What Does Leadership Look Like? (Part 2)
AAEM NEWS PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Lisa A. Moreno, MD MS MSCR FAAEM FIFEM – President, AAEM
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elcome to Part 2 of “What Does Leadership Look Like?” Part 1 (Common Sense 28:2, March/April issue) covered the first five of the qualities of a good leader that emerged from the discussions taking place during Leadership Academy. Today, we look at the other five. 1. Great leaders learn from great leaders. 2. Great leaders surround themselves with brilliant, trusted experts. Trust means not just that they know their stuff, but that they will tell you the truth and guide you with love and wisdom to do what is best for the organization. 3. Great leaders listen to all voices. 4. Great leaders think about their legacy. 5. Great leaders recognize the responsibility to create other great leaders. 6. Great leaders make decisions, knowing that they will make enemies. 7. Great leaders know it’s about the organization first. 8. Great leaders do not engage in personal attacks. 9. Great leaders accept the ultimate responsibility for everything that happens in the organization. 10. Great leaders give responsibility for success to those around them.
Great leaders make decisions, knowing that they will make enemies.
During a discussion, a few nights ago with Dr. Juan Nieto, Dr. Nieto commented to me that great leaders emerge in times of crisis. This reminded me of Dr. Amal Mattu’s talk, in which he told us that none of the U.S. presidents who held office during times when no war, no depression, no crisis existed have become renowned. Leadership emerges out of the need to make tough decisions. And tough decisions can make or break a leader. The famous physician, Maimonides, once said, “The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.” Yet how many people flounder in the waters of indecision, paralyzed by the need to “look good,” to not make a mistake, to please those around them. Madame C. J. Walker opened her factory to celebrate the beauty of the Black woman and to provide jobs for Black females at a salary that was four times that which they were earning as laundresses and domestic servants. Booker T. Washington told her she got it wrong; that the Black man needed to be lifted first. W. E. B. DuBois called her work magnificent. Did she make the right decision? Did Robert the Bruce make the right decision? King Edward thought not. Did President Abraham Lincoln make the right decision? Jefferson Davis thought not. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said in an interview with Sports Illustrated a few years ago that a leader needs to be prepared to be criticized. He explained that a coach needs to know each player
and what they need, what the team needs, what the owners expect, what the Association’s rules are, how the crew chief is likely to call a play, what the opposing team is likely to do, and what their coach is thinking. So, he said, you’re going to be criticized. With all those moving parts, someone is bound to call you wrong, to say you should have done better or different. “But they don’t see what we see; they’re not out there.” So you make the best decision you can, knowing what you know. You stand behind your decision, take the criticism, and keep it moving. As President Lincoln said, “You can’t please all of the people all of the time,” and if that’s what you’re trying to do, you’ll end up pleasing no one and being a mediocre leader.
Great leaders know it’s about the organization first.
I mentioned in my last column that three generations after we leave this life, no one will remember our names, but we can leave a legacy that will endure. Even when names are remembered, in the cases where professorships and chairs, buildings and wings of buildings, endowed foundations, and awards are named after people, we don’t usually know who those people were. What endures are the principals they embodied, the causes they supported, the good work that they did. Very few people know the name of Nellie Bly, but everyone has benefitted from the work that Bly did to catalyze the reform of psychiatric hospitals.1 Wise leaders like Bly’s editor, Joseph Pulitzer, who himself is the namesake of one of those eponymous awards, know that creating an
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The leader must weigh what is good for the indi-
vidual member (or a small group of members) against what is good for the organization and strike that elegant balance between the two.” COMMON SENSE MAY/JUNE 2021
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