Assessing Your Own Leadership Skills
By Tracy Dowdy, CVPM
When I was a kid, every once in a while my parents would back my siblings and I up to a doorframe, lay a ruler across our heads, and mark a line with a pencil to chart our growth. They would then write the date next to it. It was always exciting to see how much I'd grown since my last measurement. If only measuring our effectiveness as a leader was so easy. Why is it so hard to get a clear picture of our own strengths and weaknesses? You must do a self-evaluation. That means being willing to critique yourself and ask for honest feedback from those who can most accurately assess your leadership-those who follow you. You must also be able to exercise self-discipline. This last point is perhaps the hardest. I define self-control, in the beginning of life, as the choice of achieving what I really want by doing things I really don't want to do. Once this becomes a habit, discipline becomes the choice of achieving what I really want by doing the very things I now want to do! I really believe that a disciplined life becomes a joy - but only after we have worked hard to practice it. All great leaders have understood that their number one responsibility is cultivating their own discipline and personal growth. Those who cannot lead themselves cannot lead others. Here's what I call the START plan for becoming a disciplined leader.
START ON YOURSELF - We'd all rather focus on changing everyone else to conform to us. The only problem with that is we end up with a practice full of people who reflect our weaknesses! If you are a practice owner, manager or an associate veterinarian, the practice completely relies on your leadership skills. No matter how great of a leader you think you already are, there is always room for improvement. Ask yourself these questions: When I have something to say about people, do I talk to them or about them? How do I treat people from whom I can gain nothing? Am I accountable to at least one person for what I say and do? If I had my entire healthcare team fill out a survey, would they say I was a great leader or a poor leader? Successful practices have leaders that serve their healthcare teams in the same ways they want their staff to serve clients. Leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. Outstanding leaders are almost fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. Is your desire to be a “work horse” or a “show horse”? Great leaders are methodical, disciplined, and stay focused. Success is always the result of those beneath the leaders, who get all the credit Are we saying the leaders get the credit or that they give it to the support staff?. Great leaders also take responsibility, personally, for any failures or errors. You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit. The bottom line is that a great leader has to be willing to take the responsibility to be disciplined and sacrificial for the practice’s purpose.
START EARLY - I'm grateful for parents who taught me the value of a disciplined lifestyle early on. You can never start too early in this area of leadership. The leadership skills you have now can be built-upon throughout your entire life. Leadership behavior is possible at all job levels in a veterinary practice. Leadership is important because a veterinary practice is a service business. As a service business, everything provided to pets and the people who own them, is delivered by the people working in the veterinary practice. Create a culture in your practice that encourages leadership at all levels in your team. Can you give an example of how a lower level person such as a kennel person can be a leader? Leadership is really defined as influencing people to follow you. If your life in any way connects with other people, you are an influencer. Encouraging yourself and your healthcare team to become influencers needs to happen now. The only way you can build leaders within your practice is by leading by example. Maybe an example here such as: if you tell the receptionists that the practice will always see last minute appointments at the end of the day, but then you moan to this same group about how tired you are of seeing 5:30pm appointments, they will stop booking them. You didn’t ask them too, but they got the message and they followed you. (Or some other example, but just so they get it.)They must see you as a positive influence in their personal and professional life. In the words of successful NFL coach Bill Walsh, "...the point of leading a team is to ensure that the team can lead itself." A leader’s goal is to pursue how we as practice owners can lead our healthcare team to lead themselves.
START SMALL - A simple plan will more likely bear fruit than anything elaborate will. Remember the value of small things, consistently practiced over time, in transforming your life as a leader. Here is a simple plan to focus your improvement in your leadership skills:
- Behavior – Behave as if you live in a fish bowl. Take some time to evaluate your behavior in front of your healthcare team. What needs to change or improve in order to become a positive influence in their life?
- Attitude – Do you see the cup as being half full or half empty? Your healthcare team must see you as having a positive attitude regardless of the circumstances.
- Words – Do you speak words of encouragement or do you defeat yourself by criticizing your healthcare team publicly?
- Appearance – Do you always look your best in front of your healthcare team and do you present a professional image?
- Trust – Are you consistent in your behavior, your decisions and your actions? Leaders are more focused on what is versus who is. Exceptional leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.
- Entrusting – Are you empowering the people around you? Leaders entrust responsibility to the people who are following them. Empowering others is very powerful in becoming a great leader.
- Teaching – Do you share your knowledge or do you horde it for yourself? Effective leaders are focused on sharing their knowledge and creating a culture where teaching others at all levels is expected.
- Learning – Are you seen as a “Know It All” or do allow yourself to learn from others at all levels from your healthcare team? Great leaders set the example of never being too smart to learn new things which encourages an environment where the healthcare team wants to learn and expand their knowledge.
START NOW - The will to prepare is more important than the will to succeed. The dream to succeed, apart from the will to prepare, is simply wishful thinking. Don’t wait until tomorrow for what you can accomplish today. If you want to have a successful practice, it must start with you. Everything rises and falls in leadership!
START ORGANIZED - Those who take time to organize have a special power. Organizational skills allow you to gain stamina and momentum as your successes build. You gain a reputation as the person who always follows through. Great leaders know that in order to have a great practice they must have outstanding leaders who know how to get the right people on their teams. They know they must give the right people the power and tools to create their individual success which creates overall success for the practice.
Harry Truman once said, “Exceptional leaders set up their successors for even greater success than they (the current leader) will experience.”
Copyright © 2004 Vetindustry.com Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
Untitled Page
 Management tips:
Management articles:
Contact MRG with questions and concerns regarding the future success of your practice.
|
