Powerful physician coaching from an experienced colleague.
Sidestep physician burnout and forge a brilliant medical future.
Powerful physician coaching from an experienced colleague.
Sidestep physician burnout and forge a brilliant medical future.
This is the moment you set the course of your medical career
As a physician and surgeon with over 20 years of academic and clinical experience, I recognize that even the most driven, confident, and dedicated physicians can find themselves at a crossroads.
Whether you’re struggling to define your medical career path or looking back on a lifetime of medical excellence and wondering what’s next, career coaching allows you to reimagine your future.
Coaching
for individual physicians
Set a course to the medical career that reflects your passions, interests, and priorities. Together, we’ll explore what you want out of your medical career and how to get it.
Coaching for clinical leadership and physician groups
Using Conscious Leadership Coaching, you’ll learn how to pinpoint your hidden leadership potential as an individual and as a team.
Medical excellence and personal integrity are at the heart of every goal we set and action we take together.
Revolutionizing your career with the 4 Rs
When we work together, we’ll examine your existing career closely.
We’ll use the “4 Rs” to analyze what you want from your medical career. Then, we’ll develop a strategy and define the actions that will help you get there.
Refocus
In the Refocus stage, we’ll gain clarity on your career as it exists today. We’ll examine your situation closely to understand which aspects are unsatisfying and which are supporting your goals.
Re-perspective
Shifting perspective is a great way to help you reimagine your career. In the Revisualize stage, we’ll explore how others see your situation. Relationships are crucial to our happiness and offer unique insight into our lives.
Reframe
When we Reframe, we try to see unpleasant aspects of your career in a different context. We remove negative thoughts and terminology and replace them with a positive mindset that reframes the conversation and frees us from doubt and fear.
Re-evaluate
Finally, we Re-evaluate your strengths and assess how they can help you reach your career goals. We’ll also revisit your past - both good and bad - to find lessons we can learn and successes we can build upon to forge a brighter future.
How we’ll work together
I work with individual physicians or groups of physicians in discussion-rich, analysis-driven 45 minutes sessions. Together, we’ll focus on the priorities you want to set and the problems you want to solve in your medical career.
Client engagements are typically 6-9 months, conducted in weekly or biweekly sessions.
Engage a
discovery call
A free, 15-minute introductory call allows us to ascertain whether we’re a good fit to work together.
Schedule suitable
sessions
You can choose to meet weekly or biweekly, in person or via Zoom. Sessions last 45 minutes.
Set a 6-month
goal course
We’ll work to understand what is unsatisfactory about your current medical career and set a course toward achievable 6-month goals.
Evaluate your
outcomes
In each session, we’ll evaluate your progress toward your goals and see how better choices could further them.
Christine E Lee MD
CPE, PCC
I’m Christine E Lee MD, CEO of Crossroads Coaching & Consulting. I’m also a fellow physician: a board-certified, comprehensive ophthalmologist specializing in cataract and refractive surgery. I’m a clinical associate professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, and I’ve practiced for over 20 years in academic and private practice settings.
I approach medical career coaching with a philosophy based on integrity, trust, and respect. My philosophy background has allowed me to use perspective and collaborative viewpoints in my strategic approach to career coaching. With influences ranging from Aristotle to Existentialism, I encourage clients to take inspiration from a close examination of their careers and their actions.
I received the Professional Certified Coach (PCC), designated by the International Coach Federation, Certified Professional Coach (CPC), Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner (ELI-MP), and COR.E Leadership Dynamic Specialist (CLDS) certifications from the Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching.
I also obtained the Certified Physician Executive (CPE) designation through the American Association of Physician Leadership after completing leadership and management courses as well as a rigorous Capstone process.
I’m a graduate of the University of Michigan Honors program, where I majored in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Philosophy. I received my MD from the University of Michigan Medical School and completed my ophthalmology residency at the University of Virginia.
During my medical school years, I became a Howard Hughes Research Scholar and spent a year at NIH doing research.
I am happily married to Michael Lee, MD, and together we have raised three fantastic children Ted, Matthew, and Michelle who have blossomed into successful individuals.
Group Testimonials
A Surgical Resident Group or Ophthalmology Resident Group at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM):
“Be your own advocate when thoughts start becoming negative or situations are tough”
“Think about my ideal outcomes and then develop goals from that.”
“Keeping the end in mind”
“I learned to have more of a growth mindset.”
“the technique of asking someone who’s had a bad day ‘what would a perfect day have looked like?'”
“Asking inspiring questions to keep the big picture in mind when I or others are down and not future focused.”
“To think of goals from the future perspective in which they’re accomplished and work backwards.”
“I learned about how others see me based on the adjectives they use to describe me.”
“I learned about the 4 A’s and re-framing how I view certain stressful situations to spin them in a positive light.”
What Our Participants Enjoy The Most: Real Testimonials
“I enjoyed talking with my co-residents. These wellness sessions allowed us to strengthen our personal and professional skills.”
“The interaction with other residents and seeing their goals at different stages of training.”
“Speaking with my co-residents, getting coached by my co-residents”
“This was the best session. I think it’s helpful to discuss coaching and why teaching it to others in a group setting can be beneficial to get everyone involved. Group dynamics are really important and finding different group exercises to discuss stress relief, goals, fears, and having psychological safety is important so we can be completely honest about our experiences and feelings. Thank you.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Career coaching is a tool that can help you examine your current career and your priorities and take steps to ensure they align. Coaching can be powerful:
Coaching can unlock your untapped sources of imagination, productivity, and leadership through thought-provoking questions and other creative processes.
Coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes, and managing sustainable, personal change through new perspectives, beliefs, and mindsets.
Coaching can maximize your professional and personal potentials.
Career coaching allows you to recognize opportunities, overcome challenges, and achieve career goals and personal dreams. It empowers you to achieve the life you want.
“A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life.”
-John Wooden-
Physicians cope with a phenomenal amount of stress. To combat it, we can ask ourselves a series of questions that reframe the stress and help us gain perspective:
- Is this stress real?
- Can we say no? What will be the consequences?
- Can we just avoid the people and situations that cause stress?
- Can we view this stress in a more positive perspective?
- Can we adjust the standards? Is there a “good enough”?
- Can we look at the bigger picture? Will this matter in a month or a year?
You can manage a certain amount of stress with these techniques:
- Using movements, or visual and auditory senses
- Deep breathing
- Stretching
- Power poses
- Looking at a calm or a happy picture
- Listening to your favorite music
In coaching sessions, we often employ the 4 A’s of stress management:
- Acknowledge: Acknowledge that you are stressed.
- Ask: Do I care? Let go of any small stuff. What specifically is the real issue?
- Act: What are the possible solutions? What is the best solution?
- Advance: Resolve the issue and move on. You may come back to refine your actions later.
Self-care techniques are a deeper level of stress management. They should be worked into your daily and weekly routine to help you mitigate stress before it becomes overwhelming.
In our sessions, we can explore together how to schedule self-care techniques into your week, such as:
- Exercise
- Yoga
- Mindfulness / Centering
- Meditation
- Spa / Bath
- Sleep
- Listen to or create music
- Niksen (Dutch word for doing nothing)
- Fika (Swedish for take a break)
If you are still plagued with negative thoughts or emotions, I would recommend an individual coaching session.
Create The Medical Career You Want
Together, we’ll discover your goals and define a plan to help you meet them.