Tag: leadership coaching

Leadership; It’s more than a title

By Thomas Davis, DNAP, MAE, CRNA

Leaders: we love them, we hate them and then we become them

In the workplace and in our personal life, the concept of leader and leadership are often intertwined and misunderstood.   Let’s start this article by explaining the difference between the role of a leader and the behaviors that are associated with effective leadership.

Leader

A leader is a designated individual who has been given the responsibility to organize, guide, and manage a group of individuals.  Commonly, the leader is a person who has been handed a title and job description that outlines the expectations of the role.  Some of the common descriptions of a leader include:

  • Being the selected person in charge of a team or group.
  • Maintaining the status quo while achieving objectives outlined by the organization.
  • Delegating tasks, supervising work, and ensuring that resources are available.
  • Rigidly enforcing policies and procedures outlined by the organization.
  • Motivating team members to achieve production goals

Leadership

In contrast to being a person who carries the title of the leader, leadership is a concept or process that involves influencing and motivating a team/organization to achieve goals.  Leadership goes beyond day-to-day management and involves having a vision and the tenacity to move the organization forward while developing the individual talents of each team member.  Ideally, the person designated as the leader goes further than managing a team and exhibits leadership behavior.  Robert Smith Leadership identifies specific behaviors that are tied to effective leadership.

  • Coach and mentor.  Be a content expert and freely share your knowledge with team members.
  • Facilitator.  Ensure that the team has the required resources to accomplish the task.
  • Communicator.  Use emotional intelligence to deliver the message clearly and hone listening skills while being receptive to honest feedback.
  • Conflict resolver.  Listen attentively and use emotional intelligence to reframe the facts so that each side sees the conflict differently.
  • Innovator.  Constantly seek ways to improve the workflow.
  • Decision-maker.   Ensure that your authority is sufficient to enable you to be decisive with your responsibilities.   Align decisions with the mission, vision, and values of the organization.
  • Motivator.  Clearly define the goal, motivate the team and show resilience when setbacks occur.
  • Delegator.  Enhance professional development by delegating duties where appropriate.
  • Performance manager.  Use data-driven evidence to establish benchmarks and timelines which keep the team on track to achieve the goal.

Moving from leader to leadership

Designated leaders are often given their position as a reward for past performance and loyalty to the organization.  Often, the “go to” worker is bestowed the title as the boss with the expectation that they continue to effectively guide the workgroup and develop leadership traits.  Writing for Forbes, author Mark Murphy notes that it is difficult to transition from having a title to demonstrating leadership behavior because it requires transitioning from task-oriented work to empowering and motivating others.   He identifies the following as challenges that must be overcome when assuming a leadership role.

  • Trust others.  Designated leaders feel personally responsible for the outcome and tend to micro-manage to ensure the desired results.  Leadership is about surrounding yourself with competent people, trusting their capability, and relinquishing control.
  • Develop your leadership skills.   Communication, emotional intelligence and conflict resolution are all essential leadership skills and must be learned.
  • Delegate duties and authority.  Those in leadership set goals, provide resources, and motivate competent people to get the job done.  Leadership must ensure that workers have the authority to complete assigned tasks.   Micromanagement kills creativity must be avoided.
  • Professional development of others.  An essential component of long-term success for the organization is the continued professional development of every member of the group.  Effective leadership ensures that every employee can hone existing skills while expanding their role in the organization. In so doing, both productivity and retention are increased.

Being a designated leader with a title is all about you and how well tasks are completed.   Exhibiting leadership behavior is about the team and the success of the organization.   The most effective people in leadership positions have a vision, hire the right people, provide resources, ensure professional development, and trust team members to use their creativity to achieve the goal.  The challenge for those designated as the leader is to increase your value to the team and the organization by developing the leadership behaviors described above.

Tom is an experienced leader, educator, author, and requested speaker.  Click here for a video introduction to Tom’s talk topics.

Effective Leadership

Leadership

By Thomas Davis, CRNA

For centuries, leaders in both the Military and civilian world have attempted to identify and define the perfect leadership style. As far back as 500BC Lao-Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware….when the task is accomplished and things have been completed, all the people say we ourselves have achieved it.” On a grassroots level, people are empowered, engaged and have the self-satisfaction of a job well done.

