A strong focus on building and maintaining relationships will advance leaders, whether in the military, medicine, athletics or business.
This was the conclusion of the third annual Feagin Leadership Forum, which brought an interdisciplinary set of speakers and participants to the Michael Krzyzewski Center for Athletic Excellence May 18 and 19. The event also served as the capstone of the yearlong Feagin Medical Scholars program, which provides ethical leadership training for select medical students.
The goal of the program is to emphasize leadership qualities effective in all fields, said Dr. Dean Taylor, Medicine ’85 and chairman of the program.
“In medicine, we have physicians placed in positions of leadership without proper preparation, so we like to take the principles of leadership that apply from the military, from business, from athletics, from public policy, from divinity, and use those to help prepare the future leaders in medicine for careers of service,” said Taylor, who is also a professor of orthopedic surgery and head team physician for the men’s basketball team.
The Forum and the Scholars programs were named in honor of Dr. John Feagin, Medicine ’61 and professor emeritus of orthopedic surgery. Feagin served as a military surgeon for 18 years and led the development of hip replacement surgery before he returned to Duke. The 2011-2012 Feagin Medical Scholars include three orthopedic fellows, two orthopedic residents, one neurosurgery resident and six third-year medical students.
The value of establishing and maintaining relationships is a key quality for an effective and successful leader, said Dr. Victor Dzau, chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of Duke University Health System, in the keynote address.
“Anyone can have a great idea and put something together,” Dzau said. “To ultimately begin to impact hundreds of thousands of human lives, it takes continual relationships and networking to get that initial idea to human benefit.”
Dzau added that leaders must take the time to connect and reach out to their employees and colleagues in order to build a sense of trust. He noted the loyalty staff, workers and employees showed administrators during the construction of the medical center in 2007, amidst an economic crisis. Although the University did not lay off any workers during this time, it had to freeze the salaries of some staff workers.
“When I posed this issue to [the staff workers], I was really surprised when they told me that they believed that the initiative was just as important to them as well. One member related the [construction] to investing in future children,” he said. “There was no dissension going forward even though they were presented with a loss in the short term.”
After the keynote address was presented, the Feagin Scholars gave three presentations on their projects, which focused on leadership education and development within the current medical school training curriculum, improving leadership development access across the University campus and leadership development within physician training.
Other panels explored relationships in medical, athletic and business contexts. Men’s basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke with his former player and current Harvard men’s basketball head coach Tommy Amaker about how to manage changing relationships. A panel of social media experts discussed the benefits and dangers posed by social media for professional and personal relationships, as live tweets of the event projected onto screens behind them.
The panelists noted the importance of personal interaction, but affirmed that social media is here to stay and it is imperative to use it to strengthen relationships.
“[Social media] followership allows you to feel presence without imposing on other people’s time,” said panelist Tony O’Driscoll, professor of the practice of business administration. “We live in an information economy where the actual scarce resource is attention.”
Cara Rousseau, social media manager for the Office of News and Communications, advised prudence in online communication, warning the audience of the principle of “Once you tweet it, you can’t delete it.” She related a story of a Duke applicant who tweeted an inappropriate photo with a note that he was glad Duke admissions was not looking at it. Unfortunately for him, the Office of Admissions did see it.
The forum closed with final words by each of the 12 Feagin Scholars, who reflected on their experiences of the year and thanked the program leaders for their mentorship.
“[Leadership] is not a series of acts, it’s your character—what you’re doing when people are watching and when people aren’t watching,” said Grant Sutter, a Feagin Scholar and third-year medical student.
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