Want to be CEO? Focus on finesse.

IN THIS ARTICLE ...

Reaching the peak of your physician executive career demands that you spend some time learning the soft skills such as how to motivate your team, how to generate innovative ideas and how to harness 100 percent of your creative energies

**********

Is the CEO position the one you want next?

You may be assuming that once you've accumulated the requisite medical management and operational experience in the trenches, you will be "groomed" enough to move to the top.

Not so.

You've only earned the right to fantasize about it. Getting to the highest levels of executive leadership--not to mention succeeding when you're there--requires a whole new set of "soft skills" on top of the technical leadership skills you are developing as a physician executive.

Here are four areas of personal competency that will help you transcend your physician executive role and position yourself for the top spot.

1. Don't rely on your credentials

Before you add one more credential or certification to your portfolio, take a look at what research tells us about executive success and advancement. According to Daniel Goleman and others, authors of the popular books on emotional intelligence including Primal Leadership, (1) if you want to perform at the highest levels of leadership, your technical expertise and cognitive skills are only baseline level competencies.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Those executives who produce extraordinary results have an additional competency that gives them a genuine leadership edge: emotional intelligence. We all have emotional intelligence, but for many this is an underdeveloped skill.

You are a leader with a high emotional intelligence quotient (high "EQ") if you can manage your words, your emotion and moods, plus facilitate smooth working relationships among team members.

At the highest levels of leadership, your effectiveness will be measured by how well you facilitate group dynamics so a strategic direction emerges collaboratively, and how well you inspire and coach others to move forward with enthusiasm.

This is all about using language and communication to respectfully enroll others to take the path you envision.

2. Get out of your head

Albert Einstein's famous quote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge," speaks about the deep personal well we dip into to find new ideas. For many leaders, this well of intuition is the source of our visionary thinking.

A highly effective leader gets information and gains insight not only from analytical, quantitative data, but also from sources like intuition, a "gut read," or a "funny feeling." For many, this source of valuable information is often ignored or perhaps tuned out because it can't be rationally explained. Here's where you must get out of your head; even though intuitive information defies logic, don't discount its value.

Authors of The Corporate Mystic, (2) Gay Henricks and Kate Ludeman, observe that leaders who use their intuition are "calling forth their full potential." Intuition often plays a key role in making a hiring choice, coming up with a new market for an existing product or getting the timing right on an investment.

Here are two ways to get out of your head: First, pay attention to how you receive your own intuitive signals. For some, this may be a visceral physical sensation, for others a flash of knowing. Once you are comfortable with how you receive intuitive insight, make note of it, just like any other data.

Second, spend less time using your intellect. Many people tap into their intuitive self through physical exercise, the arts or meditation. Immerse yourself regularly in a recreational, physical, auditory or visual experience that temporarily disables the analytical, reasoning mind.

Counterbalancing mental activities with the physical or aesthetic is like pressing the reset button; you refresh your thinking.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

3. Be accountable

As you advance into higher levels of leadership, get into the habit of being accountable and expecting accountability from others. While you are certainly not an overt whiner, you may be inadvertently inviting helplessness if you tolerate victim-speak from your team.

Don't buy into phrases such as, "The other group prevented us from completing our project," "They rejected our proposal," or "The department was fine when I ran it; the new director mismanaged things."

We are all capable of offering better solutions, planning our time wisely or exercising free will to make our own choices. For many people, however, it's easier to abdicate this responsibility and play victim. And for some leaders, the easier path is to avoid confronting this victim attitude.

A good place to establish leadership accountability is through your words--both your own "self-talk" and some frank talk to your team. Use communication to point out the control each person has in creating the result they want.

In responding to the victim-speak, here is how you can use words to instill accountability: "It sounds like you did not take into account the dependencies you had on other departments," "In what ways did your proposal not meet their needs," and "Your debriefing and orientation for the new director was insufficient; what can you do now to support the transition?"

An outstanding resource, The Oz Principle, (3) by Roger Conners and others, explores how the attitude of victimization has captured not only corporations, but the whole American society, creating a debilitating culture of blame. Without executive leaders who can model accountability for their teams and organizations, this cycle will continue.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

4. Power up, authentically

The effective leader is a master at using authentic personal power to attract people to a cause, inspire them to work together to accomplish results and feel good about being a member of the team.

Authentic personal power comes from being who you are and feeling comfortable about it. Simply put, this is letting go of fear--fear of looking incompetent or feeling awkward--and all the fears that cause you to lose confidence in yourself and lose the trust of others.

Authentic personal power is difficult to describe, but we are drawn to it when we see it. When describing leaders we admire, we use words like: having integrity, being "real," playing fair, having quiet confidence, walking the talk, inspiring.

Uncovering your personal power comes from self-reflection, taking in the lessons learned from failures and aligning your action with personal values. Authentic leaders attribute their inner personal command to being driven by a higher purpose or connecting to values and soul.

The idea of looking internally to find innate power is common to many cultures. Indeed, the training of elite Samurai warriors included a personal development component. Here is how the great Samurai Tesshu explained how personal power relates to effectiveness: "If a man's soul is not projected into his hands, even ten thousand techniques are useless."

As an effective leader on the way to the top, your ultimate edge will be how you project your soul into your work. This requires an honest assessment of your underlying values and natural gifts, and a willingness to fully express them, rather than letting fear hold you back.

Projecting your soul into your work also means that you increase the wattage of your energy output. Think of yourself as a 100-watt bulb on a dimmer switch. Many people are content to operate at 60 or 75 watts. It's comfortable illumination for most tasks. But if you want to become an effective leader, you must power up to the full 100.

Getting to the highest levels of leadership follows a parallel path with tapping into your full potential as a human being. Until you focus on your own personal development and fully power up, your career will take you only to the highest levels of technical competency.

But you are capable of so much more than that! Once you develop the soft skills of authentic leadership, you will reach new heights. If you are serious about moving up, commit to a personal development plan and enroll a mentor, colleague or coach to assist you.

When you take the path of authentic leadership, your best work will ultimately be driven by your character. This is the kind of leadership that is needed at the top of health care organizations.

References:

1. Goleman D, Boyatzis R and McKee A. Primal Leadership, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

2. Hendricks G, and Ludeman K. The Corporate Mystic, New York: Bantam Books, 1996.

3. Connors R, Smith T and Hickman C. The Oz Principle. New York: Prentice Hall Press 1994.

By Francine R. Gaillour, MD, MBA, CPE, FACPE 

Francine R. Gaillour, MD, MBA, CPE, FACPE is president of The Gaillour Group, an executive coaching and strategy consulting firm. She is a nationally recognized speaker on health care leadership, cultural change and the future of medical practice. She can be reached at 888-562-7289, [e-mail] or visit her Web sites at www.gaillourgroup.com or www.physicianleadership.com

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]