Transcript 36x48 Horizontal Poster - American Association for

Physician Leadership Success Model for Large Group Practices
The Results of an Interview-Based Job Competency Study
Tracy Duberman, Ph.D. & Leonard Fromer, M.D.
WJM ASSOCIATES, INC. & GROUP PRACTICE FORUM
INTRODUCTION
Our research with a sample of 65 physician executives from the
American College of Physician Executives revealed several
leadership challenges resulting from the changing US healthcare
landscape. The top five cited include new challenges for physician
executives:
• Identifying and communicating metrics to define physician
"value" to patients and health partners
• Understanding clinical systems thinking and applying the
concepts to new models of care delivery
• Communicating effectively to engage physicians and other
healthcare providers to work as a high performance team
• Implementing patient-centered clinical integration
• Leading culture change rooted in trust between physicians and
the health systems they support
Given these emerging insights about the needs and challenges of
physician executives, WJM Associates, an internationally
renowned authority in developing executive leaders, in
partnership with the Group Practice Forum of the Kinetix Group, a
Medical Advisory Board-led network designed to provide group
practices with resources and information to achieve maximum
clinical effectiveness, have designed an exploratory study to better
understand the specific behavioral competencies of effective
physician leaders, experiences that raise the level of success, and
common derailing behaviors that often impinge on success. This
was accomplished by interviewing and examining the
competencies of successful leaders of several thriving large group
practices.
METHODS
A qualitative, inductive, behavioral event interview design with
psychometric testing to determine the key leadership behaviors
of physician executives of large group practices, including
physician CEOs and leaders of large multi-specialty stand-alone
and integrated group practices spanning several regions in the
United States. Participant organizations include Austin Regional
Clinic, Clinical Care Associates of the University of Pennsylvania
Health System, Dean Health System, Healthcare Partners
Medical Group, Holston Medical Group, Medical Edge Healthcare
Group, St. Vincent Physician Group; and advisors from Group
Practice Forum, The Iowa Clinic, and TransforMED.
RESULTS
RESULTS
We report our results in three main areas, namely leadership
competencies, pivotal experiences and derailers that may inhibit
success.
Leading
Self
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
A unique competency model has been developed based upon the
interview outcomes and psychometric diagnostic. Our research
reveals that effective physician leadership requires competence in
four main leadership areas:
Leading
for
Results
Physician
Leadership
Effectiveness
Leading
Others
Leading Self
 Self Awareness – Recognizing one’s emotions and their effects;
and knowing one’s strengths and limitations.
 Self Management – Ability to manage emotions and impulses; and
taking responsibility for personal performance.
 Self Development– Demonstrating commitment to personal
development and a learning agility.
Leading Others
 Building Effective Teams – Understanding the individual
competencies required for success in the key positions on the care
coordination team; recognizing and leveraging team members’
strengths and providing developmental opportunities; and
building trust, commitment and alignment with patient and
organizational goals, and those of the health system.
 Communicating and Inspiring – Creating and communicating a
compelling and inspired vision or sense of core purpose; providing
logical reasons for choices; and fully articulating ideas with data
and logic to reach optimal and sustainable consensus.
Leading Change
 Resiliency – Demonstrating personal flexibility; being comfortable
handling risk and uncertainty; and able to shift gears in response
to emerging priorities.
 Courage & Authenticity – Keeping one’s word; fulfilling one’s
promise; identifying and acting upon appropriate risks; and saying
what needs to be said.
 Change Management – Ability to rally teams and entire
organizations around a burning platform for change.
Leading for Results
 Decisiveness – Making sound and defensible decisions in a timely
fashion, especially in times of uncertainty.
 Systems Thinking – A mind-set for understanding how things work;
a perspective for looking for patterns to seek underlying systemic
interrelationships which are responsible for the patterns of
behavior or events.
 Business Acumen – Bringing a business perspective to the
healthcare system, and a passion for the business side of
medicine.
Leading
Change
PIVOTAL EXPERIENCES
 Early managerial/administrative experiences, such as election to
state specialty chapter, serving as medical director and/or
residency program director.
 Formal Leadership training boot camp & fellowship programs, in
such areas as finance, public health, legal, human resources,
quality, leadership, communication, change management, and
team development to name a few.
 First-hand experiences that fueled the passion for making a
difference (e.g., seeing the difficulty that patients encounter in
navigating the system, practicing in a rural area, etc.).
 Losing a key position and learning from mistakes along the way.
In other words, being willing to take risks, make mistakes and
be vulnerable – to try, fail, learn and grow.
 Mentoring by a respected physician or non-physician leader.
 Coaching by an external coach.
CONCLUSIONS
Given the changes in the healthcare landscape and the challenges
that lie ahead, there is a great sense of urgency to identify and
develop physician leaders who can effectively position their
organizations for success. While a strong clinical background is
preferable for physician leadership positions, it is challenging to
find physicians with the competencies required to be a strong
leader. We recommend early identification of high potential
physician leaders who possess integral physician leadership
competencies and/or the capacity to develop these leadership
competencies.
Furthermore, the results of our research indicate that leadership
training ought to start early in the educational lifecycle for
physicians. We propose instituting a targeted development
program based upon our success model early on in a physician’s
career, as well as exposure to on-the-job experiences in
administration and management. We also recommend instituting
feedback mechanisms for physician leaders to allow them to
understand how their leadership behaviors are being perceived by
others to enable course correction throughout their careers.
Long-term solutions such as changes to medical school education
are good. However, the need for a new kind of leadership is too
urgent to wait for the next generation of leaders. We recommend
immediate investment in the development of current physician
executives that pull upon three learning methodologies, namely
on-the-job experiences, coaching and mentoring to support onthe-job experiences, and formal classroom learning with a focus
on systems thinking, process improvement methods,
communication and conflict management skills, change
management and teamwork.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
DERAILERS
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Being risk averse
Limited self-awareness
Inability to manage change
Being inflexible and/or impatient
Being too self-involved and individualistic
Being naïve about the importance of politics
Inability to persuade groups towards a common goal
Allowing the tactical to take the place of more strategic work
Unwilling to give up instant gratification for longer term success
Unclear role expectations for self and inability to communicate
expectations to others
Tracy Duberman, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President, Organizational Effectiveness Practice
WJM Associates, Inc.
973.722.4480
[email protected]
Leonard Fromer, MD, FAAFP
Executive Medical Director
Group Practice Forum
310-383-8168
[email protected]