M aybe you started practice just a couple years ago, and this morning you were asked to serve as chairman of your hospital's department of family practice. Or maybe you've been in practice for a few years and the senior partner has asked you to chair your group's quality improvement committee. Or perhaps you are a career family medicine educator, and you have just accepted an appointment as director of a new family medicine residency program. Or maybe, like me, you have accepted an appointment as chairman of a medical school department of family medicine. It's useful to engage your group in imagining ways to respond to various potential changes in your environment.
Effective leaders create conditions that enable others to work effectively.
In each case, you are or will soon become a leader. You wonder what skills you have to help you succeed. You wonder if you can plead temporary insanity as a way to back out of your agreement to accept the new leadership role. A growing number of family physicians are being invited to lead clinical and academic medicine in ways we have not previously experienced. And more and more are finding the challenges of leadership to be very satisfying, even fun.