As vice-chair of neurosurgery at Boston Children's Hospital, Mark Proctor found himself increasingly called upon to speak the language of business. In the Program for Leadership Development (PLD), he found knowledge to complement his medical training and help him foster effective teamwork in a complex organization.
The level of instruction was simply outstanding—and I say that as someone who is also an educator. I'd sit through a PLD lecture for an hour and a half, and I'd be shocked when the professor said "time's up" because it was so unbelievably interesting.
The program is a time for introspection and focus because it provides the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks just concentrating on yourself as a leader. All the time you spend at PLD is about you.
At PLD, you live with up to eight people from completely different professions in different parts of the world. At first you think, "How am I going to relate to these people?" But one of the key strengths of the program is this interaction. As we shared our diverse perspectives, we discovered that we all faced the same problems. When we listened to each other's challenges, we were able to apply our experience to help.
PLD added immensely to my knowledge of finance, strategy, operations, and organizational psychology—understanding how people work together. I developed skills for problem solving on an organizational level—how to take a complex situation, break it down into the different problems, and figure out what's not working.
PLD teaches you a lot about working with teams. At Children's Hospital, teams need to function effectively for the sake of the patient. Whether it's a team working together in the operating room or a team running the hospital, if the leader doesn't know how to guide the team, you're going to see failure. For patient care, that means the potential for a serious mistake and a negative outcome.
My colleagues who have been through PLD were excellent physicians and team members to start, but the program strengthened them as leaders. We are developing a cadre of mid- to upper-level physicians who really understand leadership and institutional dynamics. They know finance and accounting, but more important, they have a clear understanding of how people can work together effectively across the institution and help lead the next phase of the organization's development.
PLD is excellent for someone who is clearly on a trajectory toward leadership, but is at a career midpoint. The skills that got you to a certain point in your career are not necessarily the skills that will help you move forward, and PLD puts you in a better position for assuming any kind of leadership role.
