“Please, not another leadership book!”

I know what you are thinking, because I have had the same thought myself, many times. That is typically my reaction when I stumble across a new leadership-related title. Bookstores are saturated with such publications. Just venture around at your local public library and you will find volume after volume promising readers that they too can become successful leaders if only they would apply the book’s advice and principles.

So why did I spend two years of my life adding to the stack of leadership books? Because I realized that of all the books that are available, there was a significant void, especially in healthcare. While there are a lot of excellent texts out there with great advice, what I noticed is that most of them were written by previous or current executives who aimed to distill the lessons that they have learned over their careers into a number of principles or recommendations. However, with all due to respect to these authors, one person’s experience, no matter how rich and significant, is just that, one person’s experience.

What is lacking in leadership books, especially in healthcare, is evidence-based practices, i.e. practices that have been proven to be effective by a large number of people, in a variety of different settings, over time. And that is what I attempted to do in this book: I combed through the evidence in an attempt to uncover the truth. As a healthcare administration professor, I spend a lot of time interacting with students and graduates working in hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Observing the careers of some 600 emerging leaders over the last 15 years has given me some good insights about leadership styles. Moreover, I interviewed 20 healthcare leaders, providers, and experts on leadership-related issues, and collected data from more than 500 employees, supervisors, middle managers and executives in nine health systems.

If you are hoping that by reading this book you will get the five principles of management, the seven habits of success, or the nine rules of leadership, then you will be disappointed. Also, there are no made-up buzzwords, and no terms that are copyrighted with a little © next to them. This is not a self-help book either- another “how-to” scouts’ guide to becoming a better person or a more effective boss.

What you will find in this book is results from research data that I collected and findings from other studies. You will also find insights from people that I have interviewed, and from interviews reported by others. For example, you will learn about what is common between nursing students and healthcare leaders. You will distill leadership lessons from a nun-turned-CEO, a highly successful Scottish soccer coach, an aggressive but caring vice president, and a retired executive who has a charter school named after him. You will also uncover what it means to be an asshole at work, what the “nice guy syndrome” is all about, and how the Divergent book series is biased against nice people.

This book is an exploration of what the great minds, philosophies, research, and healthcare executives have to say about the role of humility, compassion, kindness and generosity in leadership. At the heart of the book is a simple question: Can leaders embody these characteristics and be successful at the same time? As I explore this question, other important emerge, which I tackle in the second part: With all the changes happening in the healthcare industry, what kind of traits will be needed for future healthcare leaders? Can leaders balance humility, compassion, kindness and generosity with having a strong personality? With getting things done? With producing results? After addressing these core questions, I turn my attention in the third part to issues related to gender, age and training: How do men and women differ in their perceptions of humility, compassion, kindness and generosity? Are there generational differences in how leadership is perceived? And finally, are these traits born with leaders, or can they be learned through training and practice?

This book is written for you: the undergraduate and graduate students, the early careerists and the emerging leaders in healthcare. My plan is to reach you before you are set in your ways. I don’t give you any prescriptive answers, but my hope is that, as you are turning the pages, you begin to ask yourself some profound questions about caring for others, leadership styles and behaviors. I hope to push you to start making some changes in how you behave with others as a leader, and how you treat the people that will be working with you and for you. And I hope that you start working towards becoming a humbitious leader. That is why I believe this is a different type of leadership book that will be worth your time.

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Dr. Amer Kaissi is a Professional Speaker, Executive Coach and an expert on Leadership, Humility & Ambition, Assuming Positive Intent, Psychological Safety & Accountability, Growth Mindsets & Resilience.