Battlefield to the Bedside: 8 Military Skills that Transition to Surviving as a Healthcare Leader

I have been in combat, I have been in healthcare leadership. Some days they feel the same.

Leadership in Healthcare is an ever-demanding challenge that causes many leaders to suffer from leadership fatigue and burnout. Throughout my 15 years in healthcare leadership including leading in combat, the civilian sector, and being a director of critical care during the pandemic, I have learned and developed some valuable tools to help us all survive! I hope you can find them as useful as I have been able to.

1. Power of being poised

Courage doesn't mean the absence of fear, and of course, being a leader certainly doesn't mean charging ahead blindly in the face of adversity. It does mean you can't allow your fear to become contagious. People look to you as a leader to be the calm amid the storm. Stay poised. Remaining calm and controlled demonstrates your confidence in making smart decisions and guiding the team through challenging times. It also allows you to make the best decisions. I call it the emotional teeter-totter. When emotions are high, our decision-making and communication skills are usually low. Let them balance out!

2. Sharing the mission and goals

Align everyone with a common purpose and direction. This allows people to work proactively, instead of waiting for orders. By defining and communicating the mission and goals, you create a united team with everyone headed in the same direction, towards the same goal. If your team knows the mission and goals of what everyone is trying to accomplish then they can act with autonomy, and confidence, and make real-time decisions when needed.  Involve your team in planning new processes.  As you develop as a leader, create systems that function independently of your direct involvement. When problem or situation X occurs your team doesn’t need to go to you because they have a system to handle that problem. This has freed up so much of my time that I can now allocate it elsewhere.

3. The importance of asking questions and being silent

One of your primary jobs as a leader is to gather information. The more you manage the less you know about the granular level of your areas. Asking questions and then being quiet allows your team to be engaged and also gives you information to make effective decisions. Too many leaders say, "We have problem X, and I think we should implement solution Y. What do you think?" This approach can stifle the team’s creativity. Instead, state the problem and ask your team for their ideas on the best solutions. I have been AMAZED at what my teams have been able to develop! What is the challenge? What resources do you need to overcome it? What specifically can I do to help the most? Then help fix their challenges with the resources they need.

4.  Anticipate problems

Problems will happen. We can’t predict every problem but we can try our best. In the military, we have a saying that “Sweat in training prevents blood on the battlefield.” Great teams don’t happen without great training. It may be a mock downtime, code blue, equipment failure, etc. 

Expecting your team to execute perfectly on something they’ve never done before is essentially setting them up for failure. Contingency planning should be a part of everything you have. If system A fails, how do we operate? Do we have a system B? Does it work? Does anyone know how to use it?

5.  Encourage your people

It is not always easy trust me, but as a leader, you need to be one of the most motivated and positive people on your team. The team will almost always take on the personality of the leader. It is important to sincerely encourage your people. Celebrate accomplishments, give on-the-spot positive feedback, publically share positive praise of patients, etc. I have achieved remarkable success by doing the following. Instead of stating we are not doing X correctly enough, we need to do better. State nurse Sue does a great job on X. I want to use her example of how this should be done. Now the message is positive and rewarding and not demeaning towards the team. Create an environment of openness, creativity, and FUN! People operate best when the mind is free, creativity is expected, and laughs are heard.

6.  Explain the true situation in hard times

Be real with your people during difficult times. Most people can endure difficulty if they know what they are facing and this can lead them through it. Also if you don’t tell them what is going on, they will make it up anyway and the rumor mill version is almost always worse! I have experienced great success by being very open with my teams about financials, budgets, staffing, future plans, and more. You'll find that your staff are highly perceptive and aware of the challenges in healthcare. By sharing openly and honestly about difficult issues, you will build trust, eliminate drama and rumors, and be amazed at how your team will come together and step up.

7.  Delegate to your upcoming stars

I have struggled with the delegation for a long time. I wish I had learned earlier how great delegation could be. Note: There is a difference between delegation and dumping! Jocko Willnick, best-selling author stated that as a leader you should always delegate a job that someone else has the time and resources to do. This will free up your time to focus on tasks ONLY YOU can do. I have been amazed at how members of my teams have enjoyed learning and conquering new tasks. They have often even found better ways to do them than I had! Proper delegation gives your upcoming stars purpose and value. It is also helpful to delegate tasks you are not good at, but others strive. I dread long detailed data entry tasks. I have delegated these tasks to people and they get a lot of enjoyment from doing them. Know what you do not do well, and what your team members do well.

8.  Introduce Stability/ Efficiency

You as a leader need to be as constant as possible. We've all likely encountered a leader whose mood seems unpredictable, leaving staff to constantly guess how they might be feeling at any given moment. Staff walking on eggshells has no benefit. The large majority of people do not operate well in constant instability. As a leader, you must find a way to reduce chaos and introduce stability. Developing standard operating protocols, fixing long-standing issues, reducing complexity and adding simplicity, all help introduce stability. Even in the small things, stability allows people to predict their needs and plan better. Stability helps people to focus on the job at hand and in the future.

I hope you can add these tools to your proverbial toolkit/ rucksack, whatever it may be and lead more successfully!