Despite unprecedented investments in health information technology, physicians are reporting burnout and dissatisfaction at alarming rates. Certainly, innovations in seamless data exchange, attention to user design and mobile-enabled patient data are needed. However, health care will continue to fumble with technology advancements without leadership attention to the cultural change required to support adoption. Today’s health care executives need support in developing skills and marching out thoughtful cultural change management plans.

To support my supposition, I need only reflect on a recent interaction with a colleague who’s a seasoned chief medical officer. He was passionate about the need to transform health care into a safer, more efficient system, and his organization was finally making substantial investments to deliver on his vision. I encouraged him to make bold moves with the medical staff, fully leveraging his position and relationships prior to leaving. It would take his replacement years to learn the organization and culture well enough to lead change with the same deftness. The actions in the last months of his career would provide the strongest winds to power the sails of organizational change into the future.

Despite his passion, he was clearly struggling with the emotional vulnerability I was encouraging. He used a parable to explain his hesitation. To summarize, in his parable an eager young boy is disparaged by a classmate for his singing during a performance by the elementary school choir. Five decades later, that young boy finds himself in a baseball stadium sitting quietly as everyone around him collectively belts out the national anthem. That man is held hostage by an internal dragon that was impressed upon him by his childhood classmate. In this story, the dragon represents a deep-seated fear of rejection that presents itself when personally expressing oneself to others. It was clear that my coaching required this physician leader to step into an emotionally inspiring but publicly vulnerable role and was akin to asking him to come face to face with his personal dragon.

While reading Michael O’Brien’s book, Shift: Creating Better Tomorrows at Work and in Life, I was reminded of this parable. I have had the pleasure of sharing turns at the crank making slow-churn ice cream with Michael, and I grew up with his wife, Lynn. In his book, Michael skillfully tells his story of surviving a bicycle accident after a head-on collision with an SUV. He recounts his difficult recovery and return to a productive life. Along the way, he shares how the experience caused several shifts in his perspective to live a more courageous and fulfilling life as a husband, father, leader and now coach. I equate these shifts in Michael’s perspective to slaying personal dragons that were keeping him from his personal potential.

As I think about the executives who are leading today’s technology-based health care transformation, several lessons stand out as particularly relevant:

• Know your why: Understand your personal relationship to the mission of your organization and the need for this change.

• Be courageous: Take risks in relating to a “why” that is authentic to you individually.

• Be an inspiring storyteller: Learn to wrap your “why” in a story that others can relate to emotionally.