Leadership Lessons They Don't Teach in Medical School
Leadership Lessons They Don't Teach in Medical School
Physicians know how to serve. We've been doing it since the first day of medical school. But serving patients and serving a team are not the same skill. The shift from one to the other is harder than most people expect. And getting it wrong can quietly undermine your leadership before you even realize what's happening. Robert Greenleaf's concept of Servant Leadership can help.
A new JAMA viewpoint argues that physician well-being needs both comfort and meaning. It's a thoughtful framework, but and an incomplete one. What's missing is agency: the ability of physicians to shape the systems they work in, not just survive them. That requires leadership skills most doctors were never taught, but can learn.
Whatever your message, someone has said it before. And someone will say it again. But when you say it with your story — your thoughts, your memories, your joy, your pain — that's when it becomes unforgettable. The final installment of this series covers the last two lessons: show yourself, and have fun. Together, they explain why ChatGPT can write a speech about your topic but can't write your speech, and why both showing yourself and having fun are indispensable to becoming a voice that moves.
Someone told me they practiced their speech while walking their dog. "Do you say it out loud?" I asked. "No," they said. That's not practicing — that's thinking. Part 3 of the series about lessons I learned from my Toastmasters contest last year covers two lessons about preparation: practice aloud to find the words make you stumble, and rehearse with real people to find out if your message actually lands.
Would you pay four people to do a job one person could do better? So why do we do that with words? Part 2 of this series covers two tightly linked lessons: make every word earn its place, and tell the truth without being boring. Together, they explain why cutting 44% of the words from one paragraph made it hit harder — and why a CMO's no-brainer proposal to imrove care took a whole year to make happen.
Last year, a 7-minute speech took me to the semifinals of the World Championship of Public Speaking. Along the way, I learned seven lessons about communication that apply far beyond any contest stage. The first and most important: your only obligation when you speak is to the people listening. Not to your ego, your thoroughness, or your desire to be complete. This is Part 1 of a four-part series.