Dr. Richard Winters
Leaders at every level in every industry face critical challenges that call for decisive action. During the Covid pandemic and all the chaos it spawned, we had a chance to see some good—and certainly some not-so-good—leadership practices.
Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just now stepping into a new leadership role, an excellent source of solid counsel can be found in You’re the Leader. Now What? The book’s subtitle is Leadership Lessons from Mayo Clinic, which provides a solid clue about the reliability of the prescription.
The author is Dr. Richard Winters. In addition to being an emergency physician at the Mayo Clinic, he serves as director of Leadership Development for the Mayo Clinic Care Network, delivering training for leaders at all levels of healthcare organizational worldwide. He’s a certified professional coach through the International Coaching Federation, and holds an MBA in healthcare management. In other words, if you’re looking for a physician with strong people skills, Dr. Winters is your guy.
Rodger Dean Duncan: In many instances, an individual contributor is thrust into a leadership role without receiving any real leadership training. What’s your advice on the first steps such a new “leader” should take in interacting with team members?
Richard Winters: First, get to know your team. Spend a few weeks meeting with your colleagues and listening to their responses. You do this before moving to action.
You have one-to-one conversations, you walk the floor, you meet with groups, and you take notes. What do your colleagues see as the opportunities ahead? What stupid stuff is getting in their way? What stories inspire them? What do they want you to understand?
Your colleagues' responses—their bullet points of themes and perspectives—come together to represent a map of your team’s thinking. This map represents the shared reality of your team. Within this shared reality, there are agreements and disagreements, ideas for innovation and foundations of tradition, and differing views for what might and what might not be possible.
Next, you consider your team's shared reality as you craft your vision for how you will lead. What is your vision for the future? Which of your team’s fears and worries will you specifically address and work to mitigate? Which stupid stuff will you eliminate? Which organizational values and stories will provide a strong foundation for your path forward?
Finally, you move to action mode and lead your team forward with a clear vision. You identify two to four objectives to prioritize as your initial way forward. You work with your team to set expectations for key results. And you work to achieve your vision.
Duncan: On the flip side of previous question, some leaders overplay their expertise by being too quick in proposing solutions to problems. What’s your advice in that kind of case?
Winters: What if you skip developing an understanding of your team's differing perspectives, their fears and worries, and their stories—you simply decide to move forward based on your experience? You're the leader, right? You have ideas for how to make improvements. Let's save some time, you know what to do.
Unfortunately, you have significant blind spots. Those initial conversations you have with your colleagues help you discover—help you look around—your blind spots.
Leaders who jump to solution without first understanding their team’s perspectives are operating blindly. They lack a clear understanding of nuances of their challenge. They appear uninformed and disconnected—because they are uninformed and disconnected.
Duncan: You say effective leaders wear five hats. What exactly are those five hats (roles), and what behaviors are associated with each?
Winters: The five hats of effective leaders are supervisor, mentor, teacher, coach, and sponsor.
Each hat is essential for effective leadership. But in my experience coaching leaders at Mayo Clinic, two of the hats are favored by leaders who create followers, and three of the hats are favored by leaders who create leaders.
First, let's talk about the overworn hats of less effective leaders—the hats of supervisor and mentor. These are the hats favored by leaders who create followers.
When you supervise, you steward resources, oversee the implementation and accomplishment of tasks, set deadlines, and protect the mission, values and strategies of your team. You are the enforcer and protector, and often the one who hires or fires. It’s an essential hat, but it can be overplayed.
When you mentor, you help your colleagues see their world through your eyes. You've been there and done that. And given your expertise, you help your colleagues see what you would do if you were in their situation. You say, "If I were you, this is how I would approach this situation", or "You might want to consider this." Another great hat, but perhaps instead of telling your colleagues what you would do, you could help them figure out what they might do.
The leader who overplays the role of supervisor and mentor has direct reports who go to "the boss" to see what they should do, and whether they have done things right or wrong.
.
Now let's discuss the hats favored by our most effective leaders—the hats of teacher, coach, and sponsor. These leaders create leaders rather than followers.
When you teach, you convey new information and help your colleagues attain new skills. You keep them informed. You share the inside scoop. You grant them the power of knowledge.
When you coach, you help your colleagues make sense of the world through their own eyes. You ask questions that prompt insight. You might ask, “What have you seen work? What do you see as the obstacles? On the one hand you say this but on the other you say that. How do you put these two perspectives together? How would you like to proceed?”
When you sponsor, you spend some of your social capital to advocate for your colleagues. You help them gain opportunities and resources. You put your own reputation on the line as you ask another leader to give your colleagues a chance on a project, or to get resources, or to be promoted to new roles.
Who would you rather have as a leader? The one who tells you what to do, or the one who empowers you to lead? Our most effective leaders help colleagues attain knowledge through teaching, make sense of the world through their own eyes by coaching, and help them gain opportunity through sponsorship.
Duncan: What mindset seems to be most helpful in filling those leadership roles successfully?
