101. How Can You Escape the #1 Physician Leadership Blind Spot in just 5 seconds?

Speaker A: 00:00:00

There's a blind spot in the heart of every physician's leadership skill set. Let's dig into that today so that you don't fall into the trap of leading in your administrative role the same way you lead in the exam room.

You learned a way to lead in medical school that just doesn't work.

As soon as you're away from the bedside, and I want to show you a hand motion and a single sentence that can turn it all around and make you the best leader in your organization really quickly. When I'm done, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Let's get started.

Back in episode 93, we talked about how all doctors are leaders. We're installed by our rank at the head of the care team, but we've never taken a leadership skills course.

There is no leadership 101 in med school or residency. We learned the way to lead as a doctor by watching the attendings and the residents who trained us as we came up through the system.

And this whole system works like this, right? And this is very familiar to you? The doctor is the expert and makes the diagnosis. The team sits around and waits for the doctor to give them orders.

And once the team has orders, they obey. And once we talk to the patient about what the patient is supposed to do, give the patient orders, they're supposed to be compliant. They comply.

That's a top down, command and control leadership style. And it actually developed when doctors originally came into contact with groups of nurses working in hospitals.

It was originally developed in the 18 hundreds when doctors began to care for patients in hospitals, interfacing with teams of nurses and hasn't changed much since. But notice there's only one source of wisdom. It's the doctor. Nobody else can contribute. They can only do what you tell them to do.

When you tell them to do it, you didn't ask them any questions, so you didn't tap the skills and experience of the team. It's a very lone ranger, perfectionist, driven form of leadership. And it works in the clinical setting.

But we're talking to you right now because you are a clinician and a leader. You're a physician leader, you've got another role.

You're in a straddle position part time, you're seeing patients part time, you're in an administrative leadership role and you're being asked to deal with issues that have to do with patient flow and revenue cycle management and metrics and all sorts of other things that you're not an expert in. What happens when a non expert starts to make diagnoses and older people around expects them to obey?

The skill set of being a physician doesn't work outside the exam room specifically, doesn't work when you're in an administrative meeting over in the ivory tower. Right. The challenge is, and the blind spot is, hey, I can lead as a doctor, I'll just be a leader in this, this committee meeting, too.

Not going to work. You're actually going to upset people.

And doctors are quite frustrating for non physicians when they come in and give orders and expect people to obey. So the truth is, the only way to be a really effective leader is to change your skill set when you change your role.

And I always talk about it being like hats.

So you have a doctor hat and then you have a leader hat, and there's a point at which you take your doctor hat off when you're going to the administrative meeting and you put your leader hat on. So what I'm going to ask you to do is mime that, right? So right now I'm going to. Here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to put my hand on my head like I'm grabbing a hat. And as I lift that hat off with my hand in my arm, I'm going to say, I'm taking my doctor hat off now. I'm taking my doctor hat off now.

So that's an energetic state change, and what I want you to accompany it with is the decision to stop giving orders and start asking questions.

Start asking questions now, this isn't a difficult skill set for a doctor because how do we reach the diagnosis, especially in a difficult case, you've got to ask questions, and if the case has been difficult to diagnose, you have to ask more subtle, deeper questions. So we have the ability to ask questions. That's what's being asked for of you in your role on the administrative side of the house.

So when you switch from doctor to leader, go ahead and physically say, I'm taking my doctor hat off. And physically take it off and switch from giving orders to asking questions. Here's another reason why asking questions is so powerful.

It allows you, who's not the expert in this role, to gather the learnings and experience, to understand the capabilities and all of the input of everybody on your team, because you're asking questions and getting everybody to participate, unlike the way they have to sit around and wait for your orders on the clinical side.

So asking questions, using your doctor question asking skills to diagnose the problems on the administrative high side of the house, with everybody participating in the discussion, that is servant leadership. You're leading in service to the team, helping the team address the challenges that they face.

You're not lording it over them that you know what's best and giving orders and expecting them to obey. And it will make you a much, much better leader. Let's do it again. Put your hand on your head and say it with me. One, two, three.

I'm taking my doctor hat off now, and this is just one of four different attitude switches you make as you become a servant leader.

The first step for a physician when you step into your leadership role is to take your doctor hat off and lead by asking questions, not by giving orders. There's three more I'm gonna teach you in next episodes.

I think you're gonna be excited to know that you can be a much, much better leader with a much happier team. Get so much more done, and you don't have to work as hard as you have been.

You don't have to work so hard if what you're responsible for is not the answer. It's a couple of good questions. We'll talk about that next time.

Until then, keep breathing and have a great rest of your day.