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Providing Leadership

INTRODUCTION

The title of Doctor places many responsibilities on an individual. Some of these are obvious while others are not quite as clear. The role of leader exemplifies the latter. Certain practitioners feel their only job is to provide ocular care, and it has nothing to do with leadership; however, if people feel comfortable enough to place their vision in your hands, they will naturally turn to your leadership at other difficult times, whether you want them to or not. It is an incredible compliment to be thought of that way. The result of this is that your acceptance and ability to effectively lead will impact your company’s overall success.

Leadership is simply guiding and influencing others. At the highest level, the practitioner provides direction about an organization’s goals and demonstrates its culture. This includes the desired reputation in the community among colleagues and the quality of patient care given to customers. These leadership duties extend to many other tasks such as directing change. If needed, the provider will convert a toxic work environment to one where valuable recruits want to join it. Another example includes developing and training that star low-level technician with jagged edges to eventually become a well-polished office manager.

Although understanding the meaning of leadership is important, the successful eye care practitioner also comprehends how great leadership is executed. Therefore, this chapter begins with a section about key strategic questions that must first be skillfully addressed. The answers to these provide the company’s direction and identity. The attention then shifts to 5 critical leadership activities that promote a winning organization. This chapter aims to help readers recognize how they will be seen as leaders in their organization and motivates them to capitalize on these opportunities to improve themselves and others during the process.

What are the qualities of an excellent leader? Although there are many attributes, one underlying trait is the capability to maximize other people’s abilities. A common misconception is that leaders only affect those individuals reporting to them. However, this definition more closely resembles managers. There is an important distinction between managers and leaders. Managers control the activities of those they govern. Leaders are quite different with much broader-reaching results. Their influence is felt throughout the entire business, regardless of who reports to them, now and into the future.1

An important display of leadership is affecting the culture of a business. It is the culture that provides the blueprint for the organization’s building blocks. It directs 2 critical questions. The first is where it wants to be in the future, or its vision.² The second is what it wants to be, or its mission. After these are established, the remaining task is to execute the plan to reach these goals. This includes harnessing the leader’s skill set to maximize the organization’s human resources by empowering employees to exercise their own leadership.

LEADERSHIP IN EYE CARE

The benefits from leadership are not easily noticed during peaceful times. However, when tensions are high and consequences are meaningful, the presence and ability to effectively lead becomes priceless. It can mean the difference between eventual success or failure of the organization and all of its employees.

Leadership is the glue for businesses that holds all the pieces together and provides the overall mold to create the desired shape. Its extensive reach directs the positioning and executing of all the other arms in a company. This is accomplished by supplying the fundamental principles about the practice’s identity and goals. Successful eye care practitioners perform the following: exemplify the culture, form the vision statement, create the mission statement, lead change, develop talent, empower the employees, encourage teamwork, and manage conflict.

Exemplifying the Culture

Importance

One of the most underappreciated but vital activities to build and maintain a prosperous company is the development of the right culture. It is easy to see the problems individuals run into by not realizing the value of an organization’s culture. The first association people make when thinking about business is money. Although wealth is important, the financial capabilities of a business are simply the downstream effects of how successfully it is run. The driver for all operations, however, is its culture. The proof to this statement is that culture will play a role in every other chapter of this book.

The culture serves as a compass to direct activities and guide decisions. It supplies the framework for the practice’s expectations of employee behavior with each other and customers. To illustrate the fundamental application of culture, consider the common dilemma of how an employee should react when confronted with a problem that does not have a standard response in the company’s protocol. The quality of the decisions made at these moments on a day-to-day basis are what separates the best businesses from the rest. If the culture is one of valuing relationships, acting professionally, and providing the best service, then this is how the employee will react in that and any other similar situation. Employees will naturally conduct themselves in a manner and present an answer that is consistent with the company’s culture. Unfortunately, this is also true if the culture is defined by less than favorable characteristics.

The takeaway message is that the individuals who influence the culture in an organization play a critical role. They are the true leaders by defining and demonstrating its values. It is imperative to have the right culture that is built upon the company’s desired qualities. This circles back to the initial thoughts on how people mistakenly only associate the success of a business with its ability to make money. The thriving eye care practitioner understands that the real force in a winning organization is its culture.

