**At Providence, I’m on a team of people who are trying to instill newly formed Team Norms into the culture at the Digital Innovation Group (DIG). One of our Team Norms is around leadership, so in the month of October we decided to focus on this norm. As a part of that focus, I’ve been writing weekly emails to the team exploring brief ideas about leadership. What is shared here is the content I’ve provided to the team…though shortened or edited when necessary.**
We Lead—We empower one another to take initiative and remove roadblocks. We expect it.
This past week I surveyed a handful of current and former colleagues and asked one question, “What is one leadership quote that you remember and try to live by?”
“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
–Ralph Nader
“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
–Eleanor Roosevelt
“The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.”
–Henry Kissinger
“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
–Harvey S Firestone
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
–Dwight D. Eisenhower
As my friends emails began to come in, I immediately noticed a common thread…Leadership is not about you, it is about other people. Sometimes I think we lose sight of that fact. We may want to be a leader or to be seen as a leader, without the hard work that comes with it. Leadership is about taking the focus off of yourself, so that you can be laser focused on the needs and desires of others…customers, stakeholders, and the team.
When DIG says “We Lead” this is what we mean. We mean that we are focused on removing roadblocks for one another…for our teams, for our peers, for our bosses, and for those who need us to be great innovators in healthcare. To do this we must have an openness that doesn’t always come naturally and an ability to listen that ensures we hear the needs of those around us.
What’s your favorite leadership quote?
Mine is:
Happy Leading!