#109 – Leadership 101 – Why it Matters

Anesthesia Guidebook

What’s up yall! This episode dives into fundamental concepts related to leadership and casts a message for why it matters to all of us.

Whether you’re primarily a clinical CRNA/physician anesthesiologist, resident/SRNA, a practice leader/manager, business owner, educator, researcher or policy advocate, leadership has a fundamental role in your day to day life.

In this episode, we talk about:

• The art & science of leadership
• Position, power, influence
• Leadership & management
• Leadership & followership
• Culture, and how we influence it
• The Servant Leadership Model
• Jocko’s leadership principles

I’m pulling from my time as an instructor with Landmark Learning and NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School), both outdoor education schools that thread leadership principles through their risk management and wilderness medicine programs. I’m also pulling from my experience as the chief CRNA at Maine Medical Center, a level 1 trauma center with over 200 staff in the anesthesia department. And some of the content is coming from the work I’m doing as I pursue a PhD in organizational leadership with a research focus on how high performance teams operate in emergencies.

Hopefully you’ll find something you can hang your hat on here.

Leadership is the art and science of influencing others to achieve shared goals.

There’s a ton of different leadership styles & theories out there and I’ll touch on some in the podcast. My personal approach is the Servant Leadership Model, which flips the traditional organizational chart – a pyramidal/triangular structure – on its head and puts the leader at the bottom of the triangle and the most important staff up at the top. The most important folks in any organization are those who are doing the front line work to deliver on the mission and vision of the organization. In the Servant Leadership Model, these folks are the top and the leaders and managers are positioned below them. The job of leaders and managers is to support and empower the folks above them to do their best work in robust and resilient environments where the capacity for the right thing to happen flourishes.

No big deal right? To find out more, check out the podcast!

Servant Leadership ModelDownload

Leadership Tactics

By Jocko Willink

1. Be humble
2. Don’t act like you know everything
3. Listen, ask for advice & heed it
4. Treat people with respect
5. Take ownership of failures
6. Pass credit for success up & down the chain of command
7. Work hard
8. Have integrity – do what you say, say what you do
9. Be balanced – avoid extreme actions/opinions
10. Be decisive
11. Build relationships = this is the main goal of a leader
12. Get the job done

Willink, J. (2023). Leadership strategy and tactics: field manual expanded edition. St. Martin’s Press.

Thank you to everyone who subscribes to the website & podcast… wherever you do that! YOU are the reason Anesthesia Guidebook is here. Take care and have fun out there!

Jon Lowrance