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The staff members within an eye care practice look toward their leaders to provide the company’s culture and ground rules. These select individuals have the keen leadership abilities to influence others by connecting, encouraging, empowering, and orienting.1 People are naturally drawn and want to follow these types of human beings. However, this quality places the responsibility to lead well on these individuals. Their words and actions model to everyone else the expected conduct within the organization. The requisite to creating a top culture is having outstanding leaders that exemplify it. On the other hand, leaders with a negative attitude will disseminate and produce an equally poor culture.

Identifying these leaders is not as straightforward as one would assume. Most individuals inaccurately believe a manager or anyone in a supervisory role is a leader, and that only people in high-ranking positions can be leaders. These are misconceptions. Managers are not necessarily leaders, and leaders do not have to be managers. Anyone in any position within an organization can lead. In fact, a sign of a great leader is one that understands how to lead from the middle of an organization. His or her actions can affect those above, below, and at the same level as him- or herself.

How does one lead without having an official managerial title? There are many methods, including some that are easy, of how any employee can create a great culture. For example, consider an associate physician without an ownership stake in a practice. He or she shows leadership by knowing the name of all the staff members and something important about them. This creates a special bond and demonstrates that everyone is appreciated. A simple statement like the following is sometimes worth more than a raise to an employee: “John, thank for your help today working up those last few patients; and, by the way, how did Tommy’s Little League baseball game go?”

Leaders are consistent with their words and behaviors. They walk the walk and talk the talk. When these individuals go down a hallway, they lean over to pick up trash on the ground even when no is around to see it. Chances are high that this type of positive behavior will be noted at some point and shared among other employees. These actions, much like their reputations, spread like wildfire in an organization and are quite infectious in nature. Everyone else suddenly follows that lead. It becomes expected that any staff member would have picked up that litter because it is the culture. These demonstrations of culture resonate even louder when done by the respected eye care provider.

Outstanding leadership both empowers those around the leaders and also holds them accountable to their actions and responsibilities. They model professional and trustworthy characteristics, and they expect others to follow that lead. Leaders understand that if they treat others like adults, they will act like adults; but if they treat them like children, they will act like children.³ They influence others into the right actions.

Leading a group also necessitates guiding many individuals with different backgrounds to work as a team. Leaders know that all it takes is one bad apple, or one good apple that has a lapse in judgment, to gossip and destroy the hard-earned trust among the group. The creation of a safe and positive culture is aided when leaders do not partake in gossiping and let others know not to as well. Again, they treat others as adults and expect adult behavior from them.

Forming the Vision Statement

Importance

A method that leaders incorporate to develop and maintain an organization’s culture is to provide direction and set goals of where the business should be in the future. Elite leadership not only aligns the company culture to these goals, but also delineates the required steps needed to achieve the desired outcome. An effective vision statement accomplishes this task by serving as a map. Although it can be done verbally, a written vision statement is powerful because of its permanent nature. It signifies strength, commitment, and confidence.

The vision statement helps orient the organization to its future direction.⁴ This includes providing clear endpoints, in addition to milestones, to be accomplished along the way. This strategic approach ensures that the day-to-day staff activities will ultimately lead to the company’s favored outcome. It also prevents valuable resources from being wasted. With each daily task, employees should be able to confirm that their work will result in the group getting closer to their shared vision.

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If you do not have one, it is time for some serious self-reflection and determination of what the vision should be for your organization. Think carefully about the desired goals and craft a written statement that inspires your employees to work together to reach them. Do not complete this task by yourself; instead, enlist and empower key staff members through this process. This will not only show your entire organization that you value their thoughts, but also you will have their buy-in to its actual results. If they helped create the vision statement, then it is their own reputation that is at stake for its quality and execution.

Creating the Mission Statement

Importance

An organization’s mission statement complements the vision statement and is equally important in function. Leadership must also transmit a clear message about it to the staff. Instead of thinking about the future as described by the vison statement, the mission statement primarily focuses on the present time. Great leaders utilize it as an opportunity to illustrate what the company is by using values as a focal point. The hope is to develop an intimate connection with individuals, including its customers.

The mission statement presents to customers a sense of who and what the business is in an effective manner. Inherently, customers are looking to have their needs met by requesting a service. In this transaction, they give up their hard-earned money and, as a consequence, they develop a set of expectations that need to be met. This is where the value of organizational transparency becomes advantageous for practices that are properly positioned. A company with a clear vision helps ensure that what the customers are anticipating from the relationship matches what the business plans to provide. The ability to successfully link the expectations of the customers to goals of the company makes for a mutually beneficial relationship and develops trust.

Keywords

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