Well Cultivated Self Awareness

In our Second Edition of Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Leaders (Health Administration Press, 2015), Andy Garman and I wrote about four cornerstones that comprise the competencies that exceptional leaders possess. The first cornerstone was a well cultivated self awareness. We described it as follows -

“The first Cornerstone, a Well-Cultivated Self-Awareness, is the foundation of all leadership competencies. Knowing yourself and behaving in an authentic manner are critical to consistently ethical leadership. One CEO once commented, “Self-awareness means that you have a good understanding of what you have and what you don’t have.”

“The word insight comes to mind when contemplating the skill sets described in this section.”

Self awareness is truly one of the most important leadership competencies.

Self Awareness and Physician Leaders

I spent a significant amount of time the last two weeks with some excellent physician leaders. One of the topics we discussed related to the reasons why physicians often fail in their ledership roles. I introduced the concept of managerial derailment (Google this to see all the excellent research available) and suggested that one of the greatest challenges for physician leaders was self awareness, In our 2013 book, Developing Physician Leaders for Successful Clinical Integration, (Health Administration Press, 2013), Dr Jacque Sokolov and I wrote:

The higher in an organization executives move, the less likely they are to receive feedback about their behavior. And yet, for many physician leaders, their success rests in great part on political and interpersonal skills. In the words of a number of leadership experts, leaders are hired for past results and fired for personality.

Executive performance evaluations often focus exclusively on organizational parameters of success—prof­itability, meeting budget, quality scores, and patient satisfaction scores—rather than personal factors. However, leaders sometimes have little influence over these factors and would benefit instead from specific insight on their people skills, such as communication, collaboration, and conflict management.

Self awareness can go a long way to help physician leaders avoid derailment.

Developing Self-awareness

Developing self-awareness is one of the most important aspects leaders can do.

In my second edition of Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, Second Edition (2015, Health Administration Press, Chicago, IL), I wrote:

“Self-awareness means understanding yourself as a leader—in particular, your strengths, limitations, hot buttons, and blind spots. Developing self-awareness requires leaders to intellectually and emotionally process on two levels.

First, leaders must develop the ability to collect accurate, high-quality feedback from the work environment.

Second, leaders must contemplate with an open mind what that feedback means to them and to their performance as a leader. While these processes sound deceptively simple, in reality they are far from it. We all receive some feedback from the environment, and we all accept it with some open-mindedness. The magnitude of both this environment and our capacity for being open-minded makes the difference between good leadership and exceptional leadership.

Exceptional leaders make sure their environment is rich in feedback and internalize the feedback they receive. High performance in the area of self-awareness also involves mastery of two competencies: Leading With Conviction and Using Emotional Intelligence.”

Leaders Grow Though Experience (Mostly)

I was with a group of executives the other day and we were talking about how physicians learn how to be leaders. Ultimately, the conversation ended up with everyone at the table agreeing that experience fuels the greatest amount of leadership growth.

I was interviewed in 2009 about this matter. In an interview with Healthcare Executive (November/December 2009, “Cultivating Tomorrow’s Top Leaders,” Jessica D. Squazzo, Interviewer), I said,

“If you asked seasoned leaders, ‘What contributed most to your growth as a leader?’ I think they would say a specific experience. An ideal leadership development situation should be a combination of coursework and experiential learning.”

This is so true of all of us but especially so with physicians. In my 2013 book, Developing Physician Leaders for Successful Clinical Integration (Health Administration Press, Chicago), I wrote: 

"One distinctive area of experience-based learning for physicians involves working within teams. As discussed earlier in this book, physicians by nature are very independent and much of their work is often done in a solo capacity. Working with teams is often an area that requires ample practice for physicians. Educational focus should be given to how teams are best formed and how they are best managed. In developing physician leadership and management development programs, it is critical that organizations build in experiential opportunities. This can be achieved though different assignments, including leading a task force, appointment to a board committee, heading a start-up for a new program or service or managing a turn-around."

Experience - the great teacher.

Good Leadership Books vs. Troubadour Literature

Overwhelmed by all the book on leadership?

So am I.

In writing about many of the books that are published on leadership, Hogan and Kaiser (2005, 171) called many of them “troubadour” literature. They write, “It (troubadour literature) consists of the opinions and score-settling reminiscences of countless former CEOs. These works are high on entertainment value, but are so context specific that it can be difficult to derive defensible generalizations from them.”