Winters: Effective leaders in modern organizations are facilitators and coaches, rather than the expert supervisors. They embody organizational values, rather than just speaking of them. They leverage the diversity of viewpoints within their teams, rather than the myopic views of the powerful few. They develop leaders, rather than followers.
Effective organizations seek out and develop individuals to lead at all levels. For example, in many healthcare organizations departments choose their own leaders. These leaders are often chosen based on their ability to fight the fight for their department, rather than for their ability to work collaboratively across their organization. However, the leader who can gain the most for their department may be the leader who divides and conquers others.
At Mayo Clinic, department chairs are chosen by a multidisciplinary committee of physician colleagues. Future chairs must not only demonstrate effectiveness in delivering results for their department, they must also demonstrate a track record of embodying organizational values as they work collaboratively with physician, nursing, and administrative colleagues throughout the organization.
Leaders and leadership skills are developed over time. Effective organizations develop individuals to become leaders at throughout their career. It is not left to happenstance.
Duncan: You point out that we live in a VUCA world where volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity seem to be the norm. How can leaders best adapt to such an environment?
Winters: Effective leaders help their teams adapt to volatile, complex, ambiguous, and uncertain (VUCA) environments. They tap into the collective wisdom of colleagues in order to better sense the VUCA environment. They seek multiple options for how they might move forward. And when they move to action, they learn from their environment. This enhances their ability to sense the evolving environment and deliver results.
On the contrary, those who lead through individual power and pointed edicts may do well in static environments for a while, but eventually their blind spots get in the way and their teams tap out.
Duncan: Even the smartest and most attentive leader can have blind spots. In addition to seeking the perspective of trusted colleagues, how can leaders become aware of their own blind spots?
.
Winters: Here's a simple exercise. During your next meeting, think about how easy it is for you to form an opinion about any topic being discussed. And how you can do this without even hearing or considering other perspectives. Or perhaps even without even knowing all of the variables being discussed.
As the group begins to discuss the topic at hand, are you thinking, "Yes, I agree with her," or "Nope, he is wrong" as soon as an alternative perspective is voiced? If so, this is quite natural. You are human. And you have identified a situation where if you don't quiet your decision-making reflexes, you magnify your blind spots.
Duncan: For a variety of reasons, burnout has become increasingly common in the workplace. What are the early warning signs, and how can leaders help create a work environment that promotes high performance without jeopardizing people’s health and wellbeing?
Winters: Organizations need to measure rates of burnout just as they measure cost, quality, and customer satisfaction. They are a part of the vital signs for organizations.
You'd be suspicious of emergency physicians who didn't look at your vital signs (at least you should be) before they choose your treatment.
Organizations must prioritize the health and wellbeing of their employees. Otherwise, and the literature is quite clear on this, they increase their overall cost, they increase employee turnover, they decrease quality, and they decrease customer satisfaction.
Duncan: For several decades, employee engagement has been an important metric in assessing personal wellbeing as well as organizational vitality. What can leaders do to enhance engagement of team members?
Winters: It's one thing to measure engagement. It's another thing to actually do something about it. Many organizations survey employee engagement and speak of seeking to understand and promote positive change. However, their leaders simply discuss the results for a few moments during a busy meeting agenda and move on.
For example, what if your engagement survey reveals that your direct reports don't feel comfortable expressing their viewpoints? Do you briefly discuss this during a meeting in which one or two individuals with power give their interpretation of the results? I hope not.
It’s better to engage colleagues to interpret the engagement survey results and identify a better way forward together. This means not jumping to conclusions and action. Instead, you seek the input of not only the loud and opinionated, but also the quiet and reserved. You ensure it is safe for them to be heard. And you incorporate their perspectives as you identify options for how to proceed together.
Duncan: “Cognitive headlock” is a phrase you use to denote some leaders’ practice of pushing past resistance and using their expertise and power to impose their will. What are the most important steps a leader can take to avoid such destructive (not to mention boorish) behavior?
Winters: The practice of leadership is one of self-development as it is one of developing others. I coach senior leaders who still interrupt others and use the "cognitive headlock approach" to push things forward. They know this behavior gets in their way, and they know it hurts their team. They want to stop, they try to stop, but then the behavior continues.
In my experience, the leader needs to understand why this unwanted behavior works for them—why they keep doing it. And without fail, their dysfunctional behavior counteracts and quiets fears and worries they hold about what would happen if they did the opposite.
The leader wants to stop interrupting people and pushing their agenda on the one hand, but on the other hand they fear that if they were to stop doing so they would waste time, or not be seen as a leader, or lose control. They have one foot on the gas pedal (they want to stop dominating meetings) and the other foot on the break (they don't want to be seen as weak or feel out of control).
Once a leader sees this internal opposition, they (and, when possible, with an experienced executive coach) can create experiments to see whether these fears and worries and the limiting assumptions derived from them still hold. More often than not, the leader can identify new and more functional responses and the previous fears and worries release their powerful hold. However, they must first change the way they make sense of their challenges, not just the way they behave in the moments their challenges arise.
A simple change in behavior in such situations rarely results in longstanding change. A change in the way of the leader thinks and feels is also required.
