Creating a Leadership Legacy of Caring: A Health Care Leader's Ultimate Journey
2009; Elsevier BV; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/j.mnl.2008.02.012
ISSN1541-4620
Autores Tópico(s)Primary Care and Health Outcomes
ResumoLeadership in health care today is a fast-paced, demanding, and challenging world that carries enormous responsibility. Health care leadership performance is receiving more scrutiny than ever as the requirements and performance expectations continue to rise at all levels of leadership. After all, the role and performance of a health care leader impacts countless lives. Patients, families, employers, regulatory agencies, payers, and each of us as health care consumers want and expect the latest in clinical treatment and equipment; faster, more accurate diagnoses and results; and better care and service from hospitals, health care organizations, and caregivers. This trend represents consumerism at its finest. But above all, consumers expect hospitals and health care organizations to be places of caring and healing—and rightfully so. Patients want their care and service to be outstanding, with caregivers, staff members, and leadership working together as a team, and consistently demonstrating they really care about the patient as a person. Nobody wants a health care service encounter to be cold and uncaring or to be treated as a number or just another diagnosis. When a patient experiences a negative health care service encounter, it can lead to negative perceptions about quality and safety, possibly even affecting the treatment outcome. Leadership in health care today is a fast-paced, demanding, and challenging world that carries enormous responsibility. Health care leadership performance is receiving more scrutiny than ever as the requirements and performance expectations continue to rise at all levels of leadership. After all, the role and performance of a health care leader impacts countless lives. Patients, families, employers, regulatory agencies, payers, and each of us as health care consumers want and expect the latest in clinical treatment and equipment; faster, more accurate diagnoses and results; and better care and service from hospitals, health care organizations, and caregivers. This trend represents consumerism at its finest. But above all, consumers expect hospitals and health care organizations to be places of caring and healing—and rightfully so. Patients want their care and service to be outstanding, with caregivers, staff members, and leadership working together as a team, and consistently demonstrating they really care about the patient as a person. Nobody wants a health care service encounter to be cold and uncaring or to be treated as a number or just another diagnosis. When a patient experiences a negative health care service encounter, it can lead to negative perceptions about quality and safety, possibly even affecting the treatment outcome. But doesn't the job of caring reside with caregivers? What role do health care leaders play in creating an environment of caring? Every hospital or health care institution has a mission around providing healing and service. A mission of healing and service is predicated on quality patient care being provided in a healing environment and caring manner. And creating a caring environment or culture for healing and service begins with leadership. Leadership establishes the organization's culture—how the business of caring and healing gets done—in any hospital or health care institution. While it is readily recognized that a hospital or health care organization's culture starts in the C suite, it is the entire leadership team that promulgates the organization's culture throughout its workforce. And all members of the leadership team help to create the organization's culture with their leadership style and actions. The leadership style of each leader also creates a legacy in action that defines the leader as a person and leader, particularly as it relates to the higher purpose of any healing enterprise—caring. Moreover, when a leader becomes inspired to intentionally create a legacy of caring, they can have an enormous impact on all the lives they touch, both within and outside the organization. And like a pebble tossed into a pond, a leader's legacy of caring can have a ripple effect so far-reaching that it is ultimately immeasurable. The legacies of leaders are ultimately about how they impact other lives, and how this impact or effect remains after they have left their leadership positions. A leadership legacy can therefore be defined as having two important characteristics: first, the real and perceived impact the leader has made on other lives and, second, how the leader is distinguished by others—both as a person and a leader. For many hospital and health care leaders, the reason they chose a career in leadership was to make an impact—a real difference in the lives of others. As a leader, can you see the difference you make—and can make—in the lives of other people? What leadership legacy are you creating in action everyday? Would others around you describe your leadership legacy in action as caring? What type of leadership legacy do you desire to create? A question that patients and families consistently ask themselves about the caregivers and staff members they interact with is “Do they really care about me?” Their perception or answer to this question can have a profound impact on the many critical success factors of the organization. And caregivers and staff members of the organization ask the same question about their leadership, with their perception or answer having similar significance or impact on the organization's critical success factors. One of the most important aspects to understand about the implications for this question is simply this: can caregivers and staff members really give something they themselves are not receiving? The answer probably rests somewhere between “it's highly unlikely” to “next to impossible.” In its simplest form, this important question about the leader can be summed up in “Does he care?” Therefore, it stands to reason a leader's legacy for caring directly and dramatically impacts the lives of caregivers and staff members, which in turn directly and dramatically impacts the lives of patients, families, and the community served by the healing enterprise. A leader's legacy for caring cascades throughout the organization, impacting the culture and its people, and touching lives both directly and indirectly through her leadership style and actions as a leader. Again, the question about whether the leader cares is continually asked by caregivers and staff members, both at a conscious and subconscious level. How this question gets answered and the prevailing perceptions surrounding it have profound implications. So what does caring really mean? Clearly, caring means different things to different people, and both its meaning and importance must be viewed in the context of all individuals: their expectations, mental states, needs, wants, desires, outlooks on life, experiences in life, and other pertinent factors. However, at its fundamental level caring simply means, “Does the person/leader [sometimes referred to as ‘The organization’] really care about me as a person—a human being? Do I matter?” Employee perceptions around this very important question have far-reaching implications for the healing organization. In the context of leadership, there are three key conditions that directly and significantly influence an employee's perception about whether a leader (or an organization) cares about them: 1.Is my presence recognized and acknowledged in a meaningful way?2.Do I matter? Is my life (along with my needs and desires) important to my boss (and the organization)?3.Do the actions, words, and demeanor of my boss (or senior leaders, the organization, and its physical environment, policies, procedures, and