Episode 109
109. Why Do the Best Doctors Often Make the Worst Physician Leaders?
Are you unknowingly setting yourself—or others—up for leadership failure? Discover the hidden pitfalls that can make even the best doctors ineffective physician leaders.
In this episode, we dive into one of the "dirty little secrets" of physician leadership: the tendency for individuals to rise to their level of incompetence in a hierarchy - the Peter Principle - is especially problematic in healthcare. Learn being the best doctor in your department never translates into being the best department chair.
YOU WILL:
~~ Understand how promoting the best clinicians to leadership roles can lead to a management disaster.
~~ Learn why diagnostic skills and question-asking are invaluable tools for successful physician leadership.
~~ Explore practical strategies for overcoming the Peter Principle and becoming a more effective, impactful physician leader.
Don’t miss this episode—listen now to learn how to avoid common physician leadership pitfalls and build a skill set that ensures your success and the well-being of your team!
Episode 101 is Here: https://bit.ly/SPB_101
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Explore physician leadership tools and strategies to stop physician burnout, enhance physician wellness and give you the power of personal influence in the C-Suite. All the tools you need to play your role in leading the charge to wellness - at three levels - for you, your teams and your entire organization.
Takeaways:
- The podcast reveals that many physician leaders rise to incompetence due to poor leadership selection.
- Burnout among physicians is often a direct consequence of inadequate leadership in healthcare settings.
- The Peter Principle explains that frontline workers are often more competent than their leaders.
- To combat incompetence in leadership roles, prioritize hiring those with proper administrative experience.
- Acknowledging one's limitations in leadership skills is crucial for personal and professional growth.
- Doctors should leverage their diagnostic skills to ask the right questions in leadership roles.
Transcript
The purpose of this little podcast, 10 minutes on Tuesdays and Fridays, is to give you the skills to be an excellent physician leader.
Speaker A:And in order to do that, I have to show you physician leadership's dirty little secrets.
Speaker A:Last time I showed you how burnout is a tried and true path to leadership and that bad physician leaders burn out their direct reports.
Speaker A:Physician leadership is a primary cause of burnout.
Speaker A:Let me show you another one of the dirty little secrets today.
Speaker A:It is a trend that was first diagnosed by a man named Lawrence J.
Speaker A:Peter, a Canadian educator who found that, and this is his famous quote, in a hierarchy, employees tend to rise to the level of their incompetence.
Speaker A:Meaning he saw patterns over and over again where the folks in the senior leadership positions were incompetent while the frontline workers were pretty good at their jobs.
Speaker A:Have you ever noticed that in a healthcare setting?
Speaker A:Let's talk about why that happens and how you can avoid it.
Speaker A:It's actually quite simple.
Speaker A:You have all the tools that you need.
Speaker A:We just need to point them in the right direction.
Speaker A:Ready?
Speaker A:Let's get started.
Speaker B:Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Stop Physician Burnout podcast, a physician leadership podcast where you will learn the skills so that we can join together and lead the charge to physician well being.
Speaker B:Skills to earn the respect of your colleagues in the front lines.
Speaker B:Skills to exerc true influence in the C suite and take back your job, your practice, your career and your life.
Speaker B:All of these tools have been proven effective in my 40,000 doctor physician coaching and training practice.
Speaker B:And if I know one thing, I know you're super busy.
Speaker B:So let's get started.
Speaker A: Back in the: Speaker A:Peter was a administrator and an educator who noticed a pattern over time that the higher you go up the org chart in an educational organization, the more incompetent the people appeared to be.
Speaker A:The frontline workers were pretty darn good, but the leaders were terrible.
Speaker A:He actually coined a phrase, people rise to the level of their incompetence inside a hierarchy.
Speaker A:And he tried to figure out why this happened, because he saw this pattern across every industry.
Speaker A:And I bet you've seen it in healthcare.
Speaker A:The frontline doctors are doing a good job.
Speaker A:But you know, as we move up the org chart, things get more and more strange and the leadership skills don't seem to match the clinical skills of the folks in the front line.
Speaker A:How does this happen?
