Are medical leaders making their teams feel empowered? Or do they make them feel small, lost and broken? The evidence suggests that medical professionals today are being marginalized, increasingly alienated and made to feel insignificant. Increasingly, large organizations are becoming “systems,” and every day, professionals are faced with difficulties in practicing their professions in authentic ways. This seems to be happening everywhere.
Medical Professionals Don’t Feel Respected by Their Leaders
In San Jose, California, 450 doctors in the Santa Clara County Health System organized and threatened to strike due to worker shortages, outdated and substandard equipment, unsustainable workloads, and a backlog of hundreds of patients waiting for basic services. In October 2022, the group agreed on a contract over untenable working conditions. This contract, which took more than two years to negotiate, focused primarily on professional workload and wellness. It was finally completed just days before the physicians were due to go on strike, which would have jeopardized healthcare services for the people in that region.
In addition, the healthcare professionals cited “dismissiveness” by leadership as a primary reason for their actions. In other words, these professionals did not feel respected, according to Tran Nguyen in the San José Spotlight. In fact, a recent survey of those physicians revealed that two-thirds of them did not plan on staying with the organization. Three out of five of those planning to leave cited not being respected by management as the reason. Another physician leader interviewed by this writer stated: “I am not just a body that can be replaced by another body! We physicians are in a toxic environment today. I have never seen such pathology in the industry that I am seeing today.” But this same physician also provided some optimism: “There is nothing you can get yourself into that you can’t get yourself out of.”
Nurses do not seem to be faring much better. A year ago, nurses in Minnesota were threatening a strike, and those in New York staged and ended a three-day walkout, per the New York Times. The issues? Poor working conditions, staff burnout, cost-cutting by administrators, long patient-wait times, slow service due to staffing shortages, and overworked caregivers.
I spoke to one ICU nurse who said, “I can provide better care when I am not constantly afraid of harming the patient due to being overworked.” Nurses are not feeling respected by their leaders, their patients, or their patients’ family members. They are being taken for granted and no longer feel the joy in their profession. To make matters worse, like the physicians’, nurses’ pay increases have been minimal and are not commensurate with the increases in their workload.
Highly trained nurses, doctors, other healthcare professionals, educators and administrators are leaving their professions in droves. In studies in the U.S. specifically, 50% of workers reported feeling stressed at their jobs on a daily basis, 40% as being worried, 22% sad, and 18% angry, according to Leah Collins on CNBC. Depending on which studies you read, professional burnout is a significant consequence, impairing professional capacity to meet the ever-increasing challenges of daily work, with some professions experiencing 40%-60% burnout rates.
An Opportunity for Outstanding Leaders
All of this is a huge opportunity for leaders who want to encourage outstanding performance. The gift of leadership comes with a responsibility to lift others up—to help them be amazing in their own work. It is not meant to elevate yourself.
One CEO client kept a small box with a dollar sign on it on his desk. He let it be known among his executive staff that any executive that was quoted, interviewed or who got their photo in the local news would have to pay a fine of $100 in the box. His message to the execs was clear and unambiguous: “It is not your job to shine.” In his thinking, it was the leader’s job to make the professionals shine, to help people become wildly successful beyond their own expectations.
Ordinary leadership is when you use your leadership position to serve the company, and the customer. Extraordinary leadership is when you use your leadership position to serve the company, the customer, and the people who follow your leadership—those who do the daily work.
Offer Them a Choice
Of course, we can never know what is best for another person. But as leaders, it is our job to help them achieve great things. To do that, we need to nurture in them a full belief in themselves. By nurturing that belief, we are wielding a significant power to bring about change in others.
Of course, some people are satisfied with the ordinary. Escaping the comfort zone of mediocrity is a huge leadership challenge! The quest for outstanding results often surpasses those who will do nothing to threaten their security and comfort with their current existence.
People have no obligation to live up to our expectations of them. That is their choice. It is the leader’s job to offer choice, and then offer the respect that every human being deserves, regardless of their decision. Sometimes those who choose to be disengaged should find their calling somewhere else, and leaders can help make that happen.
Being Intentional: Making and Keeping Promises
One of the most important results of an outstanding leader is their influence on those who are willing to engage in the work of the organization. Whether that be few or many, it is the most rewarding result of good leadership. Those who live their lives with great intentionality usually leave others behind.
When we move from manager to leader, we are moving from serving the organization to serving the needs of the people in the organization. As we serve and guide them, they will be more intentional in serving the organization and its customers.
To cultivate high levels of engagement and reduce burnout, the best leaders make promises about how they will lead—and then keep those promises. Five promises stand out:
- I will listen to you, to better understand your wants and needs as a professional. Let’s make sure you have what you need to be successful. Outstanding leaders take the time to know what their professionals need to get things done well.
- I will always welcome your advice and suggestions and treat your advice respectfully and seriously. If we disagree, I will say so and tell you why. Outstanding leaders understand that professional disagreement is not personal. It is necessary to achieve the best outcomes over time.
- I will work to make you successful beyond your wildest dreams. Outstanding leaders know that when their professionals are successful, they too are successful.
- I will make sure you are compensated competitively and respectfully. Outstanding leaders understand that, while competitive compensation is not the most important goal of professionalism, it is absolutely necessary as a sign of respect for what professionals bring to the work of the organization.
- I will have your back if and when things go south. Outstanding leaders understand that true professionals want to do a great job. Leaders make sure that if things go wrong, unintended events impede results, and things don’t turn out as planned, the focus is on the process glitches, and not on blame and shame. They know that blame and shame are toxic to an engaged professional culture.
As a leader, you have significant power to lift people up, change the lives of those you lead, and nurture that intentionality. But you can only build teams of outstanding performing people if you first focus on becoming intentional yourself about how you lead.
Who are you lifting up today? Be intentional about it!
For article references, visit www.endopromag.com.
