Essential leadership competencies for success

Physicians Practice: What leadership competencies do you see is most essential for driving operational success, and how can leaders intentionally cultivate them?

Kem Tolliver: So to me, some of the competencies that I think are essential would be an interest in innovation, those leaders who kind of feel like we've always done it the same way are a little intimidated by technology. We're not going to last. We have to lean into innovation and research and understand how innovation is going to impact our care delivery, impact our reimbursement, and impact our workflows.

I think another competency is vulnerability. I am so comfortable with being vulnerable with my teams, because then I'm human and part of being a leader is being able to lead folks. And in order to lead folks, they have to feel that you're credible, that you're one of them. So I take the personal stance of vulnerability.

I think the other component would be having a team mentality, right? So if you think about the team mentality, we are exposed to a ton of sensitive and proprietary information that we can't, for obvious reasons, share with our team. So just by that kind of standpoint, sometimes what we are elevated, right? The goal that I have in having a team mentality is not not being above my team, but being a part of that team. So one of the competencies that I recommend is being comfortable being part of the team and finding ways to insert yourself as part of the team.

I think the other thing is the ability to strategically apply solutions across the board. That's a key competency. So with that, one of the areas that I kind of think about is the utilization, or the adoption of a patient portal. There are so many times where we're not optimizing the use of our patient portal, right? So as a leader, my competency requires me to see the the lack of patient portal utilization from so many different perspectives.

I'm looking at it from the provider's perspective. I'm looking at it from the patient's perspective. I'm looking at it from a compliance perspective. I'm looking at it from the billing perspective. I'm looking at it from the front office perspective. So having that ability to strategically apply solutions across the board using so many different perspectives, I think, is a huge component of a solid leadership competency.