Speaker A:Well, just go with me and you'll see why it's automatic.
Speaker A:This pattern became known as the Peter Principle.
Speaker A:Let me show you how you can avoid falling victim to it.
Speaker A:You have a department.
Speaker A:Say it's the pediatrics department, and the pediatrics department is growing.
Speaker A:You got a bunch of good pediatricians in it.
Speaker A:But now you need a head of pediatrics, a chairperson of the department, a program director, whatever the role is called.
Speaker A:But you need to bring in a person who is an administrative leader.
Speaker A:And you're probably going to hire them from within the staff that you have right now.
Speaker A:How are you going to pick the person who's going to be the leader?
Speaker A:Well, you're probably going to make the mistake picking the best doctor.
Speaker A:So you say this person is the best doctor of pediatrics.
Speaker A:Let's make him the chairperson of the department.
Speaker A:Sounds like a great idea on the surface, doesn't it?
Speaker A:Except let me ask you this.
Speaker A:What are the qualifications, the knowledge base and the experience to be a good pediatrician?
Speaker A:And do those qualifications, Knowledge, experience, do they match the qualifications to be a great head of the.
Speaker A:Of a pediatrics department?
Speaker A:To be a great administrator?
Speaker A:Manager.
Speaker A:Not a doctor, a manager, an administrator.
Speaker A:The answer is obviously no.
Speaker A:So if you take the best frontline worker and put them in a leadership role, they're naturally and automatically incompetent.
Speaker A:They actually were never qualified to have the job in the first place.
Speaker A:Think about it.
Speaker A:When you move from a clinical role to an administrative role, the whole time you've been working, you've been in the room with the patient, and all the administrative stuff happens outside the room.
Speaker A:Well, you're seeing patients.
Speaker A:You don't even have exposure to some of the issues that will be brought to you as an administrative leader.
Speaker A:So how do we get around this?
Speaker A:First of all, acknowledge it's true.
Speaker A:Just like last time.
Speaker A:Burnout is a tried and true path to leadership for many doctors.
Speaker A:That's okay, let's acknowledge it.
Speaker A:And crap leaders burn out their followers.
Speaker A:Let's admit that that's true, too.
Speaker A:30% of my coaching clients have to leave their job and get a new one to recover simply because they have a challenge with a crap bo.
Speaker A:Well, when you get promoted to a leadership position in the administrative side of the house, you don't know what you're doing naturally and automatically, unless you've been a successful administrator of that size department before, and you probably haven't.
Speaker A:So admit your ignorance, admit your incompetence, and stick close to what you're best at.
Speaker A:You're best at being a diagnostician.
Speaker A:You're best at asking questions and putting the answers together into solving the puzzle of the patient's disease.
Speaker A:Just so you know that's a universal business skill set.
Speaker A:Doctors are great to have on your board of directors.
Speaker A:Doctors are great to have in the C suite if we remember our question asking skills and our diagnostic skills to solve puzzles to help everybody get on the same page by asking great questions and connecting the dots into a unifying thesis of where the issue sits and how we might therapeutically address it.
Speaker A:It's a universal business skill set if you just relax into it and don't think you have to know everything.
Speaker A:You're there to ask the best questions and help everybody figure out how to proceed.
Speaker A:So admit you're almost certainly not qualified.
Speaker A:You may have been burned out to get here and I would ask you to make one of two choices.
Speaker A:If you're not up to this game to be an excellent leader, put your heart into it and make a difference.
Speaker A:Encourage you to quit the administrative job or retire.
Speaker A:And if you are up to it and realize you got some work to do to be the leader you capable of, then go back to lesson 101 and start watching 10 minutes at a time so I can show you how to be a four tool leader in today's deteriorating US healthcare workforce.
Speaker A:We haven't got the time for us to continue to be mediocre leaders in health care.
Speaker A:I encourage you to dedicate yourself to leadership excellence and if you'd like to accelerate that path, my discovery session link is in the show notes.
Speaker A:I'd love to talk to you about your specific situation.
Speaker A:That's it for now until we're together in the next podcast.
Speaker A:You keep breathing and have a great rest of your day.
