I thank Sabrina Rodak for inspiration for this post contrasting CEO success traits with failure. She wrote "7 Traits of a Great Hospital CEO" last month. The seven traits include:
- Servant leadership: Vincent Caponi, CEO of St. Vincent Health, says, "A great leader ... is one where people are doing things under his supervision because it's the right thing to do." Servant leadership encompasses integrity, genuineness, and gratitude.
- Communication: The CEO's responsibility is to keep employees, staff, and physicians informed of the hospital's plans.
- Mentorship: "You need somebody who can unabashedly tell you where your blind spots are," says Mr. Caponi.
- Being a role model: A can-do attitude can help motivate others to work to overcome challenges.
- Connection with the community: Mr. Caponi says, "Great leaders have a sense of community." The community includes not only the community of patients that the hospital serves, but also the community within the hospital, according to Edward Miller, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medical Center.
- Sense of humor: Lehigh Valley CEO Ronald Swinfard says that humor can cut through the stress and help healthcare professionals feel better about themselves.
- Balance: According to Mr. Caponi, one quality of great CEOs is their ability to differentiate when to compete, for example on patient service and access, from when to collaborate, for example on patient safety initiatives.
Meanwhile, in Better Communication for Better Care, Professor Sidney Finkelstein wrote that hospital CEOs can exercise great personal magnetism and yet fail because of the following habits:
- Unsuccessful executives see themselves and their companies as dominating their environments. These executives believe that they can create the conditions under which they will operate and achieve their vision by imposing their will on employees (and physicians whom they do not employ), using intimidation to dominate others. People around these leaders fear their anger to such an extent that they become reluctant to convey any news that might upset their bosses, making it difficult for the CEOs to learn about issues until they become crises.
- Unsuccessful CEOs identify so completely with their companies that they lose sight of the boundary between personal and corporate interests. They develop a private empire mentality and behave as though they own their institutions and have the right to do anything that they want. They have difficulty acknowledging mistakes because doing so seems like a declaration of personal inadequacy. Such executives confuse personal adversaries with their institutions' adversaries.
- Unsuccessful executives think that they have all the answers. Top-notch CEOs dazzle people with their understanding of complex situations and their decisiveness. This talent becomes a weakness, however, when leaders' need to have the answers prevents them from hearing different points of view and from learning new approaches. Such intransigence drives opposing perspectives underground and dampens creativity and innovation.
- Unsuccessful CEOs ruthlessly eliminate anyone who is not 100 percent behind them. By defining reformers as negative influences, they eliminate dissenting viewpoints and cut themselves off from their best chance of correcting problems as they arise.
- Unsuccessful CEOs are obsessed with company image. High-profile CEOs, who become community leaders, may allow media accolades to cloud their judgment and settle for the appearance of accomplishment rather than substantive change. By assiduously cultivating public relations exposure, they raise community expectations beyond what they can meet.
- Unsuccessful CEOs underestimate major obstacles, especially if the hospital has enjoyed previous successes. When CEOs become enamored with their vision of what they want to achieve, they disregard the difficulty of executing their strategy and underestimate the personal and financial costs. When they find that obstacles are more formidable than expected, they tend to escalate their commitment rather than rethink their strategy.
- Unsuccessful CEOs stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past. Such CEOs fail not because they failed to learn, but because they learned one lesson all too well.
What traits have you witnessed in great and failing CEOs at your hospital?
- Does the threshold for continued success seem narrow compared to the potential for failure?
- Do you agree with Mr. Caponi that mentors, who tell people where their blind spots are located, are important for continued success?
- Does servant leadership require active listening and continuous learning?
I welcome your input to improve healthcare outcomes for the communities that we serve.
Ken is a practicing general surgeon/MBA and CEO ofHealthcareCollaboration.com, who works with organizations that need to engage physicians to improve clinical and financial performance in this era of healthcare reform. His latest book,Getting It Done celebrates healthcare heroes who broke down silos and improved care for their communities. Please learn more about what he does by visitinghttp://gettingitdonebook.com.
