Leadership

The Intellectual Principles of Leadership

The second of this three-part series explores principles that can help you achieve stature as a leader.

J. Bradley Houser, MBA

The prior installment of this three-part series on leadership, looked at four functional principles of management: consistency, clarity, positive reinforcement and careful listening (see Ophthalmic Professional January/February, page 22). This installment examines three intellectual principles that can move the successful manager toward achieving leadership status.

These three intellectual principles — integrity, vision and support — are characterized by being of the mind and from reason, rather than emanating from emotions. Even so, the intellectual and emotional often intermix, as will become apparent in our final installment. A clean break between the two is rarely achievable, nor should it be.

Integrity

As President Dwight D. Eisenhower put it:

“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”

Some might say real leadership starts with integrity and comes to a grinding halt without it.

The dictionary defines integrity as, “soundness of moral character,” but it also offers “wholeness” as a synonym. Integrity is about the whole. It is not possible to achieve on a part-time basis.

I had occasion, a few years ago, to address graduating high school seniors. For me, this was a rare opportunity to speak to many impressionable, young minds. My message was simple. “You can spend years, even your lifetime, establishing your integrity. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to recapture once you have lost it. Protect it with your life, with your whole being.”

Vision

Chief Seneca once said: “To the person who does not know where he wants to go, there is no favorable wind.”

The second intellectual principle is vision. Getting people to follow you requires a clear understanding of where you are leading them. The leader with vision is one who can anticipate future outcomes and frame the aims and objectives of the business accordingly.

When I first embarked upon the business of ophthalmology more than 20 years ago, I joined a practice led by a physician with a crystal clear vision of where he wanted his practice to go. His leadership was founded in that vision. He provided clear direction to me and to everyone in the organization. His vision was so clear that business and civic leaders throughout the community came to understand it and bought into it. It helped those of us who were following his vision to succeed.

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion,” said Jack Welch, long-time CEO of General Electric. These are words to live by if you want your vision to become a reality.

Support

Unless you are going to do the organizing, directing and managing of the day-to-day efforts of your business yourself, you will have to turn over some responsibilities to others. When you delegate responsibility, you must also delegate authority.

But giving up control can be difficult. Perhaps you could do the task better than the person to whom you are giving the responsibility. There’s a strong temptation to question, second guess, micromanage and ultimately, undermine your employee. But consider the words of Theodore Roosevelt. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it,” he said.

I learned early in my career the frustration of being given responsibility without the requisite authority. As a young athlete, I was taught “team before self.” I am rarely more frustrated than when my authority to carry out my responsibilities is undermined by my own boss. And I count as one of my primary, day-to-day tasks ensuring that I do not undercut my management team. In fact, I insist that they call me on it if I stray from my commitment to them.

I believe Colin Powell captures the importance of providing support to your subordinates as well as anything I have read.

“Less effective middle managers endorse the view, ‘If I haven’t explicitly been told yes, I can’t do it,’ whereas the good ones believed, ‘If I haven’t explicitly been told no, I can.’ There’s a world of difference between these two points of view,” he said.

Building on the functional and applying these three intellectual principles will position you to employ the emotional tenets we will discuss in the next and last installment of my ten leadership principles series. As Vince Lombardi said, “Leaders are not born, they are made.” Steady application of these ten principles can make you a leader. OP

Mr. Houser is the Practice Administrator at St. Luke’s Cataract and Laser Institute in Tarpon Springs, Fl. He received his an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. He can be contacted at jbhouser@stlukeseye.com.