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Leadership skills assessment can help focus your efforts to improve
How good a leader are you? Take this test and see for yourself. It may help you become better one step at a time.
Ophthalmologists often find themselves — sometimes abruptly — leading scores of people and multimillion-dollar enterprises without any formal training in leadership, and without the ordinary, incremental tutoring that leaders in most other business sectors get throughout their careers. Some physician-leaders don’t particularly enjoy the mantle of authority that comes with owning part or all of a practice. And even those who like being boss sometimes lead quite poorly because they themselves have never been well-led or served as a protégé to a great leader.
Few eye surgeons reading this column have the patience or time to become a formal student of good leadership. But given the increasingly provocative and heated environment we all labor under, everyone leading others, in practices large and small, has the responsibility each day to polish his or her supervisory skills.
There are abundant reasons to become a better physician-manager. Being a good leader makes you a better judge of good leadership in others, so you’ll pick better administrators and department heads. Being an engaged leader yourself makes you less dependent on the comings and goings of the lay leaders in your practice. Great leaders gather to themselves great workers, staff who will pull hard and be satisfied with lower compensation just to be led by a thoughtful, rational and inspiring individual.
Given the expected trajectory of medical-economic change in the years ahead, good leadership may be needed for practice survival through this decade and the next. In my visits to client practices I see an increasing number of clinics at a tipping point between success and failure, with the leadership skills of the senior partners making all the difference in whether the practice survives or not.
Test yourself
Accompanying this article is a self-test you can take to measure selected aspects of your leadership ability. This list of attributes is by no means complete, and no physician-leader under the rank of “Dr. Saint” could be expected to have high scores on all of these attributes.
Score each item on the 50-point list based on the following scale:
5 = I have a large measure of this attribute; no more is needed for real success.
4 = I have nearly enough of this attribute for success but could use just a little more.
3 = I have enough of this attribute to get along just barely as a leader in my practice.
2 = I have a lot less of this attribute than I feel I need.
1 = I profoundly lack this attribute.
Personal baseline
When finished, add up your score. With 50 attributes and up to five points each, there’s a maximum score of 250. There is no normative scale with which you can compare yourself to others, but this summary score can be a valuable personal baseline of your fitness to lead. It can also help point out areas to improve.
Consider focusing on two or three areas at a time for improvement. Write down in your own words your commitment. For example: “I will work on my ability to use positive rather than negative reinforcement with my technical support staff. Rather than blowing up on the clinic floor as I have been, I will write down my concerns and address them in a positive, upbeat way with all back-office staff at the end of each clinic day.”
It will help if you have a trusted manager, colleagues, external advisor or even a spouse who can give you feedback on how you’re progressing. In the absence of a leadership coach, be sure to at least keep a daily journal noting your gains and losses. With even small, focused efforts on those areas needing the most help, I know you’ll be paid back with outsized improvements and a greater sense of control over the destiny of your practice.
Click here to download the self-test in PDF format.