And here is what their book is about:
“Yet, despite widespread agreement on these notions, few of us can identify physician leaders, articulate what they do, or explain how they lead. Now more than ever before we need a clear and compelling picture of physician leadership. Someone must help the healers heed the call.”
Unlike most of the other books (that are few and far between) regarding leadership among physicians, McKenna and Pugno’s book offers theory, research and a substantial offering of quotations regarding leadership that are gained from actual working physicians.
Leadership Style and Practice
A leadership model called DISC is the primary theory being applied by McKenna and Pugno. DISC has been widely used in the training of leaders and managers. A similar model, called the Leadership Spectrum, has been similarly applied in the training and education of leaders and managers. I bring these two models together in this essay as a way to enrich our understanding regarding how physicians might most effectively lead in a challenging mid-21st Century health care system.
DISC and the Leadership Spectrum
In their introduction to work styles of physician leaders, McKenna and Pugno (2006, pp. 55-56) bring in DISC. This model incorporates four major preferences to be found among leaders working in all sectors of society: (1) dominance (D), (2) Influencing (I), (3) Steadiness (S) and Compliance (C) (DISC, 2024).
I propose that these four preferences related closely to the preferences and styles to be found in a model of leadership that I have often engaged in my training of leaders. Called the Leadership Spectrum, this model is incorporated in the book on leadership that I co-authored with Jeannine Sandstrom and Agnes Mura.
Much as is the case with those who have constructed the DISC model, I believe that no one leadership style is best. Specific strengths are associated with three primary styles. These styles tend to correspond with three of the four DISC styles. In addition, I propose that there are distinctive strengths associated with various blends of these three styles. I engage the metaphor of color in describing (and hopefully making memorable) each of these primary and blended styles. That is why this model is titled: The Leadership Spectrum.
In setting the stage for a description of each leadership style, I offer a basic model regarding the ways in which we approach the many challenges of mid-21st Century organizational life. This model concerns the ways in which we identify our current reality, our desired reality, and the ways in which to move from the current to desired state. I suggest that there are three domains on which we tend to focus as leaders. These are the domains of information (where am I or where are we right now), intentions (where do I want to be or where do we want to be) and ideas (how do I or how do we get from where we are to where we want to be).
