First Published on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leading-experts-physician-leadership-david-ducheyne/
I used to be CHRO for 1700 HR specialists. Each of those 1700 people was expert in something, and they knew more than me. In my team I had experts who new more about Comp & Ben, Talent, Facilities, Communication, Safety and Prevention, Customer experience, … than me.
When you don’t know what people know, how can you lead them? Some people suggest that you should start studying. But the seems a lost battle, you will never catch up.
So many organisations resort to promoting the best expert to manager. But that is often a dead end. Being the expert is not a guarantee for being able to lead experts.
Many experts feel uncomfortable in many aspects of leadership. They feel they have not been trained for this. Or they feel that the time to lead people, keeps them away from their work as expert. Management is seen as a burden, a nuisance.
Physician Leadership
One of the clearest examples of this is physician leadership. Teams of medical doctors are led by a colleague, who is often elected. There are many reasons why a physician is candidate for a leadership role. Not all of these reasons are positive. Sometimes there is nobody else. Sometimes they feel forced to do it.
And the context is not always supportive either. Sometimes a physician leader is not compensated for the time they spend. Sometimes colleagues monitor the leader’s activities and criticise the time they spend. Every minute that is spent on management is not spent in clinical activities.
Also the organization might have difficulties with the physician leaders. A hospital is composed of many people with different backgrounds: physicians, nurses, paramedical professions, psychologists, administrative personnel. As physician leaders are elected by their colleagues, it means they are not selected. The head physician might try and influence the choice, but nevertheless they are confronted with the result of a democratic but sometimes cumbersome process.
Moreover, physicians are independent and do not “take instructions”. If a hospital wants to develop its leadership and culture, it can only do so by getting the buy-in of the physicians. As nurses are in practice led by both physicians and head nurses, they are possibly confronted with two types of leadership. That does not make it easier.
So the least one could say is that there is a risk of some tension.
So how does one lead experts?
Most people are experts in what they do. Some are so by degree, others by experience. People want to be an expert in something. Being competent in a field of work is motivating.
And probably understanding that is the key to leading experts. They are motivated by being good at what they do. They thrive when they perform a service that corresponds to the current professional norms. Making mistakes is always hard to take. And especially in medical environments where mistakes can have catastrophic results, the standards are high.
How does a leading physician tell his colleague they should do it differently? How do they deal with mistakes? How do they inspire colleagues in a certain direction?
This is a tough nut to crack. Some leading physicians call themselves “primus inter pares”, the first among equals. Still, they might be very reluctant to intervene and therefore they limit themselves to budgets, lunch meetings, information sessions.
Leadership is difficult
The truth is that many physicians feel incompetent as leader. They are not as thoroughly trained as leaders as they are as physicians. And dealing with people might be harder for them than performing a complicated surgery.
But I can always reassure them. Nobody is trained for leadership. Leadership, like parenthood , is not learnt in a classroom but by being a leader.
And that’s the biggest challenge for an expert. There is no absolute science of leadership. Leadership is very contextual. And everything people know is at best probabilistic. This is hard for an engineer or physician to accept.
And I get often the question: why don’t people do what they are supposed to do?
And that question, is vital for every leader.
Learning from other professions
It’s good to look beyond the own profession. Physician Leaders could learn a lot from experts who are leading in engineering. Or the performing arts.
I have invited conductor and musician Bart Naessens to discuss the challenge of expert leadership and leadership expertise. Bart is a renowned conducttor and continuo player. He is facing exactly the same problems as other expert leaders in other fields. Confronted with an orchestra of expert musicians he has to lead them towards a certain musical performance. He depends on their expertise as violinists, flutists, harpists, …
It’s not by barking instructions that he will motivate musicians to go along with his vision.
We will learn from him on September 26th in the Otolith House. You can register here. The number of places is limited.
(of course this is no longer possible).
