Five Ways the Eye is Like Leadership
It turns out that vision and eye anatomy is an incredible metaphor for leadership. In this post, I share this metaphor and describe ways you can use it in your healthcare practice.
The Eye Chart
When you direct an eye care patient to look at an eye chart, you're calling their attention to a goal.
"Read this," you say.
You measure the results. 20/20. 20/40. Or worse.
This is analogous to a goal at work.
- "We need a patient satisfaction score of 4.5 out of 5.0."
- "I need these workups done in 20 minutes or less, on average."
- "Our 120 days outstanding collections needs to be lower than 10%."
A goal gives you something to aim for. Every team needs a goal. Without a goal -- there is no vision. And without an eye chart, you'll never know if the patient has good, poor, or awful vision -- or if it's trending up, down, or stable. Goals and measurements give you clarity of purpose and they keep you on track.
The Cornea
The cornea is the tissue surrounding your eye. It protects the eye and helps focus light into the globe of the eye. It helps retain the structure and shape of the eye, as well.
As the leader, you must protect your team. You must insulate it from distraction and harm. And you begin to feed light (i.e., information) into your organization so it can thrive and see clearly. Examples include:
- Eliminating distracting goals or information
- Clarifying information from the outside of the practice which could become distracting or worse
- Denying poor job applicants who try to get hired
- Feeding positive information into your team
- Helping the organization heal when negative events occur
- Maintaining the cohesiveness of the team with effective boundaries
The Lens
The lens of the eye can be stretched and contracted to help you see the goal. The ciliary muscles help the lens adapt to see what's important. They shift the light coming into the eye to maximize the successful goal of seeing, understanding, and achieving the eye chart (i.e., the goal).
The way that we, as leaders, can "stretch the lens" is by providing feedback. We help our team members focus on the goal in the following ways:
- Providing feedback
- Talking about the goal
- Describing what success looks like
- Pointing out mistakes and how they can be fixed
- Talking about what is MORE important and pointing out the lesser things, to help team members prioritize
Anything that brings the goal into focus is EXTREMELY important for the leader to do. And get this - the ciliary muscles don't relax when focused on an object. They remain fixed for as long as it takes to stay focused on the object you're looking at.
In the same way, you need to stay laser focused on what is important. Talk about the goal or the message over and over again until you and your team is sick of hearing about it.
The Vitreous
The vitreous is a gel-like substance that fills the eye. Normally, it's clear and light passes through easily on its way to the retina.
However, in some people, the vitreous is cloudy. It has floaters blocking the light and obscuring the information from hitting the retina. Blood can leak into the vitreous, causing poor vision. The vitreous can detach from the retina, causing confusing messages to flash or dark spots to hinder vision.
In cases of vitreous pathology, the object of sight doesn't make its way to the retina. The light is diffused or confused. The eye doesn't see property and results are suboptimal.
The vitreous is like the culture and environment of your organization. So many things can cause the goal -- the light -- the be obscured in culture. It can be murky, cloudy, distracting, and ineffective. Traction can pull people's attention in the wrong direction. Here are some ways this happens:
- Gossip
- Negative coworkers who bring others down
- Conflicting direction from different leaders
- Frustrating and slow computer systems
- Poor training
- Noisy or otherwise poor office environments
- Annoying or lazy coworkers
- Favoritism or poor accountability
- Doctors or managers who undermine the goal that was agreed upon and publicly shared
Regardless of how clear, how compelling, or how urgent the goal is that you set, if the team has a poor culture, the light will become diffused and will never be in focus. Your results will frankly be mediocre.
The Retina
If you know eye anatomy, then you know that the retina is immensely important to your ability to see. Pathology in the retina can destroy your ability to see, read, take care of yourself, drive, and live independently. If the retina is in a state of severe disease, then vision is blurry or simply impossible.
Without a healthy retina - no amount of clarity in your goals, no amount of feedback, and no amount of culture building will help you succeed. The retina is the foundation.
As with the retina, each person on your team is the foundation of your success. If you do not hire properly, then you simply cannot succeed. You flexible, open, teachable people who can learn and adapt. People who have empathy and drive. This allows the entire system to function.
Take the time to hire well. Define your ideal team player. Move fast to hire the best people possible -- without compromising your culture. Compensate them very fairly or else you'll get what you pay for. They are your foundation.
Conclusion
To be successful as leaders, we must -
- Hire well (The Retina)
- Create a culture and environment conducive to success (The Vitreous)
- Focus the team on the goal (The Lens)
- Protect the team (The Cornea)
- And create a compelling vision (The Eye Chart)
If we can put these tasks together, then we can eventually see the outcomes we desire.
Special thanks to Dr. Blake Hampton for his expert review of this article.
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Mike Lyons is an HR professional and consultant in the Austin, TX area. He can be found at TXHRGuy.com and on LinkedIn.