Important Traits that Make Great Leaders!

 

In workplace environments, some people prefer to follow orders and be guided along, while others are made to lead and give orders, direction, and guidance. In healthcare environments, however, where people’s health, and potentially their lives, are in your hands, good leadership is essential.

Doctors, nurses, surgeons, or anybody else who works in healthcare and leads and oversees a team must ensure that they possess the necessary qualities needed to be a good leader. With poor leadership, standards slip, discipline slides, and patients’ lives become endangered, which is simply unacceptable.

Good leaders inspire others, boost morale, get the best out of their team, enhance productivity, and help ensure that goals and objectives are met.

If you work in healthcare and are either in a position of authority or could potentially find yourself in a position of authority by becoming a team leader, to help you get more from yourself and your team members, here’s a look at several traits that make good leaders.

 

The ability to educate

One of the most important traits in any leader in a healthcare setting, or any other setting for that matter, is the ability to educate.

The ability to teach others is a fundamental aspect of any healthcare role, as there are literally human lives at stake. A good leader should be able to educate others and teach them how to do their job more effectively.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re teaching trainees how to take a basic blood-pressure reading or explaining how various medications work; if you wish to be a capable and effective leader in a healthcare setting, you must possess the ability to teach and educate others.

 

Good communication skills

Leadership is all about communication, and as far as healthcare is concerned, communication is essential.

If you wish to lead a team, you must ensure that you possess good communication skills. Otherwise, you won’t get anywhere fast.

When you ask an employee to do something, make sure you explain the importance of the task you’ve provided them with, and if they aren’t sure how then make sure you explain how. Be clear and concise, and make sure they’ve understood what they’ve been told.

A lack of communication in healthcare is a recipe for disaster and could literally be the difference between life and death. If, for example, a patient is allergic to a certain medication, make sure that you explain this to your team members and make sure that they have understood precisely what you’ve told them and the severity of the situation.

At the same time, as well as being transparent, you also need to ensure that you communicate with your team members/employees in a civil manner. Don’t be rude to them, don’t boss them around, don’t be short with them, and don’t grow frustrated if they don’t understand what you’re telling them right away.

 

The ability to mentor others

A good leader in a healthcare setting should go above and beyond what is expected of somebody in their position at work. Why? Because they should possess the ability and a willingness to mentor others.

As a leader, you are training the next generation of healthcare workers with the ultimate goal of making them better caregivers for patients. You got to a leadership position because you’re good at your job, and ultimately, you should be willing to mentor others, take them under your wing and help them to become better at their jobs.

You’ll often find that leaders are more than willing to give back and to help others because they had good mentors themselves, and they wish to pay it forward, as it were, and to do for others what their mentors did for them. We aren’t saying that you need to take every student under your wing and spend every minute at work teaching them the ins and outs of healthcare, but if you can go that little bit further and help others by mentoring them, you really should.

 

Empathy

While working in healthcare, regardless of your position of authority, empathy is a trait which you should most definitely possess if you wish to provide your patients with the best possible care.

Having empathy is not the same as displaying sympathy. If you are sympathetic, you share feelings of compassion or pity for another individual. Empathy means that you put yourself in the same metaphorical shoes as another person, and you really and truly relate to their problems and feel what they’re feeling.

If you wish to succeed as a healthcare leader, being sympathetic towards your patients and, indeed, your team members is not enough. Instead, you will need to display genuine, empathetic qualities.

Show that you really do care about your patients and your team, help solve their problems with them, display caring actions and words, reassure others, and try to help your patients and your team members feel safe and comfortable with and around you.

 

The ability to solve problems

With great power comes great responsibility, and as a leader, you will probably be called upon to solve problems more often than you would have liked.

Whether you have to arrange for members of staff to cover other members of staff who have called in sick or chase up a patient’s missing medical files before they can be approved for an operation, as a leader, it is down to you to solve these problems.

 

The ability to challenge the norm

If you wish to make it as a leader in a healthcare position, rather than simply going with the flow, you will have to think outside the box and challenge the status quo every now and then.

If a patient is displaying unusual symptoms and is struggling to receive a diagnosis, you may be required to think outside of the box in order to try to determine what the problem could be. Consider new treatment plans, new ideas, and other variables to provide your patients with the best care possible.

Sometimes this does mean stepping outside of your comfort zone and possibly even putting your neck on the line, but if you wish to succeed as a leader in a healthcare environment, this is a trait which is absolutely necessary.