Developing Physician Leaders: The Immortal Legacy

“H ealth care delivery is fragmented and chaotic principally because of an explosion of knowledge and technological advances. Taming this chaos requires a new breed of leaders at every level.” It has been just over two years since Thomas H. Lee of Partners Healthcare System was quoted in the Harvard

Business Review article “Turning Doctors into Leaders,” and during that time we have seen countless articles published on the dire need to develop physician leaders. We’ve come a long way since then, and yet what we frequently hear from health care organizations is, “How do we turn doctors into leaders?” Over the past several years, we’ve had the unique opportunity to refine a methodical process to define, diagnose, and develop physician leaders who are equipped to meet the mounting challenges in health care with our clients. We’ve summarized what we’ve learned in a new paper from DDI’s Health Care Practice, “Developing Physician Leaders: The Immortal Legacy.” In the article, we outline six common challenges of developing physician leaders. We take a deeper dive into the 3 steps of the physician leadership development process. Specifically:

How to define what you are looking for in physician

leaders, and the steps you’ll need to take to create a clear picture of what is required for success. How to diagnose what’s needed for a physician to make the leadership leap, and how to scientifically measure their propensity to lead based on performance, potential, and readiness.

How physicians can acquire or improve their leadership

skills. You’ll learn critical steps to find physicians who embody the unique mix of credibility, knowledge, motivation, and interpersonal skills necessary to guide top-quality patient care not with scalpels and pharmaceuticals, but with strategy and managerial prowess.

What we frequently hear from health care organizations is, “How do we turn doctors into leaders?”