Scott Hazelbaker, MS, director of radiology at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska, revealed eight principles to creating a positive work environment at RBMA PaRADigm 2017 in Chicago.

In the session, “Leadership Principles for a Positive Radiology Group,” Hazelbaker who has worked over 30 years in the field of radiology, examines principles required to lead a successful radiology department. He notes that the skills he acquired did not happen overnight, as he spent his first few years figuring out the direction he wanted to take and looked at every experience as a learning opportunity.

“True leadership is being positive,” said Hazelbaker. “Motivate, motivate, motivate. You want to motivate a group of people to achieve a common goal.” 

Leadership Principles for a Positive Radiology Group

1. Start with the first step: You must at least like, and hopefully respect the person you report to.

2. Understand the definition of leadership: If you’re not building a positive environment, good comfort zone, networking with your hospital, good relationships with the CEO, then are you truly leading? You’re not leading if no one is following.

3. Leadership styles that fail: The Bulldog: Fear and intimidation in the long term does not work. The Detailed leader: It’s not a bad thing to get focused on your finances, but don’t let that confuse you for leadership. Micromanager: Being micromanaged after a while will get on good leaders nerves and they will move on.

4. Build your team. Know your customers: Key to leadership success. You want to choose your supervisors carefully and surround yourself with a good team and build them up. Know your customers, your customers are anyone and everyone you come in contact with (administrators, patients, referring physicians, staff), treat EVERYONE that goes down your hallway with attention. If you take care of your customers and staff, have a positive environment, and your patient has a good experience, your patient will go back to the administrator and say they had a pleasant experience. If your staff isn’t happy then your competition is probably going to get your referrals.

5. Empowerment and delegation: It’s not being lazy! With empowerment, it’s handing over control to someone else who can do the same thing and achieve a common goal. You can’t delegate away your responsibility, but you can delegate task away so you can get more done in a short period of time.

6. You’re the captain. Time to wave goodbye to the ones that don’t want to sail with you: You can’t deal with negativity if you’re trying to create a positive work environment.

7. Creating the positive compassionate environment: Some key points to take into consideration - Sincere trust, high level of interpersonal skills, a desire to enjoy your work environment, concern and care for others, listen, do to others as you would have them do to you and understand that life is extremely short.

8. Have fun: Having fun is critical in leadership success.