THE ONE THING

1. A Life-Changing Leadership Lesson from a Trauma Surgeon

For this first edition of Leadership 80/20, I thought I’d share a lesson I learned from observing a trauma surgeon.

I’ve written about this story before, but I wanted to kick things off with it again because it genuinely changed the way I view leadership.

A few years ago, I got the chance to watch Dr. Haytham Kaafarani at work.

As a trauma surgeon, he was responsible for operating on severely injured patients coming through the ER (think gunshot wounds, car accidents, and knife stabs).

I wanted to understand how surgeons make life-and-death decisions in high-stress situations. I don’t have a medical background, but I thought I might learn something that could help me in my management career.

One lesson stuck out among many.

When a patient arrived at the ER, the hospital staff paged Dr. Kaafarani to get there STAT.

A young female was airlifted to the hospital after a serious accident. She had severe injuries in her legs and lower back. As he entered the room, there were already over 12 doctors and nurses helping out. Some were adding IV lines, others were checking for internal bleeding, and a couple were monitoring vitals. The scene was chaotic but controlled.

I expected Dr. Kaafarani to jump in immediately and start assisting.

Surprisingly, he just stood at the foot of the bed.

He was calmly watching everyone and listening to their updates. He asked direct questions and made quick decisions. He requested an update about the primary and secondary surveys and made sure everyone heard the results. Twenty minutes later, the patient was in stable condition, and her injuries were no longer life-threatening.

When I later asked him why he didn’t jump in, he gave me a two-word answer.

“Situational awareness.”

Everyone had a job to do. And his job was to make sure he kept his eye on the big picture. If he got distracted by the bleeding in the patient’s thigh, then he might have missed her blood pressure drop.

He was the captain of the ship. And his team was doing their job effectively.

He was leading.

INSIGHTFUL THOUGHTS

2. An HBR Article on the Difference Between Leadership and Management

The Harvard Business Review recently tweeted about a classic article they published years ago called: What Leaders Really Do

The article goes into the differences between leadership and management, and they summed it up nicely in the article:

In other words, a strong manager is great at “coping with complexity,” whereas a strong leader is great at “coping with change.”

Although both skills are needed in organizations, the surprising takeaway for me was that it’s sometimes better to have strong management with weak leadership than vice versa. 

From the article summary:

I’m not sure I fully agree with that takeaway, but I do see how it makes sense in certain contexts.

THE 80/20

3. An 80/20 Tip You Can Apply Today

Here’s a low-effort, high-impact tip you can use with your team today:

• What: Use the word “because” in your communication to increase influence

• Why: The word “because” increases compliance by 33%, according to the Xerox Study (even if the reason given is obvious)

• Example: “Please send me the report by Tuesday COB because I need to present it to John on Wednesday ” is more effective than just “Please send me the report by Tuesday COB.”