October 7, 2026 Salus Forum

It’s our opportunity to formalize it going forward. Master being the very first thing. If you have a bunch of unhappy family doctors (which is 25 to 30% of family doctors at any one time), only 50% say they’re okay. And only 29% of family physicians say they’re happy doing what they’re doing.

A master is someone who has found a way to understand the mind, body, and spirit, the social aspects, all those deeper aspects of being happy themselves. With this mastery, they can positively contribute to the collective experience of all those whom we influence. So master, adaptive. The many things we’re talking about here. We must just embrace the fact that the present is not going to be the future. It could be way over here. It could be way over here. How do we want to influence it? And then leadership.

Mitch

One thing about confidence. Confidence that comes from the position of the leader and the title of the leader, probably is going to be problematic. It can produce an authoritative perspective. I’m the leader, that’s what we’re going to do. This is probably not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a leader that intellectually has humility, that has ability to look at themselves objectively. I like what Jack brought up regarding liminal space. The confident leader enters liminal space and says, “okay, I don’t know everything, but I can be confident in my ability to learn and my ability to set aside my biases and my prejudices and my mental models and my story and be open to the invulnerable.”

The confident leader has the courage to learn from the people all the way around them. Then we bring that liminal space to the team. The confident leader brings to the team the ability to pause between stimulus and response to pause. The confident leader teaches the pause. I could hear when Walt just started talking, that he took a pause. I think the leader that does that changes the nature of the outcome in the room. They just ask the question, what is it we’re here for?

And I think the system is not so magical other than if we look at the system through our lens, through our mental models, through our story, and we’re not open to the reality that’s all around us and can be discovered in that liminal space, then we’re going to keep making the wrong decisions. And the more authoritarian we are, the less humble we are, the less practiced we are in that liminal space overview. And the less that we’ve helped other people to get into that space, the more decisional problematic problems we’re going to have. Because we’re going to keep doing the same thing over again.

I guess the best way to say it is that we’ll be looking at the map, calling it the territory and not aware that it’s a territory. And I just think that’s the biggest problem we want to avoid in leadership. I think that, again, a learning mindset, a learning organization, learning teams, and being open to examining your own mental models and your own stories that you’re telling, setting them aside so that we can see a closer reality that’s happening.  I think it’s super important. And I think that’s a skill. I think it can be practiced.

Jeremy

Warren, I want to express deep gratitude for you taking the time to come and talk with us. This has been a rich and broad conversation. There has been great depth in this discussion. It’s been wonderful.