I agree with their statement that, “Despite its popularity, the troubadour tradition is a vast collection of opinions with very little supporting evidence; it is entertaining but unreliable.”

I am hopeful tha the books that I present do not fall into this category but instead provide guidance based upon solid research-oriented principles and proof.

So many of those books that seem to fill the business sections of airport bookstores sound enticing but when examining them, they are simply filled with anecdotes. To be sure, books that have too much narrative that is research-oriented or written in more academic terms may turn off most practitioners. There is a need though to find literature that is truly based upon true facts and not simply supposition.

The same applies to leadership. So many thoughts and concepts about leadership are based upon a single person’s viewpoint and although sounding logical or persuasive, may not in fact be supported by reality.

I caution readers to be careful what they read about leadership and be certain that there is good foundational support for the points presented.

Exceptional Leadership Second Edition

I am delighted to announce that the 2nd Edition of Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies has been released this week.

Below is the description from the publisher (Health Administration Press) website:

There are good leaders, then there are exceptional leaders. In a healthcare era of change and uncertainty, it is crucial that leaders learn not only how to be exceptional, but also what makes an exceptional leader. In this second edition of their best-selling book, the authors detail 16 critical competencies grouped in four cornerstone categories: Well-Cultivated Self-Awareness, Compelling Vision, A Real Way With People, and Masterful Execution. Each of the 16 competencies is explored in a chapter that defines the competency, explains the common skill deficits that get in its way, and provides examples and advice on how to master it.

New to this edition:

Ø  A feature case study at the beginning of the book and a supportive vignette within each competency chapter to provide practical and real-world application to each competency

Ø  Two minicases with discussion questions at the end of each competency chapter for further consideration and self-reflection

Ø  Six new chapters that demonstrate how to apply the book’s concepts at both the individual and organizational levels

Ø  A new chapter on physician leadership that incorporates findings from interviews with industry leaders and provides a helpful roadmap for those transitioning into the physician executive role

Through a clear and focused approach based on current research, this book provides a solid understanding of the tools needed by great leaders. Included in this book is a self-development plan and interview questions to apply the knowledge learned.

I also note that I have not been regularly posting on this site. I will try to get on more often. Thanks to the handful of readers who have spurred me to return to regular posting.

_______________________________________________________________________

Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, Second Edition

Carson F. Dye, FACHE and Andrew N. Garman, PsyD

ISBN: 978-1-56793-673-5
Softbound, 230 pp, 2015 
Order code: 2265
ACHE Management Series Book

Health Administration Press

Hiring Decisions - Intuition? Gut Feel? Too Subjective?

Making Hiring Decisions Based Upon Gut Feel and Intuition?

I am always interested in ways that can help us improve our assessment of candidates in a hiring process. I read this today and it hit me squarely – this addresses the intuitive aspsect of selection in a very applicable manner. See what you think.

Before you read, ask yourself the following questions:

What specific factors do I use when I make a hiring decision?

What drives the final decision point when I decide to pick Candidate A over Candidate B?

The following blog post from Daniel Goleman’s LinkedIn post:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140312132544-117825785-does-intuition-affect-decisions?trk=mp-edit-rr-posts?trk=object-title

As a follow-up to my earlier post about the brain and gut decisions, I want to share my conversation with Erica Ariel Fox for my Leadership: A Master Class about how intuition can factor into good decision-making. Erica Ariel Fox is a lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and part of the internationally acclaimed Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

“Let’s look at Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of thin-slicing. My interpretation: you are in fact cognitively perceiving data, it’s just that you’re doing it so quickly. With pattern recognition from past experience, what you experience as intuitive is actually just unbelievably quick cognitive processing.

There are also arguments that when the emotional part of the brain is damaged, people can’t make decisions: you need the right and left hand side of the brain, the cognitive and the emotional. I think that is right for certain kinds of decisions, such as when you’re gathering information and trying to make meaning or make sense out of information.

But these approaches to decision-making don’t address what might be called direct knowing: I know this, but I don’t know how I know it. I didn’t read it in a book. Nobody told it to me. I didn’t have an Excel spreadsheet that laid it out for me. Nonetheless, I know it.

I think we have a set of skills that coaches and leaders who work with teams might call “reading the room.” Others call it attunement or discernment. It’s not data processing and thin-slicing, and it’s also not having an emotional evaluation of decisions. It’s a sensing. When I work with a team in crisis, tuning in to the group’s feelings and emotions really helps me ask the right questions about what’s happening.

