Chief Change Officer
#320 Resa Lewiss MD: Micro Skills for Moments That Actually Matter – Part Two
Thu, 24 Apr 2025
In Part 2, Resa explains why she and Adaira started their book MicroSkills with the most overlooked chapter: self-care. From emotional and civic health to better rest and boundaries, she unpacks how showing up well starts before you speak. She also shares practical tools for navigating hard moments—like having a failure buddy—and reveals why thoughtful email etiquette isn’t just about manners, but about professional respect. This episode is about what sustains you—before, during, and after the work. Micro skills begin with you.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Why Micro Skills Start with Self“We opened the book with self-care—because everything else depends on it.” Physical, civic, emotional, and financial health are non-negotiables.Support Isn’t Optional“Have a failure buddy. Or a personal board of directors. Someone you can call when things go wrong.”What Real Rest Looks Like“Rest isn’t just sleep. It’s knowing what recharges you. And choosing to protect it.”Respect Through Email“BCC isn’t a trick—it’s about being thoughtful.” Communication is a reflection of how much you value someone’s time and dignity.Small Language, Big Impact“Even experienced professionals said, ‘I didn’t think I’d learn anything from a book on communication—but I did.’” Thoughtful communication isn’t about polish. It’s about presence._____________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Resa Lewiss MD --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What are Micro Skills and why are they important?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today's guest is Dr. Risa Lewis, emergency medicine physician, educator, and co-author of the book titled Micro Skills. She's also our first guest in medicine.
Dr. Lewis knew early on she didn't want to be boxed in by gender roles. she chose a specialty where she could think fast, move freely, and lead in real time. Over the past 25 years, she's worked in trauma base, taught ultrasound across the world, and trained others to stay calm when the room is anything but. In this two-part series,
We talk about what drew her to emergency medicine, how confidence is built through prepping and preparation, and how small practiced behaviors, i.e. micro skills, can shift how we show up under pressure in life and in career. Let's get into it. When I first skimmed through the book, my immediate reaction was ambitious. And I mean that in a good way.
Chapter 2: How can self-care influence professional performance?
This show is all about making change ambitiously. I've been dying to ask you this. Why combine so many different scenarios and skills into one book? You covered communication, networking, managing of everything and anything. Each of those could easily be its own short book. But you decided to go comprehensive. What was your thinking behind it?
The true motivation behind not only those articles, but then what became the book was to make it easier for other people, to give them a copy of what I call like the workplace playbook. If we were to make a sports reference, teams will get a playbook. And I certainly felt along the way that I did not get a copy of that playbook.
Chapter 3: What is a 'failure buddy' and why do you need one?
And I thought all these what I just the example I just gave about letters of reference, if someone had just told me that I would have it would have made it would have saved me a few years of learning and being less efficient and allow me to be more efficient because I was less efficient until I learned that pearl, that lesson, that this is the way the workplace works.
And so the motivation was to create a book that would help people in their careers and not just doctors and not just women, but truly everybody. You have highlighted that we started the book with three truths. Number one, we want the reader to think of time as a currency. Time can only be spent. You can't put it in a savings account for later and you cannot get a refund.
And that even ties back to the story I shared about the patient that died right at the beginning of the shift in front of me. Time was going. I had seven more hours. I had to keep going. And in the emergency department, we do a lot of task switching. When one thing's done, one patient gets discharged, one cut is sewn, next, next, next. We're always pivoting. And so time is always being spent.
And so we want the reader to be very intentional about how they're spending their time and with whom they're spending their time. And the how is also what motivated the book to be a very efficient book. practical, useful read. So sure, you can read it cover to cover and you're right, it is chock full of content, but also it can be a toolkit that you can jump in and jump out of.
And so that's why we wrote a very granular table of contents. So people will be like, I need to learn about running a meeting. Oh, okay. Page 258, running a meeting. And we specifically wanted it to be readable and And when you're publishing a book and to make it publishable, you have to somehow make the argument that it's different from all the other books.
Someone that interviewed us on a podcast was like, I have a lot of these books on my shelf and I've read a lot of them. Why should I read your book? Why is your book different? And it's a fair question because if all of us or any of us that have traveled in airports or train stations, when we go to the bookshop, there's always that table of business self-help books. And this is different in that.
If you've ever had the experience of picking up a book and it's put out there as a book for everybody, but you read it and you're like, this doesn't relate to me or my experience or this author's not speaking to me. We wanted to write a book that made no assumptions about where someone is coming from. their upbringing, their financial resources, their network, their pedigree. No assumptions.
We want to tell you these secrets, these tips, the plays in the playbook. Time is currency. It can only be spent. Number two, the world is not equal. We all have different start lines and start at different places. But by learning these micro skills, we can fill in gaps. So hopefully we all get to the same end point in terms of navigating and being successful in the workplace.
And number three, we truly believe learning is limitless. If only it is accessible. And that speaking to accessibility means, do people have time to learn, to read a book, to watch an online video, to have a conversation with a subject matter expert?
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Chapter 4: What does polished communication look like?
