Salus Forum: January 7, 2026

The seventeenth Salus Forum was convened on January 7, 2026. In attendance were Mitch Applegate, William Bergquist, Jeremy Fish, Bill Gillanders, Walt Mills, Gay Teurman, Mark Vukalcic, and Jack Westfall. The Trigger topic for this forum was provided by Dr. Mills who introduced the concept of master adaptive leadership. The ensuing dialogue centered on the challenges of leadership in contemporary healthcare systems.

Following is a narrative based on the January 7 Salus discussion.

Walt

I wish to begin by setting the stage for our reflections on master adaptive leadership. As the kickoff for today, I would like us to think through how we got where we are with regard to adaptive leadership. Where are we going? Even more importantly, how might we get from where we are and what we’re trying to do to the ways we might affect those who, in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, are in gatherings like this reflecting on times of the past. Hopefully, it’s the positive leadership that makes the world a little better place. Because it certainly is when I think of what I’ve been learning with VUCA, that is the idea of the thinking of leadership related to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and other things that have been coming up through Salus and the enlivening and enlightening aspects of thinking about higher ways of us approaching the current and future.

So, the title is Master Adaptive Leadership. So, what does this phrase mean? The term was really crystallized with the ACGME, the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education, and others involved in medical education. They come up with master adaptive learning as a new way, a better way, to think about educating our future medical students and providers. “Master adaptive leadership”. I was struck by that, and I was involved in the 2020 session. There were 50 of us from around the country trying to define where we’re going with family medicine by 2030. And one of the things that I left with was the desire to somehow understand more about leadership.