Turn Your Physicians Into Leaders
By Christopher Cheney
Physician leaders play a crucial role in the success of health systems and hospitals. They occupy key positions, including work as CMOs, department chiefs, and service line leaders.
RWJBarnabas Health takes an intentional approach to physician leadership development. Physician leaders have several essential qualities and characteristics, according to Andy Anderson, MD, MBA, CMO and chief quality officer at RWJBarnabas.
“Good physician leaders are excellent listeners, and they understand the key issues that their stakeholders are going through, including their physician colleagues, nurse colleagues, patients, and families,” Anderson says. “They are listening, and they understand what the issues are and think about how they can make improvements.”
A good physician leader tries to make outcomes better for patients and families as well as for their colleagues who work with them in health systems and hospitals, Anderson explains.
Effective physician leaders also are adept at goal setting in critical areas such as safety, quality, and patient experience, according to Anderson. They must be able to hold others accountable to achieve goals.
“They need to be able to influence their colleagues who work with them in health systems and hospitals to generate good outcomes,” Anderson says. “Part of that is using data to demonstrate baseline performance and to track progress.”
Strong physician leaders must also be able to get good feedback and provide guidance to help their physician colleagues improve performance at the frontlines, Anderson explains.
Identifying physician leaders
RWJBarnabas energizes physicians to step up and self-select for leadership roles, according to Anderson.
“When a physician is interested in leadership, we would love to hear from them and encourage them,” Anderson says.
The health system also monitors physicians to see how they behave in meetings and how they interact with their colleagues to identify future physician leaders, Anderson explains.
“When physicians show leadership potential, we ask them whether they are interested in taking on additional responsibility,” Anderson says. “That can be progressive responsibility in terms of leading a committee or leading a particular initiative, then it can progress to leading a department or program.”
Physician leadership development efforts
RWJBarnabas has several physician leadership development efforts in place.
The most formal physician leadership development program, which was developed by senior leadership including Anderson, is an all-day session designed to impart leadership skills for emerging physician leaders.
“We walk through things such as what does physician leadership look like—what are the behaviors physician leaders exhibit,” Anderson says. “We talk about areas such as recruitment, performance management, how to give effective feedback, how to maintain wellness for yourself and your colleagues, and change management.”
“It is important for senior physician leaders to be great mentors, great coaches, and great role models,” Anderson says, “so others can observe the things we do and in turn do those things themselves.”
A crucial element of mentoring and coaching physicians who aspire to being leaders is giving good feedback.
“A coach or mentor must understand a physician leadership candidate’s strengths and weaknesses,” Anderson says. “If there are behaviors that are not the right behaviors, a coach or mentor should make sure that feedback is given in a timely and effective manner.”
As the health system’s CMO, Anderson provides mentorship and coaching to RWJBarnabas’ 12 hospital CMOs.
“Each of those chief medical officers report to me, and I mentor and coach them to be more effective leaders,” Anderson says. “In turn, they have department chairs, program directors, and other physician leaders within their hospitals that they mentor and coach.”
In addition to knowing the strengths and weaknesses of his hospital CMOs, Anderson strives to be transparent with the executives in his role as a mentor and a coach.
“I like to focus on the outcomes at a hospital, see how things are going, and offer help if there are opportunities for me to coach based on the things I am hearing,” Anderson says. “I am transparent and have open conversations.”