When we first chose to pursue medicine, most of us were focused on the science of healing and the intimate art of patient care. Becoming a "leader" wasn't necessarily the primary goal. Yet, the reality of our profession dictates that leadership and resilience aren't optional skills — they are essential requirements embedded in the job description.
Every day, you are called upon to lead:
- Leading Patients out of their health problems and toward wellness.
- Leading Your Practice toward financial and operational success.
- Leading Your Profession by improving the field of medicine through professional organizations.
- Leading Public Health Efforts by addressing critical, large-scale problems like opioid abuse, mass violence, and climate change.
Such immense responsibility in the face of constant change requires a deliberate, step-wise approach to developing your leadership skills.
Leaders vs. Managers: Understanding the Difference
The first critical step is to distinguish between leadership and management. While both are necessary, they serve different functions:
- Managers focus on the present. They deal with maintenance, systems, and achieving immediate goals.
- Leaders deal with change. They look to the future, articulate a vision, and inspire people to move toward it.
A resilient physician must be capable of doing both, but true, transformative influence comes from leaning into the leader's role.
The Five Pillars of Resilient Leadership
Once you understand the distinction, the next step is to cultivate the five core components of effective leadership: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and courage.
1. Self-Awareness
As a leader, you must possess a deep understanding of yourself — your moods, your emotions, and, critically, how they impact others. Your emotional state affects every relationship, from your staff to your patients, the moment you walk through the door. This awareness is essential to self-confidence, which is rooted in realism and, at times, self-deprecation. Knowing your limits and having the humility to laugh at yourself is a sign of strength, not weakness. As management consultant Peter Drucker advised, "Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."
2. Self-Regulation
Self-regulation is the capacity to control yourself under all circumstances. It means adhering to a moral compass and finding the appropriate measure of response, even when under stress. By regulating your reactions, you build trustworthy relationships. In a world where change is the only constant, the ability to remain steady and predictable is invaluable to those who follow you.
3. Motivation
While maintaining self-regulation, you must also continually stoke the fires of your passion. Never lose sight of the dreams that first inspired you to enter medicine. By keeping your deeply seated purpose and mission in mind while cultivating an optimistic, can-do attitude, you become an authentic source of inspiration that compels others to follow.
4. Empathy
Empathy is the foundational glue of humanity. As anthropologist Margaret Mead noted when studying ancient skeletons with healed bone fractures, caring for others — a concern that extends beyond helping ourselves—marked a key moment in human evolution. In medicine, this means building meaningful relationships and focusing on the concerns of your patients, your colleagues, and your community. As the poet Tagore beautifully put it: "I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy." Empathy rewards the giver with deeper meaning and resilience.
5. Courage
Change is inevitable, yet many fear it. Physicians often fear shifts in government policy, new EMR mandates, new treatment protocols, and the implications of scientific research. We can't avoid these tectonic shifts. Instead, we must face them, understand them, and adapt. As Darwin suggested, survival belongs not to the strongest or the most intelligent, but to the most resilient and adaptable. Courage is simply the willingness to face the challenge and evolve.
Putting Principles Into Practice
To become a truly resilient leader, apply these five principles across the hierarchy of your profession:
- Become a Capable Practitioner: First, master the knowledge, skills, and values required to heal your patients. Competence is the bedrock of credibility.
- Master Your Role as a Team Member: Understand how you fit into a group—whether in a hospital, a sports team, or a research study. Remember the adage: Together Everyone Achieves More.
- Become a Competent Manager: Learn the organizational skills necessary to manage your practice's immediate goals and coordinate your team effectively.
- Articulate Your Purpose and Vision: Keep a meaningful purpose at the forefront. A concise and compelling mission will motivate your team to work at the highest level.
- Synthesize with Humility and Determination: Learn to combine all these elements with equal parts humility (knowing what you don't know) and determination (driving forward). This synthesis allows you to lead your organization through its biggest challenges.
We all face things we can't control. But if you focus on controlling the things you can — your skills, your attitude, and your leadership capacity — you will be prepared for the things you can't.
Physicians are not meant to feel isolated or disenfranchised; we are inherently social beings meant to work together. By reaching out as leaders to empower others and improve our field, we ultimately empower ourselves, cultivating the resilience needed to achieve our mission and vision.