Where do you stand on the leadership ladder?
Tunnel Vision
Like every ladder, it’s important to start at the bottom. Even if you’ve been practicing medicine and successfully negotiated the healthcare profession for decades, in a leadership position, you’re starting over in a lot of ways. This doesn’t mean you throw all your technical expertise out the window -- by no means! -- but on your leadership journey it’s likely you’ll be learning a lot of new things that will make you feel like a beginner again in a lot of ways.
On your healthcare leadership journey I extend to you an invitation:
Be humble.
Be brave.
Be willing to be a beginner.
If you missed our first post unpacking the Visionary Leadership Ladder, make sure you get the basic overview before reading on.
Aaaaaaand, welcome back! Today we’re unpacking Tunnel Vision in depth. If you’re a healthcare leader stuck on this rung, understanding what Tunnel Vision looks like and how it manifests itself in a healthcare organization can help you avoid becoming a victim of the Peter Principle. Or if you’ve already successfully moved up the leadership ladder a rung or two, diving deep into the psychology of Tunnel Vision can help you remember what it was like to start at the very beginning and find some compassion for your past self as well as others.
Tunnel Vision Leader: A Definition
A tunnel vision leader, as we know, gets stuck in the mire of technical skills, unable to see beyond the end of their own nose. Lack of awareness and learning keep this leader from being able to grow, as well as fear of losing their position and insecurity about their abilities as a leader.
Signs and Symptoms: You might be a tunnel vision leader if…
This style of leadership includes ordering the team around, leveraging technical expertise as weight against anyone else’s strengths or deriving power from a sense of seniority. This type of leader rarely trusts their team to do anything independently, and consistently finds themselves intoning internally, “If I want something done right I have to do it myself.”
It’s important to note that this leader likely has good intentions -- THEY ARE NOT BAD PEOPLE -- but stuck in a pattern of thinking, often they are hamstrung by fear and pride. For this leader, it can be difficult to admit they don’t know what they’re doing in their new position of healthcare leader. The truth is that a lot more than technical expertise goes into successfully leading a healthcare organization.
Many excellent healthcare professionals are not necessarily excellent healthcare leaders...yet.
Finally, a failure of communication often accompanies a leader with tunnel vision. Because technical competency comes naturally for them, they have very little patience with others and think things should come as easily for the team as it has for them. They don’t realize that their team (or they themselves!) may benefit from coaching, training or individual guidance.
As far as communication goes, they approach most topics on a “need to know” basis and aren’t open to different approaches for solving problems instead of having an open door policy, which allows their team to feel heard and seen. Because of this, team members aren’t comfortable coming to this leader with any issues and many workplace grievances fester and become worse instead of being solved quickly.
Furthermore, although we don’t have room to explore this topic in full in this post, leaders in the healthcare industry with tunnel vision often overlap with those suffering from other disruptive behaviors as well. If you’re looking to learn more about how this can affect the workplace, Nursing Management has a great article about it in their scholarly journal.
Tunnel Vision Leader: An Example
Meet Shawna, the tunnel vision healthcare leader
Sharp as a tack, well-published, and ambitious, Shawna became Chief of Staff of Gynecology at 41. She’s extremely proud of being the top producer in her physician group for several years in a row. When the practice was bought out by the local hospital, there arose a need for a new chief of staff, and her ambition led her to throw her hat in the ring. Even though she wasn’t the most senior applicant, she was pleasantly surprised to be offered the position, since the hospital administrators wanted “fresh blood”. Now her schedule is filled with meetings that seem to go on all day. She no longer sees patients regularly or uses many of the skills she spent the past 15 years practicing and begins to feel out of her element. However, Shawna has always been money savvy and has quite a bit of knowledge about personal finance so she’s excited to use these skills in her new position.
During the acquisition, her first challenge was to help merge EMR’s (electronic medical records). The new practice was to basically abandon their old system and adopt the hospital’s system ASAP. Many doctors are unhappy and frustrated about this change. When they ask to speak with her to air their grievances, she immediately launches into explaining exactly what they need to do. Most of the time, her team members leave her office unhappy. Noticing this, she’s puzzled and begins to distance herself from her colleagues.
A few months later, when doctors begin to negotiate their contracts, Shawna sees an opportunity to use her personal finance knowledge. Instead of giving raises, she dogmatically gives advice about how each doctor should spend their money and live more wisely on what they have. When her colleagues mention they feel overworked or stressed, she is quick to tell them about how they should get up earlier and practice meditation, like she does.
Giving what seems to her to be such good advice to her team, she’s extremely surprised in 6 months when 2 things happen simultaneously. First, her department has the highest percentage of doctors leaving, and, on the internal surveys they complete upon departure, she’s reported to be “not caring” “not listening”, “only cares about herself” and “my main source of frustration”.
She can't believe that the very people she thought she was helping are now leaving.
Tunnel Vision Leader: Next Steps
Hopefully it’s clear how, even with a good heart, a tunnel vision leader can come across as self-absorbed and distracted? Such a leader only knows what they’ve relied upon in the past and falls back on that time and again to tell others what to do. Those in this stage of leadership often have the illusion that if they are benign, that’s all they have to be. The only mode they use to help others is by telling them what to do to solve their problems. And that can appear as not listening and easily become a source of frustration. Their vision starts and ends with themselves and what they know.
In order to progress past this stage of leadership you’ll have to start by being brutally honest with yourself. Is this where you are? Could you be coming across as calloused or unfeeling by telling others what to do?
Listen
Truly listen to your colleagues grievances. Do not immediately offer solutions or “tips and tricks” to solve their problems for them. People rarely respond well to this tactic.
Learn about Leadership
Whether that comes by getting personalized coaching or a leadership seminar or class, or reading a book by a leader you admire. Admit what you don’t know. Be humble. And prepare to be a beginner again, ready to learn something new and slowly improve.
Be Honest with your Team
Revealing your vulnerability in your new position and sharing your struggles with your team can be extremely healing for everyone. Admitting you’re a beginner to yourself and others can help your transition into a new role of healthcare leadership progress a lot faster and without as many speed bumps.
When embarking upon a new journey as a healthcare leader, above all, be kind to yourself if you don’t yet know what to do. It is such a pleasure to get to share my researched and tested methods with you for free every week in these blog posts, but remember that reading about what to do can only take you so far in your leadership journey.
If you’re experiencing specific issues with your team or looking for some neutral advice to help speed along your leadership growth, contact us today to find out what coaching options are right for you.
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