Healthcare Leadership can be broken down into five key points. These five points are not meant to sum up the totality of leadership in healthcare, but are meant to address a few key areas leaders should focus on throughout their careers. Seize the opportunity to make headway with your team and operation by implementing this easy-to-remember system.
1. Lead From the Front
Being a leader doesn’t mean kicking back in your office and watching chaos unfold. It means being present and visible. Leaders are the source of strategy for their team and they should be visible to them daily. Leading from the front doesn’t mean leaders should be doing front-line work. In fact, leaders that find themselves working in the weeds may have a hard time earning respect from their teams. Leading from the front means you should be present at the front-line, ready to motivate and strategize with your team to achieve your practice’s goals. Good leaders are seen as beacons, not another colleague. Leaders that connect with their teams will build solid foundations to guide their organizations through anything thrown their way. Furthermore, developing trusted relationships with one’s team will improve morale and will ultimately lead a happier workforce. After all, happy employees lead to happy patients.
2. Know Your Patients
Patients are the cornerstone of any practice. Without them healthcare organizations would cease to exist. Patient centered care is a popular strategy in healthcare settings these days, but patient centered leadership is not. Interacting with your healthcare practice’s patients on a daily basis can pay dividends long-term. Developing relationships in your lobby will give you insight into areas for improvement and will help you set your organizational goals. Being present with patients will also remind leaders why they chose the healthcare profession to begin with. The old hospitality industry adage, ‘The customer is always right,’ holds true in healthcare as well. It will behoove healthcare leaders to remember this principle in their daily routines. Even when patients are ‘wrong,’ leaders [and all other healthcare workers for that matter] should treat patients with the same respect and integrity one would expect from a five-star hotel.
3. Know Your Service or Specialty
Knowing one’s specialty may seem obvious, but many leaders enter new situations without taking the time to learn their service. Taking simple steps to master a specialty can include reading related medical journals, books or blogs on a routine basis. Seeking a related accreditation or certification may bolster any knowledge gained throughout the process. Spending time with the physicians and providers in your practice is another easy way to learn about your specialty. Developing these valuable relationships will be invaluable throughout a leaders tenure at an organization. Furthermore, understanding one’s service or specialty will aid in future-proofing a practice. Healthcare leaders should not be caught off-guard by new technologies or treatment options.
4. Plan Your Future
Healthcare is a steadily changing industry. Patients receive new treatment options daily, but few are possible due to archaic practices and processes like prior authorization. Laws and regulations seem to change just as fast as therapies. Healthcare leaders must learn to deal with this natural progression and future-proof their practices by leading through innovation and change. Leaders need to create a culture that promotes innovation and supports growth through transformation. They should support their employee’s ideas and encourage growth. Leaders should try new things, even if they may not be on board. This will show employees their leader is willing to listen to them. Evolution is inevitable, so remember to stay ahead of the curve.
5. Remember your Vision and Mission
It is important for leaders to remember their organizational mission and vision because the daily grind can cause one to lose sight of the overall goal. Successful leaders learn how to see through the fog and keep their organization’s vision in mind at every hurdle. Vision statements are guiding declarations; the proverbial north star leaders look to when times are tough. Furthermore, mission and vision statements can help leaders motivate employees and can be the beat that a team walks to. Consider developing a three or four word mantra related to your mission or vision.
Apollo Healthcare’s mantra? ‘To the moon,’ a play on our vision that one day in the near future, every cancer patient will have equal access to life saving therapies. Every patient deserves a shot at the moon. We exist to help them get there.
