Leading Change and Negotiation Strategies for Division Leaders in Clinical Medicine

Most physician leaders assume their administrative role based on past achievements but with very little leadership training. In this article, leaders of the Association of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Division Directors describe two leadership skills that are often required to effectively lead in a clinical division at an academic or community hospital setting: leading change and negotiation strategy. We adopted our discussion from the business sector and refined the approaches through our own experiences to help division leaders in leading a successful team, whether as a division chief, residency or fellowship program director, or a clinical service director. Leading any change project may include an eight-step process, starting with creating a sense of urgency and completing with anchoring the change to the organizational culture. We then review negotiation strategies, comparing positional bargaining vs principled negotiation, to create more changes and continuing growth for the division. Finally, we discuss the importance of emotional intelligence, exemplary leadership practices, and self-development that the division leader should embrace.