PHYSICIAN LEADER GROUP
Empowering Physicians to Lead Change
Testimonials
"I have had the great fortune of knowing and working with Ashley for several years in her role as an executive coach and my role as a health care executive in a large health system. It is my firm belief that physicians are best poised to transform and lead the dramatic changes necessary for health care to be accessible, affordable and exceptional in the united states. Physician leaders learn and grow along their leadership journeys to facilitate groups, lead change management, and provide many HR functions when managing and leading physicians, business partners and hospital executives. For our most promising and influential physician executives we have sought out Ashley to coach and work with high potential leaders. For a 6-12 month engagement with a leader, Ashley provides in depth, in person and no-holds-back leadership coaching. The significant improvements in performance and impact leaders demonstrate through working with Ashley are:
1. becoming more patient to learn and appreciate others points of view
2. listening actively
3. anticipating internal and external road blocks and landmines, and deploying effective strategies to mitigate these barriers.
4. accepting and embracing leadership trait blind spots; working to change these
5. becoming an authentic leader and team member
6. actively seeking honest feedback from friends and 'foes' in the team on an ongoing basis
Ashley is a diamond in the field of many executive coaches. She does and will make a positive difference in the individual she coaches, and, the organization who then benefits from having a first rate humble leader at the helm."
Holly Beeman MD. MBA.
Senior Healthcare Executive,
Former Chief Surgical Officer at
Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group
Rob Patrawala, MD
Chairman - Sequoia Hospital Heart and Vascular Institute
Director - Cardiac Electrophysiology Sequoia Hospital
"I recently had the opportunity to spend 4 full days learning from Ashley and Fred in a physician leadership course through Palo Alto Medical Foundation. They are truly gifted in teaching leadership to physicians. They have a wonderful interactive and engaging style that helps the learning process. They stress and help convey an understanding of the difference between leading and managing and the importance of emotional intelligence in being a leader. They helped us move from debating each other to having dialogue and managing change in a group. This course ranks up there as one of the single most life altering 4 day courses I have ever taken and have already seen the benefits in my administrative activities."
Suzie Golden-Riley
Director of PAFMG
Leadership Development
"I have worked closely with Ashley for over four years, hiring her as an executive coach for our senior leaders as well as a facilitator for some of our leadership development trainings. Ashley is an absolute delight to work with. She is a consummate professional, yet very down-to-earth and approachable. She holds confidences, engenders trust, and skillfully nudges her clients to explore new learnings about themselves, their roles, and their teams. She is upbeat, enthusiastic and encouraging for her clients as appropriate, and empathetic and compassionate as needed. She has managed some difficult clients with grace and dignity - for herself and the client.
Ashley has a great depth of experience in consulting and coaching healthcare/physician leaders, and understands the unique challenges of this industry. I would highly recommend Ashley for any kind of executive or organizational leadership development coaching or consulting. She is a gem!
Gregory R. Johnson, MD, SFHM
Chief Medical Officer, Hospitalist Medicine
Sound Physicians
"I've had the opportunity to work with Ashley and Physician Leader Group on a few differing engagements. What I find refreshing is Ashley's curiosity regarding the circumstances involved with the situations in which she is peripherally involved. I believe that's given her better insight and led to a great deal more success than even I anticipated. She also is very realistic in her assessments and doesn't make promises she cannot keep. I've enjoyed working with her and would recommend her in future coaching engagements with my team."
"In an era when many physicians are moving from full-time clinical practice of either part-time or full-time administrative duties, it is imperative that they have some form of coaching to make that transition seamlessly. While most physicians feel that they have an adequate amount of training to fulfill an administrative role, it quickly becomes apparent that there are simply portions of the job that we never learned in medical school, residency, or clinical practice. To become an effective administrator, physicians need to go on a steep learning curve to master the skills that will make them successful in their new endeavors. Ashley Wendel with Physician Leader Group, has made me a much more successful physician executive by dramatically shortening the time in which I was able to master these new skills."
