What is the #1 skill of quality physician leadership?
What is the #1 skill of quality physician leadership?The answer may surprise you.
What I can tell you is that being a great clinician does not teach you this skill. In fact, our medical education sets us up to be naturally ineffective leaders.
I am not just talking about physicians in official leadership positions here. All physicians are leaders. We all have people who look up to us for guidance, answers, wisdom and vision. So let's get you the skill set you need to do a great job.
Once you learn this key skill
- You will see your team perform better than ever
- And you won't be working nearly as hard as you do now
In the brief video below you will learn this master skill and the "Lone Ranger" test to know exactly when you need to throw it into gear.
TRANSCRIPT:
Physician Leadership Video Training - The #1 Leadership Skill
Hi, Dr. Dike Drummond here from www.TheHappyMD.com with a training on what I consider to be the foundational skill of a quality physician leader -- how to lead by asking questions.
I'm going to show you how to always ask the most powerful questions and in the end, I'm going to show you what I call the Lone Ranger Test to see if you've learned this lesson well.
As physicians, we were trained to diagnose and treat and we were also taught to lead by giving orders:
- Our team was meant to obey
- Our patients were meant to comply
What I can tell you is that you when you take on a physician leadership role where you're leading an administrative team, those skills don't work so well. Because if you're the one giving orders, you're not tapping into the skills and experience of everybody on your team. So in this video, let me show you how to stop giving orders and start asking questions.
Here's one thing I know for sure: you don't have to have all the answers when you have a goal or a vision, a team and some quality questions. What kind of questions?
Well, you've heard this before it's always stated as an Open-Ended Question. Let me show you how to build an Open-Ended Question every single time. It's actually quite easy, it depends on how you start the question in the first place.
Always start your questions with one of two words. Are you ready?
Those words are WHAT and HOW
If you start your leadership questions with what or how they will always be always be an Open-Ended Question. Open-Ended Question meaning one that cannot be answered, yes or no. The person hears a what or a how question and they have to think before they answer.
When you lead by asking questions, you always get the benefit of your entire team's skills and experience.
Examples:
Hey everybody, I'm looking for a better way to file these reports from consults in a timely and accurate fashion.
- WHAT are your thoughts on how we can do it differently?
- HOW do you suggest we do that?
One habit to get into is to simply take any statement you were going to make to your team and switch the first word for what or how. This takes what would have been an order and turns it into an Open-Ended Question.
The Lone Ranger Test
Now, here's what I call the Lone Ranger Test to tell whether or not you've learned this lesson well. Any time you find yourself sitting in your office trying to figure out what to tell your team to do, you’re being a Lone Ranger. You’re succumbing to the Lone Ranger programming of our medical education.
So when you find yourself all alone, in your office trying to figure out what to tell your team ... what order to give ... STOP, grab your team and ask them a couple quality What or How questions.
Your job is to Help Your Team Solve the Team's Challenges. It's not your job to diagnose and treat and give orders when you're a true team leader as a physician.
That's all for now, keep breathing and have a great rest of your day.
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT:
How does your team respond when you lead with this skill?