how it applies to your own life.