Healthcare leaders can learn huge amounts from watching others lead. 

   ABC's Barbara Walters interviewed Jimmy Carter a year after Ronald Reagan became President. The country was optimistic, the economy was strengthening & Reagan's popularity was rocketing.

   "Why is Reagan succeeding?" she asked. Carter said plaintively, "Well, I don't know."

   We did. Carter was smart, humble, kind & high principled. But he was so smart he got tangled in details & paralyzed by analysis. Thus, he had trouble delegating, picking the best people & focusing on the big picture. I disagreed with many of Reagan's policies but he had those crucial indefinable gifts: intuition & a genius for communicating contagious optimism. 

   Reagan projected the tough & tender leadership people love. When he made mistakes, including a couple big ones, he admitted them & moved on. He  surrounded himself with good leaders including James Baker, the wonderful Howard Baker, David Gergen & many others. 

   President Dwight Eisenhower (pictured) had the same gifts. 

   Good leaders pick good leaders. That obvious truth struck me decades ago & I have wondered why it is so often ignored. Bad leaders pick big bad leaders & demand one thing above all – blind loyalty. That is one of many reasons Donald Trump's Presidency is doomed. As a bad leader, he has surrounded himself with some of the worst leaders in history.

   As we have seen with the coronavirus crisis, Trump lied & people died. 

   Health leaders can learn by leading the opposite of Trump. But, it is also true that resume-only hiring is a mistake. Hospital organization charts are filled with people who have professional licenses but no leadership training. Many won leadership jobs via length of service.

   Nursing & Doctoring require sharply different skills than leading. Leaders must focus on the big picture, inspire with high purpose & pick the best teams. This is true of people whether you lead two or three or are a President with 330,000,000 "patients." S/he can bring them healing strength through the Radical Loving Leadership of wisdom, compassion, humor, humility & integrity. 

   We need loving leadership in our hospitals & in our country. Right now.

-Erie Chapman