 

Leaders in both business and healthcare are modifying their management style to encourage employee engagement.   As noted by Edward Hess in the Washington Post, “leaders of the most successful companies do not have a top down style of management”.   Collaborative management to encourage employee engagement is the key to success regardless of the type of business to include healthcare.  In reviewing leadership literature a common thread is advocating leadership through shared responsibility.   Collaborative Leadership is a sharing of power which recognizes the contributions of each individual and helps them develop and perform at their highest level.

 

Over the past 3 decades, I have observed many styles of leadership described with many different names. Without exception, the most efficient organizations with the highest employee engagement and morale were those in which the leaders followed the principles of Serving Leadership and shared governance.   Use the principles below to establish yourself as an effective manager of an engaged workgroup.

 

There are no unimportant jobs or people in an organization that embraces shared governance.   As a manager, develop a one on one relationship with each individual. When people are respected and their views heard, they become empowered and will seek excellence.   Both managers and front line workers recognize that mistakes will be made. By treating a mistake as a learning opportunity, lessons will be learned, and the organization will become stronger because each individual is allowed to take risk.   The key to success is to keep the team focused on the common goal.   One of the powerful actions described by Covey is “Begin with the end in mind” where the mission and vision of the organization are known and shared by all. High functioning workgroups are founded in trust, collaboration and holding one another accountable.   By affirming the common goal and using mistakes as teaching moments, effective leadership can pave the way to success.

 

Work is accomplished through relationships and trust is the glue that holds relationships together. Trust begins with you.   Begin your journey toward becoming an effective manager by looking within. What is your capacity to trust? What would happen if you approached every interaction from a baseline of trusting that you and the other person share common goals and seek common outcomes? Because you may disagree on a step in the process does not mean that your greater goals are different.   In the book Trust and Betrayal in the workplace, the Reina and Reina suggest the following for developing trust in relationships:

  • Share information
  • Tell the truth
  • Admit mistakes
  • Keep confidentiality
  • Give and receive feedback
  • Speak with good purpose
  • Take issues/concerns directly to the person involved 

 

Effective communication is essential in healthcare for patient safety, efficient workflow and employee morale.     Empowering Leadership upends the traditional top down leadership pyramid and makes each team member an equal participant in patient outcome.   The best decisions are made when opinions are solicited from a broad base of individuals who have a common interest in a positive outcome.   As a trained professional and leader, your insight and opinions are needed when decisions are being made however not all opinions are openly welcomed and received.   Grenny suggests the following when confronted with a difficult conversation:

  • Share your facts. Let the other person know what is behind your opinion.
  • Tell your story. Explain how you see things and why they are seen as they are.
  • Ask the other’s path. Openly solicit the other person explain why they see things as they do and listen to learn. Do not argue or confront as the other person explains their position.
  • Talk tentatively.   Ask “what if” or “what would it look like” questions to suggest your remedy and then listen as the other person responds.
  • Encourage testing. Come to a mutual agreement on a next step with the agreement that it will be reviewed and can be tweaked.
  • Being an effective manager does not require an MBA or that you were born into a family of corporate executives.   Put the micromanaging aside and trust in the abilities of your team.   By developing relationships, building on strengths, and communicating effectively, you too can be “the highest type of ruler” where your team achieves amazing results without your heavy hand.

 

Build on individual strengths to raise the collective performance of the group.   Each member of your team brings different strengths to the workplace. The person with the most creative ideas is not always skilled at putting the plan into action.   Teaming with others who can organize and execute the plan enables the creative genius of each individual to come to life. No individual can effectively do it all.

 

  1. Hess, Edward, April 28,2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/servant-leadership-a-path-to-high-performance/2013/04/26/435e58b2-a7b8-11e2-8302-3c7e0ea97057_story.html
  2. Dennis Reina and Michelle Reina, Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace.
  3. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/safer-patient-handoffs
  4. Grenny, Patterson and McMillan, Crucial conversations: tools for talking when stakes are high

 

Thomas Davis is an experienced leader, author, speaker and teambuilding coach.