Rethinking Leadership
As Peter Waters, clinical chief of Boston Children's Hospital's orthopedic surgery department, assumed more organizational leadership responsibility, he found he needed skills not typically taught in medical school. At the Program for Leadership Development (PLD), he discovered new ways to empower teams, solve problems, and advance the hospital's goals.
How can PLD help medical industry professionals advance in their careers?
To become a clinician or surgeon, you undergo years of training and become highly skilled. You also innovate, finding new treatments, tools, or ways to operate, and you grow soft skills in how to work with patients, families, and colleagues. But when you start to take on leadership roles in a hospital, you need different skills and knowledge that are completely outside the medical domain. PLD provides this leadership foundation.
How did PLD help you build new skills?
PLD offers a safe, supportive learning environment, but it takes you outside your standard silo, where you've been effective and where you are comfortable. Doctors and scientists tend to think there's a right answer for everything and that numbers have to be very precise. When we started the finance exercises, I obsessed about getting to the right number. Once in class, however, I'd realize that much of it was back-of-the-napkin math, and then I would really begin to understand the concepts. This learning process was typical of many of the program topics. I'd go in with some baseline expectations, not realizing how much I didn't know, and then I would learn the method and how to be quite precise in my use of it.
How are you approaching your role as a leader differently now?
After PLD, the core of my leadership style is still the same, but a lot is different around the edges. For example, I orchestrate meetings differently, ask questions in a different manner, and solicit opinions more. I am more patient, and I now know when to follow someone else's lead.
In addition, PLD gave me a greater understanding of how to empower teams and how put together a team that will cooperate well. As a leader, you must have a vision of where you are going, but you also must be able to enable people to come up with a better result than you would have found on your own.
How does a shared PLD experience benefit an organization?
Most of us have become very skilled at thinking and solving problems on our own, but business challenges are often best addressed as a team. Sending multiple people to PLD has a snowball effect. When colleagues have been to PLD, you can engage in a very dynamic way and produce a better result. For example, when I serve on committees with others who have also attended PLD, that common bond and common language are very helpful.
After PLD, you enrolled in other HBS Executive Education programs. What brought you back?
I wanted to keep fertilizing my brain and reinforcing new habits of thinking and acting. People at HBS have recommended specific programs. Along the way, I was able to earn HBS alumni status, which provides other resources for continuing my business education.