practices) lead me to conclude my contributions as a caregiver or staff member are valued? These three conditions form the basis upon which employees perceive whether their boss or other leaders care about them. How important then is caring to the organization's mission of healing and service? How important is caring to a leader's effectiveness and performance and the creation of his leadership legacy? Through the use of logic and empirical evidence, one can conclude that caring has a significant and profound impact on just about everything. So if caring is a critical attribute of a health care leader's legacy, and it has implications for just about everything, what are those critical success factors of the organization that are impacted? The critical success factors of any organization typically include such things as market share, financial performance, and fulfillment of mission. In a hospital, critical success factors include employee satisfaction, retention of critical staff members, and productivity, as well as patient satisfaction, patient safety, and patient outcomes. Since all these important aspects of a hospital are affected by caring, where does the impetus for creating a caring culture begin? A culture of caring begins in the C suite and with the entire leadership team. Creating a culture of caring in a healing enterprise is a function of the leadership style and actions of the leadership team, as well as each individual leader who is part of that team. And it is through the leadership style and actions of an individual leader that his leadership legacy is created. As a leader, do other leaders and employees in your organization believe you care? What leadership legacy are you creating in action? How does a leader go about creating a legacy of caring? On the surface it appears straightforward: leaders' legacies are created by everything that they do—their everyday actions. While this is true, a deeper, more pertinent question to be asked is: “As a leader, how do I go about intentionally creating a leadership legacy of caring?” The remainder of this paper examines a five-step process a leader can follow to put into action a leadership style that will create a significant and lasting legacy of caring. Think back to the days when you were deciding on a career for your life's work. What made you decide on a career in health care, and why leadership? What did you believe the career would do for you? What did you believe your career would do for your profession or other people you served? What was your single overriding career goal or mission? Have these beliefs shifted over your career, and if so, how? Once you spend time reflecting—retracing your most important thoughts, reasons, decisions, and intentions—articulate a statement as to why you became a health care leader. If the reason today is different than when you initially chose your career, use a statement that represents your current beliefs. This statement should be no longer than one to three sentences, beginning with “I chose my career as a health care leader because…” Reflect on all the lives you touch and impact everyday—not just at work but at home, in the community, and in your profession. Let me suggest you start by reflecting about other people who have made a significant and profound impact on your life. As you reflect, notice how many of these people blessed you with their humanness—not their expertise. Most likely, these are people who supported you, believed in you, taught or coached you, or inspired you. And in most cases, their impact on you came about because of one simple yet profound reason—they cared about you. Very succinctly, list five to 10 ways in which you bless the lives of other people by your humanness (hint: reflect upon those human qualities someone else blessed you with). What is at the very core of who you are—that which motivates and ignites a powerful and unwavering enthusiasm within you? What inspires you? What are you passionate about in health care and in leadership? What is your personal mission or purpose in life? Granted, these can be difficult and even perplexing questions. You might even ask “How do I discover the answers?” All individuals must answer these questions for themselves—in their own way, in their own time. Let me suggest that the answers lie somewhere within you—not outside of you. And being present with yourself as you reflect is essential for you to connect with the answers that lie within you. List one to three things you are passionate about in health care and in leadership (hint: identify those moments you feel the greatest sense of purpose and meaning, and what activities you are doing that create this inner sense of fulfillment). Written goals can be a powerful force to help direct and guide your actions to create a future condition or state that you desire. How? By helping you focus on the important and necessary actions in the present that will lead to the creation of your future. We cannot live in the future; however, our actions in the present can create our future—whether the context for the future is tomorrow or 10 years from now. And it works the same way in creating your desired leadership legacy. Let me suggest you develop a written leadership legacy statement that is no longer than one to three sentences long. This statement may be one of the most important and meaningful written goals that you will ever create, and your response should connect to the question “What's the purpose of my life's work”? Start your statement with: “I will…” Put your written leadership legacy statement in front of you, everyday, in a place that will constantly remind you of the higher purpose for your life's work. Use this statement as a leadership tool to establish the direction and course of action for your leadership style, actions, and career in the future. Your written leadership legacy statement can become a time management tool as you use it to decide where and how to spend your time as a leader—in areas and ways that are in alignment with the leadership legacy you want to create. It can also become a decision-making tool as you reflect on it when making decisions affecting your organization, its operations, and the people you serve as a leader. Moreover, it can also become a critically important and useful tool in developing your leadership style and its effectiveness when you open up your humanness and put caring into action. As you journey through this process, be mindful of what you can learn about yourself, your leadership style and effectiveness, how you are impacting lives, and the meaning and purpose of your life's work. The answers to these questions will manifest if you are present with yourself as you reflect. This process can also help to motivate, inspire, and rekindle your passion for leadership. Like a flame being rekindled from the constant air from a billow, your leadership career will be constantly rekindled as you stay focused on your leadership legacy statement. And one leader's legacy of caring can make all the difference—just ask the people whose lives you touch everyday. The ingredients that go into making a hospital or health care leader's legacies are multifaceted and varied; however, there is no more important ingredient than whether the leaders care about the people and lives they touch and serve everyday. The important distinction as to whether the leader cares impacts the critical success factors of the organization and all the important intangibles that result in a leader's performance, effectiveness, and legacy. One could argue that creating a leadership legacy of caring is really the ultimate journey of any hospital or health care leader. And when health care leaders' life work results in a legacy of caring, the lives dependent on and affected by their leadership will be made better in ways that cannot even be measured. nl
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