Q&A: Alexander Norbash on the importance of leaders learning from their own mistakes

ACR 2016, the annual meeting of the American College of Radiology, begins May 15 in Washington, D.C. In the weeks leading up to ACR 2016, Radiology Business is previewing the conference by putting a spotlight on various sessions.

This week, we examine “Leadership Challenges: Missed Opportunities, Mistakes, and valuable on the Job Lessons That Shaped Me,” a session scheduled to include presentations by Alexander Norbash, MD, chair and professor of radiology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and others.

Norbash spoke with Radiology Business about handling mistakes in the workplace, creating a solution-oriented culture, and how radiologists can prepare for a career in leadership.

Radiology Business: The description of your ACR 2016 session emphasized that everyone makes mistakes and it is important for leaders to learn from those mistakes. What should leaders in radiology keep in mind when mistakes are made?

Alexander Norbash, MD: I think a lot of that has to do with the priorities of the leader in terms of the kind of culture they are trying to create. Is it a culture of transparency? Is it a culture that rewards those who are forthcoming? Is it a culture that is intended to lead to continuous improvements and the satisfaction of the people who work there? Because if that’s the case, then the communication line is very important and the assumption of responsibility is very important. Also, realize that you have to assume responsibility for your mistakes, but you also have to correct them.

So it really, in my opinion, behooves a leader to try and create a culture that is solution-oriented. Whether you look at politics or whether it’s business, your intent is to move forward. If the intent is to move forward, you have to create a functioning organization that can understand it has to learn from mistakes, but it also has to look past mistakes to strategy and direction-setting.

An organization can be challenged, and without the right leadership, without the right structure, and without the right culture and history, it can turn into an organization where it’s a matter of proportioning blame rather than what the system learns from mistakes.

How do you get to the point where you are, across the entire organization, interested in continuous improvements and not necessarily that you are not blamed for the problem? It’s part of this whole learning cycle, and I think to understand the role that mistakes play in our development, it’s important to be reflective, introspective, to understand what your own reactions are to mistakes, and to ensure you are learning from mistakes instead of duplicating them.

Can you name any specific examples of lessons you’ve learned over the years about leadership? Did they come from watching others in leadership positions?

The examples that I’m most familiar with involve myself in terms of the mistakes I’ve made, and when I’ve learned from my mistakes as I’ve tried to employ a different approach. A lot of these are very fundamental character traits. I know that I have a tendency to want to jump to conclusions, or to want to move on from a task to the next thing. But when you’re dealing with people in complex situations, emotions and reactions, you have to listen rather than talking all the time. Not to say you have to be in a rested state where you never make decisions, but you have to be inclusive, you have to be thoughtful, and you have to listen.

In terms of examples of good leadership, I believe the one most important character trait for a leader is to possess and project optimism. I don’t believe anybody will follow you if you have a pessimistic worldview. Why would somebody follow you if you are saying the future is a mess?

The leaders that I have respected have been radiology chairs who I have worked for that had an inspirational message.

Do you take these lessons you learn about yourself with you outside of the job and into other parts of your life?

You know, it’s actually multi-directional. I have two grown children, but being a father has made me more patient, more caring, and more thoughtful. I’m not saying I’m a patient, careful, or thoughtful, person--it’s a matter of degrees--but I’m certainly better than I was before, in my opinion, in terms of understanding people and being kind to them.

Your perspective changes depending on the life you occupy. When you become a physician, if you’re sitting on a bus and you notice somebody getting on, and their ankles are kind of big and they are huffing and puffing, you can kind of visualize what is going on in their heart and their lungs and with their kidneys. And you worry about them. It affects your perception of the world and adds a certain dimension to your appreciation of everything that happens,

It’s the same thing with management. When you learn a little bit about management and you manage people, and then you’re sitting at a fast food restaurant, you’re starting to think in terms of organizational behavior, efficiency, and cycle times, and all of these thoughts pop up in your head about how you could fix them if you were in power to do so.

Do you have any advice for radiologists who are considering a leadership position in the near future? Are there any skills they should maybe focus on or research?

I have two bodies of advice for them. One is to maximize the learning opportunity from the moment they are in, and the second is to expand their interactions so they can learn about more stuff.

The first part is, whether you are leading one person, five people, or a thousand people, you can develop yourself to a higher degree in terms of how serious you are about what you are doing and how positively you see it affecting those around you. Even if you are only responsible for one person, for an example, it’s important in that opportunity to project optimism, to feel responsible for that person’s professional development, and to feel responsible about your behavior at all times. If you say something disrespectful or hurtful, it can have a profound influence on a person’s life, and the corollary is also true.

The second thing I mentioned, expanding the range of what you learn, means that whether you are reading The Economist, Harvard Business Review, or other things, it can inform you. And spend more time talking with people who have MBAs and use that in their daily work or spend more time talking to administrators in hospitals instead of only staying inside your echo chamber and trying to maximize your time with people just like you.

You’ve got to expand your circle of familiarity, and you have to do it in an intentional and thoughtful manner. Visualize where you would like to go and who has those particular strengths or abilities. Do it intentionally; don’t allow life to be an accidental experiment.

Do you have any other thoughts you would like to share about ACR 2016, or your presentation?

What I want to share is that, as a committed member of the ACR, I see the ACR facilitating exactly what I describe. The ACR is vitally interested in preserving the leadership skills of radiologists by giving them tools, approaches, and a community of other individuals in radiology and the leadership space who can positively affect the field and, at the same time, provide a heightened level of professional satisfaction to the members.

This text was edited for space and clarity. Other ACR 2016 coverage is available here, here, and here.