Quiet Leadership

With every new company I’ve joined, each team I’ve led, every new associate I’ve brought on, I have the same discussions.? First and foremost, I let everyone know it is my obligation to clearly communicate my expectations, not their responsibility to try to understand me.? How can any of us hold our teams accountable if we don’t let them know the desired outcomes to which they’re being held.? Anyone who has raised a child knows that you can say “don’t do that!”? “OK”, says the child, “but there are at least a thousand other things that I could do; what would you like me to do?”? To leave our associates guessing is a recipe for mediocrity.?

Next on my list is:? I don’t like surprises.? Good, bad, or indifferent, I need to know.? Thinking back to my days in practice, I told the nurses caring for my patients that I would never be upset if they called me in the middle of the night and it turned out to be a non-issue.? But if I came in the next morning and discovered a serious issue about which they had not called me… let’s just say there would be a conversation.? I start with the assumption that everyone on the team has good intentions and is doing their best.? If we are not meeting our goals, there are only three reasons:? 1) we chose the incorrect goals; 2) we chose the incorrect timeline; or, 3) we chose the incorrect tools.? By limiting the circumstances to these three reasons, there is no fear of recrimination, no finger pointing.? Recalibrate, mitigate, and move on.

If I’ve communicated my expectations clearly and confirmed my teams’ understanding, I get out of the way and let them do their jobs.? If it’s legal, moral, ethical, and honest, I don’t get involved with how they accomplish the task as long as we achieve the outcomes we need, and no one is hurt in the process.? I let my teams know “I don’t want to do your job.? If I did, I would.? I don’t!”?

This leads into my next guiding principle:? I already know what I know; I want to know what you know.? One of my definitions of Quality is “the elimination of unwanted variation.”? Note that it does not say the elimination of all variation.? There must always be room for creativity leading to improvement.? And with that pursuit of improvement comes the understanding that we are not chasing the competition, we are competing against ourselves to constantly do better.

Residency training for physicians is all about getting experience, and for residents in surgical specialties part of that experience is the supervised performance of surgical procedures.? As I led my residents through various operations, I would let them get into just as much “trouble” as I knew I could get them out of – never putting a patient at risk, of course.? Whether in the operating room or a meeting room, we have a responsibility to lead by example and to “stretch” those we are leading.? Einstein said that a mind, once expanded, can never return to its original size.? Similarly, we need to guide, mentor, and share our experience so others can gain their own.? “Learn from experience – preferably other people’s” goes the old expression.? Part of trust is allowing other people to make mistakes in your business, and to have the guardrails and safety nets in place for the company and the associate.? If you don’t trust the members of your team, why did you hire them in the first place?

This brings me to my final point about quiet leadership.? Every conversation I have with one of my leaders ends with the same question:? “What do you need from me?”? With a passion for excellence, my ultimate responsibility is to contribute to the success of the company and to build the next generation of leaders.