Proactive Leadership isn't only Contageous...it's a Cure!

While recently facilitating a seminar at a government health care clinic, we asked the participants to provide some live, on-the-job examples of their experiences in regard to changing their leadership behaviors from a "reactive" to a "proactive" mode. This was a followup exercise to the previous seminar session, using Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"© as the framework for our seminar sessions.   With a sense of pride, the group pointed to their supervisor, the senior manager of the clinic, and revealed a story in which the supervisor engaged them in a proactive group problem solving activity. This not only solved a major problem but it helped them resolve some of their own concerns about the skills required to be effective managers.

The identified problem was an employee who was perceived as a "chronic complainer", always feeling overworked and unable to keep up with job responsibilities.   With feedback from his supervisees and input from the "problem" employee and other stakeholders, the senior manager worked with the group to evaluate the system for doing business with patients.  This led to an action plan to streamline the intake process with the least amount of time (stress) on staff.  The outcome of the proposed changes, while not yet implemented at the time of our last session with this group, left the "problem" employee with a sense of ownership of the proactive problem solving process and a commitment to wanting to ensure positive results. 

The managers who were involved with developing the plan not only were committed to the new processes which they believed would benefit employees, managers and consumers of the clinic's health care services alike, but they saw a shift in their perspectives around managing disgruntled employees.  Using the senior manager's example of proactive leadership that focused on the "system", not on "personalities", they felt renewed strength in their capacities to take old paradigms and convert them into new perspectives. They empowered themselves to become more effective leaders through proactive rather than reactive problem solving. 

Proactive leadership is a great cure for an age old, chronic illness in many of our organizations...low morale and employee apathy. >>>