By Steve Athey
In my last column, I discussed a “list” of questions I found in an article that one can use to determine leaders in an organization. I was curious about the effectiveness of this unscientific approach, and especially intrigued by the question, “Which of your employees is the most densely connected to other employees in your firm?”
I wondered about the predictive value of that question and set out to perform a very unscientific survey. I called a dozen supervisors and managers in the industry and asked them the question. Most answered without a second thought, immediately identifying the person in their organization that was described by the question. I then asked them, “Would you consider that person a leader in your organization or one who displays leadership qualities?” Eleven of the 12 described the person as having “considerable” leadership abilities; in fact, eight of the 11 responded that the person was already functioning in a “leadership role.” Common descriptors of these people included words and phrases like, “fair,” “team player,” “compassionate,” and “ethical.”
Unscientifically, the simple question seems to predict leadership qualities, but would you be willing to make your next promotion decision on a single question? How about a “gut feeling”? Throughout this industry’s history, managers have used their “gut feelings” about who gets promoted into leadership positions. Some choices have worked and some have not.
There is a contrasting view and today many progressive organizations are using a more scientific approach to choosing the right person for leadership roles.
Looking for Better EMS Leadership? Consider a Behavioral Science Approach
People notice. When your EMS organization lacks credible leadership, the patients, the community and your employees all notice. Underperforming supervisors and mid-level leadership creates a predictable outcome: unreliable service. When you think about it, EMS is the business of outcomes. Outcomes can generally be measured objectively. People, specifically their behaviors, can also be measured objectively. Interestingly, many managers or supervisors are promoted through a process of tests that measure nothing of consequence or worse, promotion decisions are subjective, based on intuition. Fortunately, there are better approaches that can lead to more predictable leadership outcomes.
What happened? You were such a great paramedic?
To a large extent, an EMS supervisor is a gatekeeper to an employee’s organizational resources, and that power must be used as a straightforward, cultivating, non-biased tool. To understand who will likely succeed in a leadership or supervisory role, we must first understand which behaviors can specifically contribute to failure. For example, there are easygoing and relaxed supervisors and managers who may tend to overlook administrative details. Conversely, there may be supervisors who are fine at managing daily problems but burn out when asked to quickly solve a difficult challenge.
Sometimes others seem great for a supervisory role, but once promoted, exhibit very little enthusiasm for administrative tasks. Still others are tough-minded leaders, but become pushy and overly blunt, creating a sense of distrust. These are just a few examples of behaviors that eventually can lead to poor leadership outcomes. The behavioral science questions become: Can these behaviors be changed? How can we determine which behaviors would positively or negatively affect the success of a newly promoted supervisor? Can we accurately predict a successful emerging leader based on past behaviors?
There is a substantial amount of research which suggests “effective leadership advancement realizes that leaders develop and function within a social context; and, although individual-based leader development is necessary for leadership, it is not sufficient” (Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 28 No. 1, 2007, pp. 76-91, Olivares, Peterson, and Hess).
English, please!
The point here is that some competencies (behaviors) can, and should be, enhanced through education and leadership development. However, some behaviors, such as values, motivation, and personality are inherent and cannot be changed. Therefore, when choosing a leader, we should start by identifying and screening those inherent negative behaviors that cannot be changed.
Many Fortune 500 companies figured this out years ago. In the early 1990s, companies like General Electric and Merck pioneered behavior-based leadership acquisition strategies. James Collins, in his book Good to Great (2001) noted a study of 11 companies that exhibited 15 years of below average growth, followed by 15 years of above average growth; the first step in the process of going from “good to great” was hiring the right leadership.
The Clues are in Job Analysis
The key to predicting successful leadership begins by defining exactly what we expect our leaders to accomplish and which behaviors drive those accomplishments. Human resource executives and industrial/organizational psychologists use detailed job analysis to document key job requirements and validate corresponding behaviors. This is an extremely important and comprehensive process. But consider this: most EMS supervisors are promoted from within an organization. They leave a somewhat conventional world of episodic medicine dictated by protocol. They enter an environment more concerned with administering and managing policies. They are now required to drive organizational goals. In the field, a successful paramedic makes quick decisions and completes short job tasks (in segments of minutes). Once promoted, a new supervisor manages multi-layered tasks which may take longer to achieve (normally ranging from a day to a year) and require the coordination of several organizational resources.
Turns out, some folks are not “wired” to be a supervisor
In her book, Keeping Patients Safe: Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses, Ann Page suggests, “Poor supervision drives as much as 30 percent of employee work dissatisfaction and turnover among nursing staff.” This draws a parallel to the EMS industry. It builds a case for eliminating subjectivity and intuition from the leadership selection process. Behavioral science tells us that effective leaders possess certain measurable competencies and experiences. Industrial/organizational psychologists provide us tools that can be used to better assess supervisor candidates. For example:
Leadership competency assessments — Criterion-based (linked to actual job performance data) competency assessments are normally administered as a screening tool. This assessment can evaluate key personality constructs such as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability (the Five Factor Model). Research indicates candidates whose interests and work-style preferences are aligned with characteristics of the work environment are more likely to succeed. These tests help us understand “job fit” and have been shown to be valid predictors of supervisory success.
In his literature review regarding talent assessment and selection, Stephen J. Zaccaro (George Mason University, 2008) cites a study completed by Hogan and Kaiser (2008) asserting that “personality drives leadership style – who you are determines how you lead.” Zaccaro also noted, “Ignoring personality in the selection of organizational leaders would be foolhardy.”
Structured behavior-based interviews — Behavioral science teaches us that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. A structured interview consisting of behaviorally-anchored interview questions can help predict the future behavior of a supervisor candidate.
Interviewers should be trained how to properly conduct a structured interview. These interviews should contain job-specific questions, consistently asked in a specific order and scored using objective rating scales. The same questions are posed to each candidate.
Structured interviews are good predictors of job performance because the interview questions are directly related to job requirements. Used properly, structured interviews can also reduce the risk of litigation.
Leadership work samples — These tests help measure the job-specific experiences of a potential supervisory candidate. They provide candidates with a set of job-specific problems and leadership challenges. Normally they require the candidate to choose a solution or outcome. Leadership work samples add a level of both fairness and objective predictability to the supervisor candidate assessment process. As pointed out in Zaccaro’s literature review, these tests have “yielded high criterion validities” (McDaniel, Morgeson, Finnegan, Campion, and Braverman, 2001) and “result in less adverse impact than cognitive ability tests” (Hough, et al., 2001).
Great leadership generates great outcomes
When you look at the metrics of your EMS organization, nearly all of them are driven by human performance. Each supervisor or manager you employ has the power to influence performance. They help retain key employees even when there are negative factors driving the individual to leave. More importantly, your internal leaders directly impact overtime, documentation, customer service, safety, on-time reliability and more. Great organizational leadership drives great outcomes. Taking the right approach toward choosing your organizational leaders will have a significant impact on your organizational success.
Greg Lawton contributed to this article.
Greg Lawton is President of Avesta, a Human Resource support organization with a focus on the healthcare industry. Avesta helps EMS and Medical Transportation clients use social science to identify, hire, measure and develop top performers. Contact Information: 866-342-4280, or, glawton@avestacorp.com.
