Walk a Mile

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” – Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I am blessed with a fabulous boss/mentor/friend on the ACO side of my work life, and this year during my evaluation, she challenged me with some leadership stretch goals. A couple of them weren’t surprises to me; I have been working on them for a while and need to keep honing my skills. One of them struck deep, though: use empathy for points of view different than your own in framing your plan. I do that already…don’t I? The feedback presented an opportunity to up my game.

I currently work with a pretty diverse group of folks: my practice team (small, local, I am the sole owner); my OHCA (still pretty small, local, I am one of five owners); my hospital (bigger, still local, I am chief of staff this year); the ACO (huge, national, I am an employee); and various community organizations and boards, including a major commercial insurance plan. Each role requires something different in terms of leadership. And each role can benefit from growing my leadership skills.

My improvement plan began by taking my own pulse. What did I feel/do/say when someone suggested a differing opinion during a planning session or project meeting? I found that I often held on pretty firmly to my own point of view and voiced it at the first pause in conversation. Even sooner, I could “feel” myself formulating my response at the first whisper of difference in the conversation. This gut reaction got in the way of listening to others. Woah. Ok. That was something I could work on.

As I explore the challenge of incorporating other points of view into my work, it reminds me of the oft repeated idiom, “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.” During a conversation, if I take the time to put myself in the other person’s shoes and intentionally work to see the situation from that point of view, I find the empathy critical to incorporate that perspective into my own work. The hard part, of course, is remembering to do that before my brain leaps into action, defending my antecedent ideas. The more I work on getting into someone’s shoes, metaphorically speaking, the more I notice how often I wasn’t doing it. Woah again. More work.

Developing the muscle memory for thinking from other points of view is easiest when the optique is close to my own; it requires only a minuscule move away from my entrenched thoughts toward something just a little different. When the foundational constructs of the work are far from my own experience base (for example, I serve on the investment committee for the commercial insurance plan), it takes more work because I have so much to learn before even formulating an opinion. Most difficult, though, is when the subject matter is near and dear to me (say, primary care) and the array of sentiments broad; my own firmly rooted beliefs occupy a lot of space in my head.

Although I have not yet mastered this new skill set, it is rewarding work and worth the effort. I’ve put on a couple different pairs of shoes, and I have faith I’ll get there eventually.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Chinese Proverb