It doesn’t take a crystal ball to know the next several months will continue to bring intense pressure, changes and opportunities for healthcare organizations. It’s a season that will reveal extraordinary leaders, and also expose leaders struggling with these new challenges (and, quite honestly, some of the same challenges of the past).
How prepared are you to lead through the multiple challenges facing healthcare this year?
Whatever your strategic or leadership goals may be for the coming months, achieving them requires a rock-solid foundation. There are so many challenges and competing priorities, but I am recommending leaders focus on three things this year:
First, take care of yourself.
Make sure you have a full tank if you’re going to inspire and motivate others. If your tank is empty, it’s going to show up in your leadership, in the culture you’re trying to create, and in your outcomes, which likely won’t be consistent with your values and vision. Recognizing what refills your tank and doing that on a regular basis is critical. Self-care is the first step to successful leadership.
Second, pay attention to strategic relationships.
Identify and cultivate those relationships. Be clear on whether you’re in trust mode, repair trust mode, or maintain trust mode. Strong leaders are very intentional about nurturing strategic relationships and strengthening trust.
Third, pay close attention to the dynamics of your team.
Is your team interdependent and in tight alignment? Is the team resilient, able to adapt, learn and move forward? A strong team greatly amplifies your impact as a leader and ability to achieve your shared mission and vision. Your life also becomes much easier.
Self-care, relationships, alignment. “Impossible” goals are made possible when members of your team trust one another (and you) to co-create your desired reality. Truly interdependent teams are truly built on the foundation of trust, the ability to engage in healthy conflict, and then they can achieve the strong results needed to push further. A strong leader with healthy self-care will be able to recognize when their team is heading in the direction of burnout and mistrust.
Is your team essentially a new team because of new individuals joining the team and others leaving? Is it a “stuck” team that might need an intervention or outside coaching for individuals or the team together? Or is the team already high-performing and interdependent but struggling with change and new priorities? Whatever the case, understanding the dynamics of the team and where the team is as a whole can help unlock new opportunities to elevate performance and impact together.
