Is Tenacity in healthcare leadership important?

Tenacity is a fierce combination of persistence, courage, and willpower. For healthcare leaders, it is a characteristic that can mean the difference between their healthcare facility failing or thriving and being highly successful in patient outcomes, revenue cycle, and so much more. So, does tenacity matter more than you think?

Tenacity in leadership is all about strategic persistence and having that unwavering commitment to see things through while being flexible to adapt to the necessary changes to meet or complete a goal. Tenacity is about the brain function during challenges and leaders with high tenacity tend to find themselves better able to maintain focus and clarity during highly challenging or volatile times. They are hardwired to see past the setbacks to the finish line. They tend to manage their emotions allowing them to stay cool, calm, and collected in the face of adversity. This control of emotions allows them to transform the potential stress others would feel into a driving force to get out from under the problem and reach the goal or outcome desired.

How do healthcare leaders put tenacity into action? Often many leaders will look to cut their losses and move on. Tenacious leaders look for the shortcomings of projects, processes, and procedures to find new ways to rally their team and give them renewed vigor to continue by making adjustments that turn the sinking ship around. There is a stubbornness involved that the leaders are just not going to give up on something they believe will help their facility in whatever goal they need to meet. It is this stubbornness that helps drive them to see things from a different light. Traits of tenacious leaders are:

·         Seeing the glass half full not half empty

·         Strong analytical skills

·         Stubborn

·         Driven

·         Proactive not reactive

·         High levels of perseverance

·         Reflective

·         Inspiring

While there are so many other traits of tenacious leaders, these are the top skills that help them stay on course for completing their projects and meeting their goals.

It is important to note, tenacity is different than resilience. Tenacity is persistence and resilience is the ability to recover from a challenge that one may not see through or a goal not met. Resilient people are the ones who get up when they get knocked down and tenacious people are the ones who do not let themselves get knocked down. This does not mean that tenacious leaders will not face challenges that are designed to take them out and they will not struggle and appear knocked down. The difference is that tenacious leaders step back, regroup, redesign, and continue completing the project, or task, or meeting the goal. Resilient people are often the ones who will cut their losses, regroup, and begin again with a different approach and change in goals. They seem similar, but they are different, and knowing this can help you, as a healthcare leader or leader in any industry, find the way to not just dust yourself off and start over, but find a way to continue despite the challenges one faces.

The takeaway here is that this single trait of tenacity can make you a highly successful leader in your facility and create opportunities for your facility to become known as the best in the business or the one with the highest positive outcomes for patients, staff, and the organization. In today's ever-changing, fast-paced world tenacious leaders are a necessity for all healthcare facilities to be successful and stay in business as those just meeting standards will find themselves falling to the side. A key takeaway for readers is to find a way to be a tenacious leader, employee, or provider so that your patients can reap the benefits that come with being a tenacious leader.

References for article:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-26684-4_10 Tempered Tenacity: The Leadership Required to Work Across Boundaries by Liz Wiggins from Transitions and Boundaries in the Coordination and Reform of Health Services pp 223-242

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-38534-6_17 Leadership and Health Scholars by Richard G. Milter and Kathleen M. White from Education Scholarship in Healthcare pp 253-263

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JHOM-07-2018-0210/full/html The making and sustaining of leaders in health care by Terry J. Boyle and Kieran Mervyn from Journal of Health Organization and Management ISSN 1477-7266