Learning about the impact of leadership as an action
We live in a world full of polls and trends and all manners of things that represent themselves as manifestations of "how things are going." When I was coming up through the ranks, the closest thing I ever received to management training was a sense of the approach known as "management by walking around."
Certainly, "around" is where the action is, both from a practical standpoint—around is, after all, where safety lives—but also from a philosophical standpoint—it's where the "decisions" made away from the environment (and this includes the interpretation of regulatory vagaries) impact the folks who are charged with managing the environment. Historically, I think rounding has tended to focus too much on pointing out deficiencies and not enough on figuring out how to make compliance a sustainable approach to managing the environment.
While cruising the highways and byways of LinkedIn, I came across some very positive reactions to a leadership post, so I checked it out (sometimes I wish there was a LinkedIn around when I was coming up; so much cool and useful information). Richard Corder pens a column called "The Heart of Leadership" and I found the offering from this past week to be a compelling and useful article that really frames how one can increase the purposefulness of the leader rounding process (and I think this applies to leaders at every level of an organization). As I sometimes note during consulting visits—rounding can't be as effective as it could be if it's torture. Every rounding activity is an opportunity for learning—make the most of those interactions and your program will be the better for it.
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Chartis Group. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is an advisory board member for Accreditation and Quality Compliance Center. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.