The Power of Authentic Connection, in Leadership and Healthcare
This story, a version of which will appear in my forthcoming book, Fall Risk, took place in the hospital when I was recovering from a near fatal bicycle accident in 2016. I’d recently come out of a coma and was beginning rehabilitation.
The doctor is athletic, young, handsome and fast moving. He is a surgeon, interested in seeing how the bones in my leg, ribs, and hands are healing. Competent, efficient and precise. I don’t like him.
He comes into my room, looks at my chart, studies my X-rays, and says, “Can you straighten your leg? Are you in pain? How much on a scale of 1-10?” then he’s out the door. “Keep moving that leg,” he says over his shoulder. He’s been in and out in less than two minutes. I don’t even catch his name, and I’m unlikely to comply with his orders.
Doctor Z., on the other hand, is warm and has a kind face. He takes his time. He sits down next to my bed and puts his hand on my arm. “How are you feeling?” he asks. And he waits for me to answer! He is interested in how I am feeling. Not just how the repairs are going, but how I feel, physically and emotionally. I mention that I am having trouble with simple tasks like creating or saving documents on my laptop. As for my various passwords to access the digital details of my daily life, forget it.
“That’s normal,” he says, “your brain is working harder to navigate around the parts that were damaged in the accident. Before your injury, your brain would send messages directly from one point to the next. Kind of like making a direct call from Boston to Chicago. Now the brain needs to take a detour, so that same call gets routed through Atlanta, then LA, back through Des Moines, and then finally to Chicago.”
What is interesting about these two interactions is that not only did I like Dr. Z more than the handsome surgeon, but I was also much more likely to listen to his advice, to comply with his orders and to take the medicine he prescribed. Call me childish, but I would rather have recovered more slowly than to obey the orders of the impersonal surgeon.
Doctor Z had what is often known as bedside manner. He sat at my level. He looked me in the eye. He asked questions – and actually listened to the answers. He had the ability to make an authentic connection, to show genuine empathy, and to use story and metaphor to explain something clearly. Ironically, this is what I had been teaching business leaders as CEO of a training company for 2 decades. I’d lectured and written on these topics many times, but I can honestly say that the first time I had a visceral understanding of the power of these skill, was when I was confined to my bed.
This concept was defined as Leadership Presence, by Kathy Lubar and Belle Halpern, in their 2004 book of the same name. They define presence as the ability to authentically connect with another, in order to motivate and inspire a desired outcome. So leading and healing are the same thing! Both are engaged in helping someone improve; to go from one state to an improved state. And they both require a level of interpersonal skill to make it happen. Yes, many leaders and many doctors have a great deal of technical skill, but the ability to make an authentic connection is the difference-maker. It is what turns a manager into a leader and a fixer into a healer.