Lack of Training: Leadership is MORE than Management
This week we begin to tackle another sizeable problem in the healthcare field: lack of training. A kingpin of the problems in our field, the lack of adequate training for physician leaders steers the entire industry into a quagmire from which it seems impossible to extract ourselves.
The position of physician leader is still relatively new and, thankfully, evolving. As you know, until quite recently, most physicians owned their own practice and were basically their own bosses. Now, with physician leaders leading teams of physicians (pardon the redundancy), physicians who trained for years to learn to work effectively as a physician are now being promoted to leaders with almost no training for how to do so. Or, on the flip side, outsiders are hired into a world they know nothing about and are expected to understand the intricacies of healthcare and those they lead.
It’s a classic catch-22: Hire a physician who understands doctors, expect them to relate to those they lead, and leave behind their own technical training to fill a new role for which they never prepared. OR, hire a leader from another industry and expect them to adjust to their new environment while being a complete outsider.
Formal “Leadership” Programs aren’t Human-Centric
Of course, there’s not a complete lack of training when it comes to physician leaders. I should say there’s a lack of appropriate and holistic training that sets leaders up for success. For instance, some may attend formal certification programs in leadership, or, more appropriately named: management. Because if you look carefully at the curriculum of many of these “leadership” programs, there is a lopsided amount of attention given to the non-human side of leadership. Those in the program often focus on topics such as profit and loss statements, learning how administration works, understanding organization charts, and making budget projections. Of course these are important topics to understand when preparing to run a healthcare organization, but what’s most lacking from the majority of programs is the human side that’s so integral to successful leadership.
Or, on the rare occasion when the human side of leadership is part of leadership curriculum, somehow it isn’t even human-centric! I’ve seen countless modules about labor relations, human resources, or hiring and firing procedures -- all of which reflect generic corporate practices. They rarely, if ever, address the specific and unique problems about managing physicians. The reality is that most of these programs teach management, not leadership.
Leadership is MORE than Management
We jeopardize the future of our industry if we train new physician leaders or CMO’s with largely metrics-based measures of success such as increased performance and productivity instead of human-focused measures like engagement and quality of life.
Business leaders have much more in common with artists, scientists, and other creative thinkers than they do with managers. Organizations need both managers and leaders to succeed, but developing both requires a reduced focus on logic and strategic exercises in favor of an environment where creativity and imagination are permitted to flourish.
-Abraham Zaleznik, Harvard Business Review
As Zaleznik points out, an organization needs both managers and leaders in order to thrive. In this way, proper training for physician leaders cannot be adequate without the inclusion of human-centric leadership training. While it may seem we have miles to go before we lay this matter to rest, the truth is that we sit in a very fortunate position, ready for change. Because the field is changing so rapidly there is an opportunity available to change with it and move in a direction that’s much more sustainable for the future of healthcare and the physicians within the industry.
We must do two things. First, provide training for all of those transitioning from a physician position to one of leadership. And second, ensure that the training provided fits the needs of the leader and those they serve in order to create healthy work environments where both physicians and leaders can thrive.