Craig Rhyne, MD
Regional Chief Medical Officer
Covenant Health (Providence St. Joseph's Health)
Kelly S. Derbin, MD
Medical Director - Physician Leadership Palo Alto Medical Foundation
"Ashley and Fred are a fantastic team. I just completed their 4 session Introduction to Physician Leadership program. They create an interactive, energetic and thoughtful learning environment. We covered important principles about communication style, Emotional Intelligence, team building, difficult conversations, moving debate to dialogue, and tying the principles together to move forward with ones own goal plan. I look forward to working with them to bring this training to more of our leaders at Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group."
"On behalf of Covenant Health System, I'm pleased to endorse Ashley Wendel and Physician Leader Group as a valued business partner. Over the past two years we have engaged Ashley as a physician executive coach and also as our primary change management consultant for our Electronic Health Record (EHR) implementation. As an executive coach, Ashley has been extremely successful in helping our Chief Medical Officer transition from his medical practice to a very demanding administrative role. Ashley brings great talent in helping physicians navigate the steep learning curve of this transition. As a change management consultant, Ashley was engaged late in the game during our EHR implementation to help us overcome several organization and structure challenges. In short order, Ashley was able to help our team diagnose potential gaps and establish a working structure that enabled our implementation to proceed successfully. In both engagements, Ashley helped our organization realize positive outcomes."
Troy Thibodeaux
Group President Field Operations
Sound Physicians
(Former Chief Executive Officer
Covenant Health)
Omondi Nyong'o, MD
Medical Director, Surgical Specialties
Chief, Division of Opthalmology
Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group
"Ashley and Fred form an exceptional teaching team. In their 'Introduction to Physician Leadership' course, Ashley and Fred successfully shifted our thinking into directions that are extremely helpful for leading positive change in healthcare. We learned how to shift from intellectual reasoning to emotional understanding, from individualistic competition to team-based problem solving, from debating others to forming agreements and how to develop inner awareness and self-control in order to successfully influence others. The content was rich, exciting and interactive. Ashley and Fred are gifted teachers, high -level experts in their subject matter and are very skilled at focusing broad topics into manageable and action-oriented learning. This class series is perhaps the most productive and meaningful course I have taken in all my education."
"Ashley helped identify strengths and weaknesses (after a detailed 360 degree evaluation). She elicited feedback that was thoughtful and immensely helpful. I transitioned into a new position as a VPMA in biotech and she helped prepare for a very successful transition. I also engaged in consulting work and she helped with setting that up and considerations for the value proposition. It was a delight working with her- she's engaged and interested and has a lot of experience, particularly with physicians who are transitioning out of clinical medicine, or who are trying to learn how to function as a team member administratively. Five stars!"
Robert J. Schott, MD, MPH, FACC
Chief Medical Officer, Chorus/Lilly
"I have worked with Ashley Wendel in the development and delivery of a program called Introduction to Physician Leadership for the past 3 years. Ashley has a great deal of subject matter expertise in working with physician leaders as a facilitator, coach and program designer. She has been a strong partner for us in executing on our Physician Leadership Development Strategy."
Sue Gotelli
Director, Physician Leadership Development
Sutter Health
"Ashley was a featured speaker at our most recent Medical Fusion Conference and she did a fantastic job. Our conference is designed to teach physicians how to expand their careers, and Ashley's presentation was one of the most highly rated in our post-conference evaluations. She has a tremendous depth of knowledge in the area of career transition, and her warm and approachable demeanor further enhances her effectiveness as an executive coach. I would highly recommend Ashley to someone looking for a career advisor."
Gregory Bledsoe, MD
Surgeon General
State of Arkansas
Kristin Schmiedehausen, MD
Chief Medical Officer at Adaptix Imaging and Independent Medical Consultant
"Ashley's approach to coaching is highly professional and organized and at the same time very creative and tailored to the individual. She has the knack to address difficult and challenging topics appropriately and provides lots of supportive tools, ideas and strategies that are extremely useful beyond the professional and personal impacts of a transition from a clinical to a commercial role. I can highly recommend her - thanks, Ashley!"