Is Leadership for everyone?

Wherever you are in your training, you are going to hear about developing and demonstrating leadership. You can’t hide from it. It is in every form for every speciality and you are going to talk about it in some capacity in your interviews.

You may be thinking you’re not interested in leadership roles or you have other interests you’d like to develop like teaching or research. Regardless of what your interests are, you will need to demonstrate leadership skills in some way. This brings me to what are leadership skills?

‘leadership’ is the wrong word

The skills of a leader are multiple and include:

-              Giving feedback

-              Creating a sense of purpose

-              Investing in development of others

-              Setting measurable goals

-              Allowing healthy conflict

-              Communication

From this list you can see that whether you aspire to the future clinical lead or positive educator these skills are relevant to you.

I urge you not to look at leadership training and courses as preparation for a role. I personally do not like the word leadership. I prefer to call these courses professional training because what you are learning whether it is effective communication, collaboration, team building or negotiation is how behave in a professional way in a professional setting. The NHS is an organisation and it is made up of different types of people, clinical and non clinical. You need to work with everyone. I get the feeling that people just assume doctors know how to operate in the corporate setting but if you look at complaints and issues around the hospital you realise doctors are typically just concerned about being a good doctor. There isn’t anything wrong with that but being a good physician or surgeon will only get you so far.

Why do some people just seem to get all the great opportunities?

Think about some of the people you respect and look up to. Some will be because of their clinical ability but I am sure you also see how well they work with others. How they know how to get things done. Or consider this, think about those who you don’t consider to be clinically so strong but just seem to get the top jobs. Both groups are similar. Why do you think? If you think about it, it’s how they communicate, how they are able to convince others and how they just know the right things to say. These individual either have a natural ability or more often have conscientiously learnt how to master these skills. This is what leadership teaches you. It teaches you about yourself and others and how to work effectively with each other. When you can do this, people notice. When people notice they open opportunities for you because they see you have an ability with others, you are able to be productive and you can make change happen. 

Communication isn’t talking

Communication skills are a vital skill that you need to master. When you think communication skills the natural tendency is to think it’s the words you use but that’s wrong. Communication is much more than that. Unfortunately, medical school focuses on the words and script you use whether it is dealing with an angry patient or breaking bad news and when trainees (under and post graduates) are placed in a communication station where the patient doesn’t want to speak it makes a lot of them crumble. They hate the awkward silence. Admittedly, that situation is a horrible situation but examiners are assessing your communication skills which are more than words.

Communication is what you say, how you say it, how you respond, your body language and your ability to show you understand them. 

I recently had a medical student sat in with me for morning clinic and I asked what did she learn and at first she told me the clinical things like understanding murmur but then she said ‘it’s how you communicated with the families’. It wasn’t the outcomes of the appointments or the words used. She explained it was how you explained things, your use of diagrams, your ability to bring calm to conflict and the plans you negotiated. These are all things ‘leadership courses’ teach you.   

So don’t look at leadership training as preparation for a role. Consider it as training to be a more effective you. The NHS is changing and you need to evolve with it.

If you think that it’s time develop those skills and rethink how you see yourself as a professional in the NHS why not consider booking on to Excel Medical’s Leadership Course: https://www.excelmedical.co.uk/leadership