10 Key Thoughts For Leaders

Would you label yourself a leader?

I've noticed people who work in healthcare tend to be leaders (...Especially those on social media! High five if you are!). But not everyone is necessarily a great leader. Sometimes we need a quality control check. I ran across this thought provoking list of key lessons for leaders from RD411. Here are my favorite 10 from the list:

1. Managing is working with plans and procedures that are already in place. Leadership is developing new plans and procedures.
2. Being a leader is a continual process. You must show up every day with a willingness to learn new things.
3.  Every experience is a lesson—even if the lesson is how not to do something.
4.  You must be confident about the decisions that you make, and if you’re not, you have to put the decision on hold. This is not something that you can fake. Your employees are able to sense that you are not as confident as you appear, and this will cause them to lose trust in you.
5.   Communication is critical. Gather as many opinions and concerns as you can before implementing a change. Share information and ideas with all levels of the organization.
6. Prioritization is extremely important. If you have 5 million things to do, you need  to learn to learn to pick the two or three that are most crucial.
7.  You can’t readily do your employee’s work for them, or this will become the expectation. Many leaders are taken advantage of in this manner when they are first starting out.
8.  A good leader is a long-term thinker. A good leader can see beyond yesterday and today, and make long-range plans.
9.  Don’t look at your day as something to “get through.” Look at it as part of a continual process.
10. Your employees will do as they see you doing and ignore what you say, if the two actions are in conflict with each other. No one likes a hypocrite. Your behavior must match your words. Try to see yourself as your employees likely do. They might not know what you’re doing in your office all day or what all the meetings that you go to are about. Let them into your world a little bit.

What advice do you wish you would have been given? 

-Carlene