“How do we choose participants for our physician leadership development program?” This question comes up frequently.
Start by asking yourself a few questions. The answers will guide you toward an approach that is right for your organization.
(See, also - Learning to "Practice" Leadership)
1. What are your goals?
The goals of the program will, for the most part, drive, who should participate. Frequently, I find an organization has realized that it needs to provide physician leadership development resources, but has not necessarily defined what it’s hoping to accomplish. Taking some time to define these, will help clarify who should participate Examples of goals, and considerations:
The Goal: Improve the performance of specific areas/departments
You’ll likely want to focus on physicians already in leadership roles, as they will be in a position to quickly drive improvements. You may also want to make this a “department-specific” program – building the learning around specific initiatives.
The Goal: Build “bench-strength” and the next generation of physician leaders
You’ll want to look at newly appointed physician leaders, or those who’ve expressed an interest, or the potential, for taking on leadership roles.
The Goal: Engage physician leaders in effective high-level strategic planning, and taking on complex tasks topics like population health, and moving to value-based care models?
This may need to be a shorter, focused, program on a few key topics, with a smaller group of senior physician leaders.
The Goal: Create more of a culture of medical staff engagement, collaboration and “team”?
Consider mixing newer and more experienced physician leaders in the cohort. If you structure it correctly, they can learn from each other, and each find value in the work. More importantly, it creates the opportunity to encourage open dialogue and collaboration across departments and generations of physicians.
The Goal: What’s the overall vision for the organization’s approach to physician development?
Is this a one-time project to achieve a specific goal with a specific group?
Have you outlined an overall, long-term plan for physician development?
What’s already in place?
Ideally, you want the program to be part of a larger plan to provide on-going support and development for physicians at all points in their career. This will enhance physician and provider engagement and retention.
3. What is the size and complexity of the the organization?
This will drive decisions about whether you need one program run each year, or different programs for different levels of leaders.
Will the participants all be from a single hospital/region or does it make sense to pull together physician leaders from across the system. Do you need to run a few version of the program in different regions?
Download our White Paper on Creating a Culture of Physician Leadership at our landing page.
4. What is the right participant “selection” process?
This will, also, vary depending on a number of variables.
You may be able to simply hand choose the participants.
Do you offer participation as an opportunity, or make it mandatory for any physician taking on a leadership role
Do you ask Departments or facilities to nominate participants?
Do you create a formal selection process? A large system had been using a simple nomination process. They found that participant motivation, engagement, and even post-program promotions lagged. We moved to a more formal selection process, based candidate experiences, and previous training (Are they prepared, and motivated, to take on this training?) This proved a far more effective approach in this situation
As always, the success of your program will depend, to a large degree, on a thoughtful program design and deployment methodology.
No matter the make-up of the group, though, it will be critical to create an engaging learning journey, focused on practical application of new skills to YOUR challenges. This is reason for the unique design, and technology, of the Activ8 Physician Leadership Essentials program.
Download "Build a Culture of Physician Leadership
To learn more about how to design your approach to physician leadership development, and the PLE program, visit the Trailhead Strategic Solutions page on Physician Leadership.
To learn more about Activ8 Health's learning journeys, visit, https://activ8.health/
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