Leadership Skill Building

Leadership Development: Healthcare’s Most Underused Advantage

Leadership Development: Healthcare’s Most Underused Advantage

///
Every day, healthcare organizations promote some of their best people. Charge nurses become managers. Clinicians become department heads. Physicians step into administrative roles. These are people who’ve already proven they’re talented, trusted, and committed to the mission. But here’s the question: are they as equipped to lead people as they are to deliver care? The reality is, clinical and technical competency and leadership competency are entirely different skill sets. Organizations that recognize the difference, and…
Read Full Article
Who Is Really Responsible for Your Development?

Who Is Really Responsible for Your Development?

///
I write more on personal and professional development than any other topic. In my book The Busy Leader’s Handbook: How to Lead People and Places That Thrive, the first chapter sets the foundation for a person’s development. The two main components are self-awareness and coachability.  Willingness is key to both: willingness to hold up the mirror to oneself and willingness to seek out coaches and coaching. Please think of the coach’s work in its broadest sense. A coach…
Read Full Article

Park Ranger Leadership: The Cost of Always Coming to the Rescue

///
I was fortunate to be with leaders from Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center in Mattoon, IL. I presented on Park Ranger Leadership. The fable centers on a person who gets lost hiking in the woods. He immediately starts working hard to get back on track. He tries to retrace his steps, look at the location of the sun, searches for moss on the side of a tree, etc. After 30 minutes or so, a park…
Read Full Article

Some Lessons Are Worth Repeating (and a New Tip from Mike Harbour).

///
When one writes hundreds of columns, certain themes show up over and over. A reason is that there are areas in leadership in which people consistently struggle to achieve and sustain great results. Plus, there are new leaders. Close to half the people in a supervisory role are either new to leadership or are in a new supervisory role or a new organization. I benefit from repetition and reminders. I hear or read something that…
Read Full Article

Why New Leaders Struggle…and How to Set Them Up to Succeed

///
When a person is asked to take on a leadership role, it is done with good intentions. The person does not do as well as hoped. Why? There are a variety of factors, and most can be avoided. While there are people who seek a leadership role early on, most who end up there do not take that route. A manager resigns. The leader’s job is to find a replacement. The first place to look…
Read Full Article

Transparency Builds Accountability…and Accountability Creates Students

///
When performance is visible, accountability follows. Being transparent with goals and outcomes achieves alignment and clarity. It demonstrates progress. It shows which people and areas are performing the best. Transparency puts performance in the light. This reduces gossip, excuses, and misinformation. For example, a leader is not doing well in customer satisfaction. They feel the issue is the measurement tool or the staffing model. When the overall results are shared, it is evident that other…
Read Full Article

Leaders, Here’s How to Make Your Thank-You Notes Count

///
You are moving to a new place to live or to work. What are you bringing with you? What are your keepsakes? If you mentioned thank-you notes, cards, and/or letters, you’re not alone. At times, the impact of sending these items is underestimated. I wrote on this subject in a recent HPSG Pulse blog post that I shared on LinkedIn. We all have experiences that make a difference in our lives long after the experience. When I…
Read Full Article

Success Plates: How to Learn from What’s Going Right

///
We think about learning from what goes wrong. But do we also learn from our successes? It is a standard process to assess when something does not work as expected. The situation is reviewed, and changes are made. A good action is to study those who have the best outcomes. This provides a “success plate,” a template that captures what goes well. It identifies what drives the best outcomes. A senior executive in an addiction…
Read Full Article

Five Ways to Reduce Leadership Variance (and Stop Leaving Performance to Chance)

///
Reducing variance has been a key focus of mine for many years. Notice I said many years. It shows that reducing variance is a never-ending journey. Is leadership variance always a bad thing? There are those situations when a leader may vary an approach seeking improvement. I call these operational trials. There are times when a situation arises where a process or action needs to not be followed. These are isolated or emergency situations. In general, reducing…
Read Full Article

Are You a Doer or a Developer?

///
If you leave, who will take your place? If there’s a family emergency, who can fill in for you? Should job openings be filled externally or internally with a candidate who has been developed along the way? A related question: Are individuals who achieve great individual results great at developing others? Most know the answer is “not always.” It could be that things come more naturally to them, and they assume the same is true…
Read Full Article