Why Your Best Clinician Might Not Be Your Next Leader

You know the scenario. Your best team member, the one with seven years in and the best hands in the building, gets the title. Lead assistant, office manager, clinical director. And within 90 days she's frustrated, the team's frustrated, and problems are showing up on your desk three weeks late instead of getting solved. You can't unpromote her without a cost, and now you're both miserable. In part 1 of this two-part series, Dr. Kassmel explains why this almost never comes down to training and everything comes down to selection. She names the three attributes she looks for before anyone gets a leadership title: wanting to be effective more than wanting to be right, emotional self-awareness paired with real open-mindedness, and the capacity to sit in healthy conflict without avoiding it or dominating it. She also names the one disqualifier, a person whose lens only points inward. Then she gets practical: why proof of concept has to come before the title, what kind of project actually reveals whether someone can lead (hint, it has to require working through other people), and what to watch for over that 90-day window. This episode is the foundation. Part 2 covers the seven invisible layers of leadership once you've selected right. Grab the worksheet with the leadership characteristics scorecard, the project chart, and the 90-day observation log at http://summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus. Ready to build your leadership bench the right way, with your own leader alongside you? Enrollment for https://products.summerkassmel.com/Fo... opens August 14th, capped at 30 practices, and includes a seat for one of your leaders.