Manage up

By the time you read this we likely will have elected the new “leader of the free world” to occupy The White House.

Short of making any kind of political statement, let’s just say the two primary and two secondary candidates for President of the United States all possess and exhibit distinct styles and their own unique brands of leadership.

What defines leadership? What kind of leader are you?

Lee Eisenstaedt, founder and CEO of Chicago-based consulting firm Value Drivers LLC, wrote a book titled, “Being a Leader with Courage.”

One of the things he posits is four words that every CEO must learn to ask or say.

“What do you think?”

For someone with an over-abundant ego or a softly polished sense of self-worth, those four words can seem like a foreign language. For someone with a servant-hearted and servant-minded style of leadership, those four words signify their standard operating procedure.

“Think about that,” wrote Jim Kendall, head of Kendall Communications Inc. that writes a small business column for the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper. “Asking the question almost compels you to at least consider the answer, maybe defend the idea that led to the question, possibly improve it, and likely, take an action.”

Eisenstaedt continued … “Keep asking until the person runs out of things to tell you.”

That can get annoying, for sure, but the idea remains sound. It’s how you manage up instead of down.

Managing down is easy enough — and efficient. After all, a dictatorship is considered by many to be the most efficient form of government. The problem? It also can be deadly. In the workplace, it can be a job-killer — namely the recipient of the whipping and not the one wielding the whip.

But you don’t have to be in the C-suite to be a leader.

Yet leaders may be hard to find as we approach the end of the decade.

During Bellwether League’s Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Forum last month, presentations and conversations centered on two primary topics: The Accountable Care Act’s impact on various markets as well as on access, cost and quality since inception, and the need to identify and equip the next generation of healthcare supply chain leaders to continue operating in this environment.

Speakers presented results from a nationwide survey of supply chain executives at integrated delivery networks (IDNs) that found that a lot of IDN supply chain leaders are nearing retirement or leaving their positions with mixed results on succession planning.

Further, survey results indicated that leadership skills were the most pressing need for future supply chain executives, due in part to the expanding breadth and depth of responsibility and the criticality of supply chain in a complex healthcare environment. Attendees noted that healthcare can find the necessary talent outside of healthcare because supply chain in other industries seem to have a better handle on the function and its foundational relationship to an organization’s performance and progress. Perhaps that’s why healthcare organizations have seen a growing influx of non-healthcare supply chain executives to its ranks.

It’s unlikely that healthcare-centric and healthcare-specific supply chain experts will see their executive ranks thinned and transfused with non-healthcare industry supply chain experts within the next decade if they start taking action now.

How? They need to encourage their supervisors and managers and directors and vice presidents to ask questions. And then provide answers — or at least suggestions and recommendations. From this leaders and followers will benefit, which will benefit the organizations and the patients they serve.

Management may be a trickle-down concept, but leadership should be a trickle-up enterprise. Just leave gravity — but not gravitas — outside the door.