People will be shocked when they think back over the course of their lives, ‘when I made that decision, I actually knew it was wrong, but I didn’t trust the part of me that was telling me not to do it.’ Or they say, ‘It was the craziest thing. I made this decision. Everyone in my life thought I was insane, but I just knew it was right, and it turned out it was the best decision I ever made.’”

How does this concept resonate with you? How would you explain intuition in relation to decision-making?

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Sorry if I am giving you too much Dan Goleman but I do think he is clearly a leading edge thinker.

Dan Goleman and Adaptable Leadership - the Famous HBR Article

Flexible leadership style? Contingent leadership style? Leadership style to fit the situation or the individual(s) being led?

Yes, I believe we all make a mistake to try to develop a single leadership style. The reality is highly effective leaders need to have the ability to use various leadership styles.

You can imagine how surprised I was to see this article on Becker’s Hospital Review. Once again, the 14 year old article by Dan Goleman makes the press. This HBR is truly a classic. See the following --

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-blog/what-effective-leaders-top-golfers-have-in-common.html

What makes an effective leader? For years, management scholars and other tried to answer that question by identifying a certain leadership style that correlated with managerial success. These scholars were essentially asking: What type of leader gets the most desired results?

The results of an oft-cited 2000 study changed that approach. A study of nearly 4,000 leaders by Hay/McBer identified six distinct leadership styles. Each of the styles delivered results differently. But, most interesting, was that the study found "leaders with the best results do not rely on only one leadership style; they use most of them in a given week — seamlessly and in different measure — depending on the business situation," according to a Harvard Business Review article discussing the study.

While this research is not new, I recently came across the article as I was researching leadership traits for another article I'm working on. While nearly 14 years old now, its findings — that the best leaders are flexible, using different leadership techniques in different situations — are simple but profound.

The six leadership styles these top leaders move between include:

Coercive — demands immediate compliance

Authoritative — mobilizes toward a vision

Affiliative — creates emotional bonds and harmony

Democratic — builds consensus through participation

Pacesetting — expects excellence and self-direction

Coaching — develops others for the future.

What do top leaders and top golfers have in common?
Daniel Goleman, author of the HBR article and a psychologist noted for his work on emotional intelligence, explains how the best golfers resemble the best leaders:

"Imagine the styles, then, as the array of clubs in a golf pro's bag. Over the course of a game, the pro picks and chooses clubs based on the demands of the shot. Sometimes he has to ponder his selection, but usually it is automatic. The pro senses the challenge ahead, swiftly pulls out the right tool, and elegantly puts it to work. That’s how high-impact leaders operate, too."

So, the next time you are working with an individual or department to move them toward better results, consider the six leadership styles and weigh the relative value of each approach for the individual and situation at hand, just as the golfer would weigh the relative value of his various clubs given the needs of the shot.

----For the HBR article see -

http://hbr.org/2000/03/leadership-that-gets-results/ar/1

Too Many Leadership Competencies?

I have been working a lot with leaders lately on leadership competencies. Through this process I have observed a significant problem with competencies – their sheer number and the bureaucratic problems they seem to cause leaders in some companies.

Consider these two great posts -- Effron (2013) suggested that “today’s typical competency model is an all-encompassing, multi-layered monstrosity whose complexity far outweighs its value. And, even with its verbosity and heft, it still doesn’t tell managers exactly how to succeed.” The length of the list can be problematic as well as typical human resources rules about how to use the competencies.

Roberto (2012) wrote that “Senior executives have to boil down their expectations to a simple list of behaviors and capabilities that they value and wish to cultivate in aspiring leaders. Simplicity and brevity will breed behavioral change much more quickly and effectively than complexity and comprehensiveness.”

Effron, M. Life After the Competency Model. From Insights published by The Talent Strategy Group. http://talentstrategygroup1.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Life-After-the-Competency-Model.pdf Accessed 12-12-13.

Roberto, M. The Problem with Competency Models. Michael Roberto’s Blog, Musings about Leadership, Decision Making, and Competitive Strategy January 25, 2012. Accessed 12-1-13. http://michael-roberto.blogspot.com/2012/01/problem-with-competency-models.html

Leadership - 2014

The coming year may present some of the greatest challenges we know in leadership. As the economy continues to struggle, the national health care reform changes in a mess, and increasing challenges to authority, we will all be hard pressed to "step it up" to the next level of leadership. I will try to present more thoughts and approaches to leadership for those who will join me.

Happy holidays and a very rewarding 2014.