By Marion Spears Karr, MA, FACHE
Managing Director – Healthcare and Life Sciences Practice

Over the past two years, across the globe, healthcare workers and leaders have been thrust onto center stage. The pandemic that started nonchalantly with “15 days to slow the spread” has exposed not only how little we knew about COVID, but also gaps in our healthcare delivery systems, supply chains, workforce, and leadership.

Burnout, stress, anxiety, and fear have placed burdens on caregivers, physicians, nurses, and staff in an industry that was already taxed by rising costs, higher acuity patients, a rapidly expanding elderly population, and social determinants of health that impact high-risk populations. Yet, there has also been good that has come from this ongoing experience.

Many healthcare leaders have taken a hard look at themselves in the mirror and have risen to the occasion in dramatic and inspiring fashion.

As I think about the best healthcare executives I have worked with over my 31 years in the industry as a lead executive search professional and supportive of those they intend to, especially those who are excelling today, I am reminded of the work of Erich Fromm, the German-American social psychologist. In his 1947 published book, Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics, Fromm introduced the concept that genuine love for others is demonstrated through action, and he called it “productive love.”

The four attributes of this productive love model, he argues, are Care, Responsibility, Respect, and Knowledge.

Over my career working with healthcare leaders across the country, I believe that the best ones, the ones who have and are making the biggest impact on the lives of the patients and the organizations they serve, live these four characteristics as core values.

Let us unpack these four attributes a bit further. Leaders who care for their team do so through purposeful and intentional action. It is not enough to espouse that they are supportive of those they intend to lead. They must put on the mantle of the servant leader, be present in the moment, and, as Michael Maccoby, author of The Leaders We Need and What Makes Us Follow, puts it, they must lead with the head, the body, and the heart.

Responsibility is the cornerstone of any successful healthcare leader, but what does that mean in today’s challenges?

From my observations of those executives who embrace their role as being fully mission-centric and centered on accountability, for themselves and others, they are the ones who make the most significant positive difference through the work they do. Aligned with a personal sense of purpose, privilege, and honor, the responsible executive thrives in serving the stakeholders of the organization in which he or she leads.

Respect is a word that sometimes loses its meaning in today’s vernacular. In a time when diversity and inclusion can be buzzwords that are thrown around but are not supported with behavior change within organizations, true respect can be absent as well. Fromm points out that the word “respect” comes from Old French respect and directly from Latin respectus, “regard, a looking at,” literally “the act of looking back (or often) at another person.”

The key here is in the “regarding” and “looking back at” or considering the other person often. This means seeing the person or group of people from their perspective, point of view, and needs, and evaluating how you, as a leader, respond to them. Great leaders embody respect as manifested behavior and not simply as a catchphrase.

The best healthcare leaders today see the continuous development of knowledge and understanding as paramount to their ability to guide their organizations through the travails and storms that they face. This knowledge, however, cannot be simply for their own benefit but must be shared with others in an environment where there is a positive discourse, a shared learning experience, and then acted upon.

The 20th-century management thought leader Peter Drucker once said, “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” I would add that it must also be used for the greater good.

Care.
Responsibility.
Respect.
Knowledge.

These four attributes of Fromm’s “Productive Love” model are hallmarks of the greatest leaders in healthcare today and a framework for future generations of leaders to emulate.