The recent ICSI Colloquium on innovation and quality had an outstanding array of presentations. Perhaps one of most interesting and unusual was the keynote address by David Shulkin, MD, who is both a professor of medicine and CEO of a major hospital in New Jersey.
Dr. Shulkin is a widely known and experienced speaker, but he choose to do his entire presentation with a series of YouTube clips. I am not sure if this is the future, but it clearly gives a different texture to presentations and scholarly work.
So here is my attempt to use this principle to emphasize the major elements of servant leadership. This leadership approach is one of the important components of St. Thomas’ Physician Leadership College and Health Care MBA curriculums.
Servant Leadership
Robert Greenleaf developed the concept of servant leadership in 1970 and it is very useful approach to leading in a health care environment. Greenleaf distinguishes the servant leader from the power leader. The servant leader lives the service first model of leadership while the power leader lives the leader first model.
Servant leaders today demonstrate seven key practices:
- Self Awareness.
- Listening.
- Changing the organizational pyramid so that the leader is not at the top.
- Developing your colleagues
- Coaching, not controlling your subordinates.
- Unleashing the Intelligence and energy of others.
- Foresight.
The video clip below is probably one of the most powerful illustrations of the servant leadership concept and was used by Dr. Shulkin in his presentation.
You will note that midway through the clip, Mo Cheeks, coach of the Portland Trailblazers professional basketball team, enters the video. He was unselfish as a player and is a role model for servant leadership as a coach. You can see his outlook on life and leadership in this video.
So does YouTube make the point more powerfully than just reading about the topic? Perhaps YouTube will now become a unique but supportive part of all educational endeavors.
