Point B’s Perspective on Leadership
As my 9-year old son was being placed onto a gurney in a Seattle hospital and wheeled to an ambulance, I was a few miles away awaiting his arrival at a Regional Pediatric Oncology Center. For the next 17 minutes and 28 seconds, he was closely monitored by a coordinated group of expert nurses, physicians, ancillary specialists, hospital administrators, facility engineers, and my project team. My son was a mock patient in what was the culmination of months of detailed planning to coordinate the work of safely transporting critically ill pediatric oncology patients from one facility to another. The trial run with my son and other volunteers went off without a hitch, as did the real-life move for the young patients and their families the following week.
Though most of our client engagements at Point B don’t include life-threatening consequences, each project is important, complex, and carries risks that require leadership skills, effectively applied, to be successful. The business community has come to expect leaders to inspire, motivate, set vision, align stakeholders, communicate and deliver results. Certain leadership behaviors, properly executed, can go even further, helping to achieve outcomes beyond these already high expectations. Those who can work at this level are leaders who have the opportunity to improve their organizations’ products and services beyond what can be learned in a book or taught in any class.
Point B’s objectivity adds an important dimension to the leadership we bring to our clients’ most important initiatives. It informs our ability to deliver results and enhances every aspect of our leadership:
Thought Leadership – The ability to identify and engage creative thinkers, and
to objectively assimilate their collective wisdom is an art of leadership that
extends an initiative’s vision, provides clever solutions to complex problems and improves expected outcomes.
Trusted Advisor – A trusted advisor is someone who offers a safe environment for colleagues to explore and challenge ideas, to offer differing points of view, and to provide honest feedback. Unbiased leaders who are open to and participate in these relationships are more effective and can yield better results in less time than those who operate without this level of collegial collaboration.
Encouraging an Ownership Orientation – Objective leaders who allow colleagues to invest an owner’s mindset and passion in their organization’s initiatives will benefit from a dedication and commitment to excellence regardless of challenges faced. Thinking like an owner is about thinking longer term. Those who think farther ahead are better at achieving successful outcomes.
Team Builder and Promoter – A leader who possess the skill to identify and develop talent, take the right risks on diamonds in the rough and invest in individuals’ personal and professional development will create teams with synergy. Additionally, impartial leaders who focus on team over individual accomplishments will create teams that are resilient and supportive, with a competitive spirit and high retention.
Our pediatric move initiative was clearly more than just defining and executing a process to relocate patients from one facility to another. It was an initiative that required leadership on many levels. The leadership aspects noted above helped this initiative to achieve unimaginable and positive results, and set the stage for a much larger patient move initiative the following year.
At Point B, we continually seek to provide world-class leadership on each and every client initiative. Our associates recognize the need to apply a variety of leadership aspects in our quest to help our clients turn their visions into reality.
See Point B's Point of View on Objectivity