We are in a series discussing and learning from the recently published book titled Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life. The book, authored by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller is available wherever best selling books are sold. I encourage you to purchase a copy and join our discussion and learning. The book is directly applicable to any person who desires to become a more effective healthcare leader.
This book is written in story form, which adds to its interest and applicability to each and every leader. In the first chapter of the book, Debbie (an excellent leadership mentor) makes a powerful statement to Blake (an aspiring leader):
“One of the things Jeff [Debbie’s mentor] wanted to create was a high-performance team. He knew that the best teams always do life together. That’s why we always shared about our families and other important things in our lives that were happening outside of work.”
Blake, who is keeping copious notes in his journal in order to most effectively remember, revisit, and apply important leadership concepts and principles in his personal and professional life, writes down the following: “THE BEST TEAMS ALWAYS DO LIFE TOGETHER.”
As they continue their discussion, Debbie describes the dramatic and very positive impact this mentor had on her life:
“I don’t know where my career would be… more importantly, I don’t know who I would be, without the powerful and lasting impact of this mentor.”
In my own career, having met, observed and served well over 1000 healthcare leaders over the past 40 years, it has been my observation that many leaders intentionally try to separate the inside (organizational issues, priorities and journey) from the outside (personal issues, priorities and journey).
As thoroughly learned from her extremely successful mentor, Debbie is making the point that this is a huge leadership mistake! Highly effective leaders understand that “THE BEST TEAMS ALWAYS DO LIFE TOGETHER.”
I encourage you to take a look at your own leadership style and actions. Are you carefully and purposefully integrating the fact that “THE BEST TEAMS ALWAYS DO LIFE TOGETHER” into your day-to-day leadership style and actions?
How can you better integrate the “inside” and the “outside” in order to build and sustain a more powerful and successful healthcare organization?
More from “Great Leaders Grow” next week. If you have not purchased your book, I encourage you to do so. Joining our journey with the text at your fingertips will be far more effective. Also, the text includes many valuable concepts and principles we cannot discuss in this column due to space limitations.