And if it's a long email that's chunky and just like long paragraphs, they're less likely to read it. So we give specific advice on creating a title that you're actually telling what the email is about in the title of the email. So we go into the use of tools, the two line, the CC line, which stands for carbon copy, and a favorite is the BC, the blind carbon copy.
And a lot of us either avoid it because we're not sure what to do with it, or we've been taught, unfortunately, to use it in a malevolent manner. In other words, to...
Chapter 5: How can thoughtful email etiquette enhance professional respect?
get someone trouble to create a paper trail and we basically really feel that the bcc should not be used nefariously that the bcc can work towards having positive communication and actually creating health for yourself so for example say i have to keep track of a communication and i want to make sure i follow up a week from when I send it.
When I send, for example, I send an email to you and I want to make sure I follow up, then I can BCC myself and then a copy of that email will go right to the top of my inbox when I send my email to you. That's one example. Another example is say we're at the same company and someone in our department gets a promotion.
if you put the whole email list to the department congratulations vince got a promotion then everybody is going to want to respond congratulations congratulations next thing you know we have 50 to 100 emails that everybody's getting to their inbox which isn't really necessary so what i can do is say i'm making the announcement of your promotion i can put you
in the two line and the email list of our department in the BCC. And I can say, everybody congratulate Vince. She got promoted. And then all the congratulations go back to you and me. And so you can see all the colleagues that are congratulating you, but all those colleagues don't get the 50 to 100 emails. There's just the final way, and this is something that relates to you and to me.
We were introduced thanks to a mutual friend. So it's very simple. If you want to introduce or create and grow the network of someone in your network, say, I'm going to introduce you to my friend, Tom Smith. Dear Tom, please meet Vince. Please take the conversation from here. You or Tom can reply, thank you, Risa. I've placed you in BCC. Dear Vince, when's a good time that you and I can meet?
It would be wonderful to have a conversation. So then everybody knows that I have seen that this loop was closed. I don't continue to get emails as you and Tom communicate. But also, it's not hidden from you that I have seen the message. Because that's a big thing. We talk about, say...
Say I'm going to BCU, we actually think you should tell the person receiving the email, Dear Tom, I've spoken with Vince, parentheses, in BCC, and you and I are going to connect first, and then you can connect with her. In other words, he knows, everybody knows, there's no hiding because he can't see you when I've placed you in BCC.
As you were talking, I kept thinking, this isn't just about email etiquette. I've learned this the hard way in corporate life. Yes, there are technical things like CC or BCC someone, but underneath that, there's an art to it. It's about respect. It's about knowing when to involve someone, when to close the loop, when not to overwhelm people with too much noise.
and when silence can actually feel like exclusion. It's not just about the email, it's about how we treat people. And the more I listen to you, the more I realize thoughtful communication is relationship management.
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Chapter 6: What are the key elements of effective networking?
Chapter 7: How can time be viewed as a currency in professional settings?
Someone that interviewed us on a podcast was like, I have a lot of these books on my shelf and I've read a lot of them. Why should I read your book? Why is your book different? And it's a fair question because if all of us or any of us that have traveled in airports or train stations, when we go to the bookshop, there's always that table of business self-help books. And this is different in that.
If you've ever had the experience of picking up a book and it's put out there as a book for everybody, but you read it and you're like, this doesn't relate to me or my experience or this author's not speaking to me. We wanted to write a book that made no assumptions about where someone is coming from. their upbringing, their financial resources, their network, their pedigree. No assumptions.
We want to tell you these secrets, these tips, the plays in the playbook. Time is currency. It can only be spent. Number two, the world is not equal. We all have different start lines and start at different places. But by learning these micro skills, we can fill in gaps. So hopefully we all get to the same end point in terms of navigating and being successful in the workplace.
And number three, we truly believe learning is limitless. If only it is accessible. And that speaking to accessibility means, do people have time to learn, to read a book, to watch an online video, to have a conversation with a subject matter expert?
do people have the money to pay for this education these resources do they go home and do they have what is called the second shift where they take care of children or elderly parents or pets trying to make no assumptions so we wanted to write an efficient read that would give people access to that learning there are so many chapters in your book we won't have time to go deep into all of them
But there's one I really want to highlight, which is polished communication. You've worked in the ER, traveled the world, taught across cultures. You've seen firsthand how core communication is to being human. But today, let's be frank, people barely write. And with AI, some don't even bother writing at all. No real thinking, no real analysis.
In the chapter on polished communication, what would you say are three key pieces of advice you would give to someone early in their career? Things they can do to really nurture and strengthen their communication skills in today's world?
So as you point out, we wrote a chapter called Microskills for Polished Communication. And audience members may say, gosh, what did they possibly write? And I will highlight, as you asked, a few. And truly, all of them are helpful. And when we've had readers who are mid-career and late-career,
They said, oh, I didn't think I was going to learn anything from this book, but they really point to the Polish communication chapter as where they really learned specifically with email. So I'll start with email. We all think we know how to email because literally we've been doing it for years. It's a part